River Cities’ Reader publisher Todd McGreevy talks with Aaron Dail and his buddy Gary re the highlights of Issue N° 1010:

Link: Rule of Law and Its Breaches Reflect a Nation’s People

Dail asks McGreevy if Kathleen McCarthy, the author of this article (and his wife), employs any personal protection. While downplaying KMcC’s formidable qualities — she’s all the protection she will ever need — Dail makes a salient point about her indictment of a system where the gulf between “the rules for Thee” and “the rules for Me” yawns like a Lovecraftian monster: You don’t kick against the Dagons without some kind of reprisal in the post. To quote her, “Progressive [politics] always becomes regressive, then inevitably oppressive.” Recent national events have shown increasing appeals to emotion instead of logic — the sign of propaganda at work, and of such beasts as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA, formed under President Trump, continued under Biden) and Environmental Social Governance (or ESG) scores becoming frighteningly tangible. When emotional matters finally trump hard logic in a republic, then it’s Game Over, because the rules of the game have been shown to have no solid foundation. Does anyone really want to live to see such a day come ‘round?

Link: Rein in the FBI: Put an End to the FBI’s Gestapo Tactics

John and Nisha Whitehead provide a rundown of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s history of activity and ask, How does J Edgar Hoover’s legacy apparatus distinguish itself from the Gestapo under Nazi Germany? You know, aside from the obvious fact that the Gestapo had a twelve-year run and the FBI, which got going in earnest in 1935, is still running strong? Their conclusion: It can’t. And with their list of civil-rights abuses growing every day, at a seeming geometric clip, what is to be done when the plain fact that the org’s modus operandi is power for its own sake finally becomes general, and can’t be explained away so cavalierly?

Link: Demystifying Beer and Pedals: Stompbox Brewing Celebrates Its Third Anniversary on June 17 with Local Music, Brews, and Effects

Loren Thacher’s article re Stompbox Brewing’s third-anniversary show 06/17. If the home-brew didn’t derange your senses, then the effects pedals would have done the job.

Link: Reader Events Calendar: Your Key to Quad Cities’ Culture

All the fun, edifying distractions up in which a person can find oneself caught.