The Saddest Day

Get ready for retribution. It's coming in the form of Project 2025

I remember a chant that high school basketball fans rained down on opposing free throw shooters. It went, “You did it, you did it, you know you did it, you, you, you!”

It came immediately to mind when Special Counsel Jack Smith reluctantly dropped the federal charges against Donald Trump for the insurrection he caused on January 6th 2021, and for the top secret documents he absconded with the first time, then had littered all over unsecured areas like bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago.

Our nation has endured a number of reality-altering sad days in the last few years. We’ve watched a religious and partisan Supreme Court overturn women’s right to choose healthcare that best suits their circumstances. That little gem cascaded down to the states where women are now dying regularly because doctors are afraid to treat simple miscarriages for fear of criminal prosecution. Another woman died of sepsis just last week in Texas. Prosecutors there and elsewhere are trying to figure out how to criminally charge women who flee their states to obtain an abortion.

An even sadder day found SCOTUS telling POTUS, go ahead, not only will you not be charged with any crime while in office, now there are no crimes, because you’re immune from prosecution after your term as well.

I was also saddened by the knowledge that the incoming administration is not disclosing names of donors who are footing the transition bill. Secret money is usually associated with bribery, but here it is out in the open; well, at least the behavior—the “what”—is; we won’t definitively know the “who” for a while, maybe not ever. Ultimately, the “why” may expose the “what” and the “who.”

When you see regulations blown to smithereens and watch the fabulously wealthy get fabulously wealthier, you’ll know the who, what, and why.

It’s a new low for accountability in government. I fear that example will lead to even less accountability for businesses, and ultimately filter down to the man on the street who has been told repeatedly over the last few years that one does not have to be accountable for any action at all.

Of course the fabulousness will continue unabated. We’ve already begun the exaggerations with the “landslide/unprecedented” victory that in reality is just a plurality, not a majority—a 1.5% win, which ranks 27th in closeness of the 32 elections since 19a00. They’ll use this phony mandate to invoke as much of Project 2025 as they can. It’ll be up to his courts and the Republican House and Senate to restrain them. You’ll recall the campaign lie that he had nothing to do with P25, and that he didn’t know anyone associated with it, and that he, in fact disdained it as bad ideas never to be implemented. He ran away from it then, but his appointments make clear that he is running toward it now.

The lead author of the gargantuan reordering of society was Russell Vought, the Office of Management and Budget designee. The pick to head the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, wrote the chapter on media regulation, and is chomping at the bit to curtail the free speech of broadcasting companies that the new administration doesn’t like.

Tom Homan, the charmer you may have seen on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago, led the border separation of parents and children. He’s the pick to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He’s hot to round up 10 million immigrants and put them in camps until they can all be deported.

John Ratcliffe, the guy with no experience in the field that the Senate wouldn’t confirm last time around as Director of National Intelligence, has turned up again like a bad penny.

Put all the P25’ers on the scales, and they tip toward a Christian nationalist view of the country that empowers white men, even though most people say they voted on economic issues like the price of eggs, not theocracy.

The result in total, including the Steve Bannon-promised destruction of the national government, beginning with firing every civil servant who doesn’t pass a loyalty-to-Trump test, and you’ve got more sadness to go around than COVID-19 after a family reunion.

And for what it’s worth, our civil service corps is made up of technocrats who keep the country running, not politically-motivated people. Will we notice when the career civil servants who choreograph the elaborate dance of men and machines at the nation’s ports are replaced with ideologues who toe the Trump line, but know not of shipping logistics?

I suspect we’ll notice.

Can the Republican Senate put a stop to the madness of incompetence we’re going to experience and stop the sadness we’ll all feel for the country that used to know how to get things done?

Again, I suspect we will.

©2024 Jon Sinton