Tuesday, April 8, 2025 at 6:00 AM
Who would have thought that in 2025 America would find itself floating on a sea of uncertainty, self-doubt, and being scorned, not by her enemies, but by her erstwhile friends and allies, who have supported her through thick and thin? I use the word erstwhile, because it is becoming apparent that this current president is doing his best to drive a wedge, both economically and diplomatically, without rhyme or reason, to distance America from the familiar currents that have guided her and the alliance for the past 80 years. Our neighbors, Mexico and Canada, are being punished because Trump does not like Trudeau, and Mexico? Just because!
How one man, who received 1.5% more votes than his Democratic opponent, can wield so much power, can wreak so much havoc on the world economy, on our allies, on the poor, the weak, the defenseless, is a mystery!
For the past 249 years America has passed itself off as a democracy. In spite of slavery and Reconstruction and McCarthyism and the fight for civil rights, we have claimed to be a democracy, supported and upheld by the voters of this country. In barely the last two months, our democracy, with a small “d”, has been destroyed and replaced by autocracy, with a capital “A”. Instead of having leaders who know how to run a country, we are inundated with billionaires who have no sense of what it takes to be public servants, and are ruling us the way they manage their own companies; and I mean, ruling us. They are in service of themselves and the other autocrats, not of Joe the plumber.
How can any country claim to be a democracy when all our rights are being stripped away, and/or stifled? When the press, the learning institutions, the lawyers, the courts, politicians, are all contorting and conforming to the will of an unstable, uneducated, unfeeling, unfettered clown? Whose pettiness and incompetence and arrogance are leading us down a path of no return? Who will ever trust us as the gold standard again, even after he is gone? I do not believe that anything, or anyone, can bring us back to respectability and integrity after this massacre of the Constitution ends, if it ever ends!
The “shining beacon” that we supposedly were, has dimmed to a point where we are not the envy of the world as we once were. We are becoming hated and despised by a world which holds us, not Trump, responsible for turning us into this non-ending nightmare for those who once saw us as the Statue of Liberty advertised: the land of opportunity, where anyone had an equal chance to survive and thrive, and help those less fortunate. Today, we are the less fortunate.
There was a movie called Elysium, starring Matt Damon. In that movie the oligarchs built a very high-end space station above earth, with all the luxuries one could imagine. Earth itself was overpopulated, polluted and used as a factory to supply the rich, who only came down to earth to check on their industries. The masses left behind could look up and dream, but were all destined to live and choke on the misery of their existence. That is the future I see for us, remaining on this very dystopian trajectory we’re now traveling on.
We are adrift, with no chance of ever landing on a level playing field, ever again. And when I say we, I mean all of us, no matter where you live. We are now living in the time when Elysium is a possibility, when the book 1984 is fulfilling its prophecy, while we are slow walking around with our heads up our a**es and hoping for the best.
In the immortal words of Malcolm X, the chickens have come home to roost. Wat a ting!
Glen