Fridays in Trumpland: 4.4.2025
Crash and Contempt
Sometimes, it’s hard to put words to the conjunction of harm and incompetence that arrives daily thanks to Trump and Musk. The fallout this week has been loud, and low, and frightening.
This week, an absolutely irrational, insane set of tariffs— which notably appear to have been calculated using an AI Chatbot— have crashed the global economy, and as I sit here writing this post (albeit a little late for my usual schedule), the market plummets continue worldwide.
We’ve seen threats to end Title I funding to low-income schools because of programs that amplify marginalized kids and celebrate inclusion (a.k.a. “Woke,” in the MAGA lingo). We’ve seen wild demands from Trump that the chair of the Federal Reserve lower interest rates at his request, so as to contain the fallout from his ferocious high-speed destruction to our economic health.
And then, despite all the havoc he wreaked by Thursday night, Trump opted to go golfing in Florida rather than greet the coffins of returning soldiers killed in Lithuania on their return to Andrews Air Force base.
Meanwhile, Judge James Boasberg signaled that he may hold Trump officials in contempt of court for refusing to stop flights to an El Salvador slave labor camp filled with men accused of no crimes, despite his order that those planes be turned around mid-flight.
Meanwhile, four Senate Republicans defied their party and voted in favor of a resolution that would end the tariffs against Canada, and no less than Chuck Grassley co-sponsored a bill that would require Congressional approval of any future tariffs.
These are not empty gestures.
There is more, far more than an ordinary human can grasp, that went down this week, but there was one extraordinary moment worthy of note, and that was Cory Booker’s epic 25 hour speech on the floor of the US Senate in protest of all that Trump and Musk have wrought.
All hope is not lost.
But it is a slow speed train crash, this experience of living in America, right now. And as I said this week on Bluesky, there are some days where I really want off this train.
If you’re exhausted, you’re not alone. AND: rebellion is rising, and it’s time to act.
This weekend brings the HandsOff protests nationwide, which are guaranteed to be loud and huge. I encourage all to attend. We desperately need community right now, and the comradeship of like-minded folks fighting for a better future.
And this is on top of last weekend’s wildly successful TeslaTakedown global day of action, and the concomitant slump of Tesla stock even before the tariffs went into effect.
All hope is not lost. We must commit to continuing to fight, and there are more of us getting on board to push back every day.
A long, long time ago, I dated someone who loved the Dave Matthews Band. Over and over again for me, he played a song that now, looking back on it, is a little weird and strange as a love song, but nonetheless got relentlessly stuck in my head.
It opens with the following lyrics:
You've got your ball, you've got your chain
Tied to me tight, tie me up again
Who's got their claws in you my friend?
The song is called Crash Into Me, and as the stock market crashed this week, I found it returning as a strange echo.
We’re all tied up again, aren’t we? And by a man who someone has their claws so deep into that those now-notorious tariffs did not extend to every country they could have– most notably, not to Russia.
As everything crashes and burns, the moment has arrived to begin asking the following questions: who or what will rise from the ashes of this, and when?
There’s a lot of conspiracy-esque speculation (some of which is actually grounded in writings that express specific intents) about why this is happening and what will come next– discussions of Curtis Yarvin and “network cities” and billionaires gobbling up yet more assets and leaving the rest of us to suffer and die.
But I am going to tell you again that all hope is not lost.
The story of power in the hands of the people doesn’t ever end well for those who hoard wealth and power.
And it remains up to us whether we are meant to be merely embers in the blaze, or whether we are meant to, instead, be phoenixes.
Get on board, folks. And rise.
This group, your followers, are Phoenix's.
Soldiers killed in Lithuania? I need to go look up that story. Prospects are worrisome.