Awake

Monday Morning Ignition

Kadizzle is awake. The ritual begins: coffee as starting fluid. One cup to get the mind humming, another to get the gears meshing, and by the third, the engine starts to sputter out a few thoughts. The New York Times provides the spark — a depressing reminder that democracy, like an old dragline at a coal mine, needs constant maintenance or the whole thing starts to slide back into the pit.

That image stuck this morning — the spoils slide. Back when Kadizzle worked at a surface mine, he watched how gravity never quits. Pile the overburden too high, and slowly, quietly, the dirt creeps back over what you worked so hard to uncover. That’s what’s happening to our freedom under Trump’s creeping dictatorship — a slow-motion disaster, inch by inch, while most people sip their coffee and don’t notice the ground moving beneath them.

Now it’s Monday, and the national erosion mirrors the local one. Two battles define the week in Payson:
the fight for a pool and the fight for power.

The MAGA three — Otto, Bell, and Ferris — are working overtime to hand over the Town Council’s authority to the city manager. It’s a power grab dressed up as “efficiency,” but it smells like Trump’s playbook — weaken the checks, centralize control, and make sure the lapdog barks on command. A local version of a national disease.

And then there’s the pool. The same stooges who scream “freedom” are doing their best to block the one thing this town’s kids desperately need — a place to swim. They’ve turned civic progress into a partisan war.

So yes, it’s Monday. Coffee’s gone cold, democracy’s still sliding, and Wednesday’s Town Council meeting will be one hell of a show. The question is: will the normal folks of Payson stand up and stop the slide before we’re all buried in the spoils?

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