Well! It’s been a year, hasn’t it?
We started with DOGE, and Liberation Day, and tariffs that were on and then off and then on and then off. We did not start with the Day One promises to end the war in Ukraine, nor the war in Gaza, nor to reduce the price of groceries and the cost of living. We have moved on to the Department of War attacking boats in the Caribbean without any evidence (so far as we know) that they even have drugs; certainly there is no evidence that they are “narco-terrorists,” as they are not, even if they are transporting narcotics, as they are not people who are using unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. And, if they are transporting narcotics, they are not moving fentanyl to the US, as fentanyl comes from China through Mexico, and not through Venezuela; if they are moving drugs (and there is no evidence that has been presented which says that they are, which means, according to our own concept of justice, that they are innocent, not having been proven guilty) then they are sending cocaine to Europe. Not great, but not the justification used for their slaughter: and there is, of course, no justification for the order to kill two men on a sinking shipwreck, which was an illegal order that the military followed – even though when our elected Congresspeople made a public service announcement to encourage the military not to follow unlawful orders, the administration freaked the fuck out and acted like that was sedition: entirely ignoring the clearly unlawful order that had been issued, and followed. Now the man who followed the order is doing fine, and the man (one of them) who reminded him to follow his oath is being stripped of his rank and pension.
It has been a fucking year.
A year with a shutdown, and a tax cut for billionaires, and increased health insurance costs for the rest of us. A year of dissent being squashed in clear violation of freedom of speech, with university students being arrested and jailed and deported for their speech, even while the administration promotes the same genocide the students were speaking out against: it’s almost like we have traded the right to speak our minds, for the opportunity to slaughter innocents, and then steal their homeland and make money from it. A year of our National Guard being weaponized against us in order to stop peaceful protests, while actual insurrectionists were pardoned en masse: almost like our right to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances has been traded for the freedom of loyal brownshirts. A year of deportations: starting with sending innocent people, both legal immigrants and US citizens, to torture prisons in El Salvador (along with millions of dollars in recompense for the considerate acquiescence and collaboration of the Salvadoran administration), continuing through shocking raids on homes and assaults on children, finally culminating in the recorded murder of an innocent American citizen, and the subsequent shielding of the murderer by the federal government, which continues to lie and accuse everyone who is not one of their murderous thugs. And again, the administration is cracking down on free speech, sending federal troops, and cruelly assaulting anyone and everyone they can.
It’s been a year, now, that we still have not gotten the Epstein files. Only about 1% has been released, and that 1% includes absurd redactions and previously-released information.
Happy Anniversary, President Trump. One year ago you took the oath of office for a second time: and you immediately set about destroying the country that elected you, in every way that matters: most often to increase your own wealth and power, sometimes for no good reason that I can discern – why, for instance, do you want to remove the ACA? You don’t give a shit; you don’t have that many employees. You do not profit directly from health care costs going up for individual citizens. I recognize that the likely reason is you have some billionaire whispering in your ear, like fucking Wormtongue only slimier, telling you that the ACA is unAmerican and that removing it will make America great again, and just as you expect your followers to do, you are absolutely willing to get on board without a single second of questioning “Wait – why is government-subsidized health care bad?” I also recognize that there is a certain amount of traditional Republican posturing in your political stances as well; like, you also don’t give a shit about abortion, or about gun rights, but your base expects you to remove the one and protect the other, so you do, because you are yourself entirely indifferent to anything that doesn’t affect you directly; and I know that the right hates all things resembling socialized health care (Except for the Medicaid and Medicare that they and their families use; but I’m not going to get into the hypocrisies of Americans: that blade always cuts both ways, and I’m not interested in yet another round of Whataboutism, which is rapidly becoming our national pastime): but why have you decided that this is the thing you’re so set on destroying? Your congressional delegation is clearly not on your side with this one, not all of them; so why didn’t you give up and let people keep their goddamn subsidies, and just take credit for it like you do with everything else? Why do you feel this burning need to destroy people’s lives?
Is it really just because Barack Obama got the ACA passed into law? And you hate him so much, and you are so profoundly jealous of all of the ways that he is better than you (which is, in fact, every single way imaginable except in the Shithead Championships, which you win walking away), that you want to do everything you can to destroy his signature accomplishments? I mean, that would certainly explain you destroying the JCPOA and fucking up our actually effective strategy in Iran, but I assume another benefit there for you is the potential war, which you’d clearly love to have because then you could claim Iran’s oil to go with Venezuela’s; but the ACA and the subsidies that keep people insured have nothing to do with oil. I honestly don’t get it. I get the drug price thing, because you intend to force the drug companies into making sweetheart deals with you so you can sell medications to Americans through your new Trump Rx company; but again, that has nothing to do with insurance or the cost or health care in general.
Are you really just that much of an asshole? Based on how you respond to questions from reporters with insults like “Quiet piggy,” and criticism from random passersby by saying “Fuck you” and flipping them off, it might just be that. But while I can easily accept that you do so much damage to my country and my fellow Americans because you are an evil, greedy fuck, I still struggle with you doing this much harm just because you’re a fucking prick. Maybe in honor of this august occasion, I will make this my gift to you: I will accept that your vile nastiness is on its own enough to explain your actions. Though really, that’s a gift to me. It will make it easier.
And I need to make this easier: because the actual task is going to be very, very hard. And the longer we focus on the wrong thing, the more harm will be done, and the harder it will be to solve the problem and complete the actual task that lies before us.
Here’s the truth, which I want to put before you all now, on this anniversary of the second inauguration of this vile warthog of a man: Trump is not the right thing to focus on. He is not the problem. I don’t say that to delegitimize or devalue everything that we have all done to oppose the slimeball: it was necessary, and to some extent it still is. The thing is, Trump could have been the problem, and to some extent he still can be the problem: because it is still possible that Trump could actually destroy this country. He could do it in two ways: he can start a nuclear war, and he can overthrow the legitimate government based on the Constitution and become an actual dictator. The nuclear war option remains, and will for as long as Trump is in power; the best we can hope for there is that his own self-interest will not be served by the death of the planet. We can also hope that the military will not follow an arbitrary and capricious order to launch nuclear death at the world; this hope that the military will not obey Trump’s most deranged and destructive orders is also what we can count on for the second threat, that of a coup and Trump’s elevation to Emperor – and frankly, I had a lot more confidence in that bulwark keeping us safe before Pete Hegseth told soldiers to murder drowning men, and they fucking did it. And then invaded a sovereign nation to kidnap their president. And they’re proud of it. So I dunno any more if this is something we can feel safe and secure about: would the military actually rise up and betray their oaths, and destroy their own way of life, in order to put Trump onto a throne? I really want to say no. But I can’t be sure.
So: Trump is still an existential threat, and so everything we can do to remove him, personally, specifically, from office is a good thing to do. His actions are doing real harm to real people, so everything we can do to oppose the specific actions of this administration are genuinely good things to do, whether the intent is to prevent the harm, ameliorate the harm, or provide a balancing benefit to offset the harm: all good. All righteous, all positive, all beneficial. Keep doing all those things.
But recognize, too, that so long as Trump doesn’t overthrow the government or set the world on fire, he will have to leave office. And we will still have to live in this country that he fucked up. And the real issue, of course, is that Trump isn’t the one who fucked it up: we did. Because we voted him in.
Okay, not “We.” I don’t think the people reading this mostly voted for Trump, and I don’t believe we are all equally to blame for his election, including those who didn’t vote for him. So “They” did vote him in. But we still have to live with them, in the same country; and if we don’t want to make this country an evil, unjust tyranny, we still have to let them vote. That’s the fight. That’s the work we have to do. Healing.
I don’t know how to do it. I think about that a lot: how can we prevent this from happening again? I think about it most often in specific terms of trying to rebuild the international alliances and cooperations that Trump is setting on fire; like, if he really does break NATO by making more and more absurd demands for Greenland or what have you – I will not assume that owning Greenland is the last or the stupidest idea he will have; this is only the FIRST year of FOUR – how could we convince the other members of the treaty organization that, after Trump is gone, we will never allow another piece of shit like him to take over our country and fuck it up the same way?
What laws could we put in place? What safeguards to ensure that this shit won’t happen again? I mean, we can certainly (in theory) pass a law to rescind the Supreme Court’s absurd decision that presidents are not criminally liable for their actions in office; that would require a congress that were not members of a cult, and a President willing to hold himself or herself to an actual moral and ethical standard; but I can imagine that happening. But so long as the President retains the immunity of the office, which I don’t think should or could be removed, we can’t really guarantee our allies (soon to be our former allies) that they can trust this country: this country that was willing to elect this fucking guy.
Twice.
Honestly, I don’t think we can; I don’t think we will ever be able to heal the rift that we are creating, that Trump is creating, right now. Partly because it is our fault, as a nation: we have never actually healed our own racist and biased culture and institutions, and so this could quite easily happen again. It would look different, but to think that there would never be another Republican demagogue who could tap into the resentment on the right, or a liberal demagogue who could create even worse conflict by actually persecuting the right the way they like to pretend they have been persecuted, is to ignore what gave rise to Trump’s initial success. It was not his brilliance. It was not his charisma. It was not Trump at all, though he did bring enough to the table to make it happen. He was the match, and he started the fire: but the fuel was already there, and it will remain after this match is snuffed out.
I think we have made progress, over time, towards healing the wounds that underlie this country’s dysfunctions. I think that because a hundred years ago, I would not have thought I was racist at all, and today I know that I harbor some prejudices, mostly unconscious, and that I once had some quite serious biases. I know that I live a privileged life, largely built on the privilege of my upbringing, which was at least partly due to my race and my socially-accepted gender identity. A hundred years ago, I would have just thought I was – normal. Natural. So: progress. Now I can work to identify the problems in myself, and get better; and that, multiplied by 330 million, is how we can make this into a country and a culture we can all be proud of, from end to end, rather than only in pieces, and with exceptions and excuses. Just like the fights against Trump himself, all of the work we have done and are doing towards being better people in a better world is all good work, and should continue.
But it’s slow work, and as long as it continues unfinished – and resisted and denied by millions and millions of us – there are openings for evil people to exploit. That’s how we got Trump. And it’s how we’ll get the next one. I am hopeful that this current shitshow will swing the pendulum in the correct direction, and our next few years will be better and more productive; but as long as the system stays the same, the pendulum will always keep swinging, and it will swing back this way again: and then we’ll have to do this shit all over again. And considering that Trump is worse than Bush who was (in some ways) worse than Reagan, who was (in many ways but not all) worse than Nixon, I’m afraid of who the next swing will bring us. And I’m also afraid that the swing away from Trump will not go far enough, as Biden did not go far enough, as Obama did not go far enough, as Clinton…actually, Clinton should be in the list of evil swings, because his predecessor, George HW Bush, did an honestly better job of adhering at least to the status quo and therefore not committing evil acts, though neither of them did good things. The worse the bad ones get, the lower our standards become for the “lesser evil” we are willing to accept. And that’s not good.
I’ll tell you right now, the one bright spot I can see in the fact that this administration is only one year through its four-year run is that the horror show going on in front of us, and including too many of us, is far and away the most effective mirror we could ever hold up to our own faces, our own flaws. The worse it gets, the more we recognize how bad we let it get, how deep and how dark the problems are that gave rise to this.
Please. I beg you. Recognize that the first problem is the determination not to fix the real issues, but rather to slap a bandaid on them and pretend that everything is fine. If you think that electing a moderate centrist who will do the same things Biden did – sign new executive orders that rescind Trump’s, pass a different kind of budget – that may have good things in it, as the Inflation Reduction Act did, and all the rest of Biden’s quite real and positive accomplishments – but that does not change any of the underlying structural problems (Just as Obama’s ACA did not solve any of the larger issues with health care in this country, even though it was genuinely good to make insurance more widely available and to end lifetime maximums and denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions – and I would be much more interested in the Republican congress’s claims to want to fix the problems instead of just extending subsidies that mainly enrich insurance companies if they weren’t currently in a cult enthralled to the guy who released the Great Health Care “Plan”), then I guarantee you that the pendulum will swing back sooner than you like, and maybe go farther than you can stand.
Just imagine, for a moment, President Joe Rogan. Or President Nick Fuentes.
And then think about what we can do to solve the larger problems, and to do it quicker than we currently are.
Here, just so I don’t name all these issues and sound all these warnings and offer absolutely no solutions: the two most important things I have learned in the last decade are the incredible amount of money that gets spent on politics, and the deep ignorance of so much of this country’s populace. The two are linked: because the wealthy who buy politicians are more powerful if the populace is ignorant – and that does include those who buy Democratic politicians, because while they generally don’t have the same sociocultural goals, they sure as fuck benefit from the same economic policies, which is why the Democratic party doesn’t change the basic economic structure of this country, and somehow opposes Bernie Sanders even if the other option is Donald Trump – and the more ignorant the populace is, the more effective the control mechanisms of the wealthy become. So while I don’t ever want to become a politician directly, and while I am not good at taking actual political action myself, I am exceptionally good at one of the other critical solutions to the larger underlying issues: education. I am a damn good teacher, and also a decent content creator. So that’s my task, and I am doing it, and I will continue doing it, to the best of my ability and the limits of my capacity. And that will make things better.
Especially if we can all do the same.
One year down, everybody. Look forward. Keep moving. Don’t give up.
Just Dusty 