Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at a rally in Utah, and I am not sorry for him. He was a hateful little beast who hurt so many people--by supporting ICE raids, anti-trans disinformation, lies about the LGBTQ+ community, support for Russia's terrorism in Ukraine, mocking the near murder of Paul Pelosi, disparaging successful women--and the world is better off without him.

I feel the same way about Felon47, in the White House...except I do not want him assassinated. I want him to die of natural causes, because if he's shot he'll become a martyr to the MAGAt Class and that is not acceptable. But if he's taken out by a heart attack or stroke, JD Vance becomes president and he does not have the ability to keep the bastard's cult going.

Hmph...35 years ago I had the idea of updating Aristophanes' The Birds into a cyber-punk screenplay. Set in a dystopian future where the Anglo class lived in towers reaching to the sun and the punks were at ground level working in packs to live off the dregs. Two men from the Anglo class come down to rile them up into fighting back in ways that would disrupt everything, online...forcing better conditions for them all.

I never pursued it. I mean, I did a first draft that wasn't very good but still...it would have been way ahead of its time. And I felt it was too late to do when 2001 came around.

I'm getting a similar feeling from Simon Halloran's story. That it would have been best to write it a couple years ago. Make its quiet points in a way that's accessible to people. Now the political chaos is out of control and no way can I keep up with that in my writing. Not when ICE is running around kidnapping, killing and deporting people with impunity.

This is not the America I want to live in.