Ask Howard • 06-20-25

The other day, apropos of absolutely nothing, an ad appeared in my email box from, of all hoary antiquities, J. Peterman. (Yes, that J. Peterman — Seinfeld’s J. Peterman.) Its headline read, “For the Well-Dressed Enigma,” followed by a tagline directly beneath: “Because Mystery Never Goes Out of Style,” with some pithy little text to accompany:
“She orders the espresso, lingers by the window and disappears before you think to ask her name. The clothes — well chosen, never showy — only deepen her mystery. A jacket with a past. A print that hints at passport stamps. You don’t dress to be understood. You dress to be considered.”

In other words, though certainly a creative ad, it’s aimed at my exact polar-opposite.
So, here’s my question to you: Is there nothing left anymore that’s NOT AI-generated? And why does it always land so far off the mark?

The James-Bond-movie intent is evident, but I’m hardly an Ian Fleming freak. Nor does the Far East interest me in the least. I’ll even wager that Kimono Girl is probably gazing at some murdered ingenue — the one who died via skin pore suffocation from being spray-painted solid gold.

Let’s just get all golden-fingered/deep-fake right to it, shall we?

Oh, where to begin? How about global civilization as a whole? I mean, our Fourth Reich sure flickered out creepily quick, did it not? Unraveling, 100 percent, within a span from only this past January to June — a mere SIX months to turn inside out, trading Pax America for Pox America. Who now trusts even vaccines anymore? Truth has gone the way of USAID. We’ve reached that glaze-eyed, raging nymphomaniacal phase — Hitler’s bunker’s final hours, all its inhabitants engaging in frenzied, orgiastic sex as the world ends.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” voiced a friend of mine, recently returned from New York City. “Six months ago, the sex there was still semi-normal. Now, suddenly everything’s a fisting party. Every guy I met, overnight, all into sticking their arms up people’s bums… for pleasure! When did fisting turn vanilla?”

When did Vanilla turn Rocky Road? And what does a J. Peterman ad from this century, having nothing to do with me, speak of Adolf Hitler from last century, whose sexual perversions I equally had nothing to do with?

All I know for sure is that I smell a conspiracy theory afoot somewhere. But then, who doesn’t nowadays?

From what I recall in history class (another subject too taboo to teach high schoolers here in our cowardly new world) is that the 1,000 Years’ Third Reich fully lasted only 12 years, ending in May of 1945, with WWII’s demise following the Fuhrer’s. He’d proven a tough demon to slaughter. Every single one of his assassination attempts — and there were many — failed, ultimately forcing him, along with the few loyalists he still retained within his inner circle, to swallow cyanide capsules. Their children, too. His body was then burned, to ensure what the Russians did with Lenin’s corpse could never be repeated in Germany.

Our Fourth Reich, in contrast to Hitler’s Third, lasted a well-lived lifespan of exactly 90 years, only imploding from its own accord in conjunction with NATO’s demise from Trump’s rise. L’Orange’s military birthday parade this month merely sealed Democracy’s tomb solidly shut.
Thank God though, we’ve got The Golden Dome for America to look forward to. Wow! Yet, what less could we have expected? Everyone just knew some sort of golden salvation for America must have been up our own Fuhrer’s sleeves, soon as we got a first gander at his newly gilded Oval Office: carpet to curtains and crown moldings, too — all his shiny, gimcrack gewgaws lacquered in gold spray paint, aligned in troop formation across our (the people’s) fireplace mantle!

The U.S. Golden Dome mission defense-shield project is pure manna from Trump heaven. Never shy about inventing reasons for needing to keep America’s last century great, his Golden Dome is no exception: Both laughable and horrifying, as anything Trump ever schemed up it is another ludicrosity that will naturally end up backfiring on him, to the suffering of everybody excepting Trump. The only difference this time will be that — assuming our orange orangutan’s Golden Dome for America achieves any liftoff, at all — about half of our country’s civilians will, transactionally, be killed-off in the melee rebuttal. Something more akin to The Golden Culling of America will be its more permanently lasting moniker.

If you’ll recall, way back in the ancient history of last year’s pre-Trumpian Constitution-grab, those countries comprising the continent of Africa were collectively known as “developing nations, ”— glibly referenced now by our dear leader as “failing nations.” Any future they now get depends on how exploitable they’ll be of natural resources, particularly, rare earth metals, and how compliant they’ll be in laundering Trump’s new crypto billions. It has never been easier for Silicon Valley’s truth-filterers to create deep fakes of ordinary people.

Welcome to technofeudalism’s dawn! In real-time, the media is in a death spiral. The daily absurdities and atrocities and internecine violence only snowball. (Think Trump calling in the National Guard to squelch fake uprisings in LA.) Elites are in a daze. Reality collapses. MAGA’s minions love it. Can martial law be far behind?

We’ll exit now on a spiritual note of high-dudgeon marvel. There exists but one answer, and one answer only, to the following question: How on God’s verdant Earth did an unknown American clergyman from Chicago, Cardinal Bob, suddenly find himself elevated up to religion’s most rarefied edifice of radiance, becoming anointed, literally overnight as Catholicism’s newest pontiff, Pope Leo XIV?

And the correct answer would be what, kidz? Uh huh. You guessed it right: Donald J. Trump. For there ain’t no way in hell the Italians would ever put an American cardinal on their throne were they not petrified that our very own Orangutan L’Orange may very well indeed be the Antichrist. Our Fourth Reich went history. Beelzebub, eat your heart out!

— Howard Lewis Russell

Independence Day is right around the corner, folks! Get your red, white & blue celebratory groove on, right here along with me at AskHoward@dallasvoice.com.