Scales of Awful

 With the constant firehose of gobsmacking awfulness from Trump II so far, it can be tough to keep perspective. Relative to the vast sweep of Trump's activities, his renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America is "irritating awful." Banning the Associate Press for refusing to use that name is a notch more awful than that. DOGE's indiscriminate firing of thousands of federal workers and machete-slashing of vital departments and programs perhaps qualifies as the next order of magnitude up--not just irritating but actively harmful both to the workers affected and to the workings of government.

Probably around the same scale of bad but of a different species would be Trump's rank cronyism and graft, extending or withholding favors (DOJ prosecutions, for example) based on whether someone flatters and/or enriches him. Also in that bag are his $5 million citizenship ticket or the payout to billionaires he's promised. The Muskification of government functions (e.g., Starlink promising to take over the FAA) augers a world where vital aspects of civic order turn into privately own subscription services by enshittified for-profit companies. 

The war against all things DEI also ranks here. It looks more and more like a flat-out desire to roll the society back to cishet white patriarchy at the expense of people of color, women, and queer/trans folk. It will cost lives. It damages our country's very soul (never especially healthy or clean to begin with). 

On the world stage, the US suddenly becoming an adversary to former friends and a friend to former (and current!) adversaries may just be the next level up. The Trump-Vance-Zelenskyy meltdown and its aftermath--withdrawal of support from Ukraine until Trump gets an "abject apology" (what does that even mean?) exemplifies how horrific we've become. Add this to increased military and economic aggression toward our northern and southern neighbors and you get a new Empire in need of defeating. And as much as I hear many of the pundits I attend to insisting that Trump isn't in fact a Putin stooge--well, if he were, what would look different than what he's doing already? 

But a degree of awful above even this sullying of our international reputation, even beyond the infiltration by malign (Russian) forces we're inviting (e.g., Hegseth closing down DoD research into Russian cyber-warfare)--is the USAID withdrawal. 

Today, news agencies reported on a series of memos circulated by USAID's Nicholas Enrich, acting assistant administrator for global health. These memos detailed the cost in lives that cutting of USAID funding internationally will take. The breakdown of consequences includes some shocking figures:

• up to 18 million additional cases of malaria per year, and as many as 166,000 additional deaths;

• 200,000 children paralyzed with polio annually, and hundreds of millions of infections;

• one million children not treated for severe acute malnutrition, which is often fatal, each year;

• more than 28,000 new cases of such infectious diseases as Ebola and Marburg every year.

Enrich was fired Sunday. 

Atul Gawande skeets a longer list of aid programs terminated by Trump II.

I don't want to discount the deaths in this country due to Trump's maneuvers (e.g., queer/trans suicides; violence against people of color, queer folk, women; deaths due to unemployment and insurance hikes; deaths due to curtailing reproductive care). But the scale of human death and suffering worldwide because of Elon/Trump's conspiracy theories about USAID--and Congress's quiescence in the face of Trump's actions--is hard do imagine.

HIV and tuberculosis will surge, likely with new and drug-resistant strains. Diseases we thought vanquished may make a comeback. Widespread health disparities will further destabilize impoverished regions. We'll of course start feeling this in the RFK era of vaccine skepticism (though he has about-faced on measles somewhat). 

There's no contest for which of Trump's acts so far will prove to be most destructive. There's no award. But if there were, I think ending USAID may win that grisly prize. It's an awful trespass against the whole world.