Post 778 - July 4, 2025

Aung San Suu Kyi won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.

She had advocated for her people in Myanmar, forming a political party in the 1980s called the National League for Democracy, and serving as its General Secretary. In 1990, the NLD won 81% of the seats in Parliament, but the results were nullified by the military government, which refused to hand over power. They placed her under house arrest for fifteen of the next twenty-one years.

Her imprisonment became a worldwide symbol for peaceful resistance. Time magazine called her a “Child of Gandhi.” She was revered.

In 2012, with government reforms underway, the NLD won enough parliamentary seats that Aung San Suu Kyi, finally freed from house arrest, became the leader of the opposition. The government of Myanmar was still run by the military, but they allowed her, for a time, to remain as an MP and State Councilor.

In 2017, the Burmese treatment of the Rohingya people within Myanmar’s borders reached a crisis point. The Rohingya, who are Muslim, were increasingly being brutally persecuted by the ruling military junta. Hundreds of thousands of them fled to Bangladesh. The International Court of Justice sued Myanmar for genocide. The International Criminal Court began investigations into what they believed were crimes against humanity.

Aung San Suu Kyi began to be criticized for supporting the military generals who were perpetrating these atrocities rather than opposing them. In an interview, she described some of the generals in her cabinet as being “rather sweet.”

Throughout the crisis, she remained silent about what the government of Myanmar was inflicting upon its Muslim minority. The outspoken Laureate, now, in theory, a free person, kept her mouth shut while it happened. The world, which had placed her up on an impossibly high pedestal, turned against her. Some started demanding that the Nobel committee change its rules so that her prize could be revoked.

In response to her fall from grace, Aung San Suu Kyi said, “I don’t like to be referred to as an icon, because from my point of view, icons just sit there. I have always seen myself as a politician. What do they think I have been doing for the past 24 years?”

The President will sign his “Big Beautiful Bill” into law today from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office inside the White House.

The new legislation contains provisions for tax cuts that come to about $4.5 trillion. These cuts will primarily benefit the wealthy, allowing them to keep more of their money.

To help pay for this loss of revenue, social programs that mainly benefit the poor will be slashed. Nearly 71 million Americans depend upon Medicaid to pay for their health care. 17 million of those people will no longer have access to funding.

Forty million Americans currently can feed themselves only through subsidies from our Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Over the next ten years, 4.7 million of those folks will stop being fed.

$46 billion has been added to building the US-Mexico border wall.

$45 billion has been allotted to keep 100,000 migrants in detention centers.

There are provisions within the bill that will enable the government to hire an additional 10,000 ICE agents over the next five years to help ramp up the mass deportations.

President Biden’s tax breaks to incentivize clean energy projects put in place in his Inflation Reduction Act have been eradicated. The tax breaks consumers have had when they buy electric vehicles have been removed.

During the President’s first term in office, our federal debt rose by nearly $8 trillion. This new legislation will likely raise it by another #5 trillion. That will place our debt at 122% of our gross domestic product. The White House claims that the additional growth encouraged by the tax cuts will reduce the debt by $1.4 trillion, but most economists, the ones who have actually trained in their field, strongly disagree.

Yale University’s Budget Lab projects that those at the poorest end of the financial spectrum will see their incomes drop by 2.5%. Those on the upper end of that same spectrum will see theirs rise by 2.2%. Money will continue to flow up.

Every Democrat in Congress voted against the bill. Every Republican, save two, voted for it.

Most of the people who stand to lose the most are the very people who chose to represent themselves with the Republicans, who have just opted to make their lives more difficult. None of this is what most Americans want, and yet, this is what Americans voted for.

The Republicans who voted for this legislation did so knowing exactly how harmful it would be to the folks in their districts. They voted for it because their leader wanted them to. A leader, by the way, who, based on recent interviews, does not seem to know what’s in the bill. He keeps claiming that there are no cuts to Medicaid or SNAP within its provisions. It does not appear that he has read any of it.

Under the new rules, nobody on Medicaid will be able to receive any services from Planned Parenthood. Without that income, a third of all Planned Parenthood centers will likely close.

The Saving on a Value Education (SAVE) program, put in place under the Biden administration to help lower the cost of student loans, is gone. It is estimated that without it, college graduates with loans will end up paying an additional two thousand dollars a year in interest payments.

$30 billion has been allocated for a fund to help expand enforcement and deportations at the President’s discretion.

$100 million has been appropriated to the White House Office of Management and Budget under the leadership of Russell Vought. Vought, one of the authors of Project 2025, has used the office to halt funding to existing programs like high-speed internet research. They’ve stopped research funding to the National Institutes of Health. They are currently refusing to release $7 billion in funding that pays for after-school and summer programs for over a million students.

Startup companies will be able to claim $10 million in tax-free income for their investors. The estimates are that 75% of these breaks will benefit those who are already millionaires.

There is a 100% tax credit for those who donate to private schools, which, it is estimated, will cost us $51 billion a year. In contrast to those schools that attract mainly those with means, there is only $18 billion put aside for the poorest, most underfunded schools in the country.

Why would all these Republicans in office vote for legislation that, for the most part, is going to harm most of the people they represent? They’re politicians.

Career politicians play the long game. They balance what they think they need to do to maintain their power in office with what they think their constituents will be able to stand. It’s a job.

We look at them and judge them on a moral, human level. Few elected officials think that way. Even the most idealistic get into office and, once they are there, realize that they need to play the game to survive.

During World War II, there were always people who believed that they could do some good by working with the Nazis rather than against them. The Nazis needed those people to help keep their conquered populations in line. They would relent a bit on some things, making it seem as if the collaborators had done some “good.” At the end of the war, people shunned those who had worked with the Nazis, no matter how much good it appeared they had done, even hanging some of them.

The Republicans in the House and the Senate are balancing the needs of the people who elected them with the wants of the despot in charge. If either turns against them, they are sunk.

It will be interesting to see what comes of Elon Musk’s vow to fund opposition against anyone who voted for the bill. He can rot in hell as far as I am concerned, but if it makes life difficult for the collaborationists who’ve done this to us, then I’m all for it.

Derek Mitchell, who had served as the United States Ambassador to Myanmar, said of Aung San Suu Kyi, “She may not have changed. She may have been consistent, and we just didn't know the full complexity of who she is. We have to be mindful that we shouldn't endow people with some iconic image beyond which is human."

Politicians aren’t gods. They often aren’t even very good people. You, sadly, need to be a certain kind of narcissistic bully to get anything done. Even Mother Theresa was apparently hell on wheels. Politicians, however, are supposed to work for us and represent our interests. That is why we choose them.

When they stop helping us, we can un-choose them, too. That’s what today is all about. That’s why on this July 4th, despite the passage of this reprehensible bill, we should all be celebrating.

Have a read of the beginning of our Declaration of Independence:

“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

We did it once, we can do it again. The people who supported this Big Reprehensible Bill are just politicians. We put them into office, and we can take them down again.

Don’t give up hope.

Happy July 4^th, everyone.