There’s a good chance you’ve seen this photo by now:
Pictured seated from left to right: Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with House Speaker Mike Johnson standing behind on the right. Tap to view at full size.
It’s from the Instagram account of the Donald Trump’s second-most-favorite kid (and from all accounts, it’s a distant second), Donald Trump Jr.:
Here’s a close-up of the table. As you’ll notice, it’s all McDonalds food, even for RFK Jr.:
He doesn’t look all that happy about it:
For the benefit of those readers who’ve never seen someone die on the inside, here’s a zoomed-in version of RFK Jr.’s face:
Loyalty tests and ritual humiliation
RFK Jr. famously doesn’t eat processed food, and explained why in a video he posted barely a month ago:
Trump could have easily accommodated RFK Jr.’s dietary preferences: “not junk food.” But he didn’t, for two key reasons.
For starters, he looooves the stuff:
…but the more important reason is that he’s a bully, and bullies generally cycle between two modes with their allies: cruelty and disregard…
…and loyalty tests:
And a bully who has the opportunity combine the two — say by making someone eat something they don’t want to — can’t pass it up. So Trump did just that.
If he’s willing to do that to someone in his own inner circle, wait till you see what he’s got in store for you.
Jon Stewart’s right, and we’ve been here before. Where we are now, I’ve been before — and I’m still around.
And I will remain to be around, fighting the good fight, running the good run, standing for justice, and bringing the accordion-powered “golden retriever energy” that is my stock in trade.
Lt. Col. John Alexander McCrae, author of In Flanders Fields.
The symbol of Remembrance Day is the poppy, which grew in abundance in some of Europe’s bloodiest battlefields during World War I, and became the central image of In Flanders Fields, a poem written by Canadian soldier Lt. Col. John Alexander McCrae, a field surgeon assigned to the First Field Artillery Brigade after a particularly bloody battle in Ypres that started on April 22, 1915 and that lasted 17 days. After performing a funeral for his Alexis Helmer (no chaplain was available), McCrae sat in the back of an ambulance, from which wild poppies could be seen growing in a nearby cemetery, and wrote the following into his notebook:
Here’s the text of the poem:
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
He showed the poem to a Cyril Allinson, a 22 year-old sergeant-major, who was delivering mail at the time. Allinson is quoted as saying:
His face was very tired but calm as we wrote. He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer’s grave.
The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind.
It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.
McCrae wasn’t satisfied with the poem and tossed it away. Luckily, a fellow officer retrieved it, and it was submitted to two British magazines: The Spectator and Punch. The Spectator rejected it, but fortunately for generations of soldiers, Punch saw fit to publish it in December 1915.
For our soldiers and the sacrifices they made, I’d like to say “thank you”.
I’ll make my position clear on this, in case there’s any misunderstanding: As a public servant, you serve the public, and that means everyone.
It was wrong for now-former Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, and it was wrong for Marn’i Washington to declare that Trump voters were not worthy of FEMA aid.
