Since the swearing in very little has been done by the Trump admin to “Make America Great Again” and even less is being done to show some empathy and/or support for the people of this nation.

Within the first two weeks of President Trump’s 4 year term, his disdain for ordinary citizens and preference for billionaires and wealthy people is already evident. We can’t say that we didn’t know it was coming, as throughout his campaign he associated mainly with affluent contributors and tech gurus instead of ordinary citizens. But his messages castigated the liberal elites (his elites weren’t liberal) and promised to improve the lives of average citizens. These rants attracted less educated white men, some Blacks and Hispanics, religious extremists and those who were disgruntled with the state of American society. Trump constantly emphasized the two I’s – inflation and illegal immigration, which greatly appealed to the working classes.

But once attaining office, Trump’s early executive orders have hurt the middle classes and the poor, benefiting his billionaire buddies and corporations. His playbook is Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation which he disowned during the campaign but is now following after the election. Another lie. He wants to continue or expand the tax cuts he gave the rich in his first term which did nothing for ordinary Americans. We can expect more of the same in the future.

And his obsession with tariffs will hurt ordinary Americans who will pay more for imported products and raise inflation further. Trump says the exporting countries will be paying for the tariffs but the rise in costs will be shifted to Americans. Trump also wants to cut health care benefits to poor people by slashing Medicaid. This will not only result in worse medical care but will also hurt the many nursing home residents who cannot afford to pay the costs of the nursing home. Trump has made an offer to 2 million federal workers to resign and receive a severance package that includes about eight months of pay and benefits. It remains to be seen how many federal workers will take this package and quit their jobs, but the offer is not dependent on a worker’s competency or performance. Trump just wants to cut federal spending so he can give out those tax cuts to his high earner friends. It may make the federal government even less efficient, but Trump doesn’t seem to care. He also wants to make the government bureaucracy more politically oriented and loyal to him, rather than neutral.

Trump’s Disdain for Ordinary Americans

His disdain is starting to look like a theater of cruelty….while his supporters keep drooling and ranting all the while are being lubed up….

Donald Trump’s re-election marks not just a political turning point but the ascendance of a corpse-like order, a nation stiffening under the weight of its own decay. His second coming is less a victory than a death march, a spectral procession of hollow men in red ties and stiff gaits—zombies with ice in their veins. Videos of Trump dancing evoke images of  him moving in a style that is jerky, lifeless, as if his body resents rhythm itself. A wooden plank with a painted sneer, twitching to the anthem of reaction, soulless and mean. No body on fire here. no slow bend toward desire, no trace of the supple grace that lives in a world still capable of love. Instead, the image signals the aesthetic of a new order of crudely celebrated as the manosphere—puffed-up bodies, drunk on steroids and grievance, exuding the acrid scent of sweat and power.

This is the culture that Trumpism has wrought: stripped of tenderness, of improvisation, of joy. Gone is the world I knew as a working-class kid, where music spilled into the streets, where voices—aching, defiant, untamed—set bodies in motion. Etta James wailing, Billie Holiday lingering on the edge of heartbreak, Nina Simone playing the piano like she was conjuring a storm. Little Anthony and the Imperials harmonizing into the night. This was a world of movement, of bodies ignited by something more than rage—by love, longing, the exquisite pain of feeling too much.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/02/04/trumps-theater-of-cruelty/

Is this what we as American citizens have to look forward to for the next 4 years…..a bunch of rich pansies screwing the people while enriching themselves?

So yes the cruelty has begun.

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”