Visionairies, and Beeple

I didn't post something for Earth Day 2025 in April. I keep a list of topics that I intend to address, and fully intended to do an environmental entry on or around April 22, but I kept putting it off to comment on other topics.

I am glad, as I was able to get caught up on my reading, specifically the April edition of National Geographic, and the April-May edition of the Smithsonian Magazine, both which presented me with input and revised reasons to do a post with the label Environment.

And, of course, just last week was the birthday of Rachel Carson, famed environmentalist and author who was born on May 27, 1907 and whom some consider one of the original advocates for the environment.

First, Beeple.

If you haven't heard the term before, fret not. While I was not totally surprised by its use in the Smithsonian article called Born To Bee Wild, I had never seen it used so frequently, had never realized that so many people were proud to describe themselves as such.

In essence, the article details a few of these beeple, as they, generally anonymously, go about their lives studying and advocating for bees. Some do so within the nature of their occupation, perhaps as an employee of a state or federal agency involved in some type of environment related oversight or protection. 

But many consider their time spent researching and studying bees, whether in apiaries or in the wild as time spent on a hobby, or perhaps avocation might better explain it, as the best time of their lives.

What was especially inspiring is that these beeple, while recognizing the fact that bee colonies are failing at an alarming rate, were far more upbeat than I would have expected. 

Perhaps that is the beauty of getting involved in a topic that one feels strongly about. Doing something about a perceived problem results in meeting and working with people who share your concern but also have a plan to address it. Rather than the hopelessness that many feel about the overall climate catastrophe that seems to be steaming headlong towards us, they are tackling a part of the overall issue, if even only one aspect of the problem. 

The work to understand the plight of the bumblebee, so to speak, the process of developing a plan to counter the declines in bee populations, and then engaging, with others, in an attempt to at least lessen the fallout of our "dominion" over nature philosophy, provides a sort of communal gratification. 

The phrase "actions speak louder than words" are never so on mark when it is so easy to complain and be depressed at our seemingly gratuitous assault on the natural world. 

Getting involved may not immediately stem the tide, but it allows beeple to sleep just a little better at night knowing there are doing what they can.

Speaking of which, the April edition of the National Geographic identified 33 people who are striving to make the world a better place, most of whom I had not heard of before reading the magazine.

As is true with the April-May edition of the Smithsonian, it is far better for you to read the articles than for me to give you a superficial summary.

Suffice to say, I was thoroughly impressed by, in no particular order, the founder of the outdoor clothing company Patagonia, a hugely successful actress who uses her platform to address mental illness, the founder of a well known yogurt company, an actor who uses his platform to advocate for economic opportunity to assist those born in poorer environs to protect the environment while gaining economic independence, an entrepreneur whose company inspires sustainability and ethics in the spice trade, a couple whose building enterprise is finding a novel use for plastic waste, and a woman whose app addresses food waste by linking consumers looking for a good deal with food retailers who throw out unused food.

Again, people who are not satisfied with merely complaining about our shared global problems, but who are doing something to address them, one issue at a time.

And, while a number of them have attained success in their lives first, like most beeple, there are a number of them who fly under the radar in their efforts to make the world a better place.

Make the world a better place.

Such a simple phrase. I have often posited that if it is that simple, heaven for those who are successful in that endeavor, if even only for those they encounter during their life's path, hell for those who choose me first in all their dealings, I wonder what percentage would be allowed entry through the pearly gates.

And, in contemplating such a possibility, how difficult it will be for the most successful people, the most influential people, those who effect the biggest populations, to gain entry to everlasting life.

Is it possible that Jesus's dual quotes, "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" and "blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth", were referring to just such an eventuality?

Perhaps in attaining great wealth or great renown, one burns through too many chits to be able to make them up through good works afterwards. That in the long run, the world is not a better place despite using ones riches after the fact to improve others lives. 

And conversely, that it is much easier for the everyday person to make the world a better place for those in their much smaller circle of influence. A moral not unlike the yearly lesson we are taught at the holidays through "It's a Wonderful Life".

In the meantime, I encourage my readers to engage with magazines such as National Geographic and the Smithsonian, publications which present our shared global challenges, but which also describe ways to address those issues, and the people, beeple or not, who do their best to provide answers and solutions. 

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I have posted using the topic Environment many times to date. Here are links to the last four of those posts.

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2024/05/national-parks-conservation-and.html

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-monarch-butterfly-and-selflessness.html

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2023/12/countering-rising-co2-levels.html

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2023/11/natures-beauty-and-longevity.html 

 

 

The Atlantic and Anne Applebaum

After the SignalGate controversy broke, followed by an attack on the editor from the Atlantic magazine who was mistakenly added to the chat, I decided to subscribe to that organization for both daily news and opinion articles, and its monthly magazine.

Since then, I have been happily exposed to multiple, interesting articles, and writers with whom I was unfamiliar.

In particular, in the May edition of the magazine, I have read essays, in addition to a few concerning politics, about music, religion, Ringo Starr, how porn has changed America, Dwayne Wade and the AI company Nvidia. Can you say eclectic?

Each were extremely well written and informative. I was especially effected by the Ringo Starr article. To be honest, I was never a huge Beatles fan, only gaining an appreciation for the range and depth of their music during my newspaper delivering days when I listened to the multiple hour Breakfast with The Beatles which aired on the radio on Sunday mornings.

Ringo is 84 years old now, still performing, still flashing a peace sign as he repeats his idiosyncratic phrase, Peace and Love. I read the last quarter of the article fighting through wet eyes. 

Why was I teary eyed?

Perhaps because Ringo, for all his fame, retains a significant part of the boy who grew up in difficult circumstances, someone who acknowledges that luck blew against him as a child, then was at his back for much of his adulthood. 

Perhaps because Ringo was always considered the least talented of the Fab Four, but is considered by some, to have inspired the most people through his positive outlook, persistence in making music as he feels it, and connection with every day people.

Or perhaps simply because in the near future, Ringo will be gone from this world, and we will be the poorer for the loss of someone for whom Peace and Love was not just a fad.

In addition to all that, I was introduced to the writings of Anne Applebaum.

They say a silver lining can be found in all situations, no matter how horrible. For me, discovering Anne Applebaum as a writer is the silver lining in the SignalGate scandal.

So far, in addition to the various articles of hers that I have read in the Atlantic, I have read two of her books, Twilight of Democracy and Autocracy, Inc.  

Applebaum has been around for quite a while, describing her life at the turn of the 21st century in her books, as well as the people with whom she associated, and her understanding of the conservative, pro-democracy thinking that she feels is being betrayed by the current president.

It's funny how so many people who align with the MAGA movement, dismiss conservatives like Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, David Frum, among others, who they view as disloyal to Trump, the GOP, and the conservative philosophy, completely missing the point that these people believe they are still conservative, just not aligned with Trump.

The two books I read by Applebaum do not paint a pretty picture of a world she believes has turned away from democracy, towards authoritarianism. And her extreme disappointment that she sees a similar turn in America today.

Her detailed knowledge and description of Hungary and how its authoritarian leader, Victor Orban, slowly turned a democratic nation to one in which he now controls the legislature, the courts, and who succeeds economically (and who doesn't), is revealing in light of the steps that Trump has taken since his inauguration.

What is clear to Applebaum, is that governments like the ones led by Orban, Putin, and their ilk, have never benefited the general populace. It is only through fealty to leaders such as they, that businesses prosper or not, and that freedoms are granted, or lost.

If nothing else, it is her prime lesson, for those that listen. Compliance and complacency might direct the dictator's wrath to another direction, temporarily, but leaders like that are never satisfied. Once the easy targets are defeated, the marginalized communities, immigrants, those that live, love, worship differently, new victims need to be found to maintain power, to reinforce the message of fear and submission.

So, while institutions like Harvard are resisting, so far, other universities, law firms, legislators, politicians, are bending the knee. Sadly, some are already discovering that once on your knees, there is no chance to stand again.

The good news is that the judicial branch is holding, so far. The new administration's multiple illegal executive orders and policies, are mostly being delayed. But justice can move awfully slow in a democracy. 

Our magnificent tradition of due process can play out in an excruciatingly protracted manner when it comes to determining the extent of executive power. It is a gambit that Trump and his allies depend on, all the while denying the same due process to people they have deemed enemies of the state. 

Sadly, for now, many Americans support some of these violations of our Constitution with the short sighted reasoning that those exemptions will only be applied to the "others". The fact that American citizens, even children, have already been deported because of their association with those "others", hasn't penetrated enough of the electorate for them to realize that anyone can be linked to an undesirable when absolute power is granted to one person, or one mindset.    

In the past, I have mentioned that when I first discovered the magazine Lapham's Quarterly, I was surprised and excited; surprised that I had never heard of such a wonderful literary magazine, and excited that I would now be able to read such an extraordinary publication. 

Sadly, one of the many victims of the pandemic, the magazine stopped publication a few years ago, and even more unfortunate, the impetus behind Lapham's, Harold Lapham, passed away last June. While there are plans to reactivate the magazine, in the meantime, I am very content with the newest addition to my monthly reading list, The Atlantic. 

I have written before under the topic of Media, as this post has been labelled. Here are links to four of those posts.

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2012/07/newsoom-and-more-congressional-votes.html

 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2016/02/truth-whole-half-or-none-at-all.html

 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2017/03/news-facts-and-opinions.html

 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2023/04/would-mr-rodgers-neighborhood-be-too.html

 

The Anti-Government Crowd revisited

I have mentioned in previous posts, that I am in the process of updating all of my posts with a larger font. My process is fairly simple. Whenever I log into my blog, I check the posts that have been "hit" in the last seven days, and I open them if they were created before January 2021, which was when I began creating my posts with the larger font.

Since I began this blog in March of 2010, I clearly have much work ahead of me. But I am enjoying the process, as I read the posts before I update them to the larger font. It is a revealing process, and one which I recently commented upon, as I now realize that the tone of my posts has become much less optimistic. 

Today, I encountered a post from June, 2012 called the Anti-Government Crowd. Here is a link to that post.

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2012/06/anti-government-crowd.html 

For anyone who might ask, Joe, our history is filled with people who predicted doomsday scenarios, the vast majority of whom were wrong, what makes you think this time is any different, I would respond with two points.

First, certainly I acknowledge that prognosticating catastrophe is practically a hobby of social commentators. Every major change whether it be the invention of the radio or the internet, the advances of instant hand held communication devices or machines with massive computational abilities, or even the granting of suffrage for women and minorities, inevitably creates both predictions of doom and a backlash to return to "the good old days." 

Combine that with the fact that, like our western societies as a whole, I am aging. Moving inexorably to my final days. If nothing else is true, we often project our deepest fears onto the issues that surround us. The boomer generation, of which I am part, is faced with the dual challenges of relinquishing control of the country, the world, while wishing that the promise of our youth, our ideals, had been better realized.

Second, I am sure that there were people in Germany and Italy who saw Hitler and Mussolini for who they were, who resisted the allure of nationalism, isolationism, tribalism, and every other ism that the authoritarian uses to gain power. Just as I know there were Americans who saw McCarthy as the real threat to democracy, not his overblown obsession with Communism.

In other words, there have been times when the worst was predicted, and that prognosis was on the mark.

So, while I prefer that in some future post I will be able to admit that I was wrong about our slide away from democracy, I truly believe that there are some dark times ahead.

In my original Anti-Government Crowd post, I quote a conservative of the time, David Frum, who was a well known advocate for conservative thought during the Reagan and Bush 1 years. He certainly promoted the reduction of the size of the government, although, as I said in that 2018 post, the actual number of federal workers had remained static since Reagan's presidency, only growing with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which emanated from the horrors of 9/11.

Frum, however, did not support a chainsaw approach to this effort. He acknowledged the need for our government to intervene when the business community abused consumers, when the environment was at risk from polluters, when disasters required a national response to both alleviate immediate pain and suffering, as well as prevent future destruction.

Now, seven years later, we see that Trump, Musk and his billionaire allies are bringing to fruition the years of propaganda that has laid the foundation for wrecking the federal workforce. 

They do not want to reform government, make it more efficient, root out waste. They want to eliminate it. Or to put it more directly, eliminate the structures that protect consumers, the sick, the elderly, the environment, anything that impedes their desire to create a new "gilded" age, as Trump often describes.

Because in the end, a government will still exist. But not a government that works for we, the people. But it will certainly work for people like Trump and Musk.

You only have to look at Russia and Hungary to see how altering the form of a government towards one which provides unchecked power to a particular party or person, does little to help the citizens of that country. 

It's almost comical when certain far right news outlets or commentators praise Putin and Orban. You don't see people flocking to immigrate to those countries. And how about North Korea, whose leader Trump has called a strong leader. Anyone you know talking about moving there? 

A strong leader lifts up the people of his country. North Korea ranks towards the bottom of virtually every category that matters in terms of quality of life. Kim Jung Un is far from a strong leader if your definition of strong is leading a country to prosperity. Same for Putin and Orban.

But that is the rub. Trump bases his definition of strong leader as someone who inspires fear among his citizens. Someone who is saluted as soldiers in tanks parade past him on his birthday. Someone who says Jump, and expects everyone to say How High.

This is the critical point of how the anti-government crowd, at least those who are the most vocal and influential, have changed. They are more anti-democratic than anti-government, because they know how powerful they can be with the resources of the government behind them. 

It is a far cry from the Reagan and Bush 1 philosophy but it has millions of Americans supporting it. Not because they truly want an authoritarian leader, well, maybe partially, but more because they have been sold a bill of goods about how intrusive and ineffective our government has been, so they are willing to try something different. 

Sadly, they are also missing the real motives behind Trump, a man who has nothing good to say about any democratic leader in the world, but is buddy buddy with all the autocrats. Even now, he is meeting with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Emirates, Qatar, all countries with repressive governments. Of course, Trump is only interested in a free airplane, and the promises of huge sums of money for him and his family in exchange for access to American resources.

Ever the transactionalist, he is more than willing to challenge our constitution (I am not sure I have to uphold it, he said during his recent ABC interview), ignore court orders, and govern through executive orders rather than in conjunction with the legislative branch, whatever it takes to gold plate the White House.

The signs are all there. Whether enough Americans wake up in time is still in question.

 

 

 

The Spetacular Success and Failure of DOGE

When the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was first proposed by the new president with Elon Musk spearheading the effort, there was some justifiable optimism that perhaps the richest person on the planet, as well as one of the brightest, might be able to tackle such a large job. Everyone was willing to concede that there can always be efficiencies to be found in any large government (or private) organization, and most voters believed that there was undoubtedly some fraud, waste and abuse embedded in the system.

In fact, finding fraud, waste and abuse was the mantra of every supporting political pundit and cheerleader of the effort. Why wouldn't all Americans support such an effort, was the reasoning.

Additionally, there were already people in government whose job was to do just that, so, in concert with those who already investigate fraud, waste and abuse, the various inspector generals and their staffs, bringing in some outstanding talent from the outside to revitalize the effort seemed like a great idea.

When Musk claimed that he would slash $2 trillion (that's trillion!) from our annual budget, the excitement was off the chart. While most people with knowledge of our national budget were highly skeptical, those who originally advocated for the endeavor, couldn't keep from predicting a resounding success was imminent.

We are now about three months into the process and Musk has halved  his predicted savings a number of times, but with incredible bravado, when we consder that every time he spoke of how much less money would be saved compared to his previous projection he was admitting he was wrong. The website which purported to document the savings, has been challenged and corrected multiple times. Savings that had decimal points in the wrong place, programs that had already been ended, dollar estimates based on possible expenditures rather than actual costs, suggested that Musk's team was not quite as brilliant as anticipated, and certainly not as transparent.

Not to mention the number of federal workers that were laid off or told not to come to work one day, then called back soon after when it was realized that the DOGEmen really didn't understand those workers jobs. 

At this point, it appears that Musk is stepping back from the project. Various reporting agencies have identified the savings, to date, as anywhere from $50 to $150 billion. And, since some of that savings includes salaries for workers no longer employed, it is quite true that a portion of that money will go to unemployment benefits, back pay should the various lawsuits still being adjudicated find that some of the federal workers were fired illegally, and the cost to hire contractors when it is discovered that those jobs really were necessary.

Should there actually be $100 billion saved, that would equate to 5% of the original amount Musk forecast. 

But there is good news. 

First, many Americans are starting to gain a new appreciation for the men and women who chose public service rather than (generally) higher paying private jobs. All the faceless people who make our government work for us turned out to be people who lived in our neighborhoods, went to our churches, were parents of the kids our kids played sports with, perhaps even were family members, nieces, nephews and cousins whose jobs we didn't understand.

The GOP has spent the last forty years telling Americans that our government is too big, not necessary, intrusive on our lives, didn't do anything positive for us, etc, so it was very easy for Trump and Musk to tell us they were lazy, stupid, even criminal. 

And for their part, the Democrats didn't do enough to explain to the electorate just what our taxes paid for, and just what our federal workers did, behind the scenes, day after day after day.

But the real success of the effort had nothing to do with fraud, waste and abuse. It was all about reducing the federal work force, as the GOP has always wanted, and about eliminating the regulators who keep the super rich from taking advantage of the everyday citizen.

That was why Musk went after the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) right from the start. Among other federal agencies, the CFPB has been a thorn in his attempts to enter the personal finance industry. 

Musk didn't invest $250 million into Trump's campaign solely because he leans right. He needed a way to counter the obstacles that prevent him from using his vast resources to do whatever he wants, to consumers, to workers, to his competition. 

Various labor entanglements? Go after the NLRB. 

Want to jump start Starlink? Push Verizon out of the picture to gain the inside track to providing communication systems to the government.

Want to dominate space? Threaten NASA to make sure that future contracts stay with SpaceX.

He even wrangled a free Tesla commercial at the White House when he "gave" a few cars to Trump. As if Don ever drives himself anywhere.

But Joe, hasn't Tesla stock tanked? Aren't Tesla sales down, not just in America, but worldwide? It seems like Musk lost money by attaching his cart to Trump.

Perhaps in the short run. But we all know, if nothing else, Musk is a visionary. He is always a step or three ahead of most people. He is still considered the richest man on Earth, despite his recent losses on paper. I expect that he will remove himself from Tesla in the next few years to concentrate on his next big moves, primarily his attempt to dominate communications from space via Starlink.

One step backwards, yards and yards of steps forward. And, just as the government helped him many times in the past when Tesla was struggling and SpaceX needed clients, his connection with Trump, and the current GOP leadership will provide him with the advantages he will most certainly use to solidify his control of the future of communications from space.

And by the way. Has anyone been charged with fraud for ripping off the American taxpayers? Anyone of the alleged millions of Americans who were taking Social Security payments for dead people? 

Again, Musk and his team, brilliant as they may be, had not a clue as to how the federal government worked, or what the vast amount of federal workers do. 

My guess is that they didn't care. Musk had a list of federal agencies he wanted neutered. Musk wanted access to confidential government information to help him execute his nefarious plans to reduce regulations which effect his business interests, and worst of all, Musk and Trump for that matter, don't believe it helping anyone, Americans or anyone else on our planet, unless there is something in it for them.

Aid to help improve economic opportunity for people who made the mistake of being born in the "third" world, forget it?

Programs to help improve sanitation or access to potable water, no way.

Projects that address children dying from disease or starvation, not a chance.

Unless any of those initiatives put money in the pocket of transactional people like Trump and Musk, break out the chainsaw!

It's pretty simple, really. Billionaires in charge of determining where to spend tax payer money, will always choose helping people who already have money so they can form their half-a-million-dollar-to-get-in clubs and laugh about how much richer they are getting.

All the while, everyday Americans who can't afford million dollar plate fundraisers have even less access, and receive even less benefits from the taxes they pay.

DOGE was a resounding failure if the goal was to find waste, fraud and abuse and reduce our national debt.

But a spectacular success for the co-presidents, who were allowed to gut programs that help the least fortunate while increasing the coffers of the super rich.

As if that couldn't be predicted. 

 

Take The Win 2

Back in early January, I posted a "letter" to President Elect Trump called "Take The Win". In it, I suggested that he continue telling the American people how great he governed the first time, and how wonderful everything is going now, and that he instruct those media outlets which bend the knee to air story after story to illustrate those points. 

I suggested that they show ICE agents arresting the worst of the worst of the convicted undocumented, perhaps even leading them out of American jails towards deportation planes. That he crow about the markets when stocks are breaking records, regardless of whether anything he has done could have made any difference.

That when the avian flu starts to subside, he take credit for falling egg prices. That any peace talk progress between Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Hamas be treated as proof of his strength. 

And, of course, that any drop in illegal crossings be chalked up to his brilliant immigration strategy.

Here is a link to that first post

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2025/01/dear-president-trump-take-win.html 

In some areas, Trump has done that. When the market was up in January and early February, he was first to claim it as his doing. Of course, when it dropped like a stone after his tariff announcements, he reverted to blaming Biden, but that is OK, as long as those media outlets that he controls stayed the course and repeated whatever he deemed real news.

And, while, as an actual grocery shopper and gasoline purchaser (I assume he hasn't done either in decades), I know that the price at the pump is a tad higher than on November 6th, or January 21st depending on your choice of start dates, and that eggs, while still much higher than before the avian flu kicked in, have dropped a bit, just keep repeating the lie that prices have dropped significantly. It doesn't matter than any change in the price of eggs is all about our ability to navigate and deal with the avian flu, he can take the win and pretend that he knows more about chickens and eggs than any farmer.

He even has the Secretary of Commerce repeating the nonsense of gas prices being below $2 a gallon, let alone the Press Secretary who gushes about his accomplishments like a Beatles groupie.

Shame on me though, I never expected the tariff policy disaster. While his minions continue to toggle between the justification that tariffs will reduce the flow of fentanyl, will raise enormous amounts of money, or will bring manufacturing back to our country, actual shipments into America are about to be halved, while exports which might previously have sent American made products overseas via contracts under USAID, and other government funded agencies, have been cancelled by DOGE. 

Fortunately, I see good news ahead.

Depending on the timing around possible shortages in our department and grocery stores, Trump will announce breathtakingly brilliant deals with China, the EU, etc which will soon amount to goods flowing into our country again. Like the arsonist who is first to blast water on a fire he set, Trump will then claim that he rescued America from food and merchandise shortages. It won't matter if at the end of the day, the new "deals" look very much like the old deals, or even if a deal here and there is actually worse for our country.

Take the win, hammer the message that his superior negotiating skills have once again saved the day, and move onto the next topic that can be twisted into a pretzel on purpose only to be straightened out afterwards.

Even better, invent a crisis, rather than causing one. Tell everyone of the next impending disaster, whether it exists or not, then solve it, just like his executive order on undocumented people voting. We know it is not a real problem, but should there actually be a midterm election, and it is proven that the number of voters who were undocumented was paltry, it won't matter that it always was paltry, it just matters that he made it so.

To be honest, it kind of surprises me that Trump is not following my advice/his original playbook of creating controversy (such as his original big lie, that Obama was not born in America), then capitalizing on the gullibility of his cult.

I mean, they believed that Haitians were eating the dogs and cats, why actually address a real issue when you can create one?

In this vein, he is already setting the stage for a "peace" in Ukraine. First he pretended that the United States would pull out of facilitating negotiations. Then he faked outrage that Putin kept slaughtering Ukrainians, as if the tens of thousands that have already been killed didn't matter. Eventually, hopefully soon, some form of reduced hostilities will occur, and Trump can take the win and proclaim that his threat to walk away pushed the combatants to the peace table.

In a similar way, he should return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US, then hold a sham trial and deport him again. I am sure he can find a judge who will ignore the evidence, (can you say Aileen Cannon) and rule as he wishes. Can you imagine the victory strut he could take when Garcia is deported by rule of law? Whether that rule of law is true to the term, won't matter, just that he can yell "told ya so".

He should also take the win by emphasizing other deportations of real criminals (we know there are many), and stop deporting people whose only crime was illegal entry, or American children who had the nerve to be born to an undocumented parent. Or kids with cancer.

He can even claim that because of his desire to protect women athletes from competing with men, there are now less than a dozen such trans athletes competing in the NCAA. It doesn't matter that the number was never more than that before, it just matters that he take credit for the small number now.

Another good story is to announce that fentanyl deaths are down due to his aggressive actions against Canada and Mexico. Now, of course, he may want to not repeat Attorney General Bondi's assertion that fentanyl seizures have saved 258 million American lives, that number being a tad over blown considering that she is suggesting that without Trump's leadership, roughly 75% of the people that you know, including infants and those over 80 years old, would have died in the past year.

Still, fentanyl deaths did decrease in the last reporting year, summer of 2023 to September 2024. It doesn't matter that Biden was president then, nor does it matter that one of the reasons for this decline is the availability of naloxone (Narcan) which has been distributed through various government programs into the hands of EMS personnel and into the neighborhoods where drug use is prevalent, nor does it matter that those very programs are under attack via DOGE and the president's recent budget proposal. All that matters is taking credit for the decline.

Take the win.

As I said in the first post, we know, above all, Trump likes to golf. The less he intervenes in trade policy, the less he attempts to bully institutions of higher learning, prestigious law firms, non-profit organizations that raise money for political parties and viewpoints he disagrees with, the more time he can spend on rallies and golf.

Take the win.

Tour the country telling your faithful followers how great you are by taking credit for whatever seems to be going well at the time, or even by making up things that were fine before. 

And golf like no other president has golfed before. Perhaps even combine the two and golf with "regular" folks who can then be interviewed on Fox and Friends and gush about Trump's golfing prowess, not to mention his brilliant mind and wonderful personality. 

Just stop governing. Let Congress actually work on laws as they are supposed to, if you believe in the Constitution. You can continue to sign stupid executive orders if it makes you feel important and powerful, just restrict them to idiotic things like declaring paper straws are back, and putting Columbus back in Columbus Day.

Of course, it is also possible that Trump will stick with his other tried and true playbook; continue to cause chaos while raking in millions of dollars selling access to the White House. Like a magician who makes the audience look away from the real trick, Trump may prefer throwing out inane proclamations (executive orders), or putting an AI generated picture of himself as pope, or just merely opening his mouth and verbalizing whatever moronic thought pops into his twisted mind.

All the while extorting money and favors from the stupidly and/or cowardly rich who have made the concept of selling out their country for even more money that they will never be able to spend in 1000 lives, into their new favorite hobby.

Or perhaps both. Take the win by continuing to direct his flock to think and believe whatever he tells them, and make a boat load of money to boot. After all, what is the point of being able to fool people if not to make lost of money.

Whatever permutation of this plan that he chooses, in addition to whatever other transactional scam he can concoct, I see a host of "how great is Trump" stories in our future.

Take the win, but at least leave us some money. Maybe even enough to buy four or five dolls and eight or ten pencils.