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The Beginning of the Beginning
We are not going to fold
During a turning point early in WWII, Winston Churchill was asked if this was the beginning of the end. He replied that it was the beginning of the beginning. And now, faced with the terrible unhinged reality of Donald Trump’s second term, a lot of us are left wondering how we begin to hold this thing together in the face of an overwhelming storm.
That storm is driven by a sense of entitlement that is unearned and held together by the frailest of political majorities in the Republican Party, frailties already being tested by the flurry of poorly thought out executive orders written by over enthusiastic political operatives.
Yesterday’s blanket pardon of the January Sixth violent rioters is already testing the loyalty of Trump’s supporters in Congress, among police, and the courts. The idea of pardoning those who attacked police doing their jobs to protect the Capitol is not sitting well with those who were there and feared for their lives.
And we are about to witness the round up of neighbors and coworkers who may be in the country illegally but came here to work hard and create a new life. That aspiration is an American tradition that is in the history of all Americans who came here from other places, including Trump’s family members.
The plans of Trump’s immigrant deportation czar are the actions of a police state, an unwilling police state in many cases. That is not going to play well with farmers, hotel managers, landscapers, restaurant owners, meat packing plant conglomerates, and all those who profit from their labor and ambition.
Trump signed dozens of imperial orders, so many that it is doubtful his people have really considered the longer term impact of them. Instead, what we got was a mishmash of various parties trying to use Trump’s enthusiasm to achieve their own pet goals and interests. And to do it now while the opportunity presents itself to push things through, to strike while the iron is hot.
Trump’s impulsive need for attention is his weakness and enables those in his orbit to manipulate him at opportune moments. His years of bragging about what he would do on day one created one of those moments. But rushing things usually means doing stuff that backfires down…
