A suspect is in custody.
Two West Virginia National Guard members shot in DC have died, the state’s governor says
The shooting happened just blocks from the White House. Trump was in Florida when the shooting happened.
⛵ THE FLENSBURG FILES
Back in September, we started an initiative that targets companies, conglomerates and donors who were responsible for supporting the campaign to re-elect Donald Trump, support Project 2025, ditches DEI programs that were introduced during the Joe Biden administration and most recently, donated to the project to construct the ballroom at the site where the East Wing of the White House once stood (hence my new nickname for shame: The White Ballroom). Here’s the list that has all the culprits on them from A to Z:
The list also includes ways to cut ties with them and consider alternatives. Already the initiative has gained traction in the US and among Americans living abroad, especially in light of the Black Week Boycott that is taking place between November 25th and December 2nd. Yet in order to send the right message, the boycott should go well beyond that period and this is where the next question comes in:
Are there companies that still support DEI initiatives AND have not supported Trump, Project 2025 or the White Ballroom in anyway, shape or form?
While the list is small, the answer to that question is yes. Many of these companies have stood tall against the winds of change and are setting an example of what America should look like: a beacon of democracy, where everyone should have a chance at a better life and we should take the lead in international initiatives, including and especially the environment.
There are many ways to avoid big businesses and consider alternatives to convenience, especially in hard times like these. This includes making home-cooked meals instead of going out, donating unwanted materials to those who need it, and buying used or homemade items. It also includes time with family to be spent doing something totally different than what we have been used to- including playing games, traveling and visiting new places, and donating time for the right causes. That would be my suggestion as priority number one, especially when we have the holidays.
However there are companies that deserve service for what they have done to date. These include those who had supported Trump but have since turned their backs because of his actions (and that of the architects of Project 2025 and the like. I have created a working list of these companies that are against him and his policies, including those who are supporting DEI initiatives. To make this list, these candidates must not have any connections with Trump and Project 2025 of any kind. They should also have initiatives that support diversity, equality and inclusion, and also policies pertaining to environmental protection, especially as we face climate change. Unlike the BIg Beautiful Boycott, this is a working list, which can be adjusted at any time, based on any changes we hear from the news. As a tip, if you want to learn more about which company supports these initiatives, one can download the Goods Unite Us app, which I find very useful, even more so on the Smartphone. Then there’s Open Secrets, which gives you an idea where the money from the products you buy is going- to which party and for what purpose.
The List will change regularly based on activity, so please visit it often and mention any candidates that should be added or omited to the list. Only then will we know who has been naughty and who has been nice.
The List:
ABC Network
Alaska Air
Aldi
American Express
Apache Open Office
Bloomingdale’s
Blue Sky
Burlington
Chase
Chewy
Chili’s
Cisco Systems
Cleveland Cavaliers
Colgate-Palmolive
Costco
Delta Airlines
Dick’s Sporting Goods
Disney
Dollar Tree
Dr. Bronner’s
DSW
Ecosia
e.l.f.
ESPN
Farouk Systems
FAA
Francesca’s
Gap
Geoffrey Zakarian
Giant Food
Go To Foods
H-E-B
Hilton
Honda
JCPenney
JetBlue
Jose Andres
Kroger’s Groceries
L.L. Bean
Lemmy
Levi Strauss
Liberty Mutual
LibreOffice
Linux
Logitech
Lush Cosmetics
Macy’s
Marriott Hotels
Mars, Inc.
Mastodon
Meijer
Michael’s
Mozilla Firefox
M&T Bank
Morgan Stanley
NBCUniversal
Nextcloud
NFL
Nike
Nordstrom’s
Old Navy
Oliver’s Market
P&G
PGA
Patagonia
Penzey’s Spices
Pixelfed
Prada Group
Progressive Insurance
QVC
Sally Beauty
Serta
Sephora
Southwest Air
Sprouts
Staples
Televisa
TJ Maxx (TK Maxx in Europe)
Total Wine
Trader Joe’s
Ulta
Univision
Walgreen’s
Wegman‘s
Yahoo!
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Before we get started with the Christmas series, I would like to make a couple announcements pertaining to the 2025 Christmas Series from the Files.
The first one is the biggest: The Christmas Series is moving to the Files’ Substack page.
That’s right, we’re going to feature the series for the first time in the Files’ Substack page. Yet we are going to do it in a way that the articles and activities that I have written about Christmas, the Christmas markets and the like will be moved over to Substack, with links being connected back to this WordPress website. You will notice the changes but by bit in the Tour Guide pages. This will be done as part of the series honoring the Files for 15 years of pieces written by the author and others who have contributed over the years. Plus it will free up some MB space to allow more photos.
The second one is equally big: We’re picking up where we left off from last year. We had a series going with quizzes, tours and all, unfortunately it was stopped abruptly because of a terrorist attack at one of the markets in Magdeburg, in Saxony Anhalt. We have some unfinished business with last year and we will mix that with what we have in store for this holiday season and in the days leading up to 2026. They will appear in both the WordPress and the Substack pages.
If you are interested, subscribe to the Files on Substack. It’s for free and you can read up on the current events and cultural topics whenever you want to.
Link: https://www.substack.com/@theflensburgfiles
We’ll start the series on the First Advent. Stay tuned.
🎄 THE FLENSBURG FILES
At the time of this post, efforts are underway in Geneva, Switzerland to settle the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with the former wanting to declaw and defang Selensky who refuses to give up land and rightfully so. After all, Russia started invading Ukraine by taking Crimea in 2014 and then tried to topple the government in Kyiv in 2022. The latest proposal by Trump would result in sections of Ukrainian land being given up in exchange for security guarantees. People, like Robert Hawks in his piece, have considered this nothing less than impeachment in favor of Russia, especially as Trump and Putin were the only ones dealing with it without the EU and Ukraine involved. A look at the reasons why Selensky should flatly reject the proposal and such appeasement are grounds for impeachment for Trump and the Cabinet in the White Ballroom (formerly known as the White House):
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What Trump is floating isn’t diplomacy.
It’s a ransom note written in Putin’s handwriting and signed by Donald J. Trump, who still thinks he’s auditioning for the role of Emperor of the Blackmail States of America.
This isn’t peace.
Peace is what you negotiate between equals.
This is capitulation.
It’s a foreclosure notice on Ukraine’s sovereignty, stapled to Putin’s oil-stained wish list: give up land, surrender NATO, cripple your army, hand over your future, and thank Mother Russia for not executing you in the town square.
And Trump is cheerleading that surrender like a man who’s already been told what’s hiding in his safe if Vladimir ever decides to open his mouth.
Russia isn’t just whispering in Trump’s ear; they’ve got him by the collar.
The blackmail is practically neon-lie, why else would an American president be willing to cripple a democratic ally, lift the sanctions that are the only leverage against Russian expansion, roll out a red carpet for Moscow back into the G8, and offer them Western technology, the one thing Putin hasn’t been able to conquer?
There’s a word for someone who gives the enemy access to weapons and secrets at the expense of your own allies: traitor.
Donald Trump is a f-ing traitor.
Trump is trying to put Ukraine on the auction block.
He wants to sell their territory, their dignity, and their right to exist, not for peace, but for profit, for power, and most of all, for protection, from whatever kompromat Moscow is sitting on.
He’d happily trade away NATO, our closest friends, our military guarantees, and our deterrent buffer, for his next round of golf at Mar-a-Lago with his favorite war criminal.
He’s not just trying to coerce Ukraine into kneeling; he’s trying to hand them back to the imperial butcher whose tanks rolled across their borders nearly four years ago.
You don’t “limit an army” of a country being invaded, you do that to a country you plan to invade again.
This plan isn’t about ending war.
It’s about rewarding invasion.
It’s about rewriting borders with bullets.
It tells every dictator on Earth: invade your neighbor, wait for Trump, and you’ll get a peace deal wrapped in a bow and delivered in person with a handshake and a photo op.
Well, here’s what I say:
Ukraine has fought, bled, and died for their flag, their language, and their right to exist without being swallowed by a tyrant.
NATO has stood for seventy-five years as the shield guarding democracy against authoritarian greed.
And we’re supposed to abandon them because one orange man in Florida wants to settle old debts with the Kremlin before their files on Donald get released?
No. Hell no.
F- this noise.
The correct response to this “peace plan” is three words, delivered without ambiguity and without apology:
F-. Off. Forever.
Tell Trump: you don’t get to auction off our allies.
Tell Putin: your empire is over.
Tell anyone still clutching hopes of appeasement: Chamberlain tried that.
Ask Poland how it went.
Trump’s proposal is not just naïve or reckless, it is a confession.
It proves Putin is in the room.
It proves Trump isn’t neutral, he’s compromised.
From now on, history needs to look at this man not as a potential statesman, but as a security threat with a golf handicap.
Trump may see Ukraine as negotiable.
The rest of us don’t.
Ukraine is not for sale.
NATO is not for sale.
Freedom is not for sale.
And traitors don’t get to decide the price.
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Heather Delaney Reese wrote an interesting piece about the America after Trump. It is becoming obvious, especially after the passing of the Epstein Bill and the actions that followed, that the era of Trump is coming to an abrupt end, even though he will probably not walk away quietly. The issue is what happens next after he is gone. While his next successor is in line to take over, Ms. Reese in her post mentions how much more dangerous JD Vance is, especially as he is getting support from Peter Thiel, Planatir CEO and close friend of his, whose logo is “Democracy and Freedom are not compatible.” Very Orwellian.
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It used to be easy to point at the problem. Donald Trump was the problem. Loud, unstable, corrupt, and obsessed with himself. He was a threat that was as obvious and dangerous. But now, as we settle deeper into this second Trump presidency, it’s becoming harder to ignore a darker possibility: he might not even be the most dangerous one in the room anymore.
Trumpism has mutated. It’s no longer just about Trump. This thing has taken on a life of its own. It’s strategic now. It’s systemic. It’s being guided by people who aren’t just opportunists but true believers in the complete destruction of our country. And some of them aren’t waiting for Trump to step aside; they’re building the infrastructure to outlast him. Because if Trump were to leave the office tomorrow, the man stepping into the Oval would be J.D. Vance. And Mike Johnson would be in line behind him.
That’s the line of succession. And it should terrify every person in this country who still believes in democracy.
J.D. Vance was best known as the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir about poverty in Appalachia, and later as a senator representing Ohio. He started out as a “never Trumper,” openly calling Trump dangerous and unserious. He even warned that Trump could be America’s Hitler. But once he was offered a spot on the ticket, Vance didn’t hesitate. He fell in line. Every criticism disappeared. Every contradiction was rewritten. He didn’t just accept the offer; he embraced it. He aligned himself with far-right donors like Peter Thiel and began defending policies that echo authoritarian regimes. Because for Vance, the goal was never principle, it was power. His shift wasn’t just political convenience; it was a full ideological pivot toward hard-right control. Now he stands next in line to inherit this movement.
Trump is a narcissist. He doesn’t care about people’s suffering because he’s incapable of empathy. He doesn’t study, he doesn’t plan, he doesn’t read. His evil is chaotic and driven by ego. But J.D. Vance is something else entirely. Vance is calculated. He’s cold. He’s smart. And he believes in what he’s doing. Not because he believes in the cause exactly, but because he believes in the power and positions it has given him on the world stage. Trump is indifferent to suffering. Vance seems to enjoy it. He relishes punishment. He’s the kind of man who embraces authoritarian cruelty not just as a tool, but as a virtue. And that makes him far more dangerous.
We’ve seen this kind of shift in other authoritarian governments before; it usually starts with a loud, chaotic leader who grabs power through shock and noise, but what comes next is even worse. After Mussolini came the officials who quietly turned his fascist ideas into a lasting system. Franco started with open violence, but it was the slow, organized control that kept his dictatorship in place for decades. It’s no less dangerous, it’s just more organized. Chaos grabs attention. Cold control locks it in.
Trump didn’t claw his way to the top through intelligence or planning. He got there by being a celebrity with a grievance and an army of enablers. But Vance was installed. Hand-picked. Funded by Peter Thiel. Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and early Facebook investor, is one of the central figures behind the MAGA-aligned New Right. He’s poured millions into campaigns like Vance’s, not to promote populism, but to install loyalist leaders who will dismantle the so-called “deep state” and replace it with a new executive authority. His vision isn’t democracy, it’s control.
Vance didn’t ride a wave, he was placed in the Senate by design. And that design has a name: Project 2025. A 900-page blueprint to dismantle our democracy and remake it in the image of a Christian nationalist oligarchy. Project 2025 was created by the Heritage Foundation and other far-right groups. It lays out a roadmap to fire tens of thousands of career civil servants and replace them with Trump loyalists, dismantle entire departments like Education and Energy, control the Justice Department, eliminate diversity programs, ban abortion nationwide, and consolidate power directly under the presidency. It’s not a policy platform, it’s a legal coup.
Trump once said he hadn’t read a word of it. And maybe that is still true. But Vance has. Trump can’t even follow a two-page briefing. Vance has been helping implement the plan page by page.
That’s the difference. Trump stumbles into chaos because he craves attention. Vance brings order to it, not to stop the damage, but to make it permanent. Trump breaks things because he doesn’t know better. Vance breaks them on purpose. He’s not the sideshow. He’s the system learning how to survive without the showman. And if Trump ever fades, it won’t be the end of MAGA. It will be the beginning of something far more dangerous, because the people coming after him aren’t improvising. They’re following a plan.
And while Vance waits in the wings, Trump is still at the center of the stage, spinning, deflecting, doing whatever it takes to survive another news cycle. He doesn’t have a doctrine. He has instincts. And when the pressure builds, he always reaches for the same escape hatch.
But the story can’t just be about Trump anymore. He’s the smoke, not the fire. The movement he started is growing without him, more focused, more disciplined, more dangerous. J.D. Vance is proof of that. He isn’t stepping forward to change course. He’s stepping forward to finish the job.
And standing right behind him is Mike Johnson, a religious extremist who once said democracy is a threat to Christian values. He wants to criminalize LGBTQ identity, outlaw abortion nationwide, and rewrite the Constitution through the lens of his own theology. If something happened to Vance, he’d be the President. That’s the line of succession. That’s the plan.
Trump is not the end of this movement. He was just the door. What’s coming through behind him is organized, intentional, and fully aware of what it’s doing. J.D. Vance is not Trump.
Before I close, there’s something else I need to put on your radar, and I’ll be writing more about this soon. But it’s serious, and it’s happening right now.
The Trump administration is reportedly weighing a full-scale overthrow of the Venezuelan government. Flights to Caracas have already been cancelled. Career government lawyers inside the State Department are raising red flags, warning that what’s already underway may be illegal. And yet, Trump’s allies, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, continue to push for a campaign they’ve branded “Southern Spear,” complete with strike groups, military assets, and a growing list of targets.
Let me be clear: no, the United States cannot simply “overthrow” another government. The U.S. Constitution does not grant this power to the president, and there is no legal mechanism under domestic or international law that allows the executive branch to remove a foreign regime unilaterally. The concept of “regime change” is a political phrase, not a legal authority. And history shows us the aftermath is often worse: insurgency, failed states, power vacuums. Think Iraq. Think Libya.
So why is Trump considering it? Because it’s a distraction. Because war creates chaos. Because Venezuela is politically isolated and can’t meaningfully fight back. Because this isn’t strategy, it’s spectacle. It’s because the walls are closing in on him here at home.
I’m watching this very closely, and I hope you will too. When an administration facing criminal exposure starts talking about foreign overthrows, we all need to pay attention.
But even with all the danger closing in, today reminded me that we are not powerless. Thousands filled the streets of Washington, D.C., demanding Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. This wasn’t a fringe movement; it was a disciplined, focused force of concerned citizens who came not just to protest, but to declare: we still believe in this country, and we are not letting it fall. They held signs that said “No King in America” and “Remove the Regime”. This is what resistance looks like. And we’re just getting started.
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Dictators tend to lose it when they know they are losing power. This past week, we have seen Trump lose more than his power. He is losing his decency and the end result is that he’s taking America with. If there is a rock bottom coming for America, it’s coming fast and we don’t know if that is the absolute bottom. And we even when we hit, how long will it take before we return to the normalcy we had been accustomed to at the end of 2016, let alone 2023?
This piece by White Rose USA but presented by Bruce Fanger looks at how really bad Trump has become, leaving us with a question: How much more s*** can we take until we finally take action and remove him. Already talks of impeachment are on the table, however there are many traps involved too.
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Trump isn’t just a bad man — he’s what leaks out when a society stops insisting on standards. He’s the sludge at the bottom of the barrel that somehow climbed out and convinced people he’s champagne. Every instinct he has is predatory. Every impulse is base. He’s the closest thing American politics has ever produced to a human pollutant.
This is a man whose entire relationship to other people — men, women, children — is transactional, dominative, or exploitative. The documented behavior alone is revolting: creeping around dressing rooms full of teenagers, bragging on tape about grabbing strangers, rating his own daughter like she’s a contestant in some deranged private pageant in his head. Everything about him smells like stale perfume and fresh coercion.
He radiates the energy of a man who has never once seen another human being as fully real. Just props. Just bodies. Just opportunities — especially the young, the vulnerable, the ones he thinks won’t fight back. He is a lifelong predator who thinks the world exists to indulge him.
And now he’s back in office, dragging the machinery of the state into the gutter with him. A government run by Trump is a government where files disappear, critics get “investigated,” whistleblowers suddenly go quiet, and the powerful smile too easily when people vanish from view. He learned the strongman playbook and threw out everything except the intimidation chapter.
People talk about strong presidents. Trump is a weak man with state power — which is infinitely more dangerous. Weak men in high office don’t govern. They retaliate. They weaponize insecurity. They turn fear into policy.
At least Hitler liked dogs. Trump doesn’t convincingly like anything unless it claps for him or bends the knee. You have to work pretty damn hard to be morally outclassed by a genocidal maniac on the “basic mammal empathy” scale, but here we are.
Not since Caligula have we seen a leader so shamelessly revolve around his own depravity — and Caligula, for all his monstrosity, at least tried to be entertaining. Trump can’t even manage that. He’s petty without style, cruel without purpose, decadent without imagination. A small man doing enormous damage.
And Caligula at least had the excuse of madness. Trump? He’s wobbling somewhere between malignant and mentally unraveling, and the country gets to play guess-which-mode-he’s-in every morning. One moment he’s lucid enough to weaponize his cruelty with surgical precision, the next he’s slurring conspiracies like a drunk uncle who grabbed the wrong mic at a family reunion.
You can literally watch the mind flicker — bragging, ranting, forgetting, circling back, contradicting himself, then declaring victory over battles he invented five minutes earlier. That instability doesn’t soften him; it sharpens him into something even more dangerous. A man who’s losing his grip on reality but still clutching state power isn’t a president. He’s a rolling national emergency with hairspray fumes for a world-view.
If he were fully sane, we’d be dealing with a tyrant. If he were fully gone, we’d be dealing with a patient. Instead we’re trapped in the grotesque middle zone — the twilight where ego, decay, and vindictiveness merge into one swaying, snarling spectacle of a man who shouldn’t be trusted to steer a golf cart, let alone a country.
Whatever he is, he’s not well. And he’s dragging the country into the same psychic ditch he’s been festering in for decades.
He leaves corruption the way slugs leave slime. Every institution he touches warps. Every person who gets close to him shrivels. His allies degrade themselves. His enemies multiply. His country decays under the weight of his insecurity. He is entropy in a golf shirt.
And let’s be clear: there is nothing tragic about him. No Shakespearean flaw, no tortured backstory, no “if only he had chosen differently” nonsense. He’s exactly what he wants to be: a cruel mediocrity who figured out how to capture power by appealing to fear, resentment, and the numbed moral nerves of a collapsing political culture.
Trump isn’t a leader — he’s a plague. A reminder that democracies don’t fall to geniuses, but to bottom-feeders who discover that enough people will cheer while the country is marched into the dark.
The only creature he’s ever shown real tenderness toward is his own reflection — and even then, only on days when the lights are flattering.
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Our next tour guide we will be talking about in the near future will be the Halligen Region. Consisting of islands and warfts located along the North Sea Coast, this region is well-known for their high and low tides (Flut and Ebbe), their reet dach houses, the local culture and lastly, the lighthouses. While Lighthouses are very common in the region, Anika Rieper wrote an article about how they work and where you can find them in the region which extends from Brunsbüttel at the western portal of the Baltic-North Sea (Kiel) Canal) all the way up to Romo in Denmark, including areas around Büsum, Husum, Sylt and Dagebüll. You can find her excerpt here, with the rest of the text and tour guide in the link.
The rest will be explained by yours truly. Stay tuned! 🙂
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Sea marks or aids to navigation for centuries have provided guidance, warning, and orientation help to seafarers navigating the sometimes treacherous waters at coastlines of oceans, large rivers, and large lakes. A type of sea mark that we all know is a lighthouse; in German Leuchtturm (lit. light/shine tower). They can be on land or off shore.
A broader term is Leuchtfeuer (lit. light/shine fire) which might be best translated with beacon or directional light; it includes all kinds of sea marks not just lighthouses. Every Leuchtturm is a Leuchtfeuer but not vice versa.
When thinking of lighthouses, most people think of tall red and white towers, but there are plenty of lighthouses which are neither that tall nor red and white. But before we look at lighthouses in Germany, and more specifically in North Frisia (west coast in Schleswig-Holstein), I’ll give you some terms and words that will help to understand Leuchttürme and their functions better.
Read More about the Lighthouses in North Frisia here:
Marjorie Taylor Greene is stepping down as State Representative of Georgia, effective January 5th. There have been much analysis about her downfall, yet Tony Pentimalli in his piece sums it up well. What will happen next, who knows. But Karma can be a b****.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene’s political career ends the way it always operated, in a blinding flash of grievance, spectacle, and self-inflicted ruin. Her resignation is not a tragedy or a surprise. It is the final collapse of a figure who mistook attention for power, cruelty for courage, and conspiracy for truth. She spent her years in Congress treating the House of Representatives like a stage set, the American public like an audience to provoke, and democracy itself like a toy to break for the cameras. Now she walks away from the wreckage she helped create, insisting she is a victim, when history records only an arsonist fleeing her own fire.
Her departure comes at a moment of extraordinary national consequence. Greene did not simply embarrass herself. She weakened the institutions she swore to protect. She normalized stochastic terror by elevating voices that encouraged violence against election workers. She laundered white nationalist rhetoric into the bloodstream of the Republican Party. She targeted journalists, judges, and public servants in ways that eroded their safety and undermined the rule of law. She fueled distrust in vaccines, in elections, in the military, in intelligence agencies, and in any source of truth not sanctioned by her preferred demagogues. This was not harmless noise. It was a campaign of degradation, and the country is still paying for it.
Her cruelty was not theoretical. It was personal, direct, and often aimed at the vulnerable. She once chased a teenage school shooting survivor down a sidewalk while he was lobbying for safer classrooms, demanding he debate her and calling him a coward. This was who she was long before she entered Congress. She did not grow or evolve or rise to the office she held. She dragged the office down to meet her.
Greene fashioned herself as a warrior. A defender of forgotten Americans. A Christian soldier in a cosmic battle with evil. But the reality was always smaller and sadder. She was a bully with a camera. A propagandist who believed her own conspiracies. A chaos merchant who needed perpetual outrage to justify her existence. Her legislative record is a void. Her notable achievements are a parade of humiliations: incoherent committee hearings, viral meltdowns, petty feuds, and public tantrums that reduced Congress to a punchline. She mistook volume for strength. She mistook cruelty for conviction. She mistook Trump’s approval for destiny.
And then the spell broke. When Donald Trump finally turned on her, calling her a traitor and backing a challenger to her seat, Greene discovered the truth she refused to learn. Power in the authoritarian ecosystem she helped build is conditional, temporary, and transactional. She joined a movement that devours its own the moment loyalty falters. She helped create a culture where humiliation is a political weapon, turned on anyone who slips from favor. Once Trump withdrew his blessing, her entire identity collapsed. Her resignation is not evidence of principle. It is evidence of someone fleeing a primary defeat so total it would have ended her career in public disgrace.
She now insists she is stepping down because she has been mistreated, cast aside, misunderstood. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. For years she mocked others as weak or unfit. For years she celebrated the destruction of colleagues who dared to oppose Trump. For years she reveled in cruelty and demanded absolute obedience. The moment the cruelty came for her, she declared herself a victim. After spending a career belittling the vulnerable, she now asks to be treated as one.
Her resignation is not an isolated collapse. It is part of a wider unraveling inside MAGA itself. The movement she once epitomized is entering a phase of internal purges and ideological hardening. Trump’s inner circle is shrinking. The loyalty tests are intensifying. The space for independent voices, even the loud and unhinged ones like Greene, is disappearing. Her fall is a warning to every Republican who once believed proximity to Trump guaranteed safety. Authoritarian movements do not build stable coalitions. They create cycles of devotion and destruction, and Greene is simply the latest casualty in a machine that requires constant sacrifice.
Her exit echoes a familiar pattern in American history. Joe McCarthy burned hot, terrified opponents, dominated headlines, and then imploded under the weight of his own excess. His power vanished the moment the country finally saw the emptiness behind the fury. Greene is not McCarthy in stature or intelligence, but she shares his trajectory. She built her career on accusation, conspiracy, and the relentless belief that fear was a political strategy. And like McCarthy, she ends her career diminished, discredited, and abandoned by the very forces she once commanded.
There will be no lasting legacy. No major legislation. No meaningful reform. No record of courage or leadership. What remains is a cautionary tale about what happens when a conspiracy theorist becomes a member of Congress and confuses her paranoia for prophecy. She entered office to tear things down. She leaves having succeeded only in tearing down herself.
History will not remember Marjorie Taylor Greene as a fighter or a leader or a voice for the forgotten. It will remember her as a symbol of the chaos that overtook American politics in an era when rage outpaced responsibility and performance replaced public service. Her political obituary is not tragic. It is overdue. The nation will not mourn her exit. It will exhale.
Author’s Note:
Tony Pentimalli is a political analyst and commentator fighting for democracy, economic justice, and social equity. Follow him for sharp analysis and hard-hitting critiques on Facebook and BlueSky
@tonywriteshere.bsky.social
⛵ THE FLENSBURG FILES
What follows is an “Open Letter” to every Republican member of Congress. I am sending this directly to my two Senators as well as my ‘Representative’ in the House of Representatives. Feel free to use it as you see fit … Open Letter to Every Congressional Republican In light of recent events, I have a […]
Dear Member Of Congress …
With as much drama as we have seen this past week, one has to wonder if the Republicans are tired of this all, especially those who had been loyal to Trump until the Epstein Law was passed. Jill Dennison crafted a letter to two of them representing her state and it would be a great template and incentive to craft a letter like this to your Republican constituents. After all, if they don’t wake the F up and do something to stop him from becoming an unhinged monster, they can do what Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene did last night: abandon ship. Worse case if when they’re voted out come next year.
⛵ THE FLENSBURG FILES
No more than 24 hours after he signed off on the Epstein Law, mandating the release of all unadulterated files pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein, Trump has gone off on a tangent through Truth Social. And this time, as Heather Cox Richardson mentioned in this post, it may be his undoing. Three Impeachments make a charm.
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Trump spent this morning calling a group of military veterans in Congress traitors and saying they “should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL.” Their crime, in Trump’s eyes, was their release Tuesday of a video reminding military and intelligence officers that they must refuse illegal orders.
The video features Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Representatives Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), and Jason Crow (D-CO). Slotkin is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. Kelly was a captain in the U.S. Navy. Deluzio served in the U.S. Navy. Goodlander is a former intelligence officer. Houlahan served in the Air Force. Crow is a former paratrooper and Army Ranger.
Speaking in turns in the video, the lawmakers say: “We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community who take risks each day to keep Americans safe. We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military, but that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.
“Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution. Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders; you must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant. But whether you’re serving in the CIA, the Army, our Navy, the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”
“Know that we have your back, because now, more than ever, the American people need you. We need you to stand up for our laws, our Constitution, and who we are as Americans.
They end with the famous line delivered by Captain James Lawrence, who commanded USS Chesapeake in 1813 when it engaged in a naval battle with HMS Shannon during the War of 1812. In the battle, Lawrence was mortally wounded. As his men carried him below, he ordered:
“Don’t give up the ship.”
Read more about this bizarre event can be found in Heather Cox Richardson’s page:
Link: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-20-2025
⛵ THE FLENSBURG FILES
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