Vignettes of bad choices

What do socialists and Trumpists have in common?

May 13, 2026

I am very limited in time today, so I am going to keep this short. What do socialists and Trumpists have in common? That people who agree with them must agree with all their ideas, regardless of how crazy they are; and, that those who disagree must have their agency to choose curtailed, in order to protect the public good.

I offer a few glimpses as sanity intrudes into the fever dreams of both ends of the horseshoe.

Los Angeles resurrection election?

First up, Los Angeles. Emerging from the din of the one-sided liberal/socialist radical political scene is a former MTV reality star, who is married to his former co-star Heidi Montag. Celebrity reality show stars really do have their place in our political climate, but Spencer Pratt is on a mission to save his city. When his parents home burned in the Palisades fire, which was set by a man inspired by celebrity assassin Luigi Mangione, as Jeff Blehar helpfully noted, Pratt’s anger surfaced, which confused those also running for mayor who would rather globetrot in a campaign against capitalism.

Pratt’s plain spoken truths resonated with Angelinos, and he is widely seen as the winner of the debate, who, they say, could “upend the LA mayoral race.” Hallelujah! Someone has to upend a city infested with drugs, crime, and the kind of leftist fantasy that blames those things on faceless corporations and billionaires, because the people actually addicted to drugs and committing crimes have no moral agency. Those people’s choices are set like Fate, but the billionaires and corporations decisions set in motion a chain that forces the downtrodden into a life of homelessness, violence, and addiction.

The LA mayoral race is nonpartisan, so whether someone is a Republican or a Democratic Socialist doesn’t matter. What does seem to matter is that all the candidates focus on their own fantasies, and one guy came in and spoiled their party by telling the unvarnished truth. Pratt has no political experience, but you know what? I think it’s been proven you don’t need it if you simply dedicate yourself to recognizing some things that are fantasy and dealing with the truths behind a great city’s long decline.

Trump’s birthright, for God’s sake!

President Trump is annoyed with his Supreme Court nominees Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. How could they rule according to law versus fealty to the one who put them in a lifetime position of power? Trump would love to be able to fire Justices, I am sure, but not even crazed lunatic lawyers, or Rudy Giuliani (pray for him, as he is recovering from a health scare), could come up with a legal framework in which that could happen, that doesn’t involve overthrowing the U.S. Constitution, that is.

Trump ranted on Truth Social (thanks to the New Republic for the quote):

“With certain Republican Nominated Justices that we have on the Supreme Court, the Democrats don’t really need to ‘PACK THE COURT’ any longer,” Trump continued. “In fact, I should be the one wanting to PACK THE COURT! I’m working so hard to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and then people that I appointed have shown so little respect to our Country, and its people. What is the reason for this?

What does Trump want? Birthright citizenship. To revoke the citizenship of many naturalized U.S. citizens, and possibly end the citizenship of children who were born here with naturalized parents, or parents here on a visa. To say this is distasteful to the vast majority of Americans is selling its horribleness short. What the blood-and-soil crowd seems to lose sight of, is that naturalized citizens and their children who are 18 years old or older can vote in elections. Regardless of how this particular bloc of voters feels, politically, whether they are conservative in many ways or not, they are not going to turn out to vote for a party that serves that vision, which would strip them of their God-given rights as citizens.

We can see this by the depressed turnout of Georgia Republicans, so bad that Democrats think they have a chance to flip the Georgia Supreme Court blue. Why should many Republicans care who runs the country, if the alternative is to lose their friends, employees, and for immigrants, their rights?

But immigrants, in the blood-and-soil fantasy, have no rights, nor do they have agency. It’s not the drug-addled urban kids addicted to kratom, fentanyl and super-meth who choose to commit crimes, it’s people here on a student visa, or Ph.D. candidates who have overstayed.

Meanwhile, fealty to Trump takes a very physical form, as in a 22-foot (including the pedestal) golden statue of Himself, unveiled at the Trump National Doral golf club. I know, there’s a statue of Walt Disney holding Mickey Mouse’s hand, but that is only six-foot-five, while Trump stands 15 feet. And neither Walt nor Mickey are clad in gold. The statue has a raised fist, as in the iconic image of him standing with a bloody ear after the assassination attempt in July, 2024.

The winning quote is from Golfweek:

When a tournament photographer asked a few Tour staff people if they wanted a group photo by the statue, he received a collective, “No.”

LOL.

Why shouldn’t we?

Pastor Robert Jeffress, the political pulpit mouth of MAGA, said that it looks like “President Trump has a better understanding of what the Bible teaches than the Pope.” No, really, he said it.

Pope Leo XIV, born Robert F. Prevost, Chicagoan, has spoken against the war on Iran. Of course, it’s not really a war, and there’s apparently a cease-fire, though it’s so fragile you wouldn’t even know it happened. I think the pope has a clearer vision of what’s going on than the fantasies projected by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House communications staff. The pope has the right to speak out against war, because that’s generally what the Holy See does.

What is fantasy is that somehow the hostilities have “terminated,” while we continue to see Iran lobbing missiles, and hostilities continue, along with threats from the president to heat up the war again. It’s not a war, but somehow it has cost $29 billion.

Why shouldn’t we believe that Donald Trump, whose last encounter with the Bible is when he took the oath of office on it in the Capitol rotunda in January, 2025, knows more about what’s in that book than Pope Leo, who spent his entire adult life studying the book and the Catholic Church’s teachings on it.

The key here is that Jeffress was talking about what the Bible teaches about “government,” not just, you know, life. Somehow, government is exempt from things like “love your neighbor,” because, you know, governments make war. The Bible says a lot about kings who make large golden statues of themselves, too. Maybe we should be reading about that.

Vermont gets its cheddar

I will close with some good news, a glimpse of public policy done right, when citizens realize how intrusive bad government gets. Vermont’s legislature, crammed with leftists, Ben & Jerry supporters, and people who campaign for Bernie Sanders, decided that only cities should have the right to build homes for people to live in. That same vein of thought courses through the brains of far-leftists and Greta Thunberg, who think humans infest the planet and must confine ourselves to tightly-packed urban areas, where we subsist on bugs, plant-based meat substitutes, live without cars or electricity, and somehow not murder each other to the last living soul.

Vermont’s liberal legislators passed what’s called Act 181, that declared anything rural as “Tier 3” conservation land, subject to the most draconian restrictions, intrusive regulations, and expensive permits the state can muster. Cities, of course, are exempt from this.

Then the farmers, maple syrup producers, Mountain Men, and Northeast Kingdom people read the law. These generally taciturn New Englanders reacted like Bostonians in 1775 did to England’s Parliament when the passed the Stamp Act. They rose as one and said, “hell no!”

You’d think it would lead to violence and civil disobedience. But it didn’t. The legislature listened and realized they fell for a fantasy with Act 181. They are in the process of repealing it before it takes effect. Read the article in the best source of journalism in Vermont; vtdigger.

The fine denizens of rural Vermont have made good choices, and forced their lawmakers to see their bad choices in the right way. They have exercised their rights and made their voices heard. These people owe their allegiance to no one man, or golden statue, or socialist fever dream. They just want to have their long dirt driveways, cows, and maple trees. It’s God’s country up there, and that’s how God intended it to be.

If far-left Vermont can turn, maybe Los Angeles is next, eh? Any maybe, just maybe, some golf pro will tell the world what they really think of the 22-foot golden image of a would-be king.

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