the Second Body Problem edition

Nine FACTS, One LIE
​Issue #38

1. According to Newton's Second Law Of Thermodynamics, entropy always increases over time.

2. Regardless of how you define entropy, which is to say in a literary or scientific sense, both apply equally to what is happening in Minneapolis this morning. And yesterday. And tomorrow.

3. If you are feeling as helpless + mystified + furious as I am, you are likely turning to your only real recourse in 2026 America under Donald J. Trump: talking publicly about what is transpiring without regard for the beliefs of those who remain in your life who support any facet ("At least the stock market is up", "At least the border is closed", "What, you'd rather have Kamala Harris?") of what is happening in the streets of Minnesota.

4. At this point, there is literally no one in my life who supports what is happening in the streets of Minnesota, as they've long been jettisoned for their mental health as well as mine. Because it's one thing to genially ignore each other on social media, but I could not be in the same room with a "friend" without demanding that they explain a few things to me, which they could not do, because there is no legitimate explanation aside from pure, willful ignorance.

5. Although it must be admitted that I still have some ties to The Cynical Indifference crowd, remnants of a youthful circle of angry and nihilistic artist-types that was centered in Very Loud Music, a scene that even then I found to be something of an intellectual black hole, but the potential for arty chaos and inherent huge middle finger for Reaganite polite society were both tempting and cathartic, ultimately outweighing other concerns.

6. Much like the insanity of pretending that tariffs are not harmful taxes, the Trump administration has rendered indifference to be a totally unacceptable stance if you intend to continue as part of American society. I mean, I'd respect flying to Calcutta and joining a Dervish cult and renouncing your previous life entirely, but I no longer think you can simply work your job and watch football and stream the new HBO detective series that doesn't have Woody Harrelson in it and declare yourself a free agent from morality.

7. Isaac Newton is one of my heroes. In fact, I'm of the opinion he is among the ten most brilliant men who have ever lived. His genius would be awe-inspiring even if immediately transported to today and enmeshed with current technology, but the breadth of his mind in 1670, constrained by the regressively stupid Anglican Church and living in central London, where people were generally illiterate and unbothered by living among their own excrement (no real political heart for a unified sewage system - dump it in the Thames!), makes his accomplishments impressive beyond compare.

8. No joke, he might have been an alien.

9. Also, as long as we're being honest, take a second to examine your fake-woke inclination to think while reading #7, "But Isaac Newton was an anti-semite" or "Isaac Newton refused to call Bruce Caitlin". A big part of the problem we face is the insistence that every sentence not written in warm milk needs an accompanying amelioration for the Identitarian Left. Modernity only began 10,000 years ago, and not a day has passed in which every single person alive failed to be imperfect, difficult, complex, nuanced, and repeatedly wrong.

10. Which is to say, you are not allowed to muse about why soybean farmers continue to support Donald J. Trump despite how badly he has screwed them, when the answer is right in front of you: most people prefer inflicting pain on themselves than to be hectored and corrected and belittled by their perceived cultural enemies. "Wait, you're lying to me?" requires thought. "What, you think you're better than me?" does not.

11. Anyway, our man Newton saved England in numerous ways, including devising a method for the integration of the endless forms of English coinage into one, as well protecting against forgery, without which Manchester United fans would be cheering their squad in French today, since the Crown was nearly broke and The Sun King was rampaging.

12. But back to the (presumed) point of all this: in scientific terms entropy means thermal energy that for various reasons cannot be converted into units of mechanical production. Our sun, for instance, will die over time. 

13. Metaphorically it means a slow creep toward unpredictability, an embrace of disorder, the inevitable slide into manufactured chaos, a deliberate confusion of language or message.

14. Donald J. Trump is, in both the literary and mathematical sense, the purest definition of entropy to ever simultaneously wear diapers and be president twice.

15. But mainly, let's at least agree, and start talking publicly about, just how baldly this ICE clown routine is INTENTIONAL. 

16. It's the Fascism 101 playbook. Fear. Inexplicable dictates. Hiring untrained, volatile shitheads to "police". Paying the "police" to be bounty hunters. Terrorizing a specific, voiceless community. Stephen Miller thinks he’s punishing Tim Walz. Steve Bannon thinks he’s punishing Ilhan Omar. Donald J. Trump is just fine with Renee Goode being shot, if only because he loves that FOX ran as commanded with the bullshit of calling her a "Domestic Terrorist." They want ICE to arrest five-year-olds, because it's a dare: let's see if a majority of America has the stones to declare it unacceptable. No? Then crank it up another notch. Every time they toss tear gas in someone's car, or arrest US citizens for not carrying papers and enough people simply swallow it and/or moronically race to Facebook to type FAFO, it's a huge success.

17. Each deliberate, contemptible step is one step closer to invoking the Insurrection Act. They are DYING to have someone who can be branded Leftist shoot back, and use the excuse to send in twenty thousand more Proud Boys and their pet Incels.

18. ICE is not the border control agency it once was, no matter what we thought of it then. It's been transformed into a deliberately out-of-control private army, armed to the teeth, that is just one part of The Entropic Calculation that will provide cover to skew the next two elections.

19. We'll find out in November where this country really stands, and it will be the test run for 2028.

20. If the picture below doesn't make you want to go all John Brown on Harpers Ferry, you have lost any tether to humanity. Which is another way of saying you're a pawn for Wealth Fascism, which secretly despises you for being so easily duped. 

21. At some point we can't just keep saying "How is this happening?" At some point we have to get deeply Newtonian and declare to the Pope's Face (correctly) that the earth is not a perfectly designed globe, it is a lumpy oblate spheroid. 

22. Long jail sentences await those who spend every waking moment trying convince you, for their own ends, that it is otherwise. Until then, this.