Soon after the inauguration, I happened to note on social media that I was stunned by the actions of the First Felon – the FF as I call him – particularly in the callousness he showed by attempting to shut down USAID.
Why are you stunned, responders asked. You knew he was a snake before he took the oath.
I have taken to responding with a comparison to a Number 5 Hurricane. It’s as if I went on vacation to Florida when hurricane warnings were issued. I have never been in a hurricane, but I have devoured news articles and TV coverage about them, and thought I knew what I was in for. Heavy rain and strong winds, right? We know how to prepare for those. So I go and the hurricane arrives and I live through it, although the sound of the rain and wind together scare the living daylights out of me. And then I creep out from shelter. The devastation is unimaginable. Cars have been blown down the road and out to sea. The streets are full of broken buildings. Trees are uprooted and thrust through second story windows. Where second stories remain.
I am stunned.
That is how this new administration, the world of the FF, struck me. I was prepared to see needful things taken away from us, but I saw that happening piecemeal. Almost unnoticeable. A little bit here and there until one morning we wake up and realize that the water is well and truly boiling and we are well and truly cooked. Too many metaphors? I don’t know that there is a perfect one.
The first shock was seeing the sudden withdrawal of funding from USAID, and the attempt to close the agency down altogether. Not piecemeal, but suddenly. As in, suddenly clinics were told not to distribute HIV medication already stocked in their infirmaries, but to turn people away at the door. Apparently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself was stunned enough that it took him a day or two to rescind the order, at least insofar as distributing medication on hand. A lawsuit seems to have barred closing down the agency altogether, but that is only temporary. Who knows what will play out? I’ve seen no sign of compliance as yet.
The second shock was the formation of DOGE, run for all intents and purposes by a foreign-born billionaire, cutting funding and shaving off rafts of federal employees across all the agencies, in the name of eliminating fraud and waste. But there was no investigation into fraud, there was no specific finding of waste. Neither Elon Musk nor his energetic little Muskies had any idea what they were eliminating, who they were firing. Many positions were eliminated simply by their names: did they have a reference to equity or women or LGBTQ in their titles? Were they meant to study diseases common to people of color? These are all deemed “discriminatory” and they all have to go.
A third shock is the new funding bill. The newly passed Budget Resolution which calls for more than a trillion in tax cuts, most of which go to those who are more than able to pay their own bills while cutting deeply into programs which allow others to pay bills at all, not to mention receive life saving medical treatment.
These three moves alone are enough to picture a future of a greatly diminished country, with ballooning homeless populations, more sick and disabled on our streets, little faith in the safety of our food, water, and air. A population that is mostly in want. An America that has been hollowed out. There is no one to call for help – that office no longer exists. A country of poor people. A shit hole country, if you will. And we will be encouraged to blame each other. Who will be there to help fill the holes? All of the usual avenues are closed.
The First Felon has seen to it that the agencies are non-functional. That the justice department is not about justice. An FBI which regards criticism as criminal. And a department of defense that no longer pretends to defend us against those who wish us ill.
The final shock came, of course, on February 28th. The FF did not have on him a copy of The Atlantic Charter to rip into shreds in front of us, but he may as well have as he and his cronies attempted to bully and gaslight an ally right in front of us. Volodymyr Zelinsky, however, remained cool and calm throughout, although he is said to have used a Russian epithet to VP Vance under his breath during that heated exchange. He also refused to back down, to apologize (for what?), or to agree that he had nothing to fear from a cease fire. And when he tried to warn the FF about Putin’s promises, the FF revealed his inner two-year-old and yelled, “Don’t tell me what we will feel. We will feel strong!”
I do not feel strong. I look around me and see homes that yesterday I saw as relatively secure in the knowledge that their inhabitants dwelt in the United States of America, in a country that has in one way or another tried over the years to add incrementally to the security of its citizens. Now I do not know them to be so secure. There seem to be holes eaten into the fabric of the nation. In one online thread, someone asked whether there isn’t some authority that can stop the carnage rolling roughshod over our institutions. I replied that I can see none. Everything, from Defense to Justice, from Social Security to Medicaid, from Environmental Protection to Civil Rights, is on the block.
As Joyce Vance wrote in her substack Civil Discourse yesterday:
When Donald Trump takes the stage to deliver his address Tuesday night, the truth will be this: The state of our Union is…compromised.