An eighty-year relatively peaceful period of alliances and our international influence has been flushed down a golden toilet in a relentless attack on each of our trade and security partners. Instead, we now favor authoritarians generally and unabashedly side with our primary adversary for those 80 years. The fathers and grandfathers who fought and died to stop nazis and fascists are spinning in their graves. Have we forgotten them? Have we just stopped reminding ourselves?
To corrupt a famous Gerald Ford quote, our long national nightmare is just beginning.
Consider the last sixty unprecedented and unimaginable days. Our president has given to the world’s wealthiest man (a $277 million contributor) unfettered access to the inner workings of every government function for the purpose of disrupting and destroying each of them. He compromised the most sensitive information about every citizen. In the process he corrupted the financial system that affects the lives of all citizens. The breadth and depth of the way we will be negatively impacted by that is immeasurable. Economic disruption is threatened for all of us; for a great many Americans it will literally endanger their very lives. How is this acceptable to anyone? Nobody wants the government messing with their personal information and their money, or so we claim.
We’ve witnessed a maniac looking like a perverse storm trooper replete with dark glasses, gold chains, and a gold-plated chainsaw orgasmically celebrating killing the bureaucracy. He and his incel teenager technicians joyously boasted of feeding the USAID agency “into a woodchipper”. How is this not alarming?
An eighty-year relatively peaceful period of alliances and our international influence has been flushed down a golden toilet in a relentless attack on each of our trade and security partners.Instead, we now favor authoritarians generally and unabashedly side with our primary adversary for those 80 years. The fathers and grandfathers who fought and died to stop nazis and fascists are spinning in their graves. Have we forgotten them? Have we just stopped reminding ourselves?
The economy Trump inherited, he described it as the worst ever, has gone off a cliff. Financial markets tanked, consumer and business confidence and expectations have dropped to the lowest in years. Inflation is bumping up again even before his half-baked tariffs kick in to supercharge it. He openly muses about the coming recession as “a necessary disruption that will be worth the pain”. He noted recently that if folks are crimped by the price of eggs they should just eat less. Populist? Nope, more like kleptocracy.
Cuts and closures will pile up, but that will pale in comparison to the pain inflicted by their tax plans. It is the same GOP tax policy of a half century. Take from those who need it most to justify huge tax cuts to the top one-half percent. He has disavowed painful cuts to SS and Medicare, however, the budget resolution he signed into law this week calls for cutting $800 billion from Medicaid. If that happens it will be devastating to the less fortunate among us, largely the elderly and children. Coincidently, a lot of MAGA voters will be hit hardest.
Waste. Fraud. Corruption! Oh my! Yes, government needs to be made more efficient and a lot of duplicative programs need elimination. Nobody can think that a gold chainsaw is the way to reform anything, especially an organization as complex and critical to the world as is US Government. No one except maybe someone who already crashed the $45billion enterprise that once was Twitter; or perhaps a convicted felonious con man and serial bankrupt. Daily we see the DOGE “savings scorecard” revised downward for mistakes and blatant lies. They are a long way from saving trillions in a mercenary quest to destroy lives. If it is about debt they can save a quick $4.7trillion by simply not extending the Trump tax cuts. To easily to double that savings, reform the tax code to bring the billionaire class into the taxpayer class. A lot of us voted for that option.
He spews untruth and exaggeration, yet his base is unshakeable and will not hold him accountable. He is closer by the day to outright defiance of the courts, having already conquered the legislative branch. He punishes press organizations that don’t fall in line with his lies. He has effectively cowed premier law firms into declining representations that challenge his actions. He is fomenting hate and likely violence toward judges who take their constitutional duties seriously.
We are in a very complex and confusing crisis today. I’ve mentioned only a fraction of the total tentacles of destruction he is extending into our lives and the lives of the world. History will be sorting it all out for a hundred years.
Reflecting on all this, I am just shocked that many Americans have abandoned expectations that leaders adhere to the law and protect our institutions with good faith and integrity. I am overwhelmed with grief for America that we have allowed this to happen. I will not accept as naïve a desire for leaders with integrity, empathy, compassion, competence, authenticity, character, and a basic regard for fellow humans and the world we share. They must respect what we claim to stand for. This man is president because 1% more voters chose him. I trust that a lot of that 1% already see that they didn’t vote for what he’s doing and that the number will climb as the pain grows. Our republic and our human spirit are both hanging by a thread.
Alan Menius