Trump's Shell Game: War On Free Speech is the First Step to Facism

In a world where "86" becomes a national security threat but "LOCK HER UP" is just patriotic fervor, we've crossed the threshold into dangerous territory.

The Beach Where Democracy Gets Washed Away

The air tastes like metal. That distinctive coppery flavor that floods your mouth when you bite your tongue too hard. That's what democracy tastes like now – like an accident in your own mouth that you didn't see coming.

When former FBI Director James Comey posted a harmless beach photo showing shells arranged as "86 47," he couldn't have anticipated the shit hurricane that would follow. The seashells – those innocent, hollow exoskeletons washed up on the shore – would be transformed into evidence of a capital offense, the would-be murder weapons in an imaginary assassination plot that exists only in the fevered imagination of a man whose brain has been pickled in narcissistic paranoia for seven fucking decades.

Within hours, the full force of the United States government machinery was mobilized against a retir…