The Witness Chronicles, 5/28/25
It’s not just Trump
The Fool on the Hill
Mike Johnson’s shameless toadying
Johnson professes, often, to being a deeply religious man without seeming to know what that religion teaches. But his real religion is Donald Trump and he most resembles the sad losers we knew as kids who admired bullies and tried to emulate them, the sidekicks.
You might say he is the embodiment of the House caucus he leads, a party dominated by fear of a man who is systematically destroying the government they represent. Somehow they all caved in on the Big Beautiful Bill (its actual name) that slashes Medicaid, strips funding from SNAP (food stamps), and eliminates any actions to mitigate climate change, while extending Trump’s massive tax cut to the very wealthy and corporations.
It also, by the way, raises our national debt by an estimated $4 trillion which means we will now owe more than we earn as a nation, which is beyond insane. But this is the House version and it is subject to the Senate changing a lot of that, assuming they don’t follow the Republican House by swallowing any independence or oversight responsibility and giving Trump his every request.
At this point, as Trump applies tariffs randomly than changes them, then changes them again, and his DOGE boys eviscerate the government, we should all be questioning his financial acumen and his supposed business skills. The Big Beautiful Bill is the perfect extension of all his insane and contradicting policies.
Yet every Republican in the House kowtowed to Mike Johnson and gave him a present for his master in the White House. What Johnson seems to have not realized is that the bill and those votes may well cost him the leadership and the majority next year and Trump will find a new boy to beat up on.
That pattern is well established at this point after years of seeing Trump raise followers to new heights only to gleefully knock them down when they no longer serve his needs. Those needs entirely consist of ego gratification, which is a fleeting thing.
In the face of all of Trump and Johnson’s actions the only logical conclusion we can make is that the only true goal is the destruction of the government and the American democracy. And they have just gotten started.
On the Democrat side (remember them?), there is a burgeoning movement to elect younger candidates with more and more coming out to challenge the old guard, the very old guard in Congress. As I have recently read more than once, it has been pointed out that Democratic resistance has been stifled by the seniority system that gives any power to the oldest and most entrenched career politicians. Newcomers in the Senate are designated junior senators, a phrase that stifles their ability to shake things up.
Most voters really think the Dems need to wake up and get out of DC, go to the unfriendly places to talk to voters who did not vote for them, and show sincere interest in what the other side has to say. In other words, get out of our comfort zone.
No more ‘strongly worded letters’ or thoughts and prayers. This is time to rile things up and tell voters what the right is doing and how exactly it will effect them. Judging by rallies held in red states by activists like Sanders and AOC, and likely future candidates like Pete Buttigieg, there are a lot of Republican voters hungering to speak out against Trump and his mayhem.
Notably, Buttigieg is one of the few Democrats who willingly appears on Fox News to debate the issues. Fox is the most popular source of ‘news’ for the majority of Americans so if Democrats avoid it, that majority will not learn what we stand for. Buttigieg knows this basic truth and appearing there has not hurt him, in fact it has likely helped him.
It helps that Buttigieg may be the best communicator in the Party today and seems to be fearless.
Something needs to wake up the sloth we call the Democratic Congress and give them a kick in the butt. It’s long overdue and there’s never been so much to protest. Pick your topic: the economy, foreign policy, the attempts to grab power from the courts, the environment, the dismantling of scientific research, aid to the poor…the list goes on and on and in every example Trump has managed to do the worst job possible.
Yet, with a few exceptions, we hear thundering silence from the Dem side of the aisle. It is as shameful as Trump’s berserker approach to governing. What are they protecting besides their jobs? Protecting your job is not governing.
The reality now is that the Republicans are on very shaky ground right now and a healthy daily dose of outrage might tip some of them into breaking away from Trump and Johnson. In this budget battle we are seeing some signs of that happening and the Democrats should see that as an opportunity. Bipartisanship is a dirty word in TrumpLand.
So, what about the rest of us, the ones who are seriously worried about the future of the country? You can join the protests popping up around the country and attend town halls and speak out, but not everyone is comfortable with that level of personal activism. And, under Trump, we now live in a country where physically threatening those you disagree with and their families is a very real thing.
But you can still resist, just make it one on one. You’ll always see a Share link at the end of my writing and the activist writing of others. My mantra these days is Sharing is Resistance. Send articles that make sense to you to friends, share on social media, or post links on your own media if you have one. On Substack there is a thing called restacking which you do by clicking the little circle icon at the end of all Substack posts. Click that and it posts the article to the Notes feed on Substack where many more people outside of your circle may see it.
Information is power and sharing it is resistance.
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Martin
Keep writing. Thank you.