Today is Friday, September 19, 2025. Boy, was I overjoyed that we missed the political news emanating out of this country the time we were in Copenhagen and Israel, even though we heard some snippets of the carnival of fascism swirling in this country during the present moment on BBC World News in Copenhagen. The family member we were staying with in Tel Aviv had no CNN, so we didn’t watch the news at all, but we certainly heard the news about far-right activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination while we were in Copenhagen, I believe. (I believe it happened on September 10; we were leaving Copenhagen for Israel that day.) The reaction over Kirk’s death was swift and unrelenting on the far right; the buffoon of a president talked way out of turn and condemned the “far left radicals” for Kirk’s murder, but if he had just waited until a damn suspect was taken into custody, he would have learned the gunman was not from the left at all; he was a registered Republican, as his grandmother told news outlets. This is what this “divider in chief” does so well: he divides the country into “radical lefties” and proper far righters, which he deems more American than those who espouse those policies considered too “woke” for Dump’s factions to ever wish for.

What has resulted from the death of Dump’s 31-year-old extremist friend who deserves no accolades other than that he shouldn’t have been shot for espousing such hateful opinions under the rubric of free speech is the repercussions of what Little Donnie has exacted in the wake of this event, which was to strong-arm ABC to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air for allegedly spouting anti-Kirk views on his show, which was not even the case at all. He never criticized Kirk directly for his views; he criticized MAGA for embracing Kirk’s death as a political stunt and claiming incorrectly that it was carried out by someone on the far left, which had already been disproved. For this, he was taken off the air! How ridiculous! Has anyone ever mentioned that Fox News itself should be taken off the air for espousing lies, damn lies, and more lies to the gullible American public? This station has done more irreparable damage to the American psyche ever since it came on the air, and it still is allowed to flourish, despite an almost 1-billion settlement against it for spouting lies about the 2020 election. And Kimmel is taken off for one inoffensive comment that was deemed too sensitive for the toddler in chief’s ears. In a stunning move that should serve as a wake-up call for all Americans that our First Amendment rights are now directly under attack by this fascistic administration, the Jimmy Kimmel show was put on an indefinite preemption by ABC.

It was Nexstar that owns dozens of ABC affiliates who applied pressure to the network to remove Kimmel from his late-night show. This move by Dump and his awful minions to suppress free speech should send a deep shudder through every American who cherishes the notion of free speech in this country. We are not a dictatorship – yet. But this blatant abuse of power on behalf of this authoritarian president must be dealt with severely – either with immediate lawsuits filed by Kimmel himself or by boycotting ABC itself by all people who denounce this decision by this regime. I have also been made aware that people should boycott Disney, even, since it owns ABC now. I haven’t been to a Disney property in years and I have no intention of going to one in the near future anyway.

Podcaster Aaron Parnas writes about this disturbing trend with the firing of Kimmel thusly: “If this becomes the norm, no figure in the public eye, regardless of political leaning, is safe from being pulled ‘indefinitely’ when their words displease powerful stakeholders. Beyond Kimmel, the deeper danger lies in the chilling effect this sets for all media figures, entertainers, and journalists. If the cost of expressing opinions – however clumsy or controversial – is corporate cancellation, the incentive will shift from speaking truth to power toward speaking nothing at all.” The world of 1984 will rule over this country like Big Brother reigned over that fictional land created by George Orwell.

We cannot let this thin-skinned baby get his way here. Now is the time to resist. As Parnas concludes a piece he wrote, “Today it is Jimmy Kimmel. Tomorrow, it could be any voice that dares to step outside the lines drawn by those in power.”

We are in deep doodoo, my friends, and we must make ourselves aware of how bad the situation is developing in this country and fight it. Or we won’t have a country anymore!

Despite this warning, please have a good weekend.

And so it went!