"The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, the SA (Sturmabteilung; commonly known as the Storm Troopers), the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons—the elite guard of the Nazi party), the police, and local civilian authorities organized numerous detention camps to incarcerate real and perceived political opponents of Nazi policy."TRAITOR Trump's first concentation camp, known as "Alligator Alcatraz" was opened in South Florida on July 1, 2025, in South Florida with TRAITOR Trump and Rod DeSantis present and happily touting its existence as if they had just funded an actual day care center, community college, or hospital. The only term I find adequate to describe TRAITOR Trump's emotional response to this concentration camp is "masturbatory glee". This isa term I have used once or twice before in reference to some of his most egregious and criminal acts. When TRAITOR Trump is able to do anything which creates havoc,makes the world a more dangerous place, or worsening the living conditions for a major segment of America's population, his responses are always a public exhibition of strutting like a rooster in a chicken lot in which he is the only male of the species. His face becomes exactly like of the high school bully who has just slapped a non-consenting freshman girl on the hindquartes and gotten away with it. When he stood in front of the press at the opening of this hell hole,his experssion was exactly like that of an insecure 13 year old boy who has suddenly discovered that he has one black hair on his chest or crotch. TRAITOR Trump delights in the suffering of others, especially if he is the perpetrator of that suffering. There is no word or expression in the English language that better describes his reactions in these instances than masturbatory glee. We are teetering on the edge of the greatest disaster any civilized country can perpetrate or ignore as it is being perpetrated. We are facing the onset of what will become an American Holocaust if TRAITOR Trump is not stopped by the US House, Senate, and Supreme Court. It is unlikelyh at this time that any of the three are willing or morally able to do that. The razor slim margins which votes on his "Big Vicious, Ugly Bill" is being defeated by are not based on strength or moral courage. They are based on the dissent of a small handful of the worst elected officials in America whose oppostion is due to their desire to make that "Big, Vicious, Ugly Bill" even bigger, more visious, and uglier. The United States is sitting at the cusp of being host to a Second Holocaust. More concentration camps are going to be built. More people will be incarcerated unjustly, denied due process, deported, suffer from inhumane treatment, and many of them will die in the process or because of hte long term effects of that process. The question has now become "what will you as an idividual citizen do in response to this sought after Second Holocaust? Will you sit silent or even assist as thousands of German citizens did in World War II? Will you simply stick your head deep within your shell of compliance while blaming other under your breath as many other German citizens did in World War II? Will you ignore this Second Holocaust as much of the so-called civilized world did in World War II? Or will you be a real participant in the resistance to this Tyrann, this Racism, this Second Holocaust? Will you even join TRAITOR Trump in his masturbatory glee?
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Thursday, July 3, 2025
"Alligator Acatraz" Is TRAITOR Trump's First Concentration Camp!
Monday, September 23, 2024
The Upcoming Second Insurrection!
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
"Night Watch" by Jayne Anne Phillips--Notes On Reading A Pulitzer Prize Winner
I have for many years made a practice of reading prize winning books in fiction, nonfiction, and juvenile fiction. I don't read every prize winner every year or even most of them in some years. I chose to read this one because someone I know on social media recommended it, and it is a 2024 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. The brief description of the novel on the official website of the Pulitzers says this about the book:
From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerizing story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War—and a brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds. (Pulitzer Prizes website 2024)
The novel is set primarily in West Virginia's Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum which was one of the earliest such mental institutions in America beginning shortly after the states of Maine and Kentucky built the first two such institutions. The novel is set in the times shortly before, during, and after the Civil War, and is centered on three women in the mountains of West Virginia, and the Civil War sharpshooter who is the son, husband, and father of the three women respectively. The sharpshooter has been seriously injured during the war and has no memory of who he is, his name, or personal history. But he has become skilled in caring for the mentally ill while in a hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, and has been referred to the asylum as a night watchman and general aide to the doctor. The man's mother is a root woman, an herb doctor, or healer. The man's wife and daughter, along with the older woman, are living high in the mountains of West Virginia while he is away in the war and are the victims of marauders from both sides of the conflict at times. The antagonist in the novel is a Rebel sympathizer who is wandering the countryside alone preying on whomever he can find who is too weak to defend themselves against him. He moves in with or on the young woman's mother, victimizes the two of them in every way possible and finally drops off the girl and her mother, who has become nonverbal as a result of his rape and abuse of her, at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum and disappears before returning as an inmate of the institution. The girl has been ordered to tell the asylum staff that the mother is not related to her, and she is simply a teenage orphan who has been caring for the woman. The ruse works and the mother is admitted as a patient while her daughter is taken in as an unpaid aide for her mother.
Eventually, the mother begins to talk and continues the lie their attacker has forced them to tell. But she also becomes enamored of the doctor in charge of the institution and the feelings are mutual. Her daughter is eventually made a full time nurse, a position which did not require formal educational training or a degree in the 19th century. When their attacker is brought to the asylum, he is in a violent rage and placed in a locked ward from which he eventually escapes. The novel comes to a violent climax with the building on fire, the attacker returned to try to murder the women, and, in the meantime the night watchman's wife has recognized him and they have come to tell the doctor they are married and intend to leave to go back to the mountains. The attacker climbs through the window of the doctor's office as that conversation has begun and attacks the group. The sharpshooter is shot and killed just as he manages to throw the attacker out a third story window to his death. All the loose ends are quickly tied up and the girl's mother marries the doctor, the grandmother takes the girl back to the mountains, and all is well that ends well.
This is a good novel but not a great novel. It does contain the bones of what could have been a great novel. But after years of reading many winners of the Nobel, Pulitzer, and other literary prizes, for me the novel is a disappointment. It is poorly organized, leaves far too many issues hanging at times, and could have been a far better book with a serious rewrite. I realize when I say such things about a book which others rave about, I have set myself up for anything from a mild sneer of derision to outright claims of ignorance on my part. The author has a fine resume both as a writer and a trainer of writers. This is her sixth novel and twelfth book. It is also the first of her books I have ever read and it is possible that I am not giving her enough credit. But I really do believe that she, her agent, her editor, and the Pulitzer committee all accepted less than what could have become her best work and a worthy prize winner. I'd love to have seen this book in a better form after another month or two of work from the author and her editor. But you might also read it and rave. Don't take my distaste for the book as a total red flag. If you like the sound of the plot, read it, and form your own opinion.