They want us all to be so overwhelmed that the whole idea of resistance seems pointless

Cartoon by Haitian artist Watson Mere

If you feel like you woke up in one country yesterday and went to bed in a whole different one, then you're not alone. There is good reason to be afraid. 

The new president signed 26 executive orders on Monday and you can find a pretty good run-down of them here. Members of his administration called this "shock and awe." But I prefer the phrase Steve Bannon used back in 2018 - "flooding the zone with shit" - because it is a better fit for what these guys are actually doing, as Josh Marshall explained.

The point of all of this is to create the apparently overwhelming and unchallengeable feeling that Trump is all-powerful, that his team is all-knowing and have everything figured out, and that nothing can stop him.

In other words, the president is once again attempting to use what Marshall described as "dominance politics" (emphasis mine).

Part of making sense of the current Trump campaign is understanding that Trump is continually trying to take the hyper-aggressive bullyboy tactics he learned from his father in the New York City real estate world and apply them to national politics. That style might fairly be described as sell, sell, sell and attack, attack, attack. In particular, as a New York City real estate pro described here, it’s largely about getting inside other people’s heads with over-the-top aggression that knocks them on their heels and leaves them unprepared to fight back. Some of this is simply what I’ve called “dominance politics”, an idea I’ve developed in various posts over the years, and which I described back in March as being based on “the inherent appeal of power and the ability to dominate others.”

That's the play. They want us all to be so overwhelmed that the whole idea of resistance seems pointless. 

So while there's good reason to be afraid of what's happening to our country, we also have to be clear-minded when it comes to figuring out how to respond. 

The fact is that people are going to suffer as a result of the 2024 election. For example, it's already started: 

That's just the beginning. Other examples will take days, weeks, months, and even years to unfold. There's no denying that things are going to get bad. 

The challenge for all of us is to acknowledge the darkness that is descending without letting it immobilize us. That's a journey that each of us must take individually. So wherever you need to go on that journey...I wish you godspeed.

One of the most ironic things about Monday was the fact that it was also the day we celebrate the birth of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The kind of "dominance politics" we're seeing from Trump is similar to what white southerners inflicted on African Americans during King's lifetime.

Lunch counters and buses were crucial symbolic planes of struggle that the civil rights movement decided to use to dramatize the issue, but the main suffering in the south did not come from our inability to drink from the same fountain, ride in the front of the bus or eat lunch at Woolworth's.

It was that white people, mostly white men, occasionally went berserk, and grabbed random black people, usually men, and lynched them. You all know about lynching. But you may forget or not know that white people also randomly beat black people, and the black people could not fight back, for fear of even worse punishment.

This constant low level dread of atavistic violence is what kept the system running. It made life miserable, stressful and terrifying for black people.

So today, my journey is leading me to ponder this thought from one of our greatest citizens:

I'm not sure where faith comes from in a dark moment like this. But I do know that people like MLK faced a mountain of despair that is far beyond anything I've ever experienced. My task is to learn how to turn that into a stone of hope.

The Republican plan to hurt low-to-middle income Americans

It's now official. For Trump's inauguration on Monday, his oligarch friends and associates will sit inside the Capitol Rotunda to watch the spectacle, while his MAGA supporters are left outside in the cold. That is the perfect metaphor for what is about to happen as Republicans take control of the federal budget. 

When it comes to spending, the Biden administration focused on getting us through the pandemic, building infrastructure, combating climate change, and "growing the economy from the bottom up and middle out."

On the other hand, Trump's spending priorities are to (1) extend the 2017 tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, and (2) implement his plans for mass deportation. The former will cost $4.5 trillion over 10 years and the price tag for the latter is $968 billion. 

In order to keep up the pretense that the GOP is the party of fiscal conservatism, congressional Republicans are looking for ways to offset that massive increase in spending.  Of course, one of their top priorities is to repeal any gains made during the Biden administration on things like health care and climate change. 

Their biggest offset, however, is to embrace Trump's 10% consumer tax (ie, tariff) on all imported goods. Here's how that tax will effect various income groups:

Another big target for Republican offsets is a huge reduction to Medicaid. Just to be clear, here is a summary of Medicare beneficiaries:

Medicaid covers 41% of all births in the United States, nearly half of children with special health care needs, five in eight nursing home residents, 23% of non-elderly adults with any mental illness, and 40% of non-elderly adults with HIV...

Among the non-elderly covered by Medicaid, half are children under age 19; six in ten are people of color, 57% are female; and seven in ten are in a family with a full or part-time worker.

Republicans are looking at cutting up to 1/3 of Medicaid spending over the next 10 years. Since individual states run their own Medicaid programs, they will have to decide whether to raise taxes to cover the losses or cut benefits. 

There are a couple of lists that Republicans are floating on these potential cuts. The latest one has a long list of possibilities that would hurt the average American, but two stood out to me.

First of all, they are proposing to eliminate the home mortgage interest deduction - perhaps the most significant way that purchasing a home is made affordable for middle class buyers. This is coming just as the sale of previously occupied homes hit a 14-year low. 

Secondly, Republicans want to eliminate the non-profit status for hospitals - forcing them to pay taxes and eliminating the tax deduction for charitable contributions. Over 60% of hospitals in this country are non-profit - many supported by churches. Even more importantly, this comes at a time when many hospitals (especially in rural areas) are shutting down due to persistent financial losses. 

Overall, every single spending cut proposed by Republicans is designed to hurt low-to-middle income Americans. 

Years ago, Jim Wallis rightly suggested that budgets are moral documents. It was another way of saying, "pay attention to what I do, not what I say." So while our oligarchs (who have been assured that they'll keep their tax cuts) are cozying up to Trump, his MAGA buddies in Congress are preparing to stick it to the rest of us. 

Some of us have never believed the lie that Trump's Republican Party was about populism. How much more obvious can they be?

Why I'll be listening to the prophet comedians

As we watch major media outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times bow to the incoming Trump administration, it becomes difficult to image how reality (ie, the facts) will be presented to the public. While I'm happy to give a shout-out to publications (like Talking Points Memo and Rolling Stone) as well as a whole host of substackers for stepping up to the plate, there's one group that is rarely mentioned when discussing the truth-tellers. 

Ironically, I was reminded of them by the right wing outlet know as "Newsbusters." 

From the beginning of June through the end of December, the late night comedy shows welcomed 120 liberal guests and only one conservative, according to a new NewsBusters study...

The study looked at the five daily late night comedy shows: ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.

Right on cue, the President-Elect of the United States went on social media last night to rant about one of those comedians - Seth Meyers. 

In case you're wondering what Meyers said that triggered Trump, this is probably the episode that did it:

As is often the case with these kinds of monologues, Meyers sprinkled his jokes with some pretty heavy-duty fact-checking on the president's lies. That's also why Trump has repeatedly attacked the other late-night comedians - especially Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. 

For years now I've been saying that comedians like these are prophets. If you doubt that, I'd simply remind you of Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2006. 

One of the ways I'll be coping with whatever comes our way over the next four years is to listen to the prophet comedians among us. 

Who are you going to believe? The guy who started the lie about immigrants eating pets, or the facts?

On Sunday, when asked how the incoming administration would handle issues like immigration, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance told a whopper of a lie.

JD Vance: President Biden has left us an absolute dumpster fire… pic.twitter.com/6dwzXsPqSI

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 12, 2025

A dumpster fire? Really? 

When it comes to specifics, Vance mentioned depleted FEMA funds, a wide open southern border, rising oil prices, rising bond yields, and the federal deficit. Here are some facts about those issue:

FEMA funds 

The current tally for billion-dollar extreme weather disasters in the US is hovering around 23 or 24 so far this year, according to Adam Smith, a climatologist with NOAA who helps compile the government’s count of expensive extreme weather disasters. That number is unofficial and likely to change, but it includes hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton, and it could possibly grow to add a separate complex of earlier severe summer storms.

“This is the most open disasters that I have seen with FEMA, and it’s because we’re seeing an increase in the number of events,” Criswell said Wednesday. “We had an incredibly busy tornado season earlier this year. We had catastrophic and historic levels of flooding across many states this spring as well. We’ve had wildfires across much of the West.”

In other words, climate change is turning "weather events" into "billion-dollar extreme weather disasters." While MAGA is content to blame all of that on DEI, government regulation, and Democrats, the toll that will take on FEMA will continue to rise. 

Wide open southern border 

The number of migrants arrested illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in December was lower than when President-elect Donald Trump ended his first term in 2020, according to preliminary figures shared with Reuters, a relative calm that Trump could upend with sweeping changes.

Rising oil prices 

Oil extended gains for a third session on Monday, with Brent crude rising above $80 a barrel to its highest in more than four months, driven by wider U.S. sanctions on Russian oil and the expected effects on exports to top buyers India and China.

Those sanctions were just imposed on Friday. Here's the longer-term picture on oil prices: 

Find more statistics at Statista

Bond yields

According to Paul Krugman:

[I]ncreases in long-term rates, like the 10-year Treasury rate, might reflect the horrible, creeping suspicion that Donald Trump actually believes the crazy things he says about economic policy and will act on those beliefs...What does this have to do with interest rates? There’s near-unanimity among economists that Trump’s announced agenda of high tariffs, tax cuts and mass deportations would be highly inflationary.

Federal deficit 

But those facts don't even begin to address the level of Vance's lie. Contrary to the idea that Biden is leaving a dumpster fire, Peter Baker documented that "by many traditional metrics, the America that Mr. Trump will inherit from President Biden...is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since George W. Bush came into office in 2001."

• for the first time in 24 years, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day, 
• murders are way down, 
• roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century, 
• jobs are up, 
• wages are rising, 
• domestic energy production is higher than it has ever been, 
• the manufacturing sector has more jobs than under any president since Mr. Bush, 
• drug overdose deaths have fallen for the first time in years, and
• inflation...has returned to normal.

According to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, "President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets."

Here's the question facing Americans: Who are you going to believe? The guy who started the lie about immigrants eating pets, or the facts? The idea that our politics these days comes down to how someone answers that question is enough to drive us all mad. 

Why MAGA will never reach the "find out" phase

As Trump and his shadow president Elon Musk break every promise they've made to voters, a lot of liberals claimed that MAGA was about to reach the "find out" phase of FAFO. But it isn't going to happen. 

To understand, all we have to do is look at the response to the horrific fires in and around Los Angeles. Here's what's happening:

Climate change has made the vegetation that's driving the LA fires more ready to burn, scientists say.

While the flames are being mainly driven by powerful winds, the new study says that rapid swings between wet and dry years are making trees, shrubs and grasses more vulnerable to ignition.

This "hydroclimate whiplash" has seen decades of drought in California followed by extremely heavy rainfall for two years but then it flipped again to very dry conditions this autumn and winter.

The authors say that climate change has boosted these type of whiplash conditions globally by 31-66% since the middle of the 20th Century.

But that information comes from "scientists," the very people that Trump and MAGA have demonized on everything from climate change to covid. 

So Trump took to his social media site to blame California's governor, writing: "Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California...He is the [sic] blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!”

Meanwhile, on the site formerly known as Twitter, Musk blamed government regulations, LA Mayor Karen Bass, DEI policies, LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley,  and, of course, Gov. Gavin Newsom.  Musk even went so far as to agree with Alex Jones, who said that the LA fires were "part of a larger globalist plot to wage economic warfare and deindustrialize the United States before triggering total collapse."

In summary, they're blaming anyone to the left of MAGA.

Yes https://t.co/jNTwxoXZzI

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 9, 2025

Everything Trump/Musk said was a lie. For example, there is no such thing as the "water restoration declaration" and LA doesn't get its water from the North.  Musk's claim that Mayor Bass cut the firefighting budget is also a lie.

That assertion is wrong. The city was in the process of negotiating a new contract with the fire department at the time the budget was being crafted, so additional funding for the department was set aside in a separate fund until that deal was finalized in November. In fact, the city’s fire budget increased more than $50 million year-over-year compared to the last budget cycle...

The fact that they're lying won't matter to MAGA - who tend to buy everything these idiots say. So rather than a wake-up call about the dangers of climate change, about half the country will blame Democrats and/or liberals for the devastation these fires unleash.

This is exactly what we can expect for the next four years. Trump's presidency will be a time of crisis and chaos. But rather than deal with the situation, Trump will exhibit the same response we've seen from him over and over again. 

[H]ere is the way in which Donald Trump exhibits behaviors associated with a severe personality disorder. He fabricates a world in which he is both dominant and successful. When challenged, he diverts with outrageous lies designed to blame a villain and distract us from his failures. He then assumes we’ll all move on to the next fabrication of his dominance and success.

Lie, distract, and blame...that's what Trump does. It will only get worse this time around as Musk broadcasts the blame game across his social media platform. In the end, rather than hold the president and his oligarchs accountable, MAGA will blame all of their failures on the left.  

The Rosewood Massacre: Does anyone else feel like history is about to repeat itself?

On this day in 1923, a mob of over 200 white men attacked the Black community in Rosewood, Florida, killing over 30 Black women, men, and children, burning the town to the ground, and forcing all survivors to permanently flee Rosewood.

That was just one of many massacres of Black people in this country.

To that we must add the "4075 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950."

That's just part of our history that MAGA wants to whitewash. We participate in that when we confine our discussions of the Jim Crow era to talk about segregation. As Hamden Rice once explained.

It wasn't that black people had to use a separate drinking fountain or couldn't sit at lunch counters, or had to sit in the back of the bus.

You really must disabuse yourself of this idea. Lunch counters and buses were crucial symbolic planes of struggle that the civil rights movement decided to use to dramatize the issue, but the main suffering in the south did not come from our inability to drink from the same fountain, ride in the front of the bus or eat lunch at Woolworth's.

It was that white people, mostly white men, occasionally went berserk, and grabbed random black people, usually men, and lynched them. You all know about lynching. But you may forget or not know that white people also randomly beat black people, and the black people could not fight back, for fear of even worse punishment.

This constant low level dread of atavistic violence is what kept the system running. It made life miserable, stressful and terrifying for black people.

I thought about that quote from Rice as I read the ProPublica story by Joshua Kaplan about a wilderness survival trainer that spent years undercover with right-wing militias. The whole report is fascinating. But one of the things that stood out to me was that the ranks of these militias were devastated by the prosecution and imprisonment of those involved in the January 6th riot. 

They'll obviously get a huge boost when Donald Trump pardons all of them. According to Kaplan, the militias have already been active on our southern border terrorizing immigrants. But they're now gearing up to play an active role in the administration's mass deportation plan. That's like asking the KKK to police segregation in the Jim Crow south. 

Does anyone else feel like history might be about to repeat itself? 

An explosion of violence fueled by hate

Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall recently took note of the fact that political violence has been on the rise over the last couple of months. For example, 

• the terrorist attack in New Orleans,
• the cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas
• the shooting of the United Healthcare CEO
the biggest collection of homemade explosive devices in the FBI's history was found at a home outside Norfolk, Virginia.

Noting this country's long history of political violence, Marshall tried to unravel the threads of what is going on. He suggests that it is a general disinhibition for violence that is the culprit. 

I was reminded of something President Biden said a couple of years ago.

Hate never goes away. It only hides.

White supremacy and hate-fueled violence have no place in America. pic.twitter.com/zGySbv3NGl

— President Biden (@POTUS) September 20, 2022

Hate never fully goes away. And when given any oxygen,  it comes out from under the rocks. In the last few years, we've given it too much oxygen in our politics, in our media, and on the internet. Too much hate, all for power and profit. Too much hate that fueled extremist violence, that's been allowed to fester and grow.

Twenty years ago, Derrick Jensen wrote something similar in his book, "The Culture of Make Believe" (emphasis mine).

Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state—where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised—to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized.

Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remains underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode.

That's why it is important to note that, in response to the recent incidents of violence, Trump and his enablers are responding with even more hate. 

They're too busy blaming the violence on their usual targets - Biden, immigrants, DEI and public schools - to notice the facts of each case. 

But as Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said, it goes even deeper than an attempt to level blame. He tweeted that Trump is "going to use episodes of violence to justify his crack down on immigrants and his attack on dissent - whether the facts line up or not." He followed that up with this prediction: 

In the coming days, watch for autocracy-fetishizing MAGA figures who call on Trump to use "emergency powers" or "domestic war powers" (i.e. some form of martial law) to confront domestic terrorism.

They aren't out to destroy terrorists. They're out to destroy the rule of law.

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 3, 2025

So here's the pattern: Unleash the hate by rhetorically giving it oxygen. When it leads to violence, use that as an excuse to declare martial law against both immigrants and any form of dissent. 

I hope to god that I'm overreacting. But Murphy is hardly the hair-raising type. To add to the alarm, Bret Bair recently said that he's been told to expect "shock and awe" on day one of Trump's presidency. As a reminder, here's what it looked like the last time a presidential administration used that phrase: