A FLORIDA MAN

 

For those of you who know the sunshine state well enough to understand the title, you can skip to the second paragraph. If you are unfamiliar with the inference, here is the Wikipedia explanation: “Florida Man is an Internet meme first popularized in 2013, referring to an alleged prevalence of people performing irrational, ridiculous, and maniacal actions in the U.S. state of Florida.”

I will keep this Florida Man’s identity anonymous until the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission’s statute of limitations has run its course. This particular Florida Man is a good friend who lives in the cold, cold north. In this instance, north of Joe Robbie Stadium but south of the amusement parks of Disneyland and Mar a Lago.

Bill Murray as Carl Spackler in Caddyshack the gopher played himself

To enjoy this story fully, you need you to know that this is a kind and gentle soul who is also known to be somewhat frugal. You should also know that he has suffered in a war not unlike that of Carl Spackler of Caddyshack fame. His “gopher” happens to be iguanas. He has been “dealing” with them since he moved to his new home. Their most annoying trait is that these lizards run across the top of his pool screen enclosure and leave not-so-little “presents” everywhere. Then the rain slowly spreads the liquified fecal matter into the pool and surrounding patio. Just lovely.

Iguana in topor, stunned from cold weather

Over the last several years he has refined an electric fence technology, using his Radio Shack (not Caddyshack) expertise, to humanely repel the invasive herbivorous lizards. As these pests are “illegals” from Mexico, he should have called ICE. This is sort of what he did, but I’m getting ahead of my story.

In a recent phone conversation with FM (Florida Man), he related his most recent reptile skirmish. As has been reported during this 2026 January-February Florida cold snap, iguanas have been “stunned” into a state of torpor, not unlike the physical and mental lethargy of our most famous cold-blooded Florida lizard. Yes, the orange reptile who lives at Mar a Lago.

It seems my friend ventured outside to survey his property early this day after temperatures had dropped below freezing. He noticed a tail protruding out of a rain downspout. As the visible fourteen inches of reptile did not include the body, this was a good-sized one. He put on some heavy gloves and pulled the comatose invader from the spout and placed it in a large bucket.

He then went to the Internet to look to see what he could do to humanely euthanize his pest. Somewhere in the vast reaches of this massive storehouse of misinformation he found his solution, ICE. While a call to immigration authorities would have been amusing, this solution involved dry ice.

The idea was simple. Place the iguana into a container with the dry ice and the “melting” frozen carbon dioxide gas would replace the oxygen to painlessly send his prisoner to iguana heaven. While the idea seemed simple, they don’t sell dry ice at the local Publix. After a bit more research he got an address of a place selling dry ice.

He and his wife got into their car and drove a half an hour to buy some dry ice. Much to their surprise, the smallest block they could purchase cost $40. As they had already invested over an hour in this pursuit, they splurged, got the ice, and made the trip home.

The dry ice was placed into the same bucket with the iguana. After several hours, a check of their captive found him frozen solid. Their ordeal was nearing an end. It is at this point in his story that the events are a bit unclear but he was made aware of a neighbor with a “stunned” iguana in his driveway. Walking to see his neighbor he noticed another iguana who had been run over in the street.

Florida Man was now seeing that the scope of the problem was getting out of hand. He had already invested hours of his time and watched his forty dollars literally evaporate. To quote Caddyshack's Bill Murray, I mean Carl Spackler, "I'm not a heretic; I'm a gopher assassin! To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit -- ever. They're like the Viet Cong -- Varmint Cong.".

With this inspiration, our Florida Man rose to the occasion, dragged the neighbors iguana into the street and ran over it with his car. He placed his three dead foreign invaders into a trash bag and placed them all into a large green rolling iguana coffin for pick up the next day. Donald Trump and Kristi Noem would have been proud.

 

 

 

American Democracy, RIP

MAGA Republicans in their zeal to protect the Second Amendment, have forgotten there is an amendment that precedes it. For those in that group not good at math, we are talking about the First Amendment.

“The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (adopted in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights) prohibits the government from restricting five fundamental freedoms: freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. It protects against government censorship, allowing individuals to express opinions, practice religion, and assemble peacefully without fear of government punishment.”

When the United States government prohibits peaceful protest, arrests journalists covering these protests, bans books it doesn’t like, dictates to universities and other schools the curriculum they are allowed to teach, threatens the news media with financial ruin if it continues to publish or cover news it doesn’t condone, and actually kills people exercising their right of free speech, that means we no longer have a First Amendment.

When the courts are powerless to correct the lawless actions of an elected official, we no longer have an effective judicial branch of government. When the Congress, by lack of action, fails to use their power to enforce the rights guaranteed to its citizens, we no longer have an effective legislative branch of government.

Without either a judicial branch or a legislative branch of government, we are left with an authoritarian dictatorship. We need not fear the collapse of American democracy before our 250th birthday, that ship sailed during the Insurrection of January 6, 2021. That ship finally disappeared over the horizon on January 20, 2025, when Donald Trump granted blanket clemency to all people involved in the insurrection.

The American experiment in democracy had failed. When the founders outlined this novel, unproven system of self-governance in 1776, it would last 241 years before unravelling. On January 20, 2017, the architect of its demise would begin his task of removing those freedoms that got in his way. He spent four years chipping away at that democracy. His reelection in 2024 would send him back to complete his unfinished task. Democracy was doomed.

Today, with SS-like troops marching through our streets killing our citizens with reckless abandon and without repercussions, America’s 250th birthday celebration will be hollow and devoid of true patriotic emotion. The prideful songs of our once great nation will be but a funeral dirge for what could have been. It will be the job of future generations to see what they can build from the ashes of this failed experiment. Those of us who remember what it was like to live during the successful period of our American experiment, can only wish them well.

Chaos Theory

 

In the mid-sixties, the TV series Get Smart had an international spy organization known as KAOS, pronounced chaos. It represented the forces of evil designed to disrupt world peace and cause chaos. Today, we have a president who uses chaos for his own evil intent. Chaos is used as misdirection, much as a magician uses distraction to steer the audience’s attention away from what they are really trying to accomplish. Look here, not there. They manipulate focus to hide secret actions.

Trump tells the world that he is going to invade Greenland, no Iceland, no Greenland, but maybe not. He gets the two countries confused. As any grade-school student knows, Greenland is mostly covered in ice and Iceland is covered in lush green vegitation. It was Norwegian Viking, Erik the Red who named Greenland in 983 A.D., in a sneaky attempt to lure settlers to this new land. The trick worked and settlers in the first century were fooled into moving to the mostly ice-covered land. Donald Trump is still confused.

Like a kid who likes to blow things up just to see them blow up, we now have a president in control of the most powerful military power in the world with the same mindset. He is a lame duck president who cannot legally run again so his only restraint at this point is that he doesn’t want to lose the House in the midterms. If he loses the House, he faces legislative gridlock and aggressive legal scrutiny. He could possibly face impeachment but not removal. He has been impeached before and will not be worried beyond the claim of becoming the first president to be impeached three times.

It is chaos for chaos’ sake. Attack Venezuela. Threaten to annex Canada. Threaten to invade Columbia, Mexico, or Cuba. “Acquire” Greenland through any means possible. Abandon NATO. Use your secret police force to attack democratic strongholds in your own country. Sic the Justice Department on political leaders who you don’t like. Attack and threaten US schools and universities. Ignore the economy. Accept unearned trophies. Tear down the East Wing of the White House. Rename the Gulf of Mexico and arts centers on a whim. Impose arbitrary tariffs and make wild tariff threats to intimidate. The result, chaos.

Chaos in government, marked by instability, unpredictability, and dysfunctional decision-making, can have severe repercussions for the economy. When a government operates in a state of confusion and disorder, market confidence falters, leading to the potential loss of trillions in market value. This instability triggers significant volatility, making it difficult for investors and businesses to make decisions with any degree of certainty.

The creation of "radical uncertainty" in such an environment causes businesses to hesitate, freezing investment and stalling economic growth. Supply chains, which rely on predictability and stable policy, are also disrupted. As chaos persists, the overall economic climate becomes less conducive to constructive activity. Growth and stability suffer.

Trump couldn’t care less. If attention is on Greenland, nobody is talking about his involvement with pedophiles and his association with American financier, human trafficker, child sex offender, and serial rapist Jeffrey Epstein.

Full Circle

 Full Circle

In just 250 years these United States of America have come full circle. We’ve gone from George William Frederick to Donald John Trump. George William Frederick was aka King George III who ruled over Great Britain and Ireland and those new colonies we call America. King George III was also known as the Mad King who had recurrent and eventually permanent mental illness. Now America is under a new king, King Donald I. Our second king appears to also suffer from mental illness and will likely be known as America’s second Mad King.

When the new colonies declared their independence in July 1776, that document listed twenty-seven grievances against the British king. In that list it was charged that, “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.” It remains to be seen how King Donald I will fare with historians once he has been dethroned.

Unlike our current King Donald I, King George III was a chaste and religious man who never cheated on his wife. His early life found him to be of good moral character. His current counterpart is by all accounts a moral leper. King Donald’s claim that the only things controlling him are his morals means nothing stands in his way. Not even our country. We almost made it to our 250th birthday as a constitutional republic and a representative democracy. We are becoming a constitutional monarchy just as Great Britain was under King George III.

"Haben Sie Ihre Papiere bei sich?" “Do you have your papers with you?”

 "Haben Sie Ihre Papiere bei sich?"

The title above translates from German as, “Do you have your papers with you?” In Nazi Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, such documentation would be checked to focus on a person’s identity, residency, compliance with racial laws, racial status, political loyalty, and proper registration, especially for Jews or those suspected of disloyalty.

The movie classic Casablanca opens with a scene where Nazi officers search a hotel for refugees. The first line of the film is spoken by a police officer to a civilian he stopped on the street: "May we see your papers, please?" The civilian produces a document, but a second police officer declares that it "expired three weeks ago" and begins to tell the civilian he is under arrest. The civilian attempts to flee the police but a gunshot is heard and the civilian falls to the ground.

This enforcement of laws and the checking of identity papers was known as Ausweiskontrolle. It was carried out by both uniformed and plainclothes security agencies. The Geheime Staatspolizei aka Gestapo were the secret state police and were the political police force of Nazi Germany. There was also the SS or Schutzstaffel who wore paramilitary uniforms with white armbands. They could demand to see the papers of anyone anywhere. They were Hitler’s enforcers.

The goal was control, ensuring everyone fit the Nazi racial and political framework, with documentation used to categorize, target, or allow passage, often leading to harsh consequences if papers were missing or deemed "incorrect".

Today in America, under the guise of correcting years of lax immigration policy under an outdated, underfunded, and overwhelmed system, immigrants and citizens alike are being treated like the people in Nazi controlled areas of the early twentieth century. Armed and masked secret police with Gestapo-like tactics are now roaming our streets and demanding to “see our papers.”

They are doing this without probable cause. Their justification is mainly that, by using racial profiling and targeting areas where immigrants are known to travel, shop, and work, they can stop, question, and detain anyone who does not comply with their demands or who cannot provide documentation that satisfies them. Just as Trump is quoted on saying that his power is limited by, "My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me," so too, it seems, the power of ICE is limited only by individual officer morality.

In their lust to fill quotas they will gather up U.S. born citizens, naturalized citizens, legal foreign-born citizens of other countries, and some people who are undocumented. Some end up the victims of violent arrests, detention, incarceration, and in rare instances they are shot, wounded, or killed.

I have seen news reports where over 20-armed ICE and other federal agents and numerous armored carrier vehicles were used to arrest a single non-violent immigrant with no criminal record in his home. How much did this operation cost for a single person in these situations? Estimates vary widely but can run tens of thousands of dollars. The ICE estimate is $17,121 per person, though most calculate that figure is much higher. If you factor in salaries, logistics, detention, transportation, and court costs, most estimates are around $25k per person.

The ICE budget went from $3.3B in 2003 to $9.6B in 2024. In 2025 it went to $28.7B with Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. ICE is the center of the new “Deportation-Industrial Complex” with over $170B in its budget for the next four years.

As I watch the nightly news, I find that I can only take a few minutes before I have to change channels or shut it off. I find it too upsetting to watch as armed masked goons, authorized by the President of the United States, walk through communities and drag citizens from their cars and out of their homes and away from their jobs in handcuffs, if they are lucky enough to not get shot and killed, just so this group of marauders can “check their papers,” and make their quotas.

I asked AI to compare ICE with the Nazi SS and it came back with: “Comparisons between the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the SS (Schutzstaffel) or Gestapo of Nazi Germany are a subject of significant political debate, historical analysis, and public controversy. Historians and commentators point to both sharp differences and concerning parallels, primarily as a warning against authoritarian drift.” They went on to clarify with, “ICE's operations do not involve genocide.” Well that makes me feel so much better.

I’ve Seen A Lot in Eighty Years

My “history” goes back to 1945, with valid real memories beginning in the 50s. It was a time of I Like Ike stickers on my Radio Flyer wagon. I see where that classic wagon now sells at Walmart for $208. An AI search tells me that my parents likely paid under $10 for it back then.

I grew up with the racial segregation of the South. There were “Colored” water fountains and restrooms and the schools were fully segregated through my high school graduation in 1963. The gay community was still closeted and risked legal consequences if they “came out.”

We got many things wrong back then, but we slowly evolved to enjoy the promises of our Constitution even if we had to fight our way through at times. Free speech was constantly threatened. We had both the HUAC (House on Unamerican Activities Committee) and Senator Joe McCarthy with his Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Both entities thrived within the self-induced paranoia of the Red Scare.

While McCarthy focused on the State Department and the military, the HUAC directed its ire at Hollywood and unions. This period of ruthless investigations, suspicion, and paranoia was branded as McCarthyism. The HUAC started early in the 20th century fighting Germans and Nazi propaganda and would evolve to focus on investigating suspected communists. In 1946, they considered investigating the KKK but declined with one white supremacist member stating, “After all, the KKK is an old American institution.”

Fast forward to the present and we find that, while we have evolved a bit, some things never change. Joe McCarthy is now our president in the form of Donald Trump. While McCarthy had his “commies,” Trump has his Mexicans and Muslims.

Both men learned early on that allegations need not be consistent, accurate, or founded in fact. McCarthy claimed that he had the names of 205 State Department employees who were members of the Communist Party and probable spies. Trump would have you believe that America was overrun with immigrants, most of whom were active gang members involved in heinous crimes.

McCarthyism has given way to Trumpism. Their common tool, fear. Both McCarthy and Trump learned much of their trade from attorney Roy Cohn. Their mentor had a three-dimensional strategy: “1. Never settle, never surrender. 2. Counterattack, counter-sue immediately. 3. No matter what happens, no matter how deeply into the muck you get, claim victory and never admit defeat.”

As demagogs go, Trump has McCarthy beat. Trump’s ability to arouse the populace against the “elites,” scapegoating minority groups, exaggerating their danger to stoke fear, and lying for emotional effect to discourage deliberation, has no equal in modern memory. Since Trump is a billionaire and a member of the “elites,” he has redefined the bad guys as wealthy woke liberals.

McCarthy died in 1957, at the age of 48. He had been censured by the Senate and was an alcoholic who was also addicted to morphine. At the time of his death, he had declined physically and emotionally.

Trump turns 80 this year, so for a short time he and I will be the same age. He has floated the idea that he wants to celebrate both the nation’s 250th birthday and his 80th at the White House with UFC fighters brawling on the White House lawn. One of the scheduled headliners is Conor McGregor who was found liable for sexual assault in 2018 in Ireland.

Both McCarthy and Trump excelled in keeping people angry at one another to distract from their own failures and lack of progress. McCarthy’s exploitation using fear prompted his downfall. It remains to be seen what line Trump will cross that will end his reign. Also uncertain is the ultimate national cost of his delusion and cognitive decline.

Doublethink; Don’t Believe Your Lyin’ Eyes

 

Introduction:  The following is based on the barrage of video evidence and news reporting of a recent (Renée Nicole Good occurred on January 7, 2026) event. I make no judgement of the officer involved in the shooting. He was ex-military (Indianna National Guard deployed to Iraq Nov 2004-Nov 2005) who had served in government/law enforcement almost twenty years. He was in a similar incident in June of 2025, where he was dragged by a car and injured. His actions, motivations, and training in de-escalation are unknown. I will wait until after the evidence can be weighed from all sides before judgement. The accompanying graphic includes statements being made by some on the right who have already reached their final conclusions.  That this government has placed so many tactical military personnel in our civilian populations on the pretext of clearing our cities of violent immigrant criminals, is the underlying cause of this incident.  It was bound to happen and will happen again.

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Doublethink; Don’t Believe Your Lyin’ Eyes

Winston Smith, the protagonist in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, worked in the Ministry of Truth rewriting history. The term doublethink was defined as the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accept both as true. In Orwell’s novel, in his world of Oceana, doublethink involved knowing both the real truth and the Party lie and required subjugating the truth and promoting the lie. Party loyalty was its own reward.

Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948. It was published in 1949, and Orwell died in January 1950. He wrote of a time he knew based on his observations of the second world war brought on by totalitarian regimes. The main difference between totalitarianism and authoritarianism is just a matter of degree. As the name would suggest, totalitarianism wants total control of all aspects of human life including culture, family, and personal beliefs. Authoritarians will allow some latitude of autonomy in non-conflicting areas outside politics.

Seventy-seven years after 1984 was written, we find ourselves at the mercy of an authoritarian with some in his camp dreaming of adding family and religion to the mandate. While there are many examples of our new dystopia, the Trump Insurrection of 2021, stands as a prime example of the doublethink mentality. We are asked to ignore the hours of video evidence and testimony of the event as investigated and documented, and to believe the contrarian opinion that it was a peaceful demonstration.

Fast forward five years and we have a second glaring dystopian event with government explanations contradicting what we can clearly see with our own eyes. We are told to ignore the video statement that recorded the last words of Renee Good to the man who would shoot her to death, "That's fine, dude, I'm not mad. I'm not mad at any of you". We are told to ignore the video, actually shot by the ICE officer, who then put down his personal cellphone to grab his sidearm to fire three shots into her car killing her.

As is typical with any authoritarian regime, Donald Trump then went on to push the new Big Lie. In a Truth Social post he stated, “The woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense." He went on to say, “…it is hard to believe he (ICE officer) is still alive, but is now recovering in a hospital.”

Trump said these things in reference to the Good shooting after reportedly watching a video clip. His statement would have had some credibility if only he had made it last June when this same officer was dragged by a different car and severely injured. In that event he had shot a man in the head, face and shoulder with his Taser through a broken rear window and then he was dragged a distance before falling loose.

Kristi Noem said, “This was an act of domestic terrorism.” She said this before she had conducted any investigation and without all the facts. She certainly hadn’t seen all the video footage from the event as more is surfacing now.

The ICE officer, Jonathan Ross, left the scene of this active shooting event in an SUV with other officers before any investigation was completed. He had just killed a civilian and left the scene. There were “medics on the scene” according to a video statement made to a doctor who offered his assistance and was turned down. If officer Ross was “seriously injured,” was he seen by their medics? Was he treated at a hospital? What were his injuries? From the video available at this writing, nothing shows him being injured.

The wagons have circled. The spin doctors are spinning. The doublethink begins.

Orwell was the unwitting harbinger to the era of the MAGA Party and Donald Trump, its leader. His experience was with the era of the Nazi Party and Adolph Hitler. He predicted a time when another leader would push the Big Lie and promote doublethink.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”—George Orwell.

“Two plus two is whatever I say it is.”—Donald Trump