I consider football the second most boring sport ever invented, but I've always enjoyed Super Bowl parties for the camaraderie, the food, and the funny commercials. This year, I would have gotten extra enjoyment from the halftime show that was successfully engineered to piss off racist conservative snowflakes. It pissed them off so much that the late Charlie Kirk's racist organization is putting on an alternate show, which was pathetic enough before they announced that Kid Rock was headlining it, which is exactly what liberals said they would do as a joke to make fun of them. Yes, conservatives are now officially a parody of themselves. This also serves as a reminder that the world is no worse off for not having Charlie Kirk in it. Don't come after me for being honest. Did you catch the leaked Zoom call of his widow giggling and gloating about merch sales two weeks after his death? I felt more grief when I stepped on a snail.

Alas, this year I was not invited to a Super Bowl party, possibly because my social circle has shifted from college students to people who have children in high school, and it doesn't stream anywhere for free, and I'm not patriotic enough to buy a Peacock subscription just for that. Still, I expect I'll have a delightful evening watching cartoons and listening to music. I've found that if I just tell myself a day is a holiday, it feels like one. I have simple pleasures. I have my new studio apartment to myself, I've partially adapted to the traffic noise, and in tangential but also exciting news, I now only take about forty minutes to fall asleep at night instead of two hours or more, possibly because I have space to not sit on my bed all day and make my brain associate it with activities besides sleep. Anyway, I'm sure people will be even less inclined than usual to take time out of their day to read my blog, and that's just one more reason why I'm disinclined to take time out of my day to write it, so here's the weekly post to keep up my streak, and now I'm done. I hope one of the teams that's playing today wins.

My uncle, to his credit, is someone with whom I can discuss political and religious topics that his sister just ignores. We respect each other's differences, and I try not to get into arguments. Still, I get frustrated that he identifies as a libertarian and still makes excuses for every illegal, unconstitutional, and blatantly authoritarian thing the orange jackass does. I thought we should, at a minimum, agree that it's unacceptable for the Trump regime to execute a protester in broad daylight, lie its ass off about what happened as if we didn't have eyes, and then backtrack and claim that he brought it on himself by legally carrying a firearm at a protest. I swear to God I wasn't trying to start an argument when I texted him. I thought this was the most obvious common ground in the history of the world. Even Republicans are pissed. Do you know how evil you have to be for people who take free school lunches away from children to decide you've crossed a line?

He said that yes, he was concerned about it, but we need to look at both sides of the story and not jump to conclusions. He sent me a Facebook post that, in contrast with his own typically nuanced remarks, was a deranged partisan screed about how yes, Alex Pretti's death was unfortunate, but he brought it on himself by being an activist and "illegally" interfering with law enforcement officers who are just trying to protect us, and the media is doing a propaganda campaign to make him look good because of Trump Derangement Syndrome. I skimmed after that, but I'd lost interest after reading that stupid cliche that morons to dismiss any criticism of their cult leader by people who know right from wrong. There was also some fearmongering about the minuscule fraction of a percent of undocumented immigrants who have murdered people and some condescending crap about how Alex Pretti and Laken Riley (whose parents hate it when right-wingers politicize her death) were both made in the image of God.

I told my uncle that this guy had lost me at "Trump Derangement Syndrome." My uncle said that the left loses him whenever they say "fascist" or "Nazi" (which I hadn't done yet). At that point, I got a little frustrated at his inability to see what's right in front of him despite ostensibly not trusting the government in the first place, and a bit of snark may have crept into my tone as I agreed that ICE agents aren't Nazis because the Nazis didn't hide their faces. I mean, where is the lie? And how the flaming French filigreed fuck is a libertarian okay with government agents hiding their faces? Of course, it would be unfair to single him out because most people in the comments sections of Reason magazine are more than okay with it, and they can't all be bots.

He sent me another Facebook post, and he hasn't responded to my response to it, which is fine as long as he's thinking about it, which is unlikely. I feel like discussing that post here because I enjoy dissecting other people's words, and the first post isn't worth my time. This is from someone named Rabbi Mark N. Wildes.

Now I will dissect some of his words, mainly the ones I didn't like. I know some people will think it's anti-Semitic for me to argue with a Jew about Nazis, but those are mainly the same people who think it's anti-Semitic to criticize Israel for intentionally starving and shooting children, so I don't much care what they think. It's natural for Rabbi Wildes to have strong feelings about this topic, but that doesn't make his actual argument immune to criticism. He doesn't speak for all Jews, anyway.

Since when does the government get to determine what's moral or not? It's moot, though, because the Trump regime is blocking those investigations. I wonder why. He's not a fascist, and he has nothing to hide.

Yeah, the word "Holocaust" is probably overkill at this point, I can see why Rabbi Wildes would find it deeply troubling, and I have no desire to be insensitive about that. If his post ended here, I wouldn't have bothered to write my own post about it. But...

Oh, I'm sorry, is it deeply troubling to compare racist secret police who profile people, demand to see their papers, and detain them in inhumane conditions without due process to the Gestapo? Respectfully, are you shitting me?

The systematic genocide was preceded by years of propaganda and legal restrictions to dehumanize Jews and other minorities, not unlike what the Trump regime is constantly doing. The first example that comes to mind is the Department of Homeland Security's dystopian (and infantile) ICE recruitment ads about "dangerous illegals." The second example that comes to mind is all the other right-wing assholes who have been calling undocumented immigrants "illegals" for a long time, not to mention confidently and incorrectly asserting that constitutional rights like free speech and due process don't apply to non-citizens. The third example that comes to mind is Trump claiming multiple times that undocumented immigrants are "poisoning the blood of this country," which sounds like something straight from Hitler's mouth and would have disqualified him from office for life in any sane country, though in fairness, so would thousands of other things he's said and done. Honorable mention: his absurd fearmongering lie about legal Black immigrants eating people's pets in Ohio. Of course, right now I'm just focusing on his rabid xenophobia, not all his other fascist and authoritarian rhetoric that appealed so much to my small-government family.

Also, his DHS has already sent people to concentration camps, both abroad (El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Centre) and at home (Alligator Alcatraz). The right wing's response to that is to argue over the exact definition of a concentration camp, which, as an Onion headline pointed out, is a sign of a healthy society. And far be it from me to claim more knowledge about the Holocaust than a Jew, but I'm not sure Rabbi Wildes is aware that genocide was Plan B. The Nazis' original strategy was mass deportations, but then they decided that was too hard. Huh. For no particular reason, I just remembered how the Trump regime has already said out loud that it's too hard to give everyone their constitutionally mandated due process before deporting them.

I regret having to make this personal, but I would be remiss not to point out that Rabbi Wildes is either inexcusably ignorant or intentionally deceitful, because it's very common knowledge at this point that many of the people harassed, abused, and detained by ICE and the DHS didn't violate the law either. Trump's fascist goons profile people based on skin color, accent, and/or location. The conservatives on the Supreme Court literally gave them permission to do that last year. Those who did violate the law are still entitled to be treated like human beings, and normal people - even my uncle, if memory serves me - overwhelmingly agree that those who violated the law to come here once upon a time but have contributed to the economy and not hurt anyone since then should be left alone. If ICE agents actually went after "the worst of the worst" instead of terrorizing communities and tearing families apart, nobody would hate them. But then I guess they'd have to arrest the president.

That reminds me of how the Trump regime prematurely rescinded the temporary protected status of refugees who were in the US legally and told them to get out. And how ICE agents kidnap people at their immigration hearings while they're in the process of immigrating legally. And how the Jackass-in-Chief is trying to ban birthright citizenship by overturning a constitutional amendment with an executive order.

I'm sorry, I don't understand why this part is in here. Is Rabbi Wildes implying that if the Nazis had just told Anne Frank's family to leave the country and given them a chance to leave the country, that would have been fine?

Why the hell do bootlickers think that putting the word "law" in proximity to some variant of the word "enforce" is a slam dunk argument? The Gestapo was tasked with enforcing the law too. This statement does not differentiate ICE from the Gestapo in any way. The law does not now and never has determined morality, and normal people whose moral compasses didn't stop developing when they were toddlers don't kiss law enforcement's ass just because it exists. Anyway, we all know that the convicted felon and adjudicated rapist who pardons violent insurrectionists and drug lords isn't interested in "enforcing the law" for its own sake. He just wants a private militia to terrorize "the enemy within" (or as most people call them, Americans) into submission, and promising to protect idiots who are scared of brown people is an effective way to get away with that. Until the private militia starts shooting white people, anyway.

This was the point where Rabbi Wildes really pissed me off. We know they're doing so inappropriately. We know their enforcement of the law has gone beyond their authority. We knew this for some time before they murdered Keith Porter, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti. Rabbi Wildes is not pressing the government to reign them in, and spoiler alert, he has no intention of doing so.

Gotta love it when conservatives shrug off human rights violations as "policy and implementation of policy." Surely he's aware that this attitude is a prerequisite to genocide? Again, I agree that what we're seeing right now isn't on par with the Holocaust, but genocide doesn't just pop up out of nowhere one day.

It sure isn't a condemnation, either. I read it as, "I actually have no problem with ICE's brutality, but I know I'll get torn to shreds if I admit that." Maybe it's unfair for me to cast such an aspersion on his character, but I don't know why else he'd go to such lengths to avoid saying that things we all know are wrong are wrong. And this is a guy who also seems on board with Israel's war crimes in Gaza, after all.

Like hell it is. A defense of moral clarity would have clearly explained that ICE's brutality is wrong, even though it's not the Holocaust.

I looked through Rabbi Wildes' post history. He hasn't done this, and I predict that he'll continue to not do this. He just wants to look like he has the moral high ground without having to do or say anything that makes him uncomfortable. But hey, at least he acknowledged that something happened, which is more than the leaders of my former religion have done. I thought Dallin Oaks had the courage to speak out on controversial issues and not care if he took heat for it, but it turns out that only applies to being a dick to gay people. As much as I detest Brigham Young, at least he would have had the correct response to the federal government sending secret police to Utah.

Now, to be clear, despite my initial snarky response, there isn't a 1:1 comparison between the original Nazis and the only administration in American history that had Nazi salutes at its inauguration. Hitler was more competent and more popular than Trump. Hitler understood that he needed to maintain the people's support by actually improving the economy, not making it worse and then gaslighting them that prices were going down and they weren't suffering. Trump faces far more resistance from his own people, and even with Congress and the Supreme Court sucking him off, the US system of government has more safeguards in place to prevent him from doing everything he wants. Also - and this is cold comfort, but also, I don't think Trump is really committed to his rabid xenophobia, because his only deep and abiding principle is to make himself as wealthy and powerful as he can. If he could have gotten elected by extolling diversity and praising the contributions of hard-working immigrants to our nation, he would have done that. He's a bigot, yes, but he's a narcissist first and a grifter just after that. And the backlash against his fascist goons' recent murders has already forced him to de-escalate just a little bit.

So I don't think the United States is actually going to have another Holocaust, and I wouldn't use the word "Holocaust" to describe what's going on now. I respect Rabbi Wildes' sentiment on that. However, I'm not interested in becoming complacent and seeing how far down that path we end up before these motherfuckers are voted out and prosecuted. Everything is not fine. We're not overreacting, we're underreacting. And whatever attitude you have now is most likely the same attitude you would have had in the early days of the Third Reich. If you make excuses for ICE, you would have done the same for the Gestapo. With the benefit of hindsight, you're sure you would have shown wisdom and moral courage in that moment, but now that you're in a similar moment, you tell yourself it's completely different so you don't have to do that. You're failing an open-book test with one true-or-false question. When this is over - and it will be - you may, with the benefit of hindsight that should be superfluous, try to pretend you were always against it. But you can't get away with that in the twenty-first century. So maybe just choose to do the right thing right now because you're a decent person.

P.S. As I mentioned to my uncle, who hasn't responded, the right wing's fearmongering bullshit about queer people being predators and "groomers," besides being a load of projection (I see a Trump supporter getting arrested for child porn every week), is also directly copied from the Nazi playbook.

My landlord recently decided that emptying his house would make it easier to sell, so he gave me and my two roommates less than a month to move out, which I don't think is legal, but whatever. I decided to make this unwanted move an upgrade. I moved closer to the heart of Salt Lake City proper, where it turns out I go all the time for protests and other forms of recreation, and I picked a studio apartment so I'd have more space and have it to myself. Alas, I didn't pay enough attention to the location. My window is next to not two, not four, but six lanes of traffic. And the traffic. Never. Stops. Six months of this will either cure my natural sensitivity to noise or drive me to jump off the balcony. Also, I didn't actually have the space to myself.

The first thing I did when I saw this bug scurry up my cupboard was take a picture and ask Google Gemini, "Is this a cockroach?" I'd never actually seen a cockroach in person before. Like bedbugs and tapeworms, cockroaches are a horrifying fact of life that I'd somehow been blessed to avoid until now. Of course it was a cockroach, since it was too small to be an ICE agent. In my search, I found another one inside the (otherwise empty) cupboard, flailing around on its back for some reason.

By the way, I thought these things were supposed to be impossible to kill, but I found it pretty straightforward.

​This one was still twitching fourteen hours later, though. Its antennae would twitch whenever I moved my finger within a few millimeters. That was cool. Anyway, I found a third one behind the fridge, and that one proved more of a challenge. I moved the fridge a bit, climbed on the counter, tried to kill the roach with a yardstick, and then, when it tried to run under the fridge and out into the room, I jumped down and shone my phone flashlight to scare it back. I repeated that process a few times and said some bad words. After fifteen minutes or so, I got it when it did run under the fridge and out into the room, and my feeling of triumph made the whole frustrating experience worth it. Then I found a tiny bug under the sink. The next morning, a guy sprayed the cupboards and behind the fridge, and then the next evening, I killed another big one running across the floor toward my bed, and the next night, I killed two big ones, a medium, and six tiny ones in the bathroom. I've continued to find occasional tiny ones in the sink and the bathroom.

I try to take a spiritual approach to all this. The cockroaches are a problem I have to solve, but I'm not going to despair over them. I'm keeping in mind that unlike ICE agents, they aren't inherently bad creatures, they just evolved to do their own thing, and they have as much right to exist as I do, but I'm bigger than them and don't want them here. That's the circle of life.

Speaking of ICE agents... well, what can I say? What unique, valuable contribution can I make to the discourse about the murderous fascist secret police that hasn't been made yet? I attended a vigil for their latest murder victim last night, and I attended a protest today that, with just twenty-four hours' notice, was massive. I'm sure bootlickers and bots on social media are already lying about how many people were there, demanding to know why we weren't all at work on a Sunday, claiming we were all paid to be there, and the usual stupid shit that conservatives say to keep their delusion going. The fact remains: Salt Lake City is PISSED. Just in time to get our own influx of ICE agents at the end of the month, reportedly. There's a non-zero chance that I will become one of their murder victims. I'm a little scared, but it comforts me to know that my parents will have to live with the fact that they voted for my death.

Oh, but speaking of paid shills, one of the guys that the Republican legislature flew in from out of state to collect signatures to try to overturn the anti-gerrymandering proposition that the people of Utah voted for a few years ago showed up at our protest to collect signatures. That was a strategic error. He couldn't go anywhere without people following him and warning everyone not to sign. His response was to put on sunglasses, flip people off, and say, "You guys are assholes." Haha. Of course I wish these guys no success, but in today's economy, I don't fault them for taking this job. They haven't crossed a moral line that makes me think less of their worth as humans. Unlike ICE agents. I'd let my family starve before I'd accept a $50,000 bonus to murder people in the street. ICE agents are scum, and they will get their justice someday. Not tomorrow, but soon, I hope.

I have written occasionally about the time Hayden Nelson of the Logan City Police Department verbally abused me and made me suicidal, the department's refusal to conduct an investigation and share the results with me as promised in its own complaint procedures, the other city, state, and federal agencies that declined to help or simply ignored me, and Angel Echevarria's lawsuit against him and twelve other cops for "unlawful seizure, detainer, arrest and false imprisonment; intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress; negligent training, employment, and supervision; assault; and false testimony among others." Incidentally, the city has since settled that lawsuit by giving Echevarria money, even though Mayor Holly Daines assured me that the city was confident it would win. Awkward. Anyway, I didn't know if my writing had an effect or was just so much screaming into the void, until I found out that Hayden himself had taken notice. I found that out by finding out that he'd blocked me on LinkedIn, where I got this picture that sometimes accompanied my writing.

It didn't take long to make another LinkedIn account and confirm that he hadn't just deleted his. Mind you, the following screenshot is from June 1, 2024. I've already written about it in my memoir published at the end of that year, Goodbye Mormonism, Hello World: My Slightly Pretentious Search for the Truths of Life, the Universe, and Everything, which you probably haven't read. I put off writing about it on my blog for some time because I refuse to let him dictate my life, but I always meant to sooner or later - not just to get back at him, an impulse from which I've tried to distance myself, but to help ensure that he never works in law enforcement again. Oh yeah, spoiler alert.

Not only did he make a career change, he changed his last name to "N." That is rich. That is priceless. I have to imagine I played some part in this, since all search results for his name and employer were either from my website or news stories about the lawsuit against him, and I know he was aware of the former. (He may or may not have also been aware that I mentioned him by name in my Master's thesis, which does not show up in those searches.) At this point, if he were merely stupid and poorly trained as opposed to being a bad person, he could have recognized the unnecessary and unwarranted trauma that he caused me, done some self-reflection, and reached out to apologize. He chose to block me instead. That silent reaction speaks volumes. Logan is much safer without this unintelligent bully serving and protecting it. I hope he treats phones better than he treats human beings.

Hayden, if you ever read this, I guess you know you miscalculated when you assumed this terrified, confused boy couldn't do anything about you abusing him. You really should go a step further and try the self-reflection thing. Just because you changed careers and your name to avoid the consequences of your actions doesn't mean you've become a better person. If you're not interested in becoming a better person, then I guess I can't explain why you should be. Did I mention how glad I am that you're not a cop?

On a more positive note, you became a factor in my journey out of Mormonism and into an existential crisis that was so worth it, so thanks for giving me the worst day of my life, I guess.

I almost feel like I should be grateful to this fascist regime because protesting against it has given me a purpose and brought me together with a community of beautiful humans. I moved to the Salt Lake area to be closer to friends I already had, but now I never see them, and I see new ones almost every week instead. Whatever works, eh? Recently, though, we've branched off from protesting into doing monthly clothing and food drives. I can't take any credit for the idea or the logistics, but I contribute a little, and I show up and help run them. We did our second one today. It was already much bigger than the first, and quite a beautiful experience. I was less self-conscious and more proactive in talking to the people who showed up instead of waiting for a real adult to do it.

Any appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, I've always tried to be a good, generous, and loving person. I have given to homeless people, but I can't afford to give to all of them I see, so I usually avoid eye contact because making eye contact and not giving them anything seems like a slap in the face, but I know treating them like they don't exist is also a slap in the face, so that eats me up inside. Anyway, I just wanted to say that being good, generous, and compassionate is not some radical new concept for me, but today was still a profound, transformative experience. I talked a lot to this one homeless woman who stuck around for a while. She clearly had some mental illness, and I didn't understand half of what she said, but she was still really fun to talk to. She radiated such goodness that despite her weathered face and missing teeth, I could honestly say she was beautiful to me. I felt so good to know that I helped to improve her life and the lives of others today.

I wish we could do more, of course. I wish we could give them all homes. It is extremely fucked up that we as a society have normalized letting mentally ill people become homeless and then treating them like parasites. If my own mental illness were a bit more severe, or if I hadn't been blessed to know the right people who have helped me out over the years, I could have shared their fate. I still might someday. I can't even imagine having the fortitude to live like that without killing myself. I hope society will someday provide everyone with what they need, and maybe the backlash against this fascist regime is what we need to move us in that direction. These clothing and food drives are a chance for us to show what we're for, not just what we're against, and maybe we can keep growing them bigger and drawing in more people and doing more things until we've created heaven on Earth. I doubt that will happen in my lifetime, but I can be part of the push in that direction. I try to remember that my life not just as an end in itself, but also part of history that will affect future lives for better and for worse.

In unrelated news, the LDS missionaries in the Ogden Mission sent me an inspirational message last night even though I removed my records from the church in 2022 and moved out of those mission boundaries in 2024. I assume they found my number written down by the missionaries I briefly talked to before I moved. Actually, I was thinking about the ones I ran into in a parking lot and accepted a Book of Mormon from, but when I went to link to a post about it, I remembered that the post was actually about another occasion when I let a different companionship visit my apartment. I'm nice, okay? So anyway, this is the sort of thing that would piss off most ex-Mormons, but I'm cool with it. However they got my number, I trust that the missionaries acted out of love and a desire to enrich my life, and I appreciate that. I did feel enriched. As I've said before, I want everyone to be nice to the LDS missionaries, who for the most part are good kids sacrificing eighteen months or two years of their life to do what they believe is right. They're not to blame for everything that's wrong with the LDS Church. I hope these missionaries didn't text another ex-Mormon who was mean to them.