I’m really not feeling that good about our ability to handle the next epidemic that comes our way. —BCS, January 2017

The Supreme Court today is drooling with eagerness to kill Biden’s vaccine-or-test mandate, on the legal rationale of “we declare that we can, so we will”. So, first, congratulations to Omicron. Second, this makes it even more plain that they’ll throttle the EPA on the same “fuck any regulators that want to actually regulate” basis, in a few months.

The Democrats will probably lose at least the House in November (the map isn’t turning out as gerrymandered as a lot of folks expected, but it’s still bad enough). That’s the chance of court reform gone, with a reactionary majority free to uphold theocracy, sabotage the vote, treat LGBT people as subhuman, attack labor rights, fuck over press freedom (if Roe is gone, NYT v Sullivan can hardly be safe).

The Democrats will lose the Senate in 2024 (the map will be terrible unless 2022 goes amazingly for them). Oh, and two years of Republicans running the House means two years of Benghazi!-ing, a shutdown or two, doing everything possible to make Trump president again. Did we mention that one factor in that nominally not-so-bad map has been “incumbent protection”, i.e., baking in the MAGA?

… OK, maybe Trump will be dead by then, or too ill to be propped up on two feet. DeSantis seems the most likely heir at the moment. But whatever.

And supposing Biden wins in ’24? Not a lot he’ll be able to do with both the Senate and (probably) the House against him.

Point is, we’re on a three-year train to Fuckedville while the planet cooks around us.

I’ve seen people cast about for analogies for what’s in progress/likely to be coming. Turkey under Erdogan? Hungary under Orban? The Time of Troubles? There always seems to be some ingredient that makes the analogy not quite match, for me, but not a single option on the table looks good.

What was that old Adam Smith line about there being “a great deal of ruin in a nation”? Right now, we’re in the middle of measuring just how much ruin there is.

(Apropos, how much ruin is there in a health-care system?)

Autocracy is here. It just isn’t evenly distributed, yet.