Auntie had barely settled into her chair — coffee steaming, jaw already tightening — when the footage rolled of Defense Secretary Pete Kegsbreath stepping up to the mic at the D‑Day ceremony, and baby, the way my soul left my body. Because there are moments in history when the only appropriate posture is reverence, when the air itself demands quiet, when the ghosts of Normandy stand taller than any living politician, and this was one of those moments. Yet there he was, according to critics and commentators, treating the anniversary of D‑Day like it was his personal audition tape for a culture‑war talk show, launching into commentary about European immigration policy as if the beaches of Normandy were the right venue for a geopolitical scolding. Observers have said it felt like watching someone bring a bullhorn to a funeral. And I, your Auntie Fah, felt every cell in my body try to file for divorce from the moment.

Broadcastin’ live from Gilead, babies - specifically from the Gilead Department of Spectacular Audacity, where the irony is so thick you could spread it on toast and charge fourteen dollars for it at a brunch spot that doesn’t take reservations.Pull up a chair, my loves. Auntie has something to say, and she’s going to need you to set down your beverage first so you don’t ruin your shirt.

Broadcastin’ live from Gilead, babies - where today we’re transmittin’ from the ruins of what used to be the East Wing of the White House, now a hole in the ground the size of a man’s ego and twice as expensive.

Oh my beloved rabble rousers - sit down a minute. Auntie needs to talk to you about some things, because I have been watching the news and doing math, and I am about three seconds away from taking this shillelagh for a walk it won’t forget.

Auntie has lived long enough to know that when allegations surface against a powerful man, the first test isn’t whether the public believes him or the women — it’s whether the people who claim to stand for accountability actually mean it when the spotlight swings toward their own side. And in this case, lovey, the reaction was not the usual partisan circling of wagons. The moment multiple women came forward with allegations against Eric Swalwell — allegations he denies — the political world did not close ranks around him. It cracked open. It split. It spoke. And some of the loudest voices calling for him to resign or drop out of the governor’s race came from inside his own house.

Broadcastin’ live from Gilead, darlings, where the press briefing room smells like boot polish, flattery, and MyPillow foam —Come in, babies. Sit down. Auntie has news.

Five years. Five years of war, and do you know what the American news cycle has given the Ukrainian people lately? A mention here and there when someone wants to talk about what Putin needs. A shrug dressed up as geopolitics. And now — now that our government has handed Russia a lifeline by lifting sanctions on their oil while bombs are falling in a different time zone — Ukraine has basically disappeared from the conversation entirely. The Iran war has seen to that quite nicely, hasn’t it.

Sitting here in Gilead, shaking my head and eyeing my shillelagh, where they’ve somehow managed to staple children’s healthcare to a voting bill like they’re decorating a cake with a staple gun. 

Oh, my loves. My darlings. My sweet, exhausted, still-showing-up babies. Pull up a chair. Auntie’s got the kettle on and a very specific kind of tired in her bones today — the kind that comes not from lack of sleep but from watching a man stand in front of the whole world, in a room so drowning in gold leaf it looks like a Vegas buffet sneezed on a government building, and say the quiet part so loud that the windows rattled in Madrid.You’ve seen the video by now. If you haven’t, you will. There he is — the President of the United States, flanked by enough gilded accoutrements to make a Baroque painter uncomfortable — explaining, in his own words, why Spain’s “no” doesn’t count.

Come here, babies. Sit down with Auntie a minute.I need to tell you about a grandmother.Her name is Mariana. She saved up, she planned, she made the trip of her life — a pilgrimage to Bethlehem. Not a political trip. Not a business trip. A grandmother walking where she believed Jesus walked, doing the most human and faithful thing a person can do, before her knees got too bad to make the journey.

Oh, my babies. My sweet, exhausted, slightly feral, absolutely magnificent babies. You made it. I know, I know — you’re sitting there with your third cup of coffee that’s gone cold because you forgot it existed while you were doomscrolling, wearing the same hoodie you’ve had on since Tuesday, and at some point this week you made a noise — not a word, just a noise — at something you read on your phone, and whoever was nearest to you just nodded because they made the same noise twenty minutes prior. You are living on spite and solidarity and the occasional stress pastry, and you are still here, and I need you to understand that that is not nothing. That is, in fact, everything.

Sweetheart, let me tell you something: Auntie remembers 1980 like it was yesterday. Not the fashion — God help us all — but the feeling. The air was thick with hairspray and existential dread. Every time the news came on, you half‑expected to hear that the Soviets had pushed a button and we had twenty minutes to live. That was the vibe. That was the Cold War. You didn’t “follow” it — you lived under it.