As we scoff at feeding those in need with SNAP, strip Medicaid from those who can’t afford healthcare, raise healthcare premiums, fill our cities with ICE and troops, an ugly truth emerges: We Americans are not exceptional. I’m starting to wonder if we are even good.
Good people take care of the poor, the elderly, and the sick, and they do it with grace.
We have to note that the people refusing to end the govt shutdown are led / controlled by / in fear of a man “to the manor born” who has never once in his privileged life gone hungry or given a second thought paying for health insurance.
The White House keeps claiming they’re trying to save money. When you’re trying to save money, do you tear down a big chunk of your house and start a rebuild? Take expensive trips overseas? Buy new airplanes? None of this makes a lick of sense.
Meanwhile, the Trump family has made more than $3.5B off the presidency since he took office while our soybean farmers and cattle farmers have no one to sell their products to. Why? Because the president uses tariffs as a cudgel, to punish foreign leaders who won’t bow to him. Our own citizens be damned.
We are all paying higher prices at the grocery store and Walmart because of the president’s bruised ego. And here comes Christmas.
Presidents do not leave the country during a shutdown. This president is currently on a boondoggle in Asia while TSA agents and many others are not getting paid.
Congress (continuing to receive their salaries and health insurance) should be negotiating. But the House Speaker is not even calling them to session.
Remember how they claimed DOGE was for ‘waste fraud and abuse’? Jessica Tillipman, assoc. dean for govt procurement law studies at George Washington University Law School described their numbers like this: It’s “the equivalent of basically taking out a credit card with a $20,000 credit limit, canceling it and then saying, ‘I’ve just saved $20,000.”
In other words, DOGE was bullshit.
Elon Musk contributed what’s pocket change to him (almost $300 million) to get Trump and other Republicans elected, then he was given the DOGE role while his own businesses — Tesla, SpaceX, and Starlink — profited from government contracts and subsidies. That’s rich.
When the big beautiful ballroom is built and holds a thousand people, who do you think is going to pay for the ongoing maintenance? The food, booze, and staff for their fancy parties? Will we know if it’s pay-for-play?
The billionaires are making bank while the American people (especially those most in need and marginalized) are getting screwed fifteen ways to Sunday, and we are only 9 months into 4 years of this of this mess.
If we are the good people we wish to be, we have to do a hell of a lot better than this.
Let’s help each other where we can. It’s gonna be a long haul.
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