A Preamble: The following content will be very political. However, I am a citizen of the United States, and as a student of history, someone who read dystopian novels obsessively as a youth, and as someone with over 15 years experience (coming up on 20) as an analyst and other roles in our Defense and Intelligence Communities, I just cannot keep quiet about what I see right now. I can’t stay on that side of history. I’ve been posting on my own personal social media about current events and what I see, but I think it’s reached the point that I need to share it a bit wider. It might help differentiate signal to noise for someone. And since disrupting signal to noise is literally the whole plan for this administration right now, I’m getting out of my comfort zone. These are largely reposts from the last few days. I hope they help. There will be more political posts while we are in this era.
Trump made large cuts to the VA yesterday, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. He has stated multiple times his contempt for veterans. So far, the deep cuts in the budget are actually starting to affect his base, and he doesn’t seem to be holding back. Farmers in red states are some of the biggest recipients of government handouts (I wonder if any of them find a classic rightwing adage helpful here, when people complain that the poverty level minimum wage isn’t enough: “If your job doesn’t pay well, get another one”, or does that seem as pat and unfeeling coming back, as it does when originally stated?), Alabama’s utilities received federal funding to subsidize utilities for low income earners, and now they have received $100 additions to their bills. Again, most of those people voted for this.
The National Parks received large firings of staff yesterday, including forest fire prevention staff. Kennedy got confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services, with his expertise as a guy “who does his research”. Bird flu is going to be a thing, even more than it is already. And we are on our own. What’s good is, the American Medical Association is doing updates on their youtube channels about it to keep people informed. There are also now “Alt CDC” accounts on social media that you can follow that make updates that the real CDC would do if it wasn’t getting crushed and taken over by people whose expertise is being Joe Rogan fans and googling anything except medical papers.
There’s a trend now for government departments that are getting tanked to set up a “shadow” account to keep the work and information going for those who want to be informed. I think the Democrats should totally embrace that and formalize it more, to remind people of what we could officially have if they were back in power. They have a huge messaging problem right now; they got away from trying to make life better for most Americans, or at least communicating that they were, and focused on problems with narrower scope, and it hurt them. But more about that later.
More tariffs coming online for allies are potentially going to cause more disruption. We are pulling out of supporting Ukraine, and already gave away several things at the table to Russia before talks started.
Again, overall goals are ones that I support. I believe that we should cut government spending (though the new proposed Republican budget earmarks MORE money for defense, which I don’t think is needed. There is so much pork in that department), though I think we should be careful to not throw the baby out with the bathwater and wreck good programs. For one thing, collateral human damage sucks, and second, it costs MORE waste to stand things back up after we’ve shut them down by mistake. I think actual auditors should be involved, not just rich drug addicts and scrapers. I DO think Europe needs to contribute more to its own defense, and they’ve gotten comfortable with taking advantage of our deep defense budget to defend themselves, while not reciprocating. But I don’t think leaving Ukraine in the balance is a good idea. Russia has been fully occupied, or nearly fully occupied, with that fight for 3 years. I think if its off the table, they will once again interfere elsewhere, and be emboldened to do it. That’s part of why I think it’s been a masterful stroke the way we’ve supported Ukraine over the last few years, and we will notice the difference immediately when we don’t. I also believe on principle it was a very American thing to do. We are abandoning our position of being a leader, but still seem to expect respect as though we are. I don’t think the repercussions from that are going to be as pleasant as the administration thinks.
Several states filed a huge lawsuit against Doge yesterday, so we will see how that goes. So far the “audits” have seemed to largely be stealing sensitive data still, with no disclosure of what is done with it, and no oversight. Also, the doge website itself got hacked last night. If you can’t secure a simple webfront, I really question your coding abilities, hitlerjugend. We spent 7.4 million dollars this WEEK on ~100 DOGE staff, and 7 million last week. I personally see some pretty deep inefficiences and conflicts there, how about you? Oh the “audits” also seem to be naming existing programs that Elon doesn’t like and calling them corrupt, but not actually showing corruption. So far those are approved programs; if they need to be cut, do it the right way, don’t claim corruption when it’s not.
I don’t see how any of this is making prices of groceries go down, which was supposed to be a day one thing. Inflation is still ticking up, and tariffs are just another tax on Americans dressed up in a "look over there!" bow. And I’d like to know, from all this “saving” of government tax dollars, where that money is supposed to go now. I don't see anything going to correct the enormous wealth gaps, which I think is at the root of what many people are unhappy with, though it may be obfuscated.
Anyway, it’s all exhausting, but I’ve had some people contact me who say they voted for this and regret it, and that gives me hope. And you give me hope. There are 330 million of us, and we have a lot of power. And it’s a lot harder to keep dark in the darkness these days.