One Year Down, Three to Go
It’s been one year since President Trump was sworn in for his second term, and to quote the ghost of King Hamlet, “What a falling off was there.”
Like many of my colleagues in political science and public health, I am weary. I am livid. I am fearful, especially for those more vulnerable than I. And, let’s face it, the pace of my becoming gray-haired has accelerated appreciably.
My Michigan coauthors and I analyzed in Lancet Regional Health-Americas the first 100 days of institutional arson toward American public health, so I will not repeat that here (though to contextualize the scale of what transpired, our first draft clocked in at over 11,000 words). And a lot of shit has gone down since then – perhaps most notably in health care, the ax to the American welfare state through the not-so-beautiful bill and the upending of our childhood vaccine schedule, to our detriment (thanks, Bill Cassidy).
And that doesn’t even get into the daily assault on American democracy, engaging in takeovers of American cities to terrorize anyone who deigns to speak another language or look a little different – or, hell, is just exercising the First Amendment right to protest. You know, like a “free speech absolutist” might.
And even that doesn’t get into the daily geopolitical fuckery that will take incalculable time to repair with our allies – or as they might call themselves at this point, our former allies.
There’s a lot of fury to go around. And we are the baddies.
(Forgive me while I take a minute to weep at my much earlier thoughts that George W. Bush was the worst thing that could happen to America. But no, I’m not doing revisionism on those atrocities.)
To be honest, I’m not even sure that my greatest rage is toward the occupant of the White House, because I only ever expected him to insult, infuriate, and denigrate everything that our nation stands for.
I am not an optimist by nature. I fancy myself more of a realist than a cynic, though the last several years has certainly been a delicate dance between the two. I assumed that Trump would take every ounce of power and then some and run with it. But after years of hearing (arguably bullshit arguments) about “constitutional conservatives,” I hoped that even if congressional Republicans would gleefully rejoice in the demise of the American welfare state that they revile despite their constituents benefiting from it, at least a sufficient number of them might take issue with the lawless takeovers of American cities, needless trade wars that will upend the American economy (and is already showing troubling signs), the insane efforts to seize land out of petulance over not winning a Nobel (someone needs a reminder about the best things in life being earned), the hollowing out of critical agencies that go well beyond Republican goals to shrink government, and the daily authoritarian chaos including the suggestion that we should even not have midterm elections. Instead of accountability — you know, Congress’s Article I responsibility — America has gotten enabling and even empowerment from people placating this president with servile obsequiousness beneath the dignity even of a branch that many Americans look upon with the disdain they do of cockraoches.
And I am horrified by the extent to which all of this has been with the blessing of Chief Justice John Roberts, who not only gutted a key portion of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), but authored the immunity decision of Trump v. United States (2024). Roberts will be remembered with all the fondness of Taney, and he will have earned every ounce of that revile (no, salvaging most of the Affordable Care Act does not offset any of that).
I do not have high hopes for Year Two. I am hoping that this November, there will be accountability, though that will demand that Democratic leadership meet this moment in a way that – for reasons that elude me – Senator Schumer seems fully resistant to doing. Public opinion has shifted markedly against this Administration, and it is only continuing to get more chaotic as Trump becomes increasingly unhinged, without grownups left in the room to temper his worst impulses.
It’s going to be a rocky, infuriating, galling ride, and I am in this fight. I hope you are too. In the meantime, a playlist that may resonate on this January 20 or on “one of those days,” which these days feels like every day.
Back to work…
Playlist for Today (or When the Moment Strikes)
Positively 4th Street (Bob Dylan)
Gimme Some Truth (John Lennon)
Lawyers, Guns, and Money (Warren Zevon)
Million Dollar Loan (Death Cab for Cutie)
Troubled Times (Green Day)
Gaslighter (The Chicks)
Fortunate Son (Credence Clearwater Revival)
Crippled Inside (John Lennon)
Idiot Wind (Bob Dylan)
Masters of War (Eddie Vedder cover of Bob Dylan)
FDT (YG, Nipsey Hussle)
American Land (Bruce Springsteen)
This Land Is Your Land (Woody Guthrie)