Tell Us Something We Don’t Already Know. FFS.

Judging by the number of angry e-moji faces I’ve been getting on some of the social media responses to the overwhelming amount of posts in my feed reacting to the sh-tshow in the Oval on Friday I’m apparently almost as popular with some folks compelled to express their sadness about being an American as the schmucks-in-chief that perpetrated it.

To which I say the same thing that frequently gets said to me when I note that our sister site sometimes goes days without an active post from someone who continously vows to be timely but somehow a headache, an inexplicable internet glitch or a lost wallet so often gets in the way of that level of dedication.  Sorry, not sorry.

Clearly this story is impossible to avoid; even Saturday Night Live opened last night’s show with a satirical re-enactment.  I’ve seen what went down for the cameras in its entirety and here’s all I say on the subject–I fully expected Ashton Kutcher to show up giggling and cuddling Karoline Leavitt.  Or for those of a different generation (including, I suppose, Fat Orange Jesus), an AI-generated Allen Funt.   Considering that Tass had just been ushered into at almost the same moment that a couple of US media outlets were removed, I’m more than convinced what we saw was little more than a twisted iteration of a practical joke and that there was never any intention of an agreement of any kind being signed Friday.   Unoriginal and lame versions of popular American comedy seem to be what works in that region of the world.  Remember, Volodymyr Zelenskyy once starred in a sitcom.

But honestly, the goofballs who pulled this off are literally fueled by the consternation and shock you continue to believe you must express.  It’s right up there with the “economic boycott” that was supposedly taking place on Friday when this performance art was occurring.  Want to sum up what you personally contributed by shunning an Amazon impulse purchase and see if it adds up to even a fraction of what, say, Jeff Bezos lost in the stock market?  Trust me, they’re absolutely laughing at efforts like this because, bluntly, you don’t matter to any of them.  Neither do I, for that matter.

But there are some voices and actions that are potentially more impactful because they’re occurring among elected officials and involve actions they actually have some skin in the game on.  Those stories have been out there.   You may have missed them but I didn’t.  And knowing how algorithms work I suspect many of you should have at least been in their wheelhouse for amplification.

Did you not see the story which THE INDEPENDENT’s Joe Sommerlad dropped earlier this week about something else that occurred in Washington in recent days?:

Florida Democratic Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost, the youngest member of Congress, was threatened with removal from a House Oversight Committee hearing on Tuesday after he referred to President Donald Trump as a “grifter.”

Addressing the activities of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which Trump has instructed to identify and slash expenditures from the federal government, Frost commented: “People like the grifter-in-chief, Trump, and President Musk are openly using their public offices to enriches themselves to the tune of billions of dollars.  So if we wanna look at waste, fraud, and abuse – which I’m down to do – why is there complete silence on the other side of the aisle about looking at the complete grifter that is the President of the United States and the richest man on the Earth, which is looking into things like social security and different things like that?

After causing consternation among the opposition, Frost relented only partially by referring to Trump as “President of the United States Donald Trump, who’s engaged in the grifting of the American people.” When that caused further upset, the representative dug his heels in, insisting: “I can say that Trump is grifting! “What I will withdraw is calling him ‘grifter-in-chief.’ That is what I will withdraw.

Now I didn’t know about Max Frost before this.  And the fact he’s not an attractive female might have had something to do with it.  But hey–a Florida congressman who’s not Matt Goetz or Byron Donalds.  And an outspoken Democrat not currently collecting Social Security.  In the immortal words of Mel Allen. “How ‘Bout That?!”

Or did you happen to overlook the lengthier piece from POLITICO’s Rachel Bluth and Melanie Mason that began like this?:

The resistance meets daily on Microsoft Teams. The country’s 23 Democratic state attorneys general log on at 4pm ET for a thirty-minute confidential video chat to coordinate their plans for pushing back against the Trump administration. They share updates on the seven cases they have moving through federal courts and argue about whether to treat Elon Musk as a lawful arm of the government or an uncredentialed interloper to it. They plot where to respond next, leveraging timezone differences to expand the workday.

I had zero clue who Washington State’s Bob Ferguson, California’s Rob Bonda or Illinois’ Kwame Raoul were.  Maybe you did, but didn’t think that was worth sharing while you felt more compelled to link to yet another “sad” SMH-y  “reaction” from some more popular elected official.  I can’t more strongly encourage you to do so if you are as in the dark about these guys as I was.  Yeah, sorry folks, they’re all male and two of them aren’t POC.  But they’re doing much more about trying to reign in the insanity you’re railing against than some of their predecessors have–including the ones that somehow became the candidates of non-choice that lost free and fair elections to the Jackass fanatics who clearly are getting your goat.