Chaos by design

It's clear that the Trump administration, with accelerated support from Elon Musk and his DOGE bros, are closing parts of the federal government and threatening to debilitate vital agencies and intimidate the judiciary.

His actions in these first 100 days seem calculated to overthrow all government processes from the Congress to Defense to Social Security to the courts.

It's a test of the limits of one person's power – even extending to colleges and universities or any company or law firm that would dare oppose that one person.

In some cases, like USAID, the Voice of America, and a number of other foreign aid programs, the cutbacks in grants and personnel seem calculated to speed up America's turn inward, away from its responsibilities as the leader of the free world.

In others, like issues Trump has picked – tariffs for Canada and Mexico, a turning away from our loyalty to NATO and Ukraine, and callous remarks about the Panama Canal and Greenland – we are seeing what foreign policy by whim is all about.

In still other cases, Trump has recruited individuals for cabinet-level posts who are proving dedicated only to the destruction of the federal agencies that they lead.

These cabinet secretaries – and together they are some of the richest and most callous people in America – are cutting their workforce in half and discrediting whatever remains through their own dishonor and incompetence.

Great leaders think about the consequences of their words and actions. By this definition, some have said that Trump is not a great leader. But I beg to differ. Trump wants this particular kind of chaos. He is on a lifelong journey of breaking the rules, ignoring his debts, ignoring both the norm and the law. He doesn't have much use for the law, the courts, the Justice Department and the FBI, the EPA, or the Department of Education.

Chaos gives him more power to intimidate, to promulgate, to pontificate, and to exaggerate.

Trump knows his words and actions are generating chaos throughout the United States, not only in our government and communities, but also in much of the world.

Trump's words and actions, and the actions of Elon Musk and the DOGE squad are directly calculated to put Social Security on the edge, upend NATO, and destabilize American business and international trade.

Those still living in free democracies have felt "a great disturbance in the force" as Lord Trumper has turned America from the friend of the innocent and countries under attack like Ukraine into the supporter of others, like Russia, who would oppress them.

Allies in Canada and Europe are disillusioned, recognizing they will have to find a new path to self-preservation that doesn't include any reliance on the U.S. It is a great loss, for them and for America as well.

Those already under the thumb of autocrats in Russia, China, Turkey, North Korea, and Hungary can no longer look to the U.S. for inspiration about what democracy can do. Where can they turn for hope?

America has entered a period of Babylonian captivity of a sort. We didn't get exiled to a nearby country. But we are under the control of a government – no, not government, but billionaires and autocrats – we do not recognize.

I don't know how some of the folks who voted for Trump are still making excuses for him, still minimizing, still afraid to counter his particularly sick brand of chaos.

So I write this for me, and for them, in the hope that they will understand what this will mean for America for a long time to come. I write this and will refer to Spin Rules rather than argue or engage with them. I write this in the hope that they will understand why our lament has begun, why our protests and resistance are under way. If nothing else, I hope they are beginning to see that here in America, where we can't even get Social Security to answer the phone, we are now on our own.

We are left to figure out how to care for each other, how to compensate, day by day, in some small way, for the hostile takeover of America and the gutting of whatever it is that makes our government work for the people.

Don't worry. There will be plenty of opportunity to find ways to help. For there will be plenty of misery, plenty of people abandoned who will not be able to cope or provide for themselves in these circumstances.

First lament. Then pray. Then protest. Then act.

We will have to tread water through a raging storm until the next election – assuming America can come to its senses by then and there are any American values left to salvage.