The Witness Chronicles, 5/10/25

Phony deals and a real American Pope

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

The President That Cried Wolf

Deals, deals, beautiful deals

Apparently no one in the Trump administration ever read the story about the boy who cried wolf. They’ve talked about trade deals so much, without producing any, that no one takes them seriously anymore. But that has not stopped them from crying ‘deals’ over and over again.

Thursday morning it was big detailed deal with Great Britain, except it’s a big nothing. Trump claimed a very detailed deal was made, when in fact it was only an agreement to talk about one. And we have a trade surplus with Britain. They buy more from us than we do from them. And their tariffs on our goods are only something like 1% so there’s not much to bargain about.

In other words that deal is a big nothing.

As a matter of fact, this entire administration is a big nothing. Nothing has been done, nothing positive has resulted, and there is more nothing on the horizon. The House is squabbling over the big beautiful budget bill as they realize that what Trump wants and what reality is are not compatible. The DOGE cuts to government corruption appear to be actually costing us more than they are saving. And those cuts also appear to be a coverup for the biggest data theft in history as the DOGE boys amass and steal all the government information they can in the name of cost cutting.

Meanwhile half the country is afraid to fly, Newark Airport is partially closed due to a catastrophic failure of outdated air traffic control technology, and the FAA has been randomly gutted despite a massive shortage of critical personnel. And that’s just one government department that has been crippled.

DOGE king Musk has slipped out the door but left his boys behind to play with our future while he tends to his failing Tesla empire. Their car sales in Europe, a big market for EVs, have crashed to nearly zero and they are down 70% here in the US.

Meanwhile Musk can’t wait to get to Mars because the sun is going to supernova in two billion years, conveniently forgetting that Mars would be destroyed too. But he is in such a hurry that he wants to skip colonizing the moon and leave that extremely valuable real estate to the Chinese.

Those who idolized Musk based on his extreme wealth are realizing that the man is not right, a perfect example of absolute power corrupting absolutely.

I thought the first time around with Trump was bonkers, but it was nothing. I also remember when the Bush/Cheney administration seemed the embodiment of evil and now, in comparison, they were a walk in the park.

VP JD Vance went to India and was expected to bring back a trade deal, India having made it clear they wanted one, but that didn’t happen. The reality here is every time they set expectations for anything it doesn’t happen. Yet somehow 42% of Americans still support Trump.

I can’t keep score on the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia because there really aren’t any. One day Putin is our buddy and one day he is not, and every day that changes. Meanwhile we are looking the other way while Netanyahu commits genocide in Gaza so he can take over their territory.

It’s only a matter of time before they announce the plans for Trump’s Middle Eastern Riviera resort. Remember that? Meanwhile we are amping up intelligence survelliance of Greenland, a massive empty island covered with ice and populated with 50,000 people. What the hell are they spying on?

The Port of Seattle, normally busy with imports, has no container ships right now, none. The lag between orders and shipments from Asia is normally 5-7 weeks so we should start seeing the true consumer costs of tariffs any day now.

We’ve had do nothing Presidents before but now we have a ‘make things far worse’ President, aided and abetted by the majority party in both houses of Congress. Did I mention that senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller is suing the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court? Considering the administration has a raft of cases coming in front of the court you might question the wisdom of that move.

But wisdom is in short supply in DC right now. I have a prediction. And I hope I am right. We are on the verge of regular Americans realizing just how bad all this stuff is. It’s taking awhile but at some point someone is going to wake up and get pissed off and I think the White House knows it. They’re crying wolf but we are not listening anymore, if we ever were.

I know a lot of people have skeptically written off DC and decided to ignore this stuff. But ignoring reality doesn’t make it go away and I think more and more of us are starting to see that. Obviously if you read my stuff you are far beyond that stage but your neighbors should be waking up soon.

That’s why my mantra these days is Sharing is Resistance. But sharing is also community and community is something the Trump people fear, the notion that people of disparate backgrounds and politics may find common ground. It’s out there and we need it.

Note: as I was writing this the news of a new pope selection came in and the choice was an American, now Leo XIV. Formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost from Chicago, he speaks five languages and was a bishop in Peru for decades. He holds dual citizenship, born in the U.S. and naturalized in Peru.

I’m not a Christian, I’m a Buddhist, but this choice looks inspired to me.

My hope is that having another American world leader who represents everything that Donald Trump does not is a good sign for the future. As leader of 1.1 billion Catholics worldwide he may help counter the destruction Trump has wreaked on our reputation in the world.

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Martin