Fridays in Trumpland: 3.7.2025

All Chaos, All the Time

Tariffs for everyone! Oh wait, Mexico, not for you, because you were nice to me. Oh wait, now I’ve changed my mind about everyone. But have I? Check in tomorrow!

And you, federal employee, are fired! Oh wait, you work on nuclear waste, we need you back. Hold up, we can’t figure out how to reach you because we deleted your account. Come back!

Oh wait, don’t come back, we have no office space for you, and we’ve put the building you work in on the market for purchase by our oligarch friends. No wait, we haven’t, hahahah just kidding! We’re deleting that listing right now.

But you we need you to work from home, deep state agent of waste, because we don’t have a WiFi hookup for you any more. Actually, wait a minute, you’re on administrative leave because you won’t turn over confidential information related to Elon Musk’s latest perceived uterine breeding mare for a child named after a chemical formula who just sued him for child support. Stand in the way of sharing her social security number and you are definitely FIRED. Last chance!

And in case you missed it, Ukraine is our ally. No wait, it’s not. We hate Ukraine (and especially its president, who makes us insecure in our masculinity, and really should say thank you to Putin for invading his country), and also France (and especially that minister who called Elon a court jester on ketamine), Denmark (which we definitely plan to invade to secure Greenland for “national defense,” even though it’s never belonged to us), the U.K. (silly non-warmonger country at least recently), Germany (except for the newest Nazis, who we fully embrace), the Panama Canal (just wait now that one of our favorite companies bought the ports on either end), Mexico (because brown people!), Canada (why won’t you give up your entire nation to us just because we said you should?!?!?), and, wait, certainly we forgot someone, let’s just substitute all of NATO and Africa and also who could forget Gaza where we want to build a hotel named after me so I can sunbathe with Bibi?!?!? YOU ARE DEAD, Gazans, if you refuse this.

And PS. We love you, Russia, so much we are standing down on all intelligence efforts to stop you in Ukraine and all offensive cyber actions to protect ourselves. We can trust you even though you defenestrate people routinely and bombed a general’s plane out of the sky for daring to rise against you. We trust you more than anyone.

Here is a Black child with cancer who I am using as a prop/making a Secret Service agent while cutting federal funding for childhood cancer research. Here is a blonde white girl who claims to have been hit in the head by a volleyball spiked by a trans girl, which most definitely justifies cutting off the rights of every trans person nationwide. Here is a courageous member of the House of Representatives who definitely deserves to be censured and much worse for simply shouting that I don’t have “a mandate.” Here is a mother to whom we will give a standing ovation for refusing to use her child’s pronouns– where is that child, by the way, as mom stands for her ovation as mother of the year? Here is a story about genetically modified mice that I am going to purposefully pretend were made transgender with taxpayer funds so people remember a lie and pay no attention to the fact that I am cutting social security!

Here is how much I hate you. Yes you, Democrats, for not applauding me. Yes you, American farmers, who cares if you go bankrupt? Yes you, person I just appointed a week ago inside a government agency, because you won’t do something illegal. Yes you, child of the American public school system, who needs the Department of Education anyway, screw your learning disability! Yes you, protected environmental land and trees. Yes you, working American with a union. Ah fuck it, I just hate everyone and everything, because no one can ever fill the gaping black hole of nothingness inside me.

Here is a secret: I am unworthy. No one loves me. My soul is hungry, desperate, a constant gaping maw of starvation for someone, anyone, to pay attention to me, so that the truth I know about myself is silenced for just one single second.

Why won’t that voice in my head shut up? It won’t shut up, ever, that voice inside me telling me how worthless I am, how no one loves me, how everyone deserves to suffer for never loving me enough, for never doing enough to silence that fucking voice, why won’t it shut up??? All day, all night, it claws at me from the inside, telling me that I am pathetic, stupid, dumb, that I am nothing, why won’t YOU make it STOP????

CAN’T YOU ALL SEE IT?! No one has ever been treated as badly as I have.

Everyone and everything deserves to be punished. The end of all humanity won’t be enough for me, because nothing will stop the voice. Why can’t anyone stop it?

Chaos and harm and suffering is its agenda, and I am its agent. It’s the only thing I know, and it is endless. Everyone, eventually, will pay the price for what I’ve been through.

Welcome to Trump’s United States of America, circa March 2025.

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A few years ago, I was in a therapy session, trying to address how to cope with a malignant narcissist in my own life. Every time things seemed to be going well for me, the narcissist would pull something totally out of left field, bizarre even, to try to wildly shake me to the core, and then enjoy the fallout when I lost my shit in response.

“He’s so unpredictable!” I vented. “Out of nowhere, every time with this bullshit! Fucking nonsense!”

My therapist, who had seen me go through this pattern with the narcissist countless times, made a keen observation that day that has stuck with me ever since.

“Oh, he’s totally predictable,” she said. I stared at her: how was that possible?

“He’s the black ice on the roadway. You can’t see it coming, but you know it’s there, and you’ll hit it at some point.”

“This is the thing,” she continued. “Narcissists are always predictable. They may choose their actions unpredictably, but they will always create chaos, because it makes them the center of attention. On that, you can rely.”

“The key, Elizabeth,” she finished, “is to not allow yourself to be shaken by the black ice. Keep steering the car. Accommodate for the fact that the conditions might be slippery for a minute. But your job is to keep your car on your road, not to crash it every time just because he wants you to.”

“Keep the car on your own damn road.”

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The global order is doing its best right now to keep its car on the road.

France sent fighter jets to Ukraine this week.

The EU is considering for the first time ever mobilizing a multinational army to defend Ukraine.

World leaders met in London to discuss how to stand behind Zelensky as Trump makes the US a traitor to our allies and to itself.

Protests continue to rise, as a singular empire falls.

But one thing is for sure: after this week— and particularly after Trump and Vance’s insane attack on Zelensky in the Oval Office in defense of Putin’s murderous war-criming invasion of Ukraine— nothing, anywhere, will ever be the same. International alliances are realigning, and we are not in them.

And so the question becomes: how do we continue on in this chaos, alone?

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Here’s something you might not know if you haven’t been on your own healing journey: after a certain point with malignant narcissists, the chaos becomes boring.

Oh, here he comes again. Sigh.

Not going to answer that text message, ranting again about how he’s the victim and it’s all my fault. One day, I know, I know, I’ll learn how he was right, I’ll get what’s coming to me, yeah yeah, he knows I’m so unhappy without him, here’s another threat. Not going to respond to that today. Better things to do than this again. Second verse, same as the first.

Yes, we have a malignant narcissist at the helm of the United States (again), and more than one. Yes, this is a national and international crisis. Yes, the stakes are very, very high. I know it’s hard as Medicare and Medicaid and food stamps and social security are on the chopping block to try to disentangle from all the madness.

And yes, I know it’s hard when he threatens death to look him in the proverbial eye and think, shush your madness, little boy, I will not be playing your game today.

And yes, I know there is grief in the loss of the future we thought was promised, and for a moment was right there, nearly within grasp just a few short months ago– who we might have been, who we all might have been, were it not for the folks throwing water on the roadways in subzero temperatures and telling us all, noooooo, it won’t freeze over, we promise it won’t.

But here’s the thing: part of taking back your power is to see the chaos and, rather than wading in, to organize around it.

Who keeps you safe when you’re feeling scared? Who feeds you when your soul or your body needs nourishment? Who gives you a hug and maybe even a bed to sleep in when you need it? Who loves you, relentlessly, who gives you that thing he’ll never have– that sense of security and worthiness that you can then provide back in return?

Who is your best company? Who loves you even when you’re terrified? Who will make sure you are cared for even if the bottom falls out? Who holds you tight and promises that they’re not going to let your car crash out even under terrible conditions?

Who is there to help you steer the car when, inevitably, the black ice arrives out of nowhere?

Also: this is a time to think about alternate routes.

How do we get to our desired destination despite the route we thought we were on suddenly becoming so unsafe?

What about those back roads, or even new ones yet unriven, waiting for us to break down the path toward a better future? New methods, new aims, new political parties, new possibilities, new forms of caretaking, new systems, whole new ways of being are waiting for us to simply choose to build them.

What if the way to a better future is right there, just out of sight, and all we have to do to get there is to pull aside the brush of madness and find it?

Eyes open. Peripheral vision engaged. Senses heightened and focus clear.

Armies of the unbowed can crush the new way forward, where the ground beneath us is warm and stable, and what we thought would turn to black ice is actually now just a little light rain.

We do not have to choose to ride with chaos.

Hope is a practice, friends, and as Mariame Kaba says, it is also a discipline.

And it’s time, now, to find the next best way home, and also, to keep the car on our own damn road.