CHAOS, COMEDY AND CORRUPTION IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AMERICA

The political hills and valleys of the last twenty-five years have been a confusing sight to behold.  

Today is February 5, 2025.

It is also my 25th wedding anniversary.

As it turns out, things have worked out better for me than for the country.

On February 5, 2000, Bill Clinton was President and Al Gore was Vice President. The country was at peace. the economy was humming, there was no deficit,  the right to choose existed and peace in the middle east was still possible. Among the actual "firsts" the year would occasion, there were -- in addition to my second marriage (which can only happen once) -- the following:

The first NYC subway series (between the Mets and Yankees) since 1956; 

The first civil union law protecting same sex couples (kudos to Vermont); 

The first patient receiving a totally artificial heart that beat and pumped blood (the Jarvik heart); 

The first crew visiting the international space station; and 

The first presidential election since 1888 in which the winner (George W. Bush) received fewer votes than the loser (Al Gore).

That last first was a precursor of sorts.

A warning of the darker days that would emerge over the course of the next quarter century. 

In 2000, Bill Clinton's extracurricular activities were among the reasons Bush II was able to claim the moral high ground and beat Al Gore. Sixteen years later, however, X-rated bragging about grabbing was ignored by the voters. And eight years after that, not even an adjudication of sexual assault could get in the way of Trump's return to the White House. 

In that same period, a similar hypocritical path was travelled on the issue of voting.

Or, more precisely, on the issue of vote- counting.

In 2000, America's electorate did not decide the presidential election. Instead, in stopping the vote count in Florida and enjoining that state from manually curing an almost certain undercount for Gore, the Supreme Court did. In 2020, by way of contrast, America's electorate did get to decide the election. This time, however, the party that stole the election  through litigation in 2000 tried to steal it through insurrection in 2020. 

History tells us this effort failed.  

The insurrection was stopped.

Biden won and took office. 

But did it fail? 

For four years, the principal insurrectionist lied about the result.

In 2024, that insurrectionist was allowed to run again. 

This time he won.

Do the voters care that their president is a sexual predator?

Do they care that their president is fine with coups in his favor?

Some do. 

More than half apparently do not.

Or, at the very least, they do not care enough.

Because they have allowed it.

When I was young and overwhelmed, I made lists. I tucked them in books and from time to time unfolded them to either check off an item or cross one out. I checked off the items on the list which amounted to chores or jobs I had completed. I crossed out those which had resolved themselves -- those irrational fears that had evaporated . . . 

Or even the rational ones which good luck or a generous friend (or God) had miraculously resolved.

Sometimes the list was short.

Sometimes it was long.

If America made such a list today . . .

It would be long

Here it is.

1. J6 Pardons 

2. Fired J6 Attorneys

3. Investigating the FBI's J6 investigators.

4. Fired Inspectors General.

5. Impoundment.

6. Federal Employee Buy outs.

7. Musk's Digital Coup.

8.The End of USAID.

9. Greenland.

10. Panama.

11. Tariffs.

12. Gaza

13. The Cabinet of Fools

This is a baker's dozen of problems and potential catastrophes.

All crying out for confrontation on any citizen's to do list.

I'm one of the 75 million Americans who voted for Harris and can confidently say . . .

We are already tired of  this shit.

What to do?

In my list-making days, I discovered there was utility in paring the list down, in reducing it to a more manageable size. I also discovered there are a number of ways to do this. One is to know when your problem has really become someone else's.  Another is to recognize general solutions that solve a number of problems. A third is to laugh.

For purposes of relief, let's start with the comedic stuff.

Over the weekend Trump threatened 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada and on Monday, as the actual point at which they were to take effect was about to arrive and markets were tanking, Trump caved and postponed them for thirty days. Both Canada and Mexico had made it clear they would respond with their own tariffs on American imports. And Trump's plan was universally derided for the significant inflation it would cause . . . 

And the unnecessary ill will it immediately bred.

(At an NHL game in Ottawa over the weekend, fans booed when the Star-Spangled Banner was sung. At an NBA game in Toronto, they did the same. Canada is the country that saved Americans who otherwise would have been taken hostage by Iran in 1979 and then secreted them to safety. It's pretty much impossible to piss Canadians off. Trump, however, managed to do so.)

Like all bullies, Trump punches down. 

He only picks fights with those who are weaker. 

Canada is causing America no problems at all. Contrary to Trump's claim, the amount of fentanyl passing through Canada is negligible; you could fit it in one suitcase. For its part Mexico is aggressively trying to combat the problems that pass through its borders and over ours. Nevertheless, and true to form in this case, two of our friendliest allies and biggest trading partners were to be saddled with 25% duties while China, which is causing problems ranging from the widespread theft of intellectual property to the illegal production of all the precursor chemicals needed to manufacture fentanyl, and against whom strategic tariffs have bipartisan support, was slapped with only a 10% surcharge.

Like most confronted bullies, Trump also (and usually) loses.  

In this case, he packaged his last-minute decisions to pull back as the result of concessions made by Canada and Mexico.  Those putative concessions, however, had nothing to do with his tariff threat. Mexico said it would deploy troops to its northern (our southern) border it had promised to send in 2021 and are already there, and Canada promised to implement a border plan it had approved back in December.  

In short, Trump got nothing.

This will likely be a recurring theme in Trump 2.0, a reprise perhaps of the various unfulfilled "infrastructure weeks" in his earlier term.  To this, however, must also be added Trump's twitter-visions on Greenland and Panama and Gaza.  None of them will become American states or territories or (in the case of Gaza) latter-day occupation zones (`a la Berlin after World War II) in the next four years. Nor will Trump use military force against a NATO ally (Denmark, which owns Greenland) or a party to a treaty we signed decades ago (Panama) or in Gaza (which would be insane). 

Trump is barely willing to fight wars that need fighting and do not cost American lives (e.g., Ukraine).

I doubt he will fight ones that are unnecessary and would be costly in ways that can't be counted.

That does not mean he will not forever tweet and boast and threaten.

He will.

Empty rhetoric is his specialty.

So just laugh

Call it Greenland week.

Or Panama week.

Or Gaza week

Or better yet . . . 

Granaza week.

That leaves two sets of problems on the list that cannot be laughed away (2 through 6 and 7 through 8) and two items (1 and 13) which will plague MAGA more than the rest of us going forward.

The solution to the first set is litigation on the one hand and mobilization on the other. Any civil service employee who is fired can sue the government.  I expect many will. Some already  have (see below). Similarly, impoundment, buyouts, ending the Agency for International Development, or any refusal to cut Treasury checks, sharing of personal identifying information or use of digital access to abolish statutorily established and sanctioned departments, divisions or expenditures is illegal. 

In her Letters From an American on Tuesday, Heather Cox Richardson noted that Trump's billionaire apparatchik, Elon Musk, has "taken control of the US Treasury payments system" and "claims to have been cancelling those transactions he thinks wasteful." According to Richardson, he then "went on to the General Services Administration" and told "regional managers . . . to begin ending the leases on federal offices."  SBA employees report Musk has "gotten into that agency's human resources, contracts and payment systems" and, says Richardson, "By this afternoon Musk people were digging into the data of the Department of Education with an eye to dismantling it from the inside". This morning, Richardson's Letter cited  a report that one of Musk's 25-year-old engineers "had the privilege to write code on the programs for the Bureau of Fiscal Services that control more than 20% of the US economy".

What could possibly go wrong?

All of this is more than suspect.

Most of it is also illegal.

And the lawsuits have already begun.

Last week, the National Treasury Employees Union filed suit to stop  Trump's Executive Order removing federal employees from civil service  protection.  On Monday, Trump's initial spending freeze or impoundment was enjoined by the federal District Court in DC as that case proceeds through the courts. Also on Monday, three employees unions sued Trump for violating federal privacy laws by allowing the Treasury to share data with Musk and his twenty-something data nerds, and eleven state attorneys general warned federal employees not to take Trump's buy-out offers seriously. As they put it, the "offers are nothing more than the latest attack on federal workers and the services they provide" and "are not guaranteed". On Tuesday, anonymous FBI agents filed a class action to stop Trump from publicizing their names and firing any agents who investigated the J6 cases. Previously, state AGs had also sued to stop Trump's spending freezes and a Rhode Island federal judge had granted a temporary restraining order doing so.

Trump, the so-called disrupter who now runs the second branch of government, has created the impression of endless action over the course of the first two weeks of his latest presidency. 

Given his moves, however, the busiest branch over the next four years will not be the Executive.  

It will be the Judiciary.

There are those who think judicial decrees will not matter, that Trump will simply ignore them. Maybe so (at which point revolution will be the only alternative). But he hasn't in the past. He has been contemptuous of courts and used either the office he held or was running for to protect that contempt from the consequences it would otherwise meet.  But he hasn't ignored the orders and the greater threat is that the Supreme Court will endorse his dictatorial impulses. Two weeks ago, I asked The New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger if he thought New York Times v. Sullivan would survive this Supreme Court. His laconic "we'll see" was not inspiring.  

Stay tuned. 

In the meantime, two problems will not go away and will plague Trump 2.0 every day going forward.

The first is the pardons issued the J6 insurrectionists.

The second is his Cabinet of Fools

Two-thirds of Americans despise the J6 pardons. Every time Trump yells law and order, we will yawn.  He is and forever will be the guy who pardoned cop killers.  He is also the only president who orchestrated an attempted coup, pardoned his fellow coup-plotters, and then (eventually) fired the patriots who prosecuted the coup in the first place.

That will never change.

Meanwhile . . .

Bobby Kennedy still thinks vaccines may cause autism.

Tulsi Gabbard cannot recognize a traitor.

Kash Patel's enemies list is in print.

And sooner or later . . .

You just know . . .

Pete Hegseth will take a drink.