The Witness Chronicles, 1/22/25

Trump is building a house of cards

Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

The Beginning of the Beginning

We are not going to fold

During a turning point early in WWII, Winston Churchill was asked if this was the beginning of the end. He replied that it was the beginning of the beginning. And now, faced with the terrible unhinged reality of Donald Trump’s second term, a lot of us are left wondering how we begin to hold this thing together in the face of an overwhelming storm.

That storm is driven by a sense of entitlement that is unearned and held together by the frailest of political majorities in the Republican Party, frailties already being tested by the flurry of poorly thought out executive orders written by over enthusiastic political operatives.

Yesterday’s blanket pardon of the January Sixth violent rioters is already testing the loyalty of Trump’s supporters in Congress, among police, and the courts. The idea of pardoning those who attacked police doing their jobs to protect the Capitol is not sitting well with those who were there and feared for their lives.

And we are about to witness the round up of neighbors and coworkers who may be in the country illegally but came here to work hard and create a new life. That aspiration is an American tradition that is in the history of all Americans who came here from other places, including Trump’s family members.

The plans of Trump’s immigrant deportation czar are the actions of a police state, an unwilling police state in many cases. That is not going to play well with farmers, hotel managers, landscapers, restaurant owners, meat packing plant conglomerates, and all those who profit from their labor and ambition.

Trump signed dozens of imperial orders, so many that it is doubtful his people have really considered the longer term impact of them. Instead, what we got was a mishmash of various parties trying to use Trump’s enthusiasm to achieve their own pet goals and interests. And to do it now while the opportunity presents itself to push things through, to strike while the iron is hot.

Trump’s impulsive need for attention is his weakness and enables those in his orbit to manipulate him at opportune moments. His years of bragging about what he would do on day one created one of those moments. But rushing things usually means doing stuff that backfires down the road and that is a big deal when you have razor thin majorities in Congress.

Which is the reality of where we are now. Don’t be fooled by those cheering fans packing the Capital One arena on Inauguration Day. Those are the most loyal stooges of the Trump cult and they have been thoroughly brainwashed by his constant harping on his power and glory.

It is the oldest story in the book, dictator-wise. But it is rife with miscalculations and overblown estimations of how revered he is. The first stages of the emperor’s new clothes syndrome.

Arrogance is going to be their downfall, if there is one. All signs point to that being a likely outcome. But everything depends on the steadfastness of the Democrats and the independence of some Republicans. That is the unknown factor. There are Republican senators whose terms outlast the Trump administration. They will jockey for power in a post Trump DC.

Trump may not live out his term and JD Vance is a weak successor. That’s just reality with an overweight older man whose lifestyle is far from healthy. But there are more dangerous possibilities. A global war is possible with a China/Russian axis. ‘Leaders’ like Pete Hegseth are far from equipped to handle that level of danger. And Trump’s policy of choosing highly incompetent people as advisors will backfire.

Narcissists are notoriously easy to manipulate. Their egos will always move towards attention of any kind. If there will be a downfall that will be the tipping point that brings him down. But our enemies know that and they have been grooming him for years. Putin and Xi are experts in manipulating weak egos and he is in their grasp.

Trump’s policies are based on the views of a narrow group of extremists and do not represent the desires of the American people. The primary divisive policy is his hardcore anti-immigration plans to deport illegal immigrants. In a recent interview with NBC he said that legal immigrants could be deported if they have family members who are illegal.

Only 30% of voters support the mass deportations, meaning the backlash could be far more severe than the right is expecting. And, as mentioned before, the deportations are more likely to hit Trump and Republican supporters in red states that are largely rural and dependent on a labor force largely composed of illegals.

Inflation is cited as the number one reason Trump was elected, but it was prices for food and gas that drove the perception that inflation was the culprit. The reality is that price goudging brought huge profits to the businesses controlling those commodities and Trump himself has already stated that he can’t really do anything about prices.

That betrayal seems to have been largely ignored by his hardcore supporters but it remains to be seen if they will stay loyal when groceries and gas prices fail to fall.

When we look at Trump’s claims and actions we are seeing a house of cards, not a megalith. The only way he can sustain it is to make more and more outrageous claims to distract us from the likely failures ahead. It’s how he ran his previous administration, claiming his wall building was extensive (it was not), and continuously proclaiming infrastructure weeks while taking no action to build or fix anything.

I wonder how much cruelty the American people can stomach. The visuals of families being separated, criminals like the violent January Sixth insurrectionists and neo-Nazis being released into society, the threatened loss of thousands of government jobs, and partisan treatment of areas threatened by dangerous weather and climate change are all likely to be unpopular and disturbing to many. We are already seeing it.

And that may be the key to resistance. Every one of these actions and their results must be highlighted and publicized. The harsh light of day may be our greatest weapon, but it must be constant and unforgiving. Politicians and the media must not give Trump a pass this time around as they have for the past four years.

Shine a light or surrender to darkness. That’s our choice.

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Thank you,

Martin Edic