It's Bad, Bad

Where do I even start? Every single day there's a new barrage of headlines which read me into this dystopian fantasy that we're all actually living through. It's such a strange feeling to just go about daily life punching the clock, doing chores, feeding myself, while the US government is dismantling itself from the inside.

Elon has given people barely old enough to purchase alcohol access to the US Treasury systems. Defenders say "It's read-only access! It's not a real threat!" Show me the proof. There is absolutely zero transparency around what they're doing, or what they have access to. Every single American's information has been compromised in one foul swoop. It's absolutely a real threat.

We've begun sending immigrants to Guantanamo. The administration and much of the media will twist themselves into pretzels to call them everything except what they are: the American grand premier of concentration camps. While we're at it, he's considering taking the president of El Salvador up on an offer to imprison American inmates in their country, effectively deporting American citizens. The Lakin Riley Act allows immigrants to be detained in federal prisons for being accused of theft. Not for committing theft, or for being convicted of theft; for being accused of it. 

Trump wants to take over Gaza and force 2 million Palestinians out. It wasn't enough to actively participate in Palestinian genocide by supplying Israel with weapons and refusing to hold them accountable for their crimes against humanity. Now we have to bring American imperialism into it and claim that land as our own while displacing Palestinians at best and slaughtering them at worst.

The Department of Justice is suing Chicago for it's sanctuary city status. Chicago has been protecting immigrants since the 80's, and signed the Welcoming City ordinance into law in 2006. They're not doing anything differently now, but they're being targeted by the DOJ because they're not bowing to our new Supreme Leader.

He's threatening our allies with tariffs, which would cripple the American economy and economies around the world, and then pretending to negotiate deals with them. He's accepting their offers to do what they've already been doing and calling it a win. It's bizarre. 

Federal employees are being offered "buyouts" which aren't actually buyouts so that he can replace them with cronies, or leave the positions vacant and undermine government processes that way.

Our national health organizations like the CDC and NIH have been ordered to cease all communications with the public, as a bird flu crisis continues. Information about vaccines, veterans' care, science, aids, and so much more has been removed from government websites. Information pertaining to race, gender, and sexuality is being purged from government sites at break-neck speed. More than 8000 government pages have been taken down. 

We're pulling out from the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Human Rights Council. 

Remember when no one would publicly admit they wanted to cut Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security? Now they're openly discussing cutting more than a trillion dollars from the programs. 

This is all just scratching the surface. There is so much more that has happened over the last three weeks and the entire country is reeling (except his supporters, who are somehow unwavering). The barrage of bad news is non-stop and full of horrific developments every single day. 

It's bad. We can't deny how bad it is. It's going to keep getting worse. I don't know that anything can stop it at this point. But I do know that failing to resist isn't an option. Our fall to fascism won't be one without a fight. Even small acts count; don't think that anything is too small. Do what you can. Find comradery and community in the resistance. Good luck and solidarity to everyone out there standing up for what's right.