a nation, a culture, a society in distress

I know it seems like I’m turning a blind eye to what’s happening here in the country but I assure you I am not. Just how do you write about the fall of a democracy, the loss of freedoms and rights, the loss of the rule of law, and the loss of the very foundations of this country, that the people voted in this man, a convicted felon and self admitted sexual abuser, who stated over and over that he wanted and would take all authority and it is all happening so quickly. 

People are being disappeared, sent to heinous detention centers, tortured and deported to forced labor prisons in El Salvador, all without due process, without showing any proof these people are threats. Foreign nationals with legal residency are being kidnapped off the street or from their homes, their visas or green cards or residency permits revoked immediately, taken far away where they have no contact with the outside world much less a lawyer because they participated in a protest in support of Palestinians or wrote something critical of Trump and his agenda. The most recent that we know of being Rumeysa Ozturk, a PHD student, who they surrounded in broad daylight on the street and arrested because she wrote an article critical of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.

Other foreign nationals with legal residence are being arrested in airports as they try to return from a trip abroad and detained in inhumane conditions for weeks before being deported or simply disappearing because of some post on SM critical of what’s happening in our government or event they attended making them national security risks, again all without due process and producing no proof of their accusations. There have been reports of citizens being arrested and detained. If you think you're safe because you were born here, you are mistaken. None of us are safe. Trump’s secret police will start coming for anyone critical of this administration regardless of citizenship status.

Court orders are blatantly ignored, people exercising their first amendment right to protest are labeled terrorists, law firms and lawyers are being targeted for representing people and organizations who legally file suits against the unlawful actions of this administration. Veterans are being thrown aside, people of color and women are being whitewashed out of the public record regardless of their contributions and expertise. All opposition is met with threats and retribution. Our allies can no longer count on us and in fact this country has aligned with other dictators. The man who desperately wants the Nobel Peace Prize is having invasion plans for Panama drawn up to take the Canal while he talks about annexing Greenland and parts of Canada as well. All while his appointees and an unelected billionaire dismantle the government. And their goal is not to just dismantle the government. They want to dismantle our culture and society and replace it with their strict and repressive version as outlined in Project 2025.

The mainstream media, all owned and controlled by billionaires kissing Trump’s ass either do not report on the lawlessness of the Trump administration or sanewash it or just outright lie about it. Trump’s desire to control everything to reflect his world view is now being directed at our universities threatening to illegally withhold federal funds unless they change their policies and teaching departments to suit him which generally means getting rid of Black studies/history and Women studies/history. And unfortunately, instead of standing for the first amendment and academic freedom, Columbia University has bent the knee. Kowtowing to a bully is never a good idea. It doesn’t placate him and only emboldens him to demand more concessions. We are on the way to having only Government approved education, repressing actual history and achievements Trump and the people behind Project 2025 do not approve of. 

Our European allies are drawing away from us, tourism from Canada has almost completely stopped, and European nations are issuing travel warnings against coming here as well they should.

Trump’s cabinet is nothing but unqualified, inexperienced, and inappropriate candidates whose only qualification required was that they will do what Trump tells them to do and apparently being appointed by Trump makes them think they can do that however they want. And now this Cabinet of Sewer Clowns, as Jeff Tiedrich so delicately puts it, has put our national security at risk by discussing classified strike plans on another country on a commercial phone app using their personal phones. The media is going on about this ‘accident’. Make no mistake, this was not an accident. It was a deliberate use of Signal, a communication app that is encrypted coming and going and messages can be set to self delete after a week or three/four weeks. Encrypted for public use and a secure government encrypted server are two completely different things. If they think their conversations on Signal can’t be penetrated by enemies using sophisticated techniques, then they are just as stupid as we think they are. The only ‘accident’ here was adding a reporter to the conversation and I’d qualify that as more of a stupid thoughtless mistake.

There are a few reasons Hegseth used Signal to communicate his war plans to VP Vance, Sec of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Walsh (the idiot who added reporter Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat), Director of National Intelligence Russian agent Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliff, WH Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, WH Deputy Chief of Staff Nazi Stephen Miller, and possibly others. One, they are too lazy and self entitled to get their butts down to a SCIF room and use the secure government server (it’s too hard, it’s too much trouble, it’s too cumbersome, wah wah, whine whine) even though it’s a crime to violate the proper protocols; or two, the government server archives every single word and they would just as soon not have any evidence of their clown fuckery. I’d assume option 2 to be the driving force. Who knows what else they are discussing on Signal they don’t want a permanent record of.

Of course none of them are taking responsibility for putting our national security at risk. All we’re getting, as usual, is gaslighting, denials, lies, blaming the journalist, and arguing over semantics. It wasn’t war plans, it was attack plans. I’m sorry, when you make a military strike on another country, it’s an act of war. Trump denies knowing about it, they claim discussing military strike plans with actual details of where, when, how, and what is not classified material. Heads should be rolling, people should already have been fired but this is the Trump administration after all, where no crime goes punished, where the US Attorney General Pam Bondi suggests there will be no criminal investigation into the Signal episode. Or any other illegal actions by this government which is why she is the US AG.

So this is where we are. Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter of March 27 is a chilling read.