1. I absolutely love the inflatable frog costumes becoming a symbol of the resistance.
It’s such a smart way to protest because any police brutality or state-sponsored oppression from Trump’s federal goons look absurd when perpetrated against big, anthropomorphic amphibians. And it’s difficult for the Trump Administration to lie about the protesters being violent terrorists when they’re parading down the street in such impractical costumes. Besides frogs I’ve seen inflatable Tyrannosaurus Rexes, unicorns, and other friendly looking animals. Love it.
Also, the whole Pepe the Frog meme culture getting co-opted by the Alt Right throughout Trump’s first term was a very unfortunate hijacking of a friendly source of humor, and it’s nice to take back the frog symbolism and reinterpret it as a protest against Trump’s constant toddler-esque effort to make himself a king. Plus, the available jokes, puns, and pond references are many:
2. It’s nice when artists you like share your politics
When I was a kid I enjoyed reading Bill Amend’s FoxTrot comics in the newspaper, and I was pleasantly surprised to find recently that Amend draws little “Dumb Napkin Cartoons” several times a week trolling Donald Trump. I recommend giving Amend a follow on Threads so his doodles can occasionally interrupt your doomscrolling!
FoxTrot (Bill Amend) (@foxtrot) on Threads
Tonight’s dumb napkin cartoon…www.threads.com
3. Here’s another one of Amend’s doodles that really makes you think about cryptocurrencies:
I’ve always been intrigued by stories where super expensive clothes or objects are found in thrift stores for like $3, or an abandoned warehouse is auctioned off and inside the buyer finds a spectacular collection of sports cars, or some famous painting is found in someone’s grandma’s attic when she dies. And that’s real life with physical things!
But just imagine the fortunes every year that are being lost by people who invest in crypto and then die without giving out the passwords to anyone. Or the still living people who have forgotten the passwords to their digital wallets full of hundreds of Bitcoin purchased for fifty cents each in 2011.
I don’t own any cryptocurrency, and I have never been persuaded it isn’t a speculative bubble with no intrinsic value or a pyramid scheme. The price goes up the more that people buy into it, and — because most people hoard it like gold or some other Federal Reserve apocalypse commodity and do not actually use it as a currency with daily transactions — it’s ripe for a mass rug-pulling that could wreck millions of financial morons’ savings and lives.
Sure, it can be a way to diversify a little of your wealth, but if the crypto markets were legitimate paragons of legal financial dealings, I’m sure the Trump family would not be as eager to get in on the grifting and grafting as they have been this second Trump term.
Trump even signed an executive order calling for the US government to establish a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” (SBR). Lol what a horrific use of public money to inflate the price of Bitcoin and make crypto holders even richer with taxpayer dollars. That degree of market manipulation to create a windfall for already wealthy people makes me shudder.
It’s just dumb for the economy. Crypto value doesn’t stimulate the economy because no one wants to cash out and spend that money while the pyramid scheme is continuing to find new rubes to invest. So if the federal government suddenly invests billions into the Bitcoin community — at Bitcoin’s historic high price no less! — it would be a great time for the wealthy to rug-pull and just pocket all the money that the government puts in.
Only 14% of the US population reports owning some cryptocurrency, so it would hardly be an equitable use of tax dollars. And we’d have to hope Trump doesn’t appoint someone to run the SBR who accidentally puts the password on an insecure Telegram chat.
4. When will Republicans reign in Trump’s dumb tariffs and trade warring?
Is this current Republican Congress the biggest “Do Nothing Congress” in history? The Trump Administration is routinely deciding to not follow the laws Congress has passed, and Republican senators and representatives are doing nothing about Trump willy-nilly firing thousands of employees in legally mandated jobs, and abandoning commitments Republicans have made to Democrats.
This is why Democrats are not giving Republicans the votes they need to keep the government open. What legislative compromise should be made when the executive branch will just refuse to hold up the GOP’s side of the deal?
And Trump’s economic efforts are just chaos for chaos’s sake. The president does not have the authority to institute all kinds of random and impulsive tariffs — even if he does usually chicken out! The Constitution is very clear that the president does not have power of the purse, and Congress does. The Founders designed this very intentionally to make sure the president could never become a king governing at will.
So when Trump announces the government is going to bail out Argentina for $40 billion, where exactly is that money coming from? Is this the Make America Great Again policy we’ve been hearing so much about?
5. Peter Thiel is a creep.
Thiel grew up partly in Apartheid South Africa, and is weirdly obsessed with the idea that the antichrist might be Greta Thunberg. I grew up totally secularly, and I really just cannot relate to people who seriously live constantly afraid of Satan, or take literally the fanciful Bible prophecies of the end times.
Maybe God is real and wants to torture most of humanity for eternity and I’m damned, but my religious apathy hasn’t seemed to affect my life too negatively. I’m reminded of this every time I see some guy wearing a cross necklace yell something creepy at a woman walking by them, or a crucifix adorned woman complain how sketchy the area is cause she sees an unhoused person. I think I’m living more according to their Christian morals than them!
Also, Thiel loves The Lord of the Rings so much he has given many of his companies names referencing the books. It’s sad because Theil’s political ideology of tech utopianism through autocratic libertarianism really goes against my ideas of J.R.R. Tolkien’s major themes and personal morals.
6. I still can’t believe Trump posted a video of himself dumping diarrhea all over his own citizens.
So stupid, petty, and juvenile, but also personally risky because it reminds everyone that he’s constantly being accused of smelling like shit. 🥃
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If you think Donald Trump is a joke, I published two books for you: Satire In The Trump Years, and Satire In The Biden Years, available on Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Kobo. Or, better yet, request your local library order a copy on their website.
I’ve also published three existentialist poetry books, Cabaret No Stare, Moon Goon, and Hotel Golden Hours available in print and on Kindle.
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Browse my comedy portfolio, my graffiti news portfolio, and my poetry portfolio.
The Halfway Post 