Originally published by PeaceVoice in journals nationwide on Feb 15, 2025
It takes time. That’s what people keep saying in response to concerns about the Trump Administration. It’ll take time before he can get the good stuff done. They say the promised benefits to this chaos are coming soon.
Don’t hold your breath. The egg prices are still sky-high. How much time will it take for those to come down?
Trump passed 200 executive orders in his first day in office. Not one of them taxed the rich. Not one of them lowered your taxes. Not one of them stopped price-gouging by giant corporations. Not one of them fixed the price of eggs. And yes, Trump could have used his executive orders to do all of those things on day one. He didn’t.
While claiming that the benefits to you will take some time, President Trump hasn’t wasted any time in causing widespread alarm, confusion, and upheaval.
It didn’t take him any time at all to:
- Put thousands of hardworking Americans out of work, including 1000 people at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, 4,400 public lands workers, forest service workers, firefighters, and park rangers; 388 EPA workers with 1,100 more receiving termination warnings; 1,300 Center For Disease Control workers; 1,500 National Institutes of Health workers; and half the NNSA workers who do safety work on nuclear radioactive waste.
- Destroy a centuries-long friendship between the United States and Canada, and antagonize Mexico, Panama, Denmark, and Greenland.
- Threaten the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and to takeover Gaza.
- Collapse a key market for Kansas grain farmers.
- Plunge the federal government into a deceptive and misleading censorship of facts, data, and science.
- Try to dismantle the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau that prevents corporations and rich people from fleecing people like us, possibly for the benefit of Elon Musk’s plans for a payment system on X.
- Order NASA to remove anything about women leadership, including female astronauts.
Look, you’ve got to admit they’re doing something wrong when they piss off the veterans, park rangers, Kansas farmers, and even the Canadians.
You know what else didn’t take any time at all?
- Lining their pockets, especially Elon Musk’s pockets, who planned a $400 million armored car contract and $38 million in Space X deals.
- Breaking the law. There are now 68 lawsuits against the Trump Administration over civil rights violations, disclosing the identities of FBI agents, First Amendment violations, labor law, discrimination, unfair firing, and more.
- Wasting tax dollars on Trump’s $3.4 million trip to the Super Bowl, which he didn’t even stay at until the halftime show.
- Ignoring the Constitution. From the funding freeze to birthright citizenship to disregarding administrative practices to firing congress-appointed federal agency members to getting rid of inspectors general, constitutional scholars are alarmed at the rate at which Trump is crossing lines.
This administration hasn’t found time to lower the price of eggs or make it life more affordable for the average American.
But they have made time to insult Canada, demean half our country, plan human rights violations for migrants, violate the Constitution, give handouts to Elon Musk, and fire people who actually serve the public by researching cancer, keeping our national parks vacations fun, fighting fires, and taking care of veterans.
Are we great yet?
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Rivera Sun, syndicated by PeaceVoice, has written numerous books, including The Dandelion Insurrection and the award-winning Ari Ara Series. She is the editor of Nonviolence News, Program Coordinator for Campaign Nonviolence, and a nationwide trainer in strategy for nonviolent campaigns.
Aro Veno
says:Good question . . . are we great yet? Another question . . . has this country ever been truly great? Sure, the U.S. has done some great things and was founded on some basic human rights’ principles. It was also built from the ground up on the almost total annihilation of the original people and their way of life as well as on the backs of the enslaved brought to this country by force. https://soundcloud.com/aro-veno/descendents-of-immigrants?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
As we come together to raise our voices in protest, let us also acknowledge that the “sins of the fathers” continue to take their toll on the “soul of America”. In addition to the injustice of settler colonialism that took over this land, there have been countless covert operations led by the US in other countries that supported dictatorships and took down democratically elected officials. While the dismantling of the government may be necessary and long overdue, it is being done for the wrong reasons and it is causing all the more hardship, suffering and injustice for so many while at the same time benefiting the wealthiest and most corrupt people on the planet. If there is anything good coming out of this, it is the fact that we are (finally) coming together en masse in peaceful protest.
Be Kind Be Connected Be Unafraid Thank You Rivera Sun
Aro Veno
says:I’m responding to my own comment posted earlier today. I was thinking about what I wrote and the song I shared. I got the feeling that it’s no longer necessary to raise awareness around what this country is built on. Nor is it necessary to raise awareness around what this country uses in a somewhat failed attempt to create a system that is of, by and for the people/the planet/all life on earth and beyond. I think we have reached critical mass on all the injustices past and present. What we need now is to reach critical mass on the visionary level. We need to envision (and sing about) the way we imagine the world to be. https://soundcloud.com/aro-veno/we-can-change?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
I hope it’s ok to be writing like this . . . . on this inspiring and hopeful platform that has been created on Rivera Sun’s website. What a serving grace you bring to human consciousness. An invitation to dwell in an unexplored place in the consciousness where peace, freedom and love reign.
Aro Veno
says:Once again I am responding to my own comment to disagree with myself about it no longer being necessary to raise awareness around the atrocities that this country is built on and continues to perpetrate globally. In reading all three books of the Dandelion Trilogy and now just coming to the end of Billionaire Buddha and Kazu Haga’s Fierce Vulnerability, I have come to the realization that it is necessary for us (U.S.) to acknowledge and feel the collective trauma that this country has accumulated over the centuries of its formation. We must grieve together in order for the trauma to be processed and healed. There must be accountability, remorse and reparations. I, for one, want to engage in that work in myself as well as in the collective consciousness of this country.
Thank you, Rivera, for contributing so much to the awakening and rebirth of the human consciousness.