April 17, 2025

    Consternation, depression, anxiety, loss, and disrespect all come to my mind when being confronted everyday by more stupidity, legal and police like maneuvering, economic threats towards other nations, corporations, education institutions, individuals through threatened tax audits, and civil and criminal legal threats towards opponents to public policy such as the state of Maine as I think of the many instances of our present governments actions. Well, to audit and evaluate our civil service departments seems reasonable, the facts of our present government's actions are much more arbitrary with disregard for the employment and rights of loyal civil service employees who had declared as a condition of their employment to uphold the constitution of the USA.  The misinformation disseminated by the executive branch of the USA I read is designed to negate the stupidity of these actions and even deny their reality. Dismantling the various departments, stopping critical programs that have benefited millions of citizens, defunding ongoing research and research careers of dedicated people makes me cringe with uncomfortable emotions. Our present government ignores our courts directives to reverse and postpone actions that have resulted in imprisonment of innocent people who have legal residence and some with intentions to become USA citizens because of their free speech pronouncements interpreted as against the present administrations policies.  Their country of origin and ethnicity, and their personal preferences for tattoos and dress are factors in arrest. Birthright attacks by our executive branch are frightening. USA citizens receive emails from our government to leave the country or they will be jailed and expelled are present day realities for some. 

    We  have had positive relationships and strong economic ties with our neighboring countries and with many other countries over the world. We have had trade relationships with them that have been mutually beneficial. There have been some governments such as China and Russia who have subsidized various industries so their products are cheaper to purchase. We have also done this with our agricultural industry as an example. To have a broad tariff on the exports is another stupid method to address these problems. Besides the misinformation produced by our present executive branch that reports the benefits for our country, the present result of the on again off again broad tariffs have created consternation and worse distrust with our former trading partners. The news reports that the method used to decide on the tariffs was idiotic, misrepresenting the trading imbalance and declaring that a trading imbalance means that the country benefiting in this trading area needed to have a tariff even though in no way could we produce the product or material. Can we presently get rare earth materials to meet our USA needs from our country? Not now, so our executive branch has decided that we should annex Greenland and pressure the Ukraine or else! Our foreign policy has devolved from negotiating to threats and misinformation! Our allies in the past have cooperated so that their countries have prospered as had ours. Now defense relationships are strained and cooperation with them broken. Our leaders have insulted and attempted to bully other countries through breaking agreements creating distrust. Our administration has declared that Canada should become a state of the USA. Panama canal should be returned to the USA. If Ukraine wants weapons delivered from the USA then they need to give up their freedoms and give the USA rare earth minerals.

    The USA president declares he is a genius with negotiating the art of the deal. As I am aware, he is a convicted felon who was facing multiple charges including in the past the threat of conviction for insurrection against the USA constitution. He has admitted he is a liar knowing all along that President Obama is a USA citizen though he has repeatedly declared he was not eligible to be president. He has sexually assaulted women with a court ruling against him in one civil trial. When confronted with his stupidity and ignorance and when his attempts to undermine our government are challenged he attacks others including the judges of the federal court that make requests and rule against his policies. He bullies his own party members threatening them that his base of supporters will follow his directive to have them lose their positions in the next election.  He appoints with his parties consent incompetent people and lackies who just follow his direction. His business practices before being elected was to bully, threaten and use the tax laws to declare bankruptcy. 

    Imagine you are a pilot sent on a mission to Yemen to stop Houthi attacks on shipping. Then you read that your boss in charge of defense and other administration figures discussed the specifics of the attacks through an insecure network and included a writer for the Atlantic Magazine just before your mission? Yes, your life as a pilot and logistician would be in serious danger unless our enemies did not read the attack logistical report. Imagine your in the defense department and your staff have received emails telling them to terminate their employment with a promise of some money but you have no input into these decisions which have been arbitrarily made by a group of people in the executive branch who do not have clearance to know how their actions would effect our defense?  

    Stupidity! Terminate the employment of full time workers and temporary employees to the Internal Revenue Service.  Unless, your intent is to give your oligarchical and other supporters tax benefits! By reducing the civil service employees the function of the departments mission becomes very compromised so they are now truly inefficient so the solution of our present government to correct inefficiency in our civil service will lead to inefficiency. 

    Our House of Representatives have passed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act which could disenfranchise millions of voters especially women. Our Republican dominated congress remains loyal to the executive branches directives though some cracks in this support appear present. The recent efforts to expel undocumented immigrants and illegal alien immigrants especially those who protest some of the administrations policies is very concerning for our civil liberties as I have mentioned before. Congress has passed laws to provide protection so ICE can not just whisk people away but the current congress is not complaining that the administration ignores these laws. 

    Our institutions of higher learning are under attack. They are being bullied to stop their diversity admissions efforts or lose federal support and tax exempt status. Columbia University has caved in and agreed while Harvard University has so far resisted. Our legal system is under attack from the Executive Branch and a number of law firms have caved into Trump's demands. So far Trump has been pledged by these law firms one billion dollars of pro bono work to support conservative causes. 

    In my previous posts I have written about the subject of how reasonable people have been bamboozled and remain loyal to such a liar and psychopath. Partly the Democratic parties reluctance to stop our leaky southern border crossing of illegal immigrants is a factor. The other factors has to do with the loss of jobs in the blue collar industry due to cheaper labor in other countries so that factories have moved overseas or south of the border. Again the Democratic party though attempting through job creation infrastructure legislation to address this had little direct impact so far with these under and unemployed workers. Our responses to our Covid epidemic was sometimes overbearing in restricting our movements building resentment from some sectors of our population. Our education systems failures have been described so that high school graduates had less ability to read, use rational reasoning, and think independently. I have written about our human tendency to enjoy narrative story telling thinking versus rational analysis. The outlandish conspiracy thinking that our sensational oriented media have used has confused many people. Now we need to fact check our news reporting or we are often misled. 

    Artificial Intelligence may create more problems for us if we rely on the computer, our cell phones, and media for our only information and analysis of information. There is some suggestion that our brain capacity has changed due to these developments so that we have smaller brains.  There is now research results that point in this direction that we as a nation seem to be dumbing down and this frightens me since narrative thinking and lack of critical thinking to counter misinformation can lead to loyalty to leaders who are charismatic and good actors. Here's a good article concerning this issue https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/opinion/extinction-technology-culture.html). 

    If you've come this far with me in this blog thank you for the attention. I'm still left with the question bothering me concerning what I can do about it. Maybe I'll do more thinking and planning in this area. I came across some methods such as pdf from Brandeis University (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.brandeis.edu/peace-conflict/pdfs/198-methods-non-violent-action.pdf). 

    Leonard

                                        Mount Rose Aspen in Bloom