Post 712 - February 1, 2025

A billion despicable things are unfolding at the same time all across the country. They’re all coming from Washington, though, designed to distract, alarm, and divide us.

You need only look at each of our social media posts to see that we are all up in arms about something, but none of us are up in arms about the same thing. It’s as if somebody is spraying bullets into a crowd using a Browning M2HB and each of us is focused on helping a particular victim rather than banding together to try and take out the shooter.

For the last few days ICE agents have been conducting raids throughout New York City. Their goal has been to target dangerous undocumented immigrants. Somewhere between thirty and forty people were arrested during the first day. They are hoping to find at least seventy-five people a day.

The undocumented people the Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers are concentrating on have supposedly all been involved in serious criminal activity. The officers are reportedly using lists of suspects put together by the Department of Homeland Security.

On my feed, friends have posted that people were being rounded up on the 6 train which runs along the East Side of Manhattan.

This is all designed to be a photo opportunity as much as it is anything else. New York is considered to be the prime Sanctuary City. We are firmly in the Republican’s sights. Reporters and television crews were invited to accompany the agents on their raids. Kristi Noem who was just confirmed as the head of Homeland Security showed up to cheer on the agents then put on body armor and got her photo taken as a man from Venezuela was apprehended.

As a former ICE director under Obama said, “You’re going to exhaust these (violent criminal) targets pretty quickly. It’ll be interesting to see who is targeted next.”

If the people who are being deported are, indeed, violent criminals, then by all means, deport them. The fear, of course, is that innocent people are going to be swept up in the operations. Like drift-net fishing, the by-product catch may be ordinary people who are making positive contributions to our society.

The United States travelers’ advisory website for LGBTQ people going abroad has now been amended to just include LGB folks. Project 2025 and the Republicans are doing everything in their power to erase the rights of Trans and non-gender-conforming citizens. They want to pretend that they don’t exist.

Yesterday, all Federal workers were instructed to remove their pronouns from their email signatures by 5:00 pm. Veterans Affairs staff were told, “The use of GENDER is not allowed on any form. We can only use SEX, and there should be only 2 options — MALE and FEMALE.” At the Environmental Protection Agency, all gender-neutral restrooms were closed.

All this does is put Trans and non-binary people at risk. Their health care, legal status, and basic liberties are now all seriously in question.

Yesterday, Federal Agencies scrambled to halt any activities or events related to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, Juneteenth, Women’s History Month, LGBTQ Pride Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Hispanic American celebrations and other non-White and non-hetero normative celebrations. They seem to be barring any celebrations not focused on White men.

“The Department of State is reviewing all agency programs, contracts, and grants that promote or inculcate gender ideology, and we are removing outward-facing media that does the same,” said a newly appointed Under Secretary.

The Republicans would not have won this past election without the support of Black and Hispanic men. They also would not have won without the votes of White Midwestern women. These actions were effectively chosen by some of the very people who will now begin to suffer from them.

What else is going on?

Under pressure from Elon Musk, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration resigned last month. Michael Whitaker had imposed a heavy fine on Musk’s companies for not following safety guidelines relating to two of their Space X launches. Musk wanted him out in retaliation. Musk got it. Whitaker’s gone.

A few days ago, an American Airlines passenger jet collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter above the Reagan International Airport in Washington D.C. killing everyone aboard both aircraft. Yesterday a small medical plane carrying a sick girl and her mother and four other people crashed into a Northeastern Philadelphia neighborhood. It still has not been reliably confirmed whether there were any survivors.

With nobody at the helm of the FAA, it fell to the President to respond to the tragedies. Of the crash in Washington, D.C., our fearless leader blamed DEI hires and President Biden for causing it. Rather than offering his sympathies to the victims and their families he instead used the moment to try and score political points off the left.

A whole cadre of young figure skaters and their parents and coaches went down on that flight.

While all this has been unfolding, we are beginning to see journalists and news anchors being forced out of their positions in legacy media.

Jim Acosta, a veteran news anchor from CNN found himself pushed out of his evening timeslot into the little-viewed midnight slot. Rather than be relegated to the boondocks, Acosta resigned.

He was a vocal critic of the President during his first term and throughout the last election.

The President instigated a lawsuit against CBS Television claiming that during the election they unfairly edited an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. He’s suing them for ten billion dollars. Rather than fight it, Paramount Global, the owners of CBS, are reportedly in negotiations to settle with him.

The President also sued Meta for barring him from Facebook after his January 6^th insurrection. Mark Zuckerberg, again, instead of fighting it, is going to settle with the President by paying him twenty-five million dollars.

One by one, legacy media are lining up, or so it seems, to kiss our new President’s ring and swear an oath of fealty. The settling of these lawsuits feels very much like bribes.

Then there are the tariffs. The White House announced that starting today, there will be a 25% duty imposed on all goods from Canada and Mexico as well as a 10% duty on everything from China.

It’s been pointed out by several writers and journalists that this action is fully in line with how the man has done business in the past. He believes that the United States has these countries over a barrel and can get them to do anything he likes. In truth, all this will do is encourage these exporters to find other markets. Russia would be happy to receive their exports. As would China.

Not only will these tariffs force us all to pay significantly more for everything from gas to produce, but should these imports begin to dwindle, we will begin to see shortages. The President’s business acumen is extremely limited. He might be able to force through a purely economic deal, but he clearly doesn’t have a clue how to navigate through political nuance.

Sorry that this is such a relentlessly bleak post, but I think it’s important for us all to be aware of what’s happening. Rather than ignoring these actions we must acknowledge them and take careful note.

Getting into fights with each other about which of these news stories is worse, or which one will cause more damage is nonsensical. They are all bad. By all means, post about the things that affect you and your loved ones the most, but not at the expense of belittling what else is unfolding in comparison.

Fighting among ourselves over gradations of injustice is a fool’s game. All these Presidential Orders feed into the President’s thirst for power. They circumvent the Senate and Congress, leaving our fearless leader atop the throne wielding control over everything. Let’s not help this happen by splintering the opposition.

Jim Acosta now has a Substack platform. Dan Rather has been writing from Substack for years. The best of our journalists are still writing. They are publishing from places where their content isn’t being controlled by an amorphous corporate entity that is only interested in protecting and expanding itself, no matter what the cost to our society.

We need to follow them away from our legacy media.

I didn’t plan to write about this today. I’m not sure I planned to write about anything today. We had a concert last night and another one tomorrow, so this morning I was just going to relax. It started to feel, though, that these different events were coming at me so quickly and so on top of each other that I had to just put them down on paper so I could keep track.

Before I forgot them all in what I am sure will be a brand-new wave of injustice and idiocy heading our way, I just wanted to make a list. I want to witness what is unfolding and say that I see it. This all isn’t just slipping past me.

As I walk today, I am sure that I will remember some other heinous thing the Republicans have done that I should have included. Watching them all cave in under the President’s thimb is as dispiriting to watch as anything I can remember in my lifetime. Of all the people to bend the knee to.

Notice everything and never forget. This is all happening, it isn’t just an awful episode of a television series. That doesn’t mean, however, that we should all fall apart at the seams. Just the opposite.

Instead of fighting with friends and allies on social media, maybe offer them support. I don’t know what it is like to be Black and non-binary these days, but I have friends who certainly do. I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman right about now, but I certainly have people in my life who are living it. I can’t pretend to understand what it must be like facing all of this as anyone other than an older White gay man living on the Upper West Side of New York City.

What I am gives me some astonishing and unfair advantages, but it doesn’t protect me from everything. Nor should what I might have ever cut me off from empathy and compassion. Who we are should never do that.

We each live in our own realities, but we all live them together.

Let’s stick together as best we can while this Administration does everything in its power to drive us apart. Maybe post a heart or two rather than a rant. It costs the same and is worth so much more.