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Tag: Trump

From Substack: This Will Hold

Evil on Steroids

To be clear, when we say “Trump,” understand we’re talking about the Heritage Foundation’s agenda. Trump and his tigers, elephants, and giraffes are not the ones steering this country, although it’s evident he’s enjoying the cruelty. The infrastructure behind him—ideological, financial, and operational—is what’s actually in control.

Elon Musk and the DOGE boys served as the slash-and-burn team, generating the chaos and distraction required for the early stages of Project 2025 to move forward. Trump is simply the vehicle the Heritage Foundation used to gain power.

Do they really intend to deport all brown immigrants, including birthright citizens? They’re certainly trying; the Supreme Court has the case on its docket. And if they succeed, who will work the agricultural jobs? Well, what happens when millions are unemployed, hungry, and sick? Crime rates increase.

So why the new prisons and camps? To house the “new criminals.” And what happens to those criminals? They become “free labor” in the fields.

The Heritage Foundation and the tech bros are building their own fiefdom. Sound far-fetched? More than 40 million Americans are about to lose their SNAP benefits. 13.8 million have already been laid off under Trump’s administration. The uninsured population could climb to 31 million or more by 2026. And when enhanced ACA subsidies expire on December 31, 2025, premiums are projected to increase 114% for 22 million Americans.

Now add the ridiculous tariffs designed to skyrocket the cost of living, along with every other heinous policy meant to push the American people to the brink of despair.

How will they control all these people? With the “law enforcement” they’ve created to report to the Executive Branch, of course.

The ICE Budget for Weaponry

Puppy-killer Kristi Noem received two luxury jets valued at $200 million, and ICE is flush with cash like a hog at the trough with a $170 billion budget. It’s as if torment and cruelty are now line items in America’s priorities.

In 2019 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spent just $5.7 million on the “small arms” category through October 18; during Trump’s first administration the government averaged about $8.4 million per year. In 2025, ICE has increased that weapons spending by 600 percent. In the last nine months alone, they have spent $71,515,762 on purchases listed as “small arms, ordnance, and ordnance accessories manufacturing.”

Think about that: the MAGA Big Budget Bill made ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency in the nation’s history, with a budget larger than most of the world’s militaries and a 600 percent increase in weapons spending.

This is a domestic enforcement agency—not going to war “over there,” but here: in our streets, against our people.

Blonde and Blue Jesus Forgives Them

I listen to pundits ask, “Why? Why would Republicans give up all their power? Aren’t they concerned about legacy? Why have they abdicated all authority to this Epstein-adjacent convicted felon?”

In short: The GOP has spent more than forty years twisting, remolding, and regurgitating Christian nationalist rhetoric until this moment feels like their long-awaited “crusade.” In their worldview, all one has to do is believe that a white Jesus was the Son of God—and their eternal elevator will come equipped with an “up” button.

Yes, Jesus is their get-out-of-Hell-free card—because in their version of Christianity even Hitler is forgiven. And what is “legacy” when the people destroying history are the ones holding the pen—what does it even mean to be on “the right side” of it?

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, 1984

The Republican Party of fiscal responsibility and rule of law is dead. In its place stands a movement that made a deal with the devil: fall in line behind Trump and his whims, or be destroyed in a primary. And as we’ve seen over the past year with Elon Musk, the DOGE boys, and the election data, it’s no longer just the voters deciding who wins—at least not in elections large enough to cross a certain vote-count threshold.

Their recreational depravity is evil on steroids, and I feel it every time I scroll the news or check on a friend who’s barely hanging on. You probably feel it too. Or you’re trying not to. We watch as Trump’s sycophants hack away at the agencies that keep us alive, leaving them bleeding and gasping for air.

This is how they break the spirit of the American people.

To act as if this is just “Trump being Trump” is to underestimate their underlying agenda.

Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something? Trump to former SECDEF Mark Esper in 2020.

This quote is disturbing, but it’s 2025 and we’re nowhere near the civil unrest of the 2020 Floyd protests—unless they’re able to create it.

The Manufactured Flashpoint

I think about the families in North Carolina—maybe you do too. One storm. One night. And suddenly they’re living under a tarp in the hills, shivering, staring at the mud where their home used to be. They waited for FEMA. They prayed for FEMA. And then came the denial. Trump said no. Just… no. No aid. No lifeline. No reason. Try telling a child huddled beside you that the government of the richest nation on earth just shrugged. DESPAIR.

Or the mother who did everything right—every well-check, every vaccine—until the lies and poison from RFK Jr. made her second-guess what she once trusted. Now she sits beside a hospital bed, watching her child fight a disease we had already beaten. She carries the guilt. Her child carries the consequences. HOPELESSNESS.

Then there are the farmers who voted for Trump with their full chest, now watching as the slashing of USAID and the illogical punitive tariffs decimate their businesses. Meanwhile, Trump handed Argentina a $40 billion bailout, cut a deal to purchase their beef, and in return Argentina struck new agreements to sell soybeans to countries that once bought from U.S. suppliers. All as JD Vance and his AcreTrader investors scour the country for farms on life support, ready to swoop in and rob hardworking American families of what they spent generations building. ANGUISH.

And then there’s the veteran I can’t stop picturing—perhaps because I am one, and this visual occupies space in my brain and heart that I can’t turn off. It’s reality for too many. Trump’s tariffs were supposed to help the economy and the American people; that’s what they were told. Instead, prices exploded. Jobs disappeared. The VA slashed support. Some were hit twice, never realizing that “eliminating DEI” also meant eliminating programs that kept women in the workforce. Now they stare at stacks of bills no one with PTSD should ever have to face. They’re a month away from losing their home, and SNAP benefits are days away from a hold-status until the government reopens.

An unnecessary government shutdown that could have been avoided if Speaker Johnson would just release the Epstein files. They’re confused and crushed. Fox is on in the background, reporting that Trump is building a $300 million ballroom. For who? The billionaires? The oligarchs? RAGE.

Bannon’s Firehose of Maximum Outrage

And now we have the beginnings of the uprising that Putin, Trump, Steve Bannon, the weak-ass tech bros with their pre-built bunkers, and the Project 2025 Nazis have been engineering—by slashing and burning the people’s lifelines.

This is the architecture of despair:

He tore down the fucking White House—our White House.

It’s the methodical destruction of our sacred institutions and the places we turn when we are scared, sick, or desperate. It is the breaking of the American spine by men drunk on unearned power, men who enjoy watching people crawl.

And that is why $170 billion to ICE matters. Because once you break people, you need an army to control the pieces. An army they plan to have in place by the spring, before the midterms.

Important Message from Professor Emeritus Dr. James Greenberg

Please read this insightful and informational warning about the Rule of Law and our Justice system, from legal Professor Emeritus, Dr. James Greenberg.
Justice in America is breaking. Not in its statutes or codes, which still sit on the books, but in the trust that makes them real. Prosecutors are supposed to pursue evidence, not enemies; courts should weigh facts, not loyalties.

LIKE RUSSIA

I used to teach a comparative course in law and development, and the lesson was always the same: once that trust erodes, law becomes theater. That is where we are headed.
The indictment of James Comey, pursued at Donald Trump’s urging, is more than a dispute between two men. It is a battle over whether the American judiciary will remain a neutral arbiter or become an instrument of retribution. Trump wants to transform the Department of Justice from an independent institution into an extension of his will. Comey, who refused to pledge personal loyalty and later confirmed Trump’s pressure to halt the Russia investigation, has become both symbol and target. The revival of charges—earlier dismissed for lack of grounds—cannot be understood outside this political frame.

LEGAL SYSTEM TRUST

In anthropology, the health of a legal system is not measured by its statutes but by the cultural trust that sustains them. That trust is fragile. In the United States it rests on two thin pillars: prosecutorial independence and judicial restraint. Both have been chipped away. When a president demands prosecution of an opponent, classification no longer guarantees fairness. A charge like “false statement” is drained of its meaning and poured into another mold: disloyalty. At that point, the form of justice may still stand, but the substance has gone.
Trump’s strategy is blunt. He shouts his demands in capital letters—“JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”—as if volume were verdict. In that gesture, accusation and conviction collapse into each other. Common law depends on the wide space between them, the courtroom itself. That space vanishes when the indictment becomes the sentence and trial becomes the spectacle. Whatever the outcome, the charge itself is punishment—and that is the point.

COMEY CASE

Comey’s case is less about old disputes than about rewriting the script of Trump’s presidency. By going after a former FBI director, he signals that defiance itself is criminal. For anyone who studies authoritarian systems, this is a familiar maneuver: law is turned from a shield for citizens into a weapon against them. Trials become ritual performances, staged to demonstrate loyalty and vengeance. The target is not only the accused but everyone watching. (In 2 OLLE classes at the University of  Texas in Austin last year this was underscored.)

POLITICAL ECOLOGY

Political ecology offers another lens. Systems are interconnected; stress in one part spreads through the rest. Undermine prosecutorial independence, and the damage doesn’t stop there. It weakens protections for voting rights, environmental rules, labor standards—anything that depends on fair enforcement. Once courts become partisan stages, the whole edifice of governance tilts. Legal categories drift from neutral tools into political weapons. While the system may still use the same words, their meaning is altered.

TRUMP ACCELERATES DECAY

Comparative perspective makes the drift clear. In civil law systems, codification can slow political abuse; in common law systems like ours, reliance on precedent and discretion can adapt, but also bend. Everything depends on norms: restraint, good faith, and independence. Precedent is more than procedure; it is the memory of the system. When Trump revives long-dismissed charges, he severs that chain of memory. Courts stop functioning as repositories of experience. Once that memory is broken, decay accelerates.

ASSAULT ON THE JUDICIARY

Trump’s assault on the judiciary has been steady, cumulative. He has called judges “so-called,” branded rulings as partisan, and accused prosecutors of corruption. Each step chips away at legitimacy. The Comey indictment is another blow: a message that courts and prosecutors are simply tools of politics. Delegitimize the referee, and only loyalty counts; truth dissolves into performance.
The danger is not limited to Comey or to Trump’s direct critics. Once justice shifts from evidence to allegiance, no one is safe. Friends today can be enemies tomorrow. Categories like “traitor” or “enemy” float free from legal definition, ready to be pinned on whoever falls from favor. Anthropologists call this symbolic inversion: rituals meant to guarantee order are turned upside down and used to enforce domination. (*Some interesting reading on this “report your neighbor” stuff in a documentary about the East Berlin police force.)
For ordinary citizens the erosion can be hard to see. Life goes on. Judges still wear robes, hearings still convene. Yet symbols matter. Once the courtroom becomes a theater of power, the public’s ability to tell the difference between real adjudication and political stagecraft fades. Trust—already worn thin—begins to collapse. And fear does the rest. When prosecutors hesitate, when judges weigh not only law but personal risk, when citizens decide silence is safer, the system disciplines itself. Fear spreads like contamination through an ecosystem.

McCARTHY ERA

We have seen this before: the McCarthy hearings, Nixon’s enemies list, the detentions after 9/11. Each twisted law to partisan ends. What makes the present moment different is the breadth and the brazenness. Trump is not content to exploit the judiciary; he wants to redefine it in his image. That is why the Comey indictment matters. It is not a minor skirmish. It is a marker of systemic change.
Anthropology reminds us that law is never only technical. It is always cultural: a mirror of trust and expectation. When those expectations tilt toward vengeance, the entire system tilts with them. Political ecology adds the warning: stressed systems reach tipping points. Just as an ecosystem pushed too far may fail suddenly, a judiciary stripped of trust may not recover. Rules can be rewritten, but trust—once gone—takes generations.
The indictment of Comey is not just about one man or one office. It marks how far the judiciary has been dragged into the theater of loyalty. Trump’s attack on the courts is an attack on the very trust that sustains democracy. Whether that trust endures may decide if democracy itself does.

Today’s Thought of the Day from the Letters to the Editor in Austin, TX

From Renee Potenza (of Austin, TX)

“Get Off the Trump Train and Admit Your Mistake”

To those friends and family members who voted for Donald J. Trump:

Perhaps you are a life-long Republican.  Maybe you have deeply held beliefs about those values for which the Republican Party used to stand. Maybe you got on the Trump train early on, and your enthusiasm in being part of a popular group carried you along.

I ask you now:  Please get off the Trump train. He’s not worthy of your trust.

Disengage your identity as a follower of the Donald, and think critically, questioning everything.  Utter those three little words, which are the hallmarks of honest, healthy communication:  “I was wrong.”

(A Letter to the Editor from the Austin American-Statesman of Wednesday, January 20th, 2021.)

It’s Been A Rough Four Years

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