“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff told The New York Times.

What Salesforce CEO Benioff, who looks like the player/coach of the 1972 Detroit Red Wings didn't tell the NYT, is that his Dreamforce 2025 Convention (buy nothing from them, ever) is next week, and so really, it's not so much about public safety, or the resurrection of San Francisco from the same bombed-out war-ravaged status as Portland/Dresden that he's selflessly insisting The Grifter address, it's 'cuz he doesn't want any potential buyers of worthless software mugged, panhandled, sold fentanyl, or dragged down to a drag show at Ginger's Trois (246 Kearney St.).

But what about three days later, when Dreamforce 2025 ends, and all the hungover/philandered attendees flock back to the airport, and the country's dreams dissipate with them?

"Whatever," Benioff said, doing a shot of Fetal Stem Cells & Red Bull brought to him by his lovely Vietnamese assistant, "We make it til Tuesday with no bad pub, the freaks can take over again with my blessing."

"Shouldn't a billionaire in a capitalist country whose very infrastructure allows him to accrue and then hoard such wealth, without being attacked by mobs of serfs with machetes, donate, say, 500 million of his own lucre to SF to hire more police, instead of siphoning off federal funds?" asked a slightly brown reporter, who was immediately maced, clubbed, and then tossed into an unmarked van.

When asked what should happen to the National Guard, after it had been illegally called out to the tune of sixteen million dollars per day, meanwhile trampling all over Posse Comitatus laws restricting the use of the US military against American citizens, the lawsuit and civil cases against which are even now being fought over in district courts in LA, DC, and Portland, simply to protect a bloated and unnecessary tech conference since virtually anything can be done over Zoom, Benioff lit a cigar with flaming bitcoin and said, "Those Guard losers can pick up trash, like usual. Hey, as long as the stock price bumps they can wing protestors in the legs with AR's like we did back in the old days!"
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As he stepped into his 8-door Tesla limo, Benioff was asked what the sales numbers of Salesforce might be when the country fully slides into Authoritarian Fascism, which at least in part is caused by a completely partisan militarization of certain cities as a precursor to a coming Martial Law, the fun-loving CEO with the best haircut since Vincent Price's pastry-challenged nephew Lenny Price tried out for the part of Van Helsing in "The Vampire Lestat", Benioff said, "People seem to forget that Mussolini was good for business. I mean, sure, he had some lousy ideas, but the pasta markets he opened in Ethiopia alone were worth a fortune!"

1. Well, Zuckerbook says I posted this 13 years ago today. What's so striking is, despite my inherent personal skepticism, I remember in a very raw and sadly painful way the degree to which I was convinced that, for the first time in my life, America was moving in a positive direction.

2. Which is to say, toward reason and stability and ethics and intellect and cultural openness and, yes, Hope with a capital H. If you had told me then, as I held my 7 year old daughter in my lap, that in 2025 we would be living in a genuinely Fascist Autocracy, I would have told you that you were a lunatic.

3. If only because there was no chance that America could simply roll over like a dying bison, sigh with regret, and allow the flies to descend.

4. And yet, that is precisely what has happened. The Lord Of Flies, throughout my childhood an openly ridiculed buffoon who helmed one business disaster after another, named Donald J. Trump, is, as I type this and to my burning fissile amazement, still president every day I wake.
5. People are being dragged out of their beds and zip-tied. ICE is on course to soon be larger than the US Marines. Colleges, Museums, and National Parks have been forcibly edited to suit a particularly false narrative. Foreign policy is being deliberately altered to suit Russian expansionism and weaken democracy in Europe. Anti-science initiatives are pushed daily, with the zombie corpse of John F. Kennedy's nephew at the helm. Congress has been reduced to a collection of powerless lab monkeys and sycophants. Giddily racist, white nationalist, and xenophobic utterances are celebrated daily. The Supreme Court is merely an evangelist arm of the Heritage Foundation, the same people who wrote, denied, and then implemented Project 2025.

6. Perhaps most distressingly, 150 million Americans blithely support these events, mouthing banalities about freedoms and speech and patriotism and America As An Ideal, while they drool all over themselves attempting to find ways to justify the artifice.

7. America is no longer a place, it is a concept. And that concept is a dark, masturbatory fantasy.

8. Unreasoning anger is the lifeblood of the movement toward authoritarianism, and anger, in the end, is just fear in a leather jacket.

9. There was a time, back in the days of Freewheelin' Barry Obama, when people simply held differing political views and even dangerously strident positions, which had to be accommodated as part of the pact we've made with ourselves, as the world's best, if not only, truly functional Social Democracy, in which every citizen has a right to their opinion.

10. That time has passed. No one has the right to support Fascism, no matter what shade of lipstick it wears. Abundant irony, top-shelf coffee, and clever sentences are no longer enough of a response. Unfortunately, the only way to fight Fascism is by force, if not outright violence. Is there still time for judicial, legislative, and force of Popular Will to somehow eke out a victory from beneath the jackloafers of Stephen Miller and what's left of the manipulated brain of Donald J. Trump?

11. I guess we're going to find out.

12. If you, today, this morning, still support Donald J. Trump because you think it'll help your stock portfolio, or a Woke Mob will force you to stop saying "retard" in public, or you have yet to admit to yourself that your son actually looks pretty fantastic in a lilac dress, you are a flat TRAITOR to any ideal you claim to possess.

13. It's real close to Man The Barricades time. Can't believe I believe that either, or what form it would actually take, but it's also very likely that The Remaining Sane Citizens Of America should have been out in the streets six months ago, and refused to relent until the unforgivable knee-bending to the forces of fatuousness, cretinism, imbecility, greed, dissimulation, propaganda, prevarications, myths, figments, and terminological inexactitude were cleansed away with the powerful antiseptic that brought about The Age Of Reason.
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14. Five-hundred years ago, true courage, fledgling science, unabashed secularism, and true enlightenment were afoot. We're doomed if we are unable to find that spirit again.

1. DAM FST blew by me at, shall we say, a high rate of velocity this morning. Normally I don't mind that action at all. In fact, I sort of love when someone eats up the fast lane, exploring their personal and spatial freedoms, testing momentum and friction and various quanta of acceleration like Sir Isaac Newton on a modified Kawasaki with glasspack exhausts methodically testing the movement of objects in space.

2. Someone else's proximal velocity also makes it, as Ike Newton will tell you from long experience, that much less likely I will get nailed by some cop with donut and attitude for my own reckless speed.

3. Except, in this instance, DAM FST came roaring up behind me at the end of a merge lane, where there really was not room for two vehicles, and so decided to cut around on the shoulder in order to attain exactly one car-length's advantage in ETA to destination, but then sat, like everyone else, in lazy village traffic.

4. In the automotive, therapeutic, behavioral, psychological, sociological, aeronautical, design, and proctological disciplines, this is commonly known as being "A Complete Douche."

5. Although you could make the case that the usage of "douche" as an adjective in itself, unless you happen to be twenty-two during the long summer of 1993, and you've just been verbally reamed by your manager in front of many queasily satisfied customers at Olive Garden, prompting you to throw down your alfredo-spotted apron and quit, is in itself somewhat douchey. Which, of course, in this context, makes it the perfect gateway into meta-ironicism.

6. DAM FST, who I glimpsed as he veered from the shoulder and back across gravel into my lane, was a forty-ish white guy with a shoebox of a head, Hedge Acronym ballcap, and a shiny Submariner-ish watch nestled low in abundant wrist hair. There was a pressed Brooks Brothers fresh from the dry cleaners hanging from the seat hook, and a tennis racket in an immaculate white cover propped in the passenger seat radiating the attitude of an exhausted and divorce-considering Muscovite wife.

7. So, basically, the dude was Chevy Chase from "Caddyshack" merged with Jared Kushner's predatory Saudi-vault gaze, with a side of ethnically cleansed Roger Federer and the interpersonal manners of Titus Andronicus.

8. As I idled, 5/8ths of an inch from his rear bumper, his vanity, and his vanity plate, few essential questions came to mind:

9. Was it possible that DAM FST stood for "Damascus Fist?"

10. Now, that would be awesome and mean the driver was the grandson of the little-known 70's wrestler and proudly Syrian foil of Andre The Giant, in which case, all was forgiven.

11. Or maybe DAMASCUS FIST was a proud and fervent participant in a sub-genre of romantic behavior generally frowned upon by scripture throughout the Abrahamic Religions, in which case all was also forgiven.

12. On the other hand, maybe DAM FST was shorthand for "Demi Moore's Forward Surgical Team" or "Douche As Mentioned in Florida Standard Time" or "Dean Martin's Field Sobriety Test" or "JC Van Damme's Follistatin Testosterone."

13. Unlikely, I thought, inching with the click of his left turn signal, making it imperative that I decode this person before they accelerated away from my disdain and, to a lesser degree, my OCD, forever.

13. Dampness? Damsel? Damnation? F. Scott Titzgerald? Flat Screen Television? Funter S. Thompson?

14. If you think about it though, it is kind of fascinating to envision yourself in line at the DMV, running through a last-minute list in your head of possible personalized messages, homages or references or puns, and wonder why anyone chooses anything at all.

15. Like, in 2025, barely afloat in the forced immersion of social media curation and internet self-branding, what are you, as an individual, really trying to communicate to the world with a rectangle of metal spot-welded to the back of your vehicle, which in itself already carries a distinct message in terms of style and coloration, but mostly More Wealth Or Less Wealth depending on the model?

16. Do you choose LNDCLLNG or JERRYCRIES or ZOROASTER 69 or CELEBRITY ME or MY CASH YOUR POVERTY or WARSAW GHETTO or HUG ME LIKE POMPEII or JOHN WYNE GACY or MILL E VAN ILL E?

17. Or, in a welter of pure ego and universal obliviousness, do you clumsily brag about your car?

18. Okay, so presuming it's DAMN FAST, let's look at the specs on the 2002 Mercedes SLK 32 AMG 2 seat roadster coupe (just guessing). Apparently, motivating the SLK32 AMG is a 3.2-liter supercharged, intercooled V6. It makes 349 horsepower and 332 pound-feet of torque. Based on the standard SLK32’s normally-aspirated V6, the AMG version adds, in addition to the supercharger, new throttle body, cams, valves and valve springs.

19. Fair enough, and hard to argue with. In fact, the dude's ride might even give my Extremely Powerful But Non Personalized Plate precision automobile a run for its money on a straightaway while betting pinks, and I imagine in any case it's really fun to drive, although I suspect I wouldn't fit in it very easily, and therefore would regard it as impractical for anything more than a short Steve McQueen burst across town.

20. I also wouldn't want to own the Merc on general principle, given its severe Teutonic/Blitzkrieg/Wernher von Braun baggage and Invasion Of Poland associations. But I admit that's like being a Loud Vegan and hectoring your dinner companions about the evils of GMO grapeseed oil all through the pasta course.

21. I love my father for many, many reasons, but at the moment one of the most convincing ones is that I recall, around the age of 12, asking him why he had no bumper stickers on his car. He looked at me, frowned, and said, "I am no one's billboard".

22. I pondered that for a moment, and then he said, "also, it's fucking stupid." Then we hopped into the blue Saab 900 Turbo and went somewhere superior.

23. DAM FAST eventually turned into a small shopping center with a nail salon, a teriyaki joint, and "Scissor Me Whiskers", which proudly advertised its services in the realm of bespoke pet grooming.

24. I turned in the opposite direction, toward home, and then, at some point later, arrived.
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25. There is no twenty-five.