Tag: jd-vance

“One Big Beautiful Boot”–Trump’s Bill is Just Capitalism with its Mask Off

While liberals are pearl-clutching and conservatives are clapping like trained seals, the U.S. state just reminded us — again — that it only exists to protect capital and crush the poor.

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” just passed. A 1,000 page orgy of tax cuts for the rich, surveillance-state expansion, environmental vandalism, and open war on the working class. They’re not even pretending anymore. The boot isn’t just stomping, it’s doing it with patriotic fireworks and a press release.

What’s in this monstrosity?

  1. Permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, including “relief” on tips and gig work. Translation: handouts for bosses, crumbs for precarious workers.
  2. Billions for border walls, ICE, and CBP. The U.S. is investing in a future where desperate people are hunted like animals.
  3. Slashing Medicaid and food stamps, forcing people to work to death for scraps while the rich lounge in yachts subsidized by tax breaks.
  4. Torpedoing climate policy. Clean energy incentives? Gone. Fossil fuel subsidies? Pumped full of cash.
  5. Newborn “MAGA savings accounts” because nothing says “freedom” like indoctrinating infants into capital accumulation from day one.

They even raised the debt ceiling by $5 trillion so they could do it all without blinking. No panic over the deficit now because the spending serves power.

This bill is not “big” or “beautiful.” It’s discipline — state discipline in service of capital. It rewards extraction, exploitation, and domination. It punishes care, solidarity, and survival. It doesn’t just hurt the poor, it’s designed to remind them who’s in charge.

Liberals will write op-eds about how “deeply concerning” it is. Conservatives will call it a “victory for the American worker.” But those of us truly on the left know: both parties serve the same machine. One smiles while tightening the chains, the other spits in your face as it does. The illusion of reform is dead.

The state cannot be reformed. You don’t pass 1,000 pages of fascist legislation and pretend this system can be voted out of tyranny. This is why we fight for abolition, not revision. No tweaks. No “better Democrats.” No savior presidents. Burn the whole damn thing down.

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” -Emma Goldman (and probably your gut too.)

So what do we do now?

We organize. Not to win elections, but to build dual power, sabotage capitalist logistics, defend our communities, and imagine a world without the state and without billionaires.

We do mutual aid, we educate, we disrupt. We make it ungovernable.

Because if this is what law looks like then we owe it nothing but our resistance.

No masters. No “beautiful bills.” Just solidarity, sabotage, and the end of all empires.

J.D. Vance’s Ego Just Got a Tourist Detained

In a story that sounds like it was ripped from The Onion but was sadly reported by actual newspapers, Vice President JD Vance has found a new way to embarrass America on the world stage: by getting a Norwegian tourist detained, harassed, and ultimately denied entry into the United States … over a meme.

Yes, a meme.

According to Nordlys, a Norwegian news outlet, traveler Mads Mikkelsen (no, not the actor) flew into Newar Liberty International Airport on a trip to visit friends in New York City, continue on to Austin, Texas, and finally meet up with his mother to tour the U.S. national parks. That is, until he was flagged by customs agents — not for any actual crime, but because his phone contained a funny picture of J.D. Vance.

Mikkelsen says he was pulled aside by U.S. border officials, stripped of his shoes, backpack, and phone, and interrogated in a room surrounded by armed guards. Officials grilled him on drug trafficking, terrorism, and right-wing extremism — all without the slightest indication that he was involved in any of it.

He described the ordeal as “an abuse of power and harassment,” saying, “I had traveled for twelve hours, slept poorly, and was physically and mentally completely exhausted even before they started questioning.”

After being threatened with prison time or a $5,000 fine unless he unlocked his phone — again, over nothing — Mikkelsen complied. That’s when officials discovered a meme of Vice President Vance, in which Vance’s face is grotesquely bloated and distorted for comedic effect. The meme went viral after Vance’s infamous Oval Office tantrum during a meeting with Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky, where Vance berated Zelensky in a petulant, scolding tone that made even some Republicans cringe.

Apparently, the meme touched a nerve.

The agents also found a photo of Mikkelsen holding a homemade wooden pipe. That, too, became evidence — not of wrongdoing, but of the apparent thoughtcrime of making MAGA look bad. “Both pictures had automatically saved to my camera roll from a chat app,” Mikkelsen explained. “I really didn’t think these innocent pictures would stop me from entering the country.”

But stop him they did. Officials fingerprinted him, took blood samples, and tossed him into a holding cell. “It felt like I was a terrorist suspect,” he said. “I tried to pull myself together several times, but in the end, I just wanted to go home again.”

He never made it out of the airport. He was deported.

Welcome to the New America: Where memes are a national security threat.

This is authoritarian behavior, full stop. This is how you treat people in a surveillance state. And this isn’t some isolated case — it’s part of a disturbing pattern where the MAGA regime lashes out at criticism, jokes, or even art, as if the First Amendment is an asterisk next to it now.

It’s the kind of behavior that makes America look paranoid, insecure, and hostile, not just to its own citizens, but to the rest of the world. Why would tourists want to come here if their phones are going to be searched for satire?

Instead of promoting freedom, MAGA is exporting fear. Instead of welcoming visitors, they’re detaining them over memes. And instead of leading the world, we’re becoming a punchline.

If you’re wondering why the American tourism industry is struggling, this is it. If you’re wondering why foreign allies are side-eyeing us, this is it. And if you’re wondering whether the MAGA movement is thin-skinned, authoritarian, and completely detached from reality then this is definitely it.

J.D. Vance didn’t just get roasted in a meme. He got humiliated on the global stage, and instead of laughing it off like a normal person, his cronies treated a tourist like a threat.

America isn’t great when it’s scared of jokes.