The Witness Chronicles, 4/24/25

When politics get to you, get outside

Photo by Mark Tegethoff on Unsplash

Spring Reader Letter, April 2025

Earlier today I started one of my daily rants about the Trump White House and I had to stop. I’m not done yet but realized my posts are becoming an ongoing cataloging of the endless stream of lawlessness and incompetence, in part because it’s bewildering how bad it all is.

In the writing, podcasting, and videos covering the topic there are various themes emerging. They include the imperative to share and inform those around us who are either burned out or simply checked out, of the consequences of these actions, consequences that either do not concern the Trump people or that they have never considered.

I think it’s a bit of both. When your only plan is to ignore the law and install a dictator, why would you care about the immediate effects of your actions? The more fanatical advisors to Trump, the Stephen Millers and Karoline Leavitts, intend to sweep away any vestige of democracy in the name of a man who may very well be insane, or at least on the verge of dementia.

I still do not believe they will succeed once the majority of the American people realize what is going on. This is going to hit home as Trump’s economic bungling empties shelves in big box stores and destroys our country’s reputation with our allies, possibly for decades.

Trump’s tactic of using fear of the unknown, and racism, is going to wear thin as a lot of us are get sick of the endless lies, lies that contradict each other daily as various White House people make statements only to be contradicted by statements coming from the President. Though, honestly, I do not believe most Americans pay attention to this insider stuff. And that the Trump people count on that.

My personal themes that keep coming up are that the sheer incompetency may be their downfall and that the most effective resistance is financial actions like boycotts, cutting all unnecessary spending, and pulling money out of investment markets. Trump sees everything from a transactional point of view and we have seen his kneejerk reactions to market moves and statements from billionaires.

I believe it was David Brooks who made the point that the one thing Trump can never control are the financial markets. He can lie about nearly everything else and some will believe him, but he cannot deny the markets and financial warning signs. They are everywhere and they are flashing red. And when they do, people start looking at their retirement funds and savings.

I can tell you that everyone I know has already done that and it’s not good.

I have intentionally avoided writing much about the deportation scandals where legal immigrants are being snatched up by questionable ‘agents’ and sent off to hellhole prisons in foreign countries run by dictators. Those are the actions of a police state and a dictatorship. But we are not a dictatorship, yet.

It is important to understand that Trump has one winning issue and these deportations are part of it. So he is going to keep it in the center of his publicity even as the courts come down on him. We hear a lot of talk about a Constitutional Crisis from the media but I wonder if anyone in the real world is paying attention.

To put it simply from my perspective, a Constitutional crisis occurs when the Supreme Court directly orders Trump to do something and he ignores it. The Court has waffled on doing that, to their shame, with language left subject to legal interpretation. Until they change that, we are left in legal limbo and Trump feels free to continue breaking the law.

The real failure so far is not Trump’s maniacal machinations, it is the complacency of the American people. Not you my readers, but unfortunately a lot of those around you, who just don’t want to deal with it. They are in for a series of shocks in the coming weeks, shocks that will hit all of us as prices skyrocket, businesses go under, Trump abandons Ukraine and concedes to all of Putin’s demands, and China makes fools of us. It’s that bad.

If those shocks don’t wake us up, we will have failed as a democracy and that is not, in my view, an exaggeration. And I have not even mentioned the issue no one in DC will even mention, the climate destruction we see every day across the country and the planet.

That silence has normalized the news of death, destruction, and displacement caused by weather unlike any in the record books. The really scary thing is how Trump is weaponizing misery and loss to further divide us by politicizing the distribution of FEMA aid based on who voted for him.

Red states get money, blue states don’t. Yet another major story that should be enraging all of us.

So, you can see how it might discourage writers and activists who hardly know which way to turn in this storm of madness, including me, an old guy tapping into an outdated iPad every day, trying to sort it all out. And trying to sustain an optimism that says we will get through this.

I truly believe that, but right now I can’t see the path clearly. That bothers me and it should bother all of us, a lot. Until that happens, these people are winning.

Three things sustain me these days. Conversations, community, and the unfolding of life outside as spring does its eternal thing and the trees flower and leaflets brighten the world, seemingly unfolding as I watch. I find myself sitting outside and just taking it all in without thinking about all of this stuff and that is lovely. And revitalizing.

I often wonder if the fanatics in the White House ever stop and just take those things in? If they did they might realize the planet is an incredibly beautiful place and their fears are entirely of their own making. They are the ones we should feel sorry for, encased in hate for no reason.

I’m going for a walk. Tell someone you love them.

Thanks,

Martin

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