Dear Friend,
While I have an active imagination, I can’t fully envision the panoply of putrid policies that will have spewed from Trump’s Sharpie by the time this column reaches you.
I’m writing this in the immediate aftermath of Elon Musk’s hostile takeover of USAID, the agency charged with providing humanitarian aid to the least among us.
Trump has “flooded the zone,” to use Steve Bannon’s phrase, with a torrent of execrable executive orders. While a vomitorium is defined as a wide corridor designed to get people into or out of a venue quickly, the word seems like an appropriately odoriferous description of what America’s Oval Office has now become.
It was not surprising that Trump gave choice inaugural seating to what the despicable Bannon accurately described as “techno-feudalists,” who “don’t believe in the underlying tenets of self-governance.” To be clear, given the choice between living in a world ruled by Bannon and one controlled by those digital dictators, I might well take Musk up on an offer to relocate to Mars.
How should we react? I would respectfully submit that the first—and perhaps hardest—thing we must do is to stop reacting. Right now, Trump is wielding his manic laser pointer. We need to stop acting like frantic felines. Rather, we must immediately focus on effective ways to stand and fight. Marches and rallies, by themselves, are not substitutes for a serious strategy.
Our republic, which will turn 249 years old this coming July 4, still has firewalls. Our courts have not (yet) acquiesced to the Musk/Trump coup. And our congressional allies, while they may be in the minority, still have power, provided that they don’t just rely on strongly worded statements and speeches.
Stay tuned for the congressional debate on the Continuing Resolution currently funding the government, which expires on March 14. Then, by some as-yet-unknown date, Congress must act to increase the federal debt limit. Our legislative allies must confront Trump around these deadlines — as dangerous as that may be. Then will come next year’s elections.
This has everything to do with our mission to stop overpopulation. Trump and his repugnant renegades are taking a chainsaw to programs here at home and around the world that enable women to make the choices that we know lead to smaller families, and they are deliberately annihilating efforts to address the climate crisis and so much more.
Trump shrewdly presents himself as an irresistible force. We must be immovable objects. We must show the world he is nothing more than a failed businessman who couldn’t even make money running a casino and who is now recklessly gambling with the future of our nation and the planet.
