On Bluesky, someone skeeted that they had forgotten how it felt to wake up to awful news about our President every day.
These first seven days have offered a crash course refresher in the worst way. The elaborate, performative cruelty of ICE raids and ICE arrest quotas already sullies our soul. But the ways Trump's government seems to be following the Project 2025 philosophy of federal nihilism--just stop doing everything--boggles the mind (to use a phrase from a Reagan-appointed judge swatting down Trump's attempt to overturn the 14th Amendment).
Asylum cases frozen. People who have "waited in line" to immigrate "the right way" having doors suddenly slammed in their faces. (This on top of the fact that no "line" exists, just a Sisyphean ordeal of endless paperwork and assessments and wait times and deadlines). National Science Foundation review processes frozen--for a week? for all time? The CIA lurching back to the mostly unpopular-with-experts, mostly not-as-well-supported theory that COVID came from a lab leak--not because the evidence changed but because their conspiracy-minded director changed. Hegseth the administratively unqualified and shockingly immoral confirmed as Secretary of Defense on a 50-50 vote with Vance breaking the tie.
A friend of mine who works for Catholic Charities ESL program had tears in her eyes as she related how terrified and confused her clients were as sources of assistance suddenly dried up overnight. Horror stories of victims and raids will fill timelines for weeks to come before Trump loses interest, declares victory, and moves on to some other shiny object.
Trump seems to be living out the Moon Knight meme where he throws oddly shaped blades, bellowing "Random bullshit go!" The list grows larger and more outrageous every day: Shipping ICE victims to foreign countries in shackles and military jets. Colombia's president objects, Trump proposes outrageous tariffs, they work out a deal (more humane travel), and Trump declares victory for his super-smart tough-guy moves. Installing billionaires and rewarding pretty much anyone else who gave him money with lucrative positions of power (all while claiming to be an enemy of the elites). Gutting DEI programs, terrorizing trans people, firing (illegally) inspectors general, instituting loyalty tests and purges.
And of course there's the idee fixe du jour of (somehow?) acquiring Canada and Greenland. It's another of those "can't tell if strategy or demented" moments. No one seems clear what playing hardball (i.e., issuing crude threats) to friendly nations would gain for the US aside from extremely painful trade wars.
Bird flu is making eggs even more expensive and difficult to buy. Tuberculosis seems to be spreading in Kansas City--but no one seems too alarmed thanks to the Trump administration's moratorium on health messaging from key federal agencies.
That Trump and his crew throw a ton of chaff into the air, "flooding the zone" with bullshit, to drain attention away from their really alarming agenda items is not new. But this time there's the sense that a there's less chaff. They're flooding the zone not with distractions but with the deep, vast sweep of their actual agenda.
I get that all this is likely to cause so much pain that the 2026 midterms might wipe out Republican majorities. But I fear that the damage to institutional trust and to previously reliable Overton Window sensibilities will be impossible to repair.
I have trouble imagining a future.
Yeah yeah, I know: discipline of hope, our despair is their victory, apathy and cynicism and exhaustion and surrender are the intentional results of all the crap. But, man: it's week one of four long years.
I have trouble imagining a future.
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