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This Week’s Mark McNease On Topic (Substack)
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Well, it finally happened. Donald Trump was indicted, and not the kind of ‘nothing’s going to come of this’ indictment many of us thought was handed down in New York. This is some Espionage Act, serious prison time stuff, and it has left me … ambivalent.
As much as I loathe Trump (almost as much as I loathe DeSantis, and that’s more loathing than I can fit into a thousand Substacks), the idea of a former American president sitting in a prison cell still manages to shock my sensibilities. I felt no sense of joy, no thrill of revenge, when it happened. I felt like we were finally coming to the end of a grotesque tragedy America wrote, produced, and starred in for its own entertainment. American exceptionalism is all the rage, and what could be more exceptional than a trial-by-jury of the most catastrophic head of state we have ever had?
The only enjoyment I’m getting from this is knowing how absolutely out of their minds it’s making the right-wing nut-o-sphere. Their cries of weaponized justice and the criminalization of political opponents rings more than hollow, coming from people who chanted “lock her up” at Trump rallies, and who are currently passing vicious, cruel, draconian laws in Republican-run states in a brutal but doomed attempt to eradicate trans and queer people.
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Mark McNease On Substack: Las Vegas Turnaround
Hey, there, what’s that sound … It’s Robot Anthony, of course!
I Do My Hair Toss …
Tennessee Tried to Ban Drag Shows. So Lizzo Invited Drag Queens Onstage
How much do I love this woman? The answer is not to cancel Pride parades (I’m looking at you, Port St. Lucie) but to have 10,000 people show up in drag and say, “So f**king arrest us.” To the gays I’ve seen commenting elsewhere that we’ve catered to the “extremists” among us: who the hell do you think fought back at Stonewall? It wasn’t your Brooks Brothers, Martha Stewart, tastefully married asses. It was the drag queens and the transsexuals, so sit down and shut up. We don’t need your approval and we will never have theirs.
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Mark McNease on Topic: A Million More Marthas
The following is from Mark McNease on Topic. Subscribe here for twice-weekly braintinis.
Prefer to listen? Enjoy your audio side dish, delivered with the soothing sounds of Android Anthony. I’m growing very fond of this guy …
Thank you to new paid subscribers Ron and Tim! You have a lifetime VIP pass to my heart. – Mark
The World Needs Heroes: Meet Martha Hickson
We went to the Hunterdon Democratic Committee spring brunch on Sunday. That’s the county we live in. One of the panel speakers was the amazing Martha Hickson, a school librarian and fierce advocate for kids’ right to read. Her story is harrowing and full of heroism, as she survived a MAGA onslaught to fight another day, and another. She was the 2022 recipient of the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced With Adversity, and she speaks with the kind of dedication and experience we need in these book-banning times. Children are not property. ‘Parental rights’ include the right to have your children given access to knowledge. And fire must be fought with fire, which Martha has an abundance of. We need a million more (we’re working on it!).
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Mark McNease On Topic: Crossfire Hurricane
From the Substack Mark McNease On Topic. Subscribe for twice-weekly goodies bags.
For all the times I said I would cheer when the day came, the indictment of Donald Trump did not feel celebratory. It felt like a sad day in a tawdry story that has no ending. Will they shoot to kill? Will they shoot at all? Will they ramp up their anti-trans hysteria, blaming the weakest, most vulnerable people they can still pummel while polite society remains glued to TikTok? Right-wing gadfly Ben Shapiro declares that trans people should be barred from owning guns. Not such a 2nd Amendment absolutist after all, is he?
I’m really an optimist. I think we live once, and only once, in our present incarnations. What happens when the lights go out, I don’t care and I don’t think about. I may stare awestruck at the silent void when I’m inches from it, but the whole “where do we go when we die” question has as much meaning for me as “is there a god?” It’s reported that when asked if god exists, Buddha replied with silence. I think that’s the perfect response: it exists if it matters to you that it exists.
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Mark on Topic: Subscriber Tree House – ‘Joyful Warriors’ and Cheerful Terrorists
The following is from my Wednesday ‘Subscriber Tree House’ edition of Mark on Topic (Substack). Subscribe here!
Happy Wednesday, Tree House friends! A couple things to relate today from the tin-cans-and-a-string news outlet.
One, I may take a short sabbatical from fiction writing. As much as I love making up worlds and the people who inhabit them, it’s also frequently frustrating. I sometimes suffer from a form of creative constipation, and that’s where I find myself this morning. But it does not mean I’ll be this way tomorrow. It’s likely that I’m just feeling over-extended, and one of those burners has to be put on low.
The subtitle today, ‘Joyful Warriors,’ comes from the name of an upcoming convention in Philadelphia being hosted by the Moms for Liberty kitchen-table terrorists with their massive dark money backing. You know Besty DeVoss is lurking in there somewhere, salivating at all the public education dollars she’ll be able to funnel into her Good Christian friends’ pockets as our educational system is destroyed. Knowledge and freedom are the wood, Moms for Liberty are the termites.
These vipers are at the door, slithering closer as they take over school boards across the country. This happened, quite sadly, in Bucks County, PA, just across the river from our home in New Jersey. The new board, with a 6-3 nutjob majority, has banned Pride flags, ‘safe space’ stickers, and anything else that might make a non-white-Christian child or educator feel safe. Gay? Trans? Black? Forget about it! The only safe spaces these people want are white, Christian, heterosexual, cisgender spaces. The rest of us will be peering in the window hoping we don’t get arrested for trespassing.
I’m currently part of a growing pushback on this cheerful terrorism. I’m on a committee to identify and elect school board members in my district. I’m also part of the Kingwood Democratic Club and the Hunterdon Democrats, as we scramble to recover from the ambush (Mom-bush?) of these joyless authoritarians. I had no interest in being an activist at this age, but it’s come to that. What waits ahead, no one knows, but we cannot simply lie down in the middle of the road and let ourselves be run over by the Momster trucks.
In other news …
I’m interviewing comic and activist Robin Tyler later today. She’s 80-years-old and as much a door-kicker as ever. She and Rev. Troy Perry called for the first March on Washington, and I’m looking forward to hearing what she has to say about our current state of affairs.
Buy local …
Many thanks to Babs and her Bucks on Bridge coffee shop. She hosted a reading of mine in January, and she’s selling my books at the shop.
The Twist Podcast with comedy duo Mark McNease and Rick Rose is moving to Sundays! I no longer work on the Lord’s Day, so we’re relocating and loving it. Upcoming Twist-erviews: author and podcaster Brad Shreve, and San Antonio’s very own drag warrier Queen Fantasia. Fasten your headphones!
And lastly, I’ve just signed up with an app called HealthyWage. It sounds like a scam but it’s not. I’m betting $60 a month for 6 months ($360) that I’ll lose 30 pounds by August. When I do (not ‘if’), I’ll win $745, nearly doubling my wager. The reality is most people don’t succeed, and that’s how they make make money for themselves and the payouts for people like me, who will not fail. So … wish me good eating!
Today’s parting shot …
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Now on Substack: Mark McNease On Topic
It’s a blog! It’s a newsletter! It’s a new adventure in writing!
Having just discovered Substack and all the great writers, journalists, thinkers and contemplatives offering up their intellectual property, I decided to jump right in. Mark McNease On Topic is the result. I’ll be examining something at least twice a week (gun rights, self-creation, the dangers of the unwoke, politics, culture). And on Fridays I’ll put out my Weekly Readlines news roundup.
While a lot of the writers on Substack are journalists or quasi-journalists offering paid subscriptions roughly the monthly cost of a cappuccino, mine will be free until further notice or until I have a much bigger subscription base. So why not sign up now and take this journey of discovery, recovery and misdirection with me!
Here’s my first official post from this morning (New World Disorder). Like a good blob of dough on a floured baking board, I expect to knead this out week by week until it’s something everyone in their wrong mind will want to get in their inbox. Yours, Mark.
