So many people are just plain stressed out right now. There's trans folk who have lost access to health care or even basic human regard. There's immigrants--legal and otherwise--who find themselves left out in the cold (at best) or hunted down by ICE (at worst). There are federal workers whose jobs have now become precarious based on the whims of unaccountable billionaires and their teen/twentysomething cronies. There are USAID employees out of work as well as USAID beneficiaries cut off from HIV meds and other vital care. Researchers dependent upon NSF funding suddenly face an uncertain future. Federal workers across dozens of agencies now have to scour their materials to delete references to any of a hundred newly forbidden words.
And then there's a whole lot of other people who just shrug and wonder why so many people let themselves get worked up over politics.
I was wondering to my sister what might have to happen to get them to wake up and realize the magnitude of haphazard, blitzkrieg changes sweeping federal government. What trickle-down effects would possibly move them from either pox-on-both-houses apathy or full-throated MAGA support?
I read that Trump's bizarre obsession with emptying Gaza of Palestinians and claiming it for US-own development--ethnic cleansing on a massive scale--got some bewildered pushback on Twitter at least. Perhaps if he starts a war?
No one seems to have noticed his inability to end the Ukraine war in a single day, with a single phone call. Courts seem to be stopping many of his most objectionable executive orders from happening. Musk may find himself the target of multiple class-action lawsuits soon.
But still, so much damage is being done. I confess to some morbid curiosity about how exactly Trump will spin the massive blowback of his massive (and so often clumsy, thoughtless, and unworkable) edicts. But more than that I'm just worried about all the lives he's ruining so casually.
Our church's social justice team met. We dithered. What can we do? We're trying to define a lane, areas of local help and impact. But things are moving so quickly it's hard to tell even whom in our church is being affected.
Surely this momentum can't continue like this for much longer. There's so much energy being burned by the administration right now. Elon's attention, I suspect, is finite. Trump's willingness to share the spotlight with him certainly is. Already I hear reports of Musk's young men screaming at White House officials.
How long before even some on the GOP Congress start throwing up their hands? Trump I's administration turned into a revolving door as even the most loyal loyalists either flamed out or got fed up or failed to meet Trump's idiosyncratic preferences.
Surely surely surely. We'll see.
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