A Few Random Thoughts About What’s Ahead of Us

 

 It was a terrible night for women, for children, for the hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who make this country go. For healthcare, for our climate, for scientists, for justice, for free speech. It was a terrible night for poor people, for the middle class, for seniors who rely on social security, for our allies in Ukraine, for NATO and democracy and decency. It was a terrible night for everyone who voted against him and guess what?

It was a bad night for everyone who voted for him, too, you just don’t realize it yet.

-      Jimmy Kimmel, November 6, 2024

 

Here we are. First full day of Trump’s second reign. I’m guessing a lot of people will be realizing a lot of unpleasant things in the next few days and weeks.

So it seems a good time to revisit Jimmy Kimmel’s apt summation, which can serve us, going forward, as a sort of scorecard. We can use it to keep track of just how much of MAGA’s warped agenda will actually be attempted, and what they think they can get away with.

I’m also using Kimmel as a guide to figuring out what I want to write about going forward. Because the truth is I have no idea. Starting today, my canvas is blank.

I’m not interested in tracking every idiocy of this incoming kleptocracy — I’ve been doing that since the pandemic, and it’s gotten exhausting. But that doesn’t mean I know what next week’s post will be about. Or how dangerous it will be to post it.

As for this week, what follows is an unfocused collection of random observations and speculations about what we will likely have in store. Conspicuously absent will be ideas for what to do about it.

Monday was the start of a naked power grab, and we’ll need to see how fast these thieves come out of the gate. We can expect overt attempts to intimidate the media, loot the federal treasury, and contort the rule of law in sinister ways.

There will be attempts to institutionalize the notion that down is up, and to demonize anybody who says no, down is down. If you’ve not read 1984, this would be a good time, as there is no better outline of where the MAGA goons are pushing us, whether they themselves know it or not. Thanks, in part, to Orwell, I have a vivid imagination concerning the myriad irrationalities and perversions of life in a fascist state. I recognize what Trump and his cronies want to do, and none of it will be easy for us.

But nor will it be easy for them. The MAGA operatives coming to Washington are not a clever bunch, and they hate each other as much as they hate us. Their thought processes are reptilian — unsubtle variations on playground-bully logic — which will be a weakness for them. The more powerful they get, the more their ineptitude will be exposed. They will constantly remind us of how thuggish they are, and we can count on them to pursue their perfidies with brutish incompetence.

This will surely present ample opportunities to resist. Even bad ideas require execution, which means they can be slow-walked, monkey-wrenched, bottlenecked, and otherwise have their toxic effects mitigated.

This sort of resistance is something we as a nation have rarely had to deal with, and never on the scale of people in scores of other countries around the world. We will have to learn from them, and apply their hard-won wisdom to our own spoiled lifestyles.

Speaking of which, MAGA can only go so far down the fascist path before those spoiled lifestyles undergo noticeable changes, and not for the better. Even those misguided souls who voted for Trump will feel the pinch, probably from multiple directions.

These so-called “low-interest” voters never imagined they were voting to gut Medicare or cut off Social Security. Most of them still haven’t figured out that the Affordable Care Act, which they love, is the same thing as Obamacare, which they hate. This cognitive dissonance among the duped and brainwashed will be rudely tested when their health insurance is suddenly cancelled and tariffs triple the price of gasoline, diapers, and refrigerators. How much pain are they prepared to tolerate?

If they’re working for the government, they’ll have to tolerate a lot. People in civil service positions in every federal agency will be under political scrutiny, as MAGA hacks work to nullify, if not eliminate, the career bureaucrats and technocrats who do the actual work of government. We rely on these people to know stuff, run stuff, oversee stuff, and do the grunt work of running the country. They are, by definition, apolitical. To run them off — to replace the competent with the clueless — would have massive consequences, many of them life-or-death.

The people in these jobs will be asking themselves tough questions in the coming months. Many of them, sadly, will decide to quit, unwilling to tolerate the willful destruction of their core missions. They will take their institutional knowledge with them, and our society will be much the poorer for it.

Some will stay in their jobs, but they’ll have to live under the MAGA hacks above them. They’ll need to toe the line, or at least appear to. Even so, that’s where resistance will most likely come from, at least in part.  It’s those very people who will be in the best position to counter the effects of stupid leadership.

FEMA will be an early indicator. FEMA has a strong record of success, just in the last year, in handling the cascade of hurricanes and wildfires caused by climate changes that will now officially be denied. The expertise of that agency — the sheer breadth and depth of practical knowledge — could be lost to MAGA idiots who know nothing but crude political calculation. How many experts quit, or are removed, will tell us a lot about the perils we’ll face going forward.

Then there’s the defense and intelligence agencies, where we’ll soon be openly playing with fire. The idea of a Tulsi Gabbard passing the nation’s deepest secrets to her buddies in the Kremlin is terrifying. The mere thought of a Pete Hegseth in charge of the Defense Department is a slap in the face to everyone in uniform.

How will career intelligence professionals react to the dangerous fuckery of political stooges with nuclear weapons? How will seasoned soldiers react to being asked to fire on American citizens? We’d rather not find out.

These childishly vile cabinet appointments — imagine Marco Rubio the adult in the room — will likely be the last straw for our European allies. Even if Trump doesn’t actually remove us from NATO, they will have no reason to trust us ever again. They were burned by Trump before, and they know exactly who they’re dealing with, even if we don’t.

Clearly, there’s turbulence ahead, so strap yourself in. It’s hard to imagine any of us getting through the next few years without feeling some effects of the toxic incompetence now being foisted upon us. Some of us will feel it more than others, but few of us will be untouched.

As for me, I expect to find plenty to write about, though it might take a while to find a voice that works. I won’t pretend an optimism I don’t feel, but at the same time, it’s in my nature to seek out bright sides and look on them.

When I find them, I’ll be happy to share. It’s when I don’t find them that I’ll wonder what to tell you.