I’m glad the cameras were rolling in the Oval Office on Friday for the entire world to witness the two bullies in action. I’m glad Zelinsky stood up for himself and refused to bow the knee. The interaction was outrageous. It was disheartening. It was ugly. It was all those things and so much more. We knew Trump and JD Vance were liars and that bullying and cruelty is on brand for them. We know extortion and threats are weapons in their toolbox. In this case, Trump tried and failed to extort Ukraine’s rare earth minerals for a ceasefire that Trump would not guarantee. Zelinsky, with the cameras rolling showed the world how they operate. And the free democratic world, along with most Americans, stand with Zelinsky and against Trump and Putin.
The entire nation and the world got to see how the Trump administration works by bullying politicians, the media, corporations, and judges to do their bidding. Trump operates like a mob boss who demands deference and loyalty. His fragile ego needs constant feeding. He craves praise, gratitude, and adoration in both words and symbolic gestors. It’s pathetic to watch such a needy broken human being occupying any place of authority. He is a dangerous person because his ego demands that he believes his way is the only way and that his manufactured reality is reality. He has no use for facts and cannot tolerate being contradicted by the truth. We saw his nasty pathology on full display in that meeting and afterwards. There can be no question that his illegality, his cruelty, and his alliance with Putin stems from his need to be king. The wealthy and the business leaders tolerate him because he is a useful idiot.
Their goal is to profit from the privatization of government functions. They want to use our taxpayer dollars to enrich themselves by further privatization of healthcare, prisons, education, postal service, security, research, and every other function currently run by the government. They want to make almost everything for profit without the inconvenient guardrails of regulations that keep people from being cheated, exploited, and poisoned. Perhaps this is why Margorie Taylor Greene said that government jobs were not real jobs and that government workers were stealing taxpayer money without providing any service. That was an accidental exposure about what some of this is about. Republicans are out to gut the government so that private equity can step in and make every service a for-profit enterprise paid for or at least subsidized by our tax dollars. It’s the Elon Musk model of enrichment. It’s the Walmart model where they pay their employees too little to live on, making them eligible for public assistance. It’s a recipe for the expansion of poverty, pre-mature deaths, and the loss of civil liberties.
And then there are the evangelical Christians like Speaker Mike Johnson who are more like the Taliban than Jesus. They want to shove the LGBTQ community back in the closet and send women back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, stuck in unhappy even dangerous marriages, while returning them to second-class citizenship. The white supremacists simply want to be in charge of everything and everyone. They feed their fears and insecurity by lying to themselves that they are the smartest and the most qualified to lead everything, despite their glaring lack of talent, expertise, experience, and qualifications. They believe “white is right” no matter what the actual reality and they are using the levers of government against DEI efforts along with the threat of violence to get back on top.
So, what do we do? We find a way to stop them. One cannot shame people like Trump, Vance, Musk and Speaker Johnson into doing what is right. They are too morally bankrupt for that. Their greed for power, money, and adoration drives them forward. We know that if Trump had lost this past election, he would have never conceded, and we would be fighting about a stolen election instead of watching Trump and Musk destroy our government and international relationships with a wrecking ball while Republicans sit by silently and watch the destruction. I suspect the true motive behind the massive destruction is to turn the government into a for-profit enterprise for private equity, to give the religious right reign over social and cultural norms, and to return white males permanently to the top of the leadership.
Normally, the media would step up as a defense against someone like Trump or Musk. However, having been threatened into submission, they keep trying under extreme duress, to normalize, minimize, and rationalize the pardoning of violent January 6 participants, the appointments of unqualified cabinet members, the illegal firing of government workers, the hollowing out of government accountability officers, the defunding of government grants, the suspension of information and regulations designed to protect us, and the open threats to sovereign nations. They are finding it difficult to justify the tariffs and mass deportations that include non-criminals who contribute to the economy. They strain to justify the attacks on transgender people, the renaming of a body of water, the rising prices, the falling stock market, the rise in unemployment and the projected falling GDP. The chaos is real and damage to actual lives is also real, but the corporate media is too afraid to report openly about its impact on the country and people. Many, like me are turning to independent and public media outlets and foreign news outlets for information.
Our next line of defense is the courts. So far, they are holding up. However, we’ve already heard Vance and Musk threaten judges. Before it goes beyond threats to actions that jeopardize our entire judicial system, we, the citizens need to stand against this Administration. We must be louder, bolder, and unrelenting in our resistence. We must financially support the efforts of civil rights organizations who are bringing lawsuits to defend our constitutional rights and the rule of law. I donate to Democracy Forward, the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. But we must do more.
Friday, February 28th was the economic blackout day where Americans boycotted the purchase of goods and services from corporations to show our economic power. I knew about it from social media, but my friend didn’t know anything about it. When I explained to her that I couldn’t go to the movies on Friday because of the blackout, she was disappointed because she had just finished shopping. I felt bad that I didn’t mention it to her earlier since I know she isn’t on social media. I’ll do better next time.
And finally, we must use our voices to push our lawmakers to stand up against this administration by attending town hall meetings, calling their offices, emailing them, or writing to them. We can protest in the streets or outside their offices. The few who are secretly against his agenda will only gain the courage to stand up to Trump if they fear us more. However, we must keep it our protests loud, but peaceful, so that Trump cannot label any protest an insurrection and suspend the constitution. Our goal is to protect and defend our constitution and the rule of law against all enemies, whether foreign or domestic.
In this case, the enemy is domestic and resides in our own White House. I take solace in the fact that he and the people he hires are incompetent. They are making mistakes all over the place. The world is watching and laughing at them. For example, they fired the people who look after our nuclear arsenal and then had to try to find them to rehire them. They fired people working on Ebola management, again only to try to rehire them. They fired people working on the bird flu situation. Same scenario. They are so reckless that a disaster is likely to occur, and I pray too many people don’t have to suffer because of it, but this is the price we will pay for electing this lunatic. In the end, I think we will win this fight because there are more who are against him (and them) than who are for him and the number is growing. His poll numbers are falling as people begin to suffer. Watch what happens when a natural disaster hits and there is no federal relief or when millions lose access to healthcare and food assistance so the wealthiest can get another tax break.
As a practical matter, failure is inevitable as talented men and women in the government resign in protest or commit sabotage from within. This administration will be left with the most inexperienced and least talented people to carry out its warped agenda. My guess is that the whole thing will come tumbling down, leaving Trump, Vance, Musk and Speaker Johnson lying beneath the rubble. And the nation will rejoice and then rebuild, having learned how to better safeguard our freedom and democracy. I just hope I’m still here to see it.