Vern here. Why is this an Open Thread, and written by someone else, someone famous, why no new scintillating original Orange Juice pieces this week? Two reasons:

1) I’m busy preparing an Anaheim Democrats Club [UNCHARTERED!] Meeting for tomorrow night – Thursday night Oct 9, 7pm, at the Untold Story Bookstore, 301 N. Anaheim Blvd. Our friend Amy will be helping organize us to do everything we can to get Prop 50 passed by Nov 4; our friend Izzy will have the latest from the frontlines against Trump’s war on Anaheim’s people; and we’ll have a SURPRISE CONGESSIONAL CANDIDATE! This along with our usual great food and camaraderie!

2) I’m also busy preparing a big concert Saturday the 11th at 5pm, at the Anaheim Unitarian Church, with several guest musicians & singers, entitled “Life During Wartime.” Here’s the program:

• Lutoslawski 2 Etudes (1941)
• Beethoven Pathetique Sonata
• Rolling Stones: Ruby Tuesday & Gimme Shelter
• Miles Davis: Stella by Starlight
• Bach/Brahms Chaconne for the Left Hand
• Rod Stewart: Maggie Mae
• The Doors: Touch Me
• Halloween Medley
• Brubeck: Blue Rondo a la Turk
• Talking Heads: Life During Wartime
• Jethro Tull: Bouree & Reasons for Waiting
• The Devil Went Down to Georgia
• No More Kings No More Hate No More Fear (premiere)
• Encore: Don’t You Just Know It? (Huey Piano Smith & the Clowns)

So, hopefully, you can see, why instead of writing something myself I’m putting up something historic and timely that Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project published today, “BE THE INSURRECTION.” I subscribe to Rick on Substack (as well as Jonathan Larsen of “The Fucking News”) and you should too – so I don’t think he’ll mind me re-printing this here. So without further ado here’s Rick!

Be The Insurrection

They want one. They’re going to get one.

by Rick Wilson, Oct. 8, 2025 (SUBSCRIBE!)

Team Trump has known for a while now that if they want an insurrection, they’re going to have to create one.

It’s why all the elements of the MAGA message machine are in overdrive, from Fox down to window-licking scam-fluencers like Benny Johnson and Nick Sortor, each breathlessly lying about the “carnage” on the streets of Portland, Oregon.

They’ve been telegraphing this play for years, the fantasy of crossing that final bridge, of four-wheeling across the Rubicon, of flipping the last switch on the control-rod panel at Chernobyl, because what could possibly go wrong?

Like a third-rate magician with a tell so obvious a blind man could spot it, Donald Trump and his claque of pissant authoritarians have switched from wanna-be to gonna-be, itching to turn the United States military into their personal palace guard, their political police force, their Praetorian Guard for the Thousand Year Trumpreich.

Even “good” Republicans in Washington are realizing their MAGA colleagues are all-in on the end of American. Trump’s allies who find this moment disquieting discount the possibility of bodies stacked in American streets, winnowed down by gunfire from American troops. The shame the GOP should feel for backing this horror is infinite, and unforgivable, but the price of their souls has already been collected, and shamelessness is their superpower.

Now, red state governors, eager to curry favor with the Maximum Leader are begging him to take their National Guard troops and deploy them to teach those terrorists in Chicago and Portland a stern, bloody, deadly lesson.

After all, those blue state scum aren’t real Americans, right?

There’s a reason they’re shooting priests in the head with pepper balls. There’s a reason they’re calling in fake 911 calls to claim ICE is under attack. There’s a reason they shot a woman nine times over her following their ICE snatch squads. There’s a reason they boomed into Chicago in Blackhawks, bagging-and-tagging a building’s residents, including U.S. citizens. There’s a reason the anorexic Elsa She Wolf of the SS Kristi Noem and her concububba Corey Lewandowsi descend like herpetic locusts in American cities with a film crew recording their cosplay.

There’s a reason they’ve embedded MAGA influencers in their attack squads to gleefully chronicle agitporn of the masked government thugs in our streets, warrantless and lawless. There’s a reason Fox airs endless loops of old footage of flames and chaos in Portland, claiming rampant terrorism on the streets.

It’s to set the stage for the Insurrection Act’s declaration.

Even our numb, bothsidesy chattering classes are finally catching up to the terrifying reality that the Insurrection Act of 1807 isn’t dusty relic of a bygone era, but the number one item in Stephen Miller’s dictator spank bank, poised to become the legal cudgel with which Trump will attempt to beat American democracy to death.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about law and order or immigration.

It never has been.

It’s about power.

Raw, naked, and unconstrained. It’s about silencing dissent, punishing political enemies, and creating a climate of fear, backed by lethal force. It’s the ultimate endgame of a man who sees the military not as a defender of the Constitution, but as a tool to enforce his will.

The recent, and deeply alarming, deployment of politically selected National Guard troops from the red confines of Texas to the blue state of Illinois is the canary in the coal mine.

This isn’t a response to a genuine crisis that the Land of Lincoln can’t handle.

It’s a test run. It’s a message.

It’s Trump and his loyalists demonstrating their willingness to use the Guard as a political instrument, to dispatch troops from a state whose governor genuflects at the altar of MAGA into a state led by a Democrat who has dared to defy the Dear Leader. And if the Guard can’t cut it (and by the looks of those Texas boys, they won the battle of Whataburger but not much else), he’ll declare the Insurrection Act and deploy American active and Reserve troops to carry out his will.

This move is designed to provoke a confrontation, to create the very chaos that they will then use as a pretext for a broader, more draconian crackdown.

They want the images of American soldiers on American streets, not to quell riots, but to intimidate citizens and elected officials. It’s a page ripped straight from the authoritarian playbook, a visual representation of federal power brought to bear against those who refuse to bend the knee.

It is the final nail in the coffin of the idea that the Republican Party is in any way conservative or believes in limiting the use of state power, of following the Constitution, or the rule of law.

And who is the architect of this dystopian vision?

Look no further than the ever-creepy Stephen Miller, the Rasputin of Trump world, the actual White House Chief of Staff, and acting Domestic President.

Miller has been dreaming of this moment for years, whispering his poisonous plans for mass deportations and the use of the military for domestic law enforcement into Trump’s eager ear. He’s the face (the strained, punchable, prissy incel face) of America 2.0, land of the serfs, home of the slave.

He’s the driving force in scheme to use National Guard units and active duty military forces as a arm of violence against American citizens in blue states that resist Trump’s agenda. This is the culmination of his vision of a Douchebag Fortress America, purged of the undesirable and ruled by an iron fist.

He is pushing for the arrests of Democratic governors and mayors, a bridge this nation hasn’t crossed since the Civil War.

The Insurrection Act itself has a long and complicated history. It was invoked by President Eisenhower to enforce desegregation in Little Rock, a righteous use of federal power to uphold the constitutional rights of Black students against a segregationist governor. It was used by President George H.W. Bush to restore order during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, albeit at the request of the governor. In both cases the deployments were careful, brief, and with strict rules of engagement.

But in the hands of a man with no respect for the rule of law, a man who has already demonstrated his contempt for democratic norms and institutions, the Insurrection Act becomes something else entirely. It becomes a weapon of tyranny. Trump’s “insurrections” are not violent uprisings; they are peaceful protests, critical media coverage, and legal challenges to his authority.

His “law and order” is the silence of the graveyard.

Trump may have the plenary (get used to that word) authority to deploy troops, but he does not have the moral authority. We must continue to make the case to our fellow citizens that this is an unacceptable abuse of power, a fundamental betrayal of American values.

We must pray for the strength and resolution of American military officers who will, when the time comes, honor their oath to the Constitution and disobey illegal orders to turn their force against their fellow citizens.

The coming months will be a test of our resolve, a test of our commitment to the ideals of a free and democratic society. The threat is real, and the stakes could not be higher.

But we have a power that Trump and his minions will never understand: the power of a free people united in defense of their liberty.

There’s an old saw about revolutions that goes something like this: “It’s too late to work inside the system, and too soon to start killing people.” I wonder exactly where we are on this spectrum. The system is being perverted into a monstrous construct of anti-democratic, anti-republican (both small-d and small-r) abuses that invites only one ending.

It’s the ending of all tyrants deserve.

Our Founders knew this. We must recall it to our hearts and become stronger and more determined to serve lawful and terrible justice on those who would destroy it.

Trump may declare this country in a state of insurrection in the coming days.

It will be the political and moral battle of our lives to resist it, to overturn it, to overcome Trump and Trumpism in a final battle for the soul of this nation. The only path to sustaining our nation as a Republic based on a Constitution and democratic principles will require the hard, ugly work of holding Trump and his enablers to account.

Let this be a clear warning to those who would enable an assault on 250 years of American liberty. You will not reign forever. Your Dear Leader will be dead sooner than you imagine, given his failing health and corroded mind. You will fall from your own corruption, hatred, and the rejection of your evils by the American people.

I will never give up on American resilience…on American courage…on America’s belief we are more than blood and soil, and that the millions of lives sacrificed to defend this bold idea of freedom since our founding were not lost in vain.

Then, as the kids say, the finding out phase.

The lawful power of the people will be used to deliver decisive, agonizing consequences. Legal, political, economic, and social punishments are the only warning that will work.

Those who betrayed this nation will be tried and handed punishments so severe that generations to come will remember that America is, by its very DNA, engineered to destroy tyranny.

I mean this for everyone, from Donald Trump and Stephen Miller down to the masked ICE goons violating the rights of American citizens. They can live their remaining days in an 8×8 cell or take a blindfold, a cigarette, and a wall; it makes no difference to me at this point.

Trump wants an insurrection.

And he’s sure as hell going to get one.

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OPEN THREAD!