Are We There Yet?

Mar 28

This was the question frequently on my mind as we trekked eight thousand six hundred miles across the country recently. I encountered no fewer than five dust storms, which many of them closed both sides of either Route 10 or Route 40, depending upon which road we were traveling on that day. During the first dust storm, we were being typical tourists and taking pictures of Mother Nature’s springtime fury. The first two storms were “only” in the twenty-five to thirty-five mph range. Whilst driving through the last three dust storms, when they peeked at forty mph winds, the novelty had well and truly worn off. There were daily five-hour drives where I stiff-armed the steering wheel in my best attempt to keep our SUV on the road. As evidence of the severity of the conditions, we have at least one picture of a semi tractor trailer truck completely over-turned in the median strip. Aside from my hands being sore from tightly gripping the wheel for so long, the other annoying thing was the collection of dust we were gathering in our travels; under the hood, inside the vehicle and a sense of grit on your skin. The wind whistled a tune, and it didn’t sound like “Dixie”, within our car despite every window being shut as tightly as possible. I guess this is just what happens when you’re hit with a forty-mph force.

The most devastating scenes were in Rolla, Missouri where an EF 2 tornado had touched down just six days prior to our rolling into town. There was devastation as I had never witnessed before and talking with the locals, it was the worse they had ever experienced as well.

So, it was time to tootle on home to the relative safety of Ohio where there was only a snowstorm awaiting us. I wouldn’t normally look forward to returning to snow, but an obvious, yet unspoken, question was top of mine during this last five-hour leg, “Are we there yet?”

Months earlier we had pulled out of town skipping just ahead of the winter storms that one would expect for the beginning of an Ohio January. There was trepidation, however not so much for the weather, but more worry for how our lives would change with the new Trump administration? Two months in and all of us have seen how this has played out on a daily basis and sadly, we were right to feel the sense of doom that something awful was about to happen.

There’s not enough time for me to recount here all the havoc and misery that has been unleashed not only in our country by Trump and Co, but also amongst nearly every one of our previously friendly neighboring countries and our international partners and friends. A wrecking ball operating 24/7 and on steroids, could not have caused more destruction in two months, and they’re just beginning.

If you don’t know someone personally who has lost their job due to Trump and Musk’s wholesale firings, then soon you will, as the effect on the business community who are getting lambasted with these wholly unnecessary tariffs begin to bite. The stock market has become a pretty good indicator of just how confident companies are right now in this self-inflicted turmoil. A better indicator for me are the half dozen people I know personally who have lost their jobs or those who are waiting to be the next handed their “pink slip”.

Just at the time our labor market is being flooded with tens of thousands of newly unemployed folks, there are no jobs on offer due to all the turbulence and uncertainty. Then by pairing down your family’s budget to get through the tough times ahead, people encounter higher prices on all the staples one needs to rely upon to live. Talking about food that people rely upon, Trump has just canceled millions of dollars of funds ear-marked for foodbanks, and I ask, for whose benefit?

Let’s just be honest and admit where we are on this roadmap two months into this Trump 2.0 administration. Everyday there’s at least another tick in the box in the playbook of “How to become a Totalitarian State”. If you’re thinking I’m overstating my case, explain to me who is going to investigate Trump and his cabinet members and the Vice President when these players carelessly divulged our country’s highly classified military information and then lied about it? Who is going to enforce judicial edicts against this President when he lies and tells the public he never signed an executive order to remove Venezuelans from this country illegally, despite his signature on the order? Who is going to stop the Republican members of Congress from “de-funding” the federal courtrooms of judges they don’t like? Afterall, these Congressmen are just following Trump’s lead in his withholding millions of dollars of federal funds from unfavorable universities and federal institutions (most recently the Smithsonian) and of course, threatening executive orders against law firms that he doesn’t like. Again, my question, who is left to prevent this administration from being wholly above the law?

Are we there yet? When it looks and acts and smells like a constitutional crisis, maybe we have arrived? I take heart that each and everyday tens of thousands of Americans, right across this country, get out and protest in some of this season’s worst weather conditions. They’re protesting because of the pain they’ve experienced already. They protest for all that we have lost in only two short months. They protest in fear of what liberties will be removed tomorrow and the next day. What it boils down to is, people are protesting out of anger and an effusive amount of patriotism. Yet, as addressed recently in a New York Times’ Opinion Editorial, “Trump is behaving as if he had no opponents that matter. But he does – and their anger and energy is on the rise. For every institution in American civil society that capitulates to Trump rather than honors its stated ideals, there are many ordinary Americans who are ready to fight.”

The question remains. Despite the fierce blowback from the people, will it matter if those who currently wield unrestrained power continue to prove that they are indeed above the laws of this land?