And now, an ode to our troubled times

On the occasion of Groundhog Day yesterday (and Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow, ensuring six more weeks of winter), our old friend and former journalistic colleague Jeremy Voas penned some thoughts we thought you’d enjoy.

 
ODE TO JANUARY 2026

OR

PERVERSE FREE VERSE OF ADVERSITY

Hale greeting friends past current future
I write on February 2
Sigh
So far
This is not my favorite year
I read the news last month
Oh boy
When 2026 sprang upon us
So fresh and full of premise
Flu and fatigue were my companions
But marauding microbes were trifling
Compared to the coming cascade of outrages
Visited upon us by the White House
The flu has since departed

But the firehose of Trumpian chaos
Persisted as though the news cycle
Had morphed into a debilitating
Dry cough cacophony
It’s astounding to contemplate
All that’s transpired
And those they’ve expired
January 3 brought respiratory congestion
And the raid on Caracas
With the kidnapping of the leader
Of a sovereign state
Maduro was and is a bad hombre
And
So is Vladimir Putin
Who’s killed hundreds of thousands
Of Ukrainians and his own troops
And his senseless carnage drones on
So it seems that some very wicked guys
Are inexplicably patronized
Trump did Maduro to
Stop the drugs
I meant to say acquire the oil
Which our acquisitive but savvy U.S. oil choir
Decidedly does not desire
Trump declared to the globe that he was
Temporary President of Venezuela
So he’d claim dibs on all that dino juice and seize
A few hapless tankers
On the high seas
While assuring the oil executives
That the American taxpayer would be honored to provide
The hundreds of billions required
To make Venezuela’s crude oil patch Great Again and
By the way
That the money from Venezuelan fossil fuels
Would accrue across the same high seas into
A curious bank account
In Qatar
This demented dervish of drama
Was swiftly eclipsed
By the growing concern
Openly stoked by Trump and his Merry MAGAs
That Greenland must be conquered and occupied
And above all else exploited
Yet because Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark
Which is a founding member of NATO
Attacking it would be
In actuality
An attack upon ourselves
And also because Norway
Which does not bestow the Nobel Prize
Had not bestowed upon Trump a Peace Prize
That was
In actuality
Unbestowable
Serious people worldwide were forced
To furrow brows and talk about nonsense
And those serious people
Had little trouble convincing
Sentient patriots that it was indeed
A ludicrous and dire notion
And that some NATO members would
Fight with Denmark against an invasion
Trump the paper tiger
Tucked tail and folded like origami
Like the enfeebled and addled
Temporary President of Greenland
But not before once again
Claiming victory in achieving privileges already enjoyed
And not before sneering and besmirching
Longstanding and stalwart allies
Who’d lost scores of soldiers fighting
In U.S. wars launched after 911
This includes Demark
Which of any coalition nation
Lost the highest proportion of its population
To combat in Afghanistan
And then became known
That the true winner of the Nobel Peace Prize would
Scurry to curry
Favor
She gave hers to Trump
A Jolly Rancher for an obnoxious tot
And he accepted the phony tribute with
An unironic participation trophy grin
And it perches next to his fake FIFA Peace Prize
Putin’s people predictably cackled like cartoon villains
And sang psalms to their benefactor
The Temporary President of Mar-A-Lago
It was of yet less consolation when Trump
In shimmering bronze candor
Intoned that the limits of his power were regulated only by
His own morality
A trait as evident as Yeti
And yet I
Won’t forget
That waiting on the freeze-dried streets
Of Minneapolis
Lurked the grim apotheosis of the whole tragicomedy
As easily diagnosed goons
With coward-covered faces
Descended to terrorize people of color
And people of little color
Can we get our own color revolution already
Mortals were swept up
Whether they were right with law or not
Minnesotans hated this more than
They hate the Packers
And reacted as occupied people do
By resisting and bearing witness
And speaking unambiguously
Of the barbaric assholery
Of the agents provocateurs
Dispatched by that
Millennial Eddie Haskell clone
Stephen Miller
And his ICE Princess Kristi Noem
Who’s reminiscent of a mediocre
Commercial realtor
Whose specialty is strip malls and who’s
Been given a brand and a
Wardrobe worthy of a fascionista
And a fleet of jets and a shadow
Named Corey Lewandowski
And together this dynamic duo of doom
Kneels and keens
Before the rhinestone throne of power
Even though the power looming above them
Is alchemic dark matter they cannot comprehend
Because comprehending would require a conscience
Or a vague grasp of recent history
Recent history brought vividly to mind
By The Twin-Cities Commander
Bovino
Who dressed and strutted like Heinrich Himmler
Who before he was reichsfuhrer
Was a chinless chicken farmer
Who donned jackboots to micromanage
The Final Solution
But did so in an impeccably sewn great coat
Turns out such attire projected power less potent than cyanide
Minnesotans happen to have
Coats of their own and were
Unimpressed
And
Unafraid
And
Bundled up
To exercise their First Amendment rights
Surprising nobody
Bovino’s clique had visions of capital crimes
ICE-dancing in their heads
One must not mock or whistle or witness agents
When they’re armed like soldiers with everything but
The laws of the land
Federal agents
Who were not taught
To de-escalate
But to ventilate
And thus the world saw the truth
That our government had once again mounted
An attack upon ourselves
Sentient patriots saw flaming errors egregious enough
To thaw Lake Minnetonka
But slouching toward Jerusalem
I mean hastening to the Mall of America
With F Troop fanfare
Is
And I am not making this up
A man who was surreptitiously filmed by the FBI
Accepting $50,000 in a paper bag
But whose sagacity
I mean mendacity
Is nonetheless essential
To properly czar-ing the border
The border nearest Minneapolis is Wisconsin’s
Tom Homan parachuted in like Harvey Keitel
To clean up the brain matter in the back seat
Harvey Keitel is a fine and convincing
Actor who ably grappled with Tinseltown slaughter
In a memorable film
People appreciate Keitel’s character
In its service to Pulp Fiction
But this is not fiction and
Tom Homan is a bad actor
Whom everyone
Including the stooges at the White House
Knows is incapable of a competent
“Metro Surge”
Competence and efficacy never were and never will be
The goal
The next turn of this caterwauling calliope
Brought the finest federal gumshoes
To Fulton County Georgia
To seize the ballots from the “stolen” 2020 election
Because the Big Lie must linger on
A rectal itch on the body politic
And somebody somewhere is scripting the pretense
For bollixing the 2026 election in Atlanta
And beyond
And yet we ponder all the gravity of all the travesty
While hearing of the contents of millions of documents gathered
Because Trump’s best bro
Had acquired too much money and too many friends
A lot of them on the younger side
Epstein’s pals were nearly as powerful as his testosterone
And his sense of elite entitled impunity
I mean
What fetid outhouse chamber
Produces such awful offal
So a fatuous fare thee well
Dear jacked-up January
I solicit sincerely for friends past current future
A much better
Benign and humane
Second month of
2026
February is bound to be better
Though I am obliged to mention
That this day, February 2, is
Groundhog Day and
Ayn Rand’s birthdate
Somebody please please blow out the candles

— Jeremy Voas