It takes months to build a house. It can take years to finish the property, grow trees and landscape, have neighbours build, make a neighbourhood, and add infrastructure. Yet it can all be taken down in hours with an excavator and dump trucks. That is what is happening with the Americans at the moment. They have convinced themselves that tearing down institutions that have taken years to build will make them ‘more efficient.’ They have convinced themselves that their neighbourhood will be safer by isolating themselves. It is a once-in-a-generation event. It’s incredibly sad for all involved. Our neighbourhood is changing because the biggest house on the street happens to be occupied by selfish people who don’t care about us. What they are doing is setting us back decades.
Their auxiliary president, Elon Musk, is ‘finding;’ fraud, cutting jobs, and eliminating waste. Realistically, we all know that government spending can be wasteful. But to put the World’s richest man in charge of taking away services and aid to millions of disadvantaged people is so counter-intuitive that it is an insult. Add to that how they are now floating the idea of a stimulus cheque for the citizens, taken out of the pot of money they are going to rape out of their institutions, is the most transparent mea culpa on a macro scale in recent memory. It’s like saying, ‘Sorry to tear the house down, here is some money for you to buy a tent.’
Let’s talk about that for a bit. If you were to walk into a company and be given a position to reign in spending, the easiest thing to do would be to cut out the bottom. The top people are there at the top because, over time, they have stepped on the bottom. And heaven forbid they trim themselves. So, in Trump’s case, it’s pretty simple: if you allow yourself a large tax cut for billionaires, the money must come from somewhere. To compensate for some of it, we give you tariffs, a short-term solution to fill the coffers. But that is not enough. More money is needed. So now let’s cut off agencies. USAID was only the start. FEMA, the FAA, National Parks, the Department of Education, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, pensions, unions, firefighters, Immigration, and the Pentagon. Remove funding or obliterate these, and then it looks like your revenue is just beautiful.
‘But Bill!’ you say, ‘You’re Canadian! Why do you care?’ Well, aside from the insults this man has launched at us, from us becoming the 51st state to the tariffs he is going to levy because he needs the cash, I am also a humanist. I love people. I want people to have the same opportunities I got as a white male who is fortunate to benefit just from being so. It eats at me every day. Immigrants are coming to our shores, hoping for freedom, peace, and opportunity. LGBTQ+ individuals are looked at like they are lepers because they want to love and be loved. Women’s rights. Indigenous rights and abiding by the commitments we made to them after the worst living conditions, residential schools, land grabs, and so many other indignities they have suffered. People who have been marginalized just because they are poor and have been so for generations. These and other people can enrich us all by having the opportunity to get there. We live in a great country, but we can be even greater.
I know the cynics reading this are telling themselves to let me say this because it will just disappear. But let me say that, in the last 5 weeks, amid the waves of bad news, we are beginning to see large waves of push-back. Americans vote with their wallets. And Trump’s base is suffering now, even more than ever. They are losing basic needs, their costs are rising despite the promises, and they are beginning to wake up. Thousands of Jobs are now lost. Services that they counted on are disappearing. If they go anywhere else but Fox News, they are bombarded with stories that magnify all of this. I used to think that all of MAGA was stupid. But that was so wrong. They are believers. They felt that their way of life was under attack by the Left. Many are just beginning to realize that, in general, those who lean left want good things to happen for all people, not just our own. The most incredible people I have had the privilege to know are humanists. They understand that if we all do well, we ALL do well.
There has not been a paradigm-shifting opportunity for humanity like this in a very long time. It’s coming. I don’t know how or when, but it will. It is not hyperbole. Countries worldwide are starting to shift from depending upon Americans to taking a good look at themselves and realizing they need other alliances. America the Great is becoming America the Pariah. Those alliances America has built over decades will require even longer to rebuild. The trust is gone. If you have ever lost a good friend because they betrayed you, you will get this. Once you get distance from this person, your perspective changes. You find yourself coming to terms not only with the sheer shock of this loss but also wondering if their friendship was even real, and as you pick up the pieces, you know that you have to get yourself back to where this won’t happen again.
All will change if this current administration gets the boot. But the damage, I’m afraid, is already done. A madman has shaken the World’s snow globe, so let’s put on our boots, mittens, and parkas and shovel our own paths. We have this. We need this. Our humanity demands this.
Our future is bright. It’s just different than last year’s.
Bill's Musings 