Ah, so hopeful for a second yesterday. And then today. A step outside of my usual Bluesky-colored glass house to folks at RedState, Fox, National Review, Federalist--and their comment threads (where available)--and I see the world through their lenses. DOGE is doing great. Trump and Musk are real men who only get tougher the more hysterical Dems shriek. Trump's approval rating is higher than his disapproval rating (true). An Axios focus group with Arizona swing voters suggests most people want more and more of what Musk/Trump are doing.
Meanwhile, the CDC has lost its "disease detective" taskforce, the folk who in those realistic pandemic movies swoop in to do first-level assessments. RFK has been affirmed as HHS Secretary and has--as expected--set his sights on the last 150 years of germ theory. Bird flu is spreading still. Tuberculosis cases have spread from Kansas to Ohio even as USAID funding to tuberculosis treatments worldwide have been cut off.
And most people love it.
A problem with me, and with lots of left-leaning folk, is that it's hard for me to get past what seems like plain evidence of Trump's corruption, incompetence, deceptiveness, ignorance, and authoritarianism. Again, the most bare-bones rendering of even one day's worth of his administration's actions reads like a pilot episode of It Can't Happen Here. I've been so convinced of the plain illegality of his executive orders and the manifest amorality of his cronyism (witness prosecutor resignations in response to dropping charges on NYC mayor Eric Adams) that it's still hard for me to think that anyone can spin these as positives.
Yet people--a plurality, at least--do.
Back in the Bluesky bubble, the folk I follow are (1) bitterly blaming Dems for not doing anything effective to stop Trump legislatively or win support electorally and/or (2) declaring this round fully lost and thinking that maybe, just maybe, we might be able to win enough to start the decades-long task of repairing what Trump has already shattered. From that perspective, the asteroid has already hit, and we're in the obliteration wave, waiting to see who survives. The only useful conversation now concerns post-apocalyptic rebuilding strategies. The lively debate resulting from that focuses on whether such winning or repair is even possible at this point.
Right at this moment? I'm not hopeful.
I can't help but expect that the massive and indiscriminate (and utterly corrupt/Musk-serving) cuts and modifications to federal agencies will result in several preventable disasters--a recession, a pandemic, the collapse of trustworthy air travel, etc. Yesterday I had some hope that these multiple failures would turn popular opinion against Trump, blemishing the image of him (and maybe Musk) as top-notch organizers and leaders.
Now I think it'll just make the angry-reactionary part of the electorate (the ones who brought Trump into power) even angrier and more reactionary. Trump, like most successful authoritarian leaders, has proven adept at redirecting such anger at his ever-growing list of enemies. I expect a lot of violence against, well, anyone who isn't white cis-het Christian male.
And even if there isn't violence, even if the system somehow limps along, I no longer expect Trump to lose support. I no longer expect Trumpism to die with the man himself. It's just too popular, its appeal too enduring.
I'll get to some better place on this. But for right now...bleah.
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