Biden's Farewell

As most outgoing Presidents are wont to do - since Washington set the tone - President Joe Biden issued a formal Farewell Address to the nation, pointing out his term's successes and making dire warnings about what lays ahead (via Chris Megerian, Zeke Miller, and Colleen Long at AP News):

President Joe Biden used his farewell address to the nation Wednesday to deliver stark warnings about an “oligarchy” of the ultra-wealthy taking root in the country and a “tech-industrial complex” that is infringing on Americans’ rights and the future of democracy.

Speaking from the Oval Office as he prepares to hand over power Monday to President-elect Donald Trump, Biden seized what is likely to be his final opportunity to address the country before he departs the White House to spotlight the accumulation of power and wealth in the U.S. among just a small few.

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said, drawing attention to “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked...”

Biden’s speech in the Oval Office is the latest in a series of remarks on domestic policy and foreign relations he has delivered that are intended to cement his legacy and reshape Americans’ grim views on his term. Earlier in the day, he heralded a long awaited ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which could end more than a year of bloodshed in the Middle East.

“It’ll take time to feel the full impact of what we’ve done together but the seeds are planted and they’ll grow and they’ll bloom for decades to come,” Biden said. It was a tacit acknowledgement that many Americans say they have yet to feel the impact of his trillions of dollars spent on domestic initiatives...

Biden offered his own set of solutions for the problems that he laid out: change the tax code to ensure billionaires “pay their fair share,” eliminate the flow of hidden sources of money into political campaigns, establish 18-year term limits for members of the Supreme Court and ban members of Congress from trading stocks. His policy prescriptions come as his political capital is at its nadir as Biden prepares to exit the national stage, and after he has done little to advance those causes during his four years in power at the White House...

That last sentence aptly defines what could prove to be Biden's legacy: Both the long-term accomplishments he focused on working to rebuild the economy post-COVID and post-trump, and the frustration at letting too many needed reforms go pass. ALL of those things that Biden offered as solutions - especially the needed caps on campaign financing and on judicial overreach and corruption - were things HIS OWN administration could have worked on during the brief window of opportunity 2021 to 2023 when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.

To this, I would point to Professor James David Barber's cheat sheet of Presidential Character. Where Biden falls on that spectrum - Passive-Positive - explains a lot about the lack of energy or focus when working on extensive and radical reforms. Passives are the type that don't want to "rock the boat" too hard and shake off any support from the more extreme elements of their own coalitions (and are willing to work with opponents thinking everyone's all in one big happy Starfleet); while the Positive trait of seeing the powers of high office as a good thing for the public can blind such Presidents from the need to stop corruption in government. Such Congeniality wouldn't be a problem in times of normalcy: However, we are in the Age of trump, where lies and greed are the coins of the realm, and Biden exposed himself to attacks he couldn't overcome.

This is why Passive-Positives preside over either administrations of high corruption or low energy. The good news is that Biden's personal incorruptibility - in spite of the MAGA accusations that he's corrupt like his son Hunter - drove him to surround himself with good people who did their jobs. This keeps him from getting grouped with the likes of U.S. Grant (who failed to surround himself with good people) and Warren Harding (who happily surrounded himself with corrupt friends) and Ronald Reagan (who may not have been fully aware of his regime's corruption but allowed it to happen). Biden falls in with the likes of William Taft: Who rose to power during a Progressive reformist wave and served a relatively scandal-free term, but failed to capitalize on more economic reforms and corporate regulations that were needed in that era.

As a side note, this is where Barber's Character chart of creating four major traits falls apart in the specific successes and failures of each presidency. Not all Active-Positive Presidents behave the same way, nor do Passive-Positives or Active-Negatives (there have been too few Passive-Negatives to make that observation). Even within each Character there seems to be two types: With Passive-Positives there's the type that presides over corruption because they don't want to lose friends (Appeasers) or the type that doesn't want to push harder on things that need doing (Slackers) because they feared the risks (something Actives never worry about).

Biden ended up as a Slacker President, trying to focus on big-menu items like job growth and infrastructure but unwilling to press harder on major crises such as trump's lawlessness and foreign wars/interventions such as Ukraine (where Biden's fear of Putin's nuclear retaliation paralyzed our support efforts to Zelensky) and Gaza (even as Biden claims success with a ceasefire, it took too many months and too many innocent Palestinian lives to get here).

Because of Biden's inability to see trump as a genuine and ongoing threat to American democracy and political well-being - and because he feared falling into the accusations of dictatorship if they pursued trump's criminality - he didn't push too hard - and hired a like-minded Attorney General in Merrick Garland who also didn't press the need - to see trump held accountable for his actions on January 6th. That delay cost us dearly: It allowed trump to campaign again and use his gaslighting and denials to escape justice, and return to power with a vengeance (literally).

Biden's administration is going to be less remembered for the accomplishments he did achieve - especially a key infrastructure bill that should improve local manufacturing and job growth for the next 20 years - and more remembered for all the missed opportunities to end global threats like Putin and greedhead threats like Elon Musk. He'll be among the ranks of the recently passed Jimmy Carter: A Good man who didn't exactly do a Great job.

And Injustice For All, Because Justice Came Too Late

The January 6th part of Jack Smith's Special Counsel report is officially out.

You can read for yourselves the parts where donald trump intentionally started and condoned a riot in our nation's capitol to interfere with the 2020 election results. These were things Smith was convinced could be proved in a court of law and leading to trump's conviction on federal charges. This is why people called it an insurrection and what should have disqualified trump from ever running for office again.

And yet, he did run for office again. The Republican Party failed to maintain any personal ethics and allowed this viper the chance to run again; Merrick Garland and the Justice Department moved too slow out of fears of politicizing matters, refusing to convene a grand jury and press for indictments for years; the Supreme Court refused to hold trump accountable and even granted more executive powers that trump can now abuse; the mainstream media ignored all the evidence and all the corruption, and failed to label trump as the violent insurrectionist that he is; and above all 77 million of our fellow Americans decided to vote for the crooked son of a bitch back into the White House where trump will inflict worse horrors on the nation.

What the hell, America. THIS monster - this court-confirmed sex offender, this convicted felon, this sociopathic insurrectionist - is what you want to lead you. The cruelty and injustice we're about to suffer is ALL ON YOU.

Yes, Rudy is Contemptible and It's His Own Damn Fault

While donald trump skates free of any real punishment for his 34 felony convictions - what the hell is "unconditional discharge?" Sounds like a bad infection - his would-be Roy Cohn just keeps digging himself deeper into the mudpits. Former NYC mayor, once-federal prosecutor, Noun-Verb-9/11 propagator Rudy Giuliani was found in contempt for the second time regarding his defamation verdicts when he lied about Georgia election officials (via Alex Galbraith at Salon):

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell tore into Giuliani on Friday for violating a permanent injunction against bad-mouthing Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two women who successfully sued the former New York City mayor for defamation. Howell said that Giuliani continued to disparage the women on his online radio show, "America's Mayor Live," telling the conservative media figure that continuing to speak ill of Freeman and Moss after the court handed down a massive punishment takes "real chutzpah." 

Giuliani's attorneys argued that the Trump hanger-on genuinely believed that Freeman and Moss committed election fraud, a point that held no water with Howell.

“So, what? You’re saying this defamation is never going to stop?" she asked. "He’s never going to stop saying this because he thinks he’s right?”

To make sure that Giuliani is completely clear on the facts around the 2020 election in Georgia, Howell required him to sign a declaration that he's read all the evidence against his claims of fraud. She threatened Giuliani with a $200 fine and potential jail time if he failed to complete the declaration within 10 days.

Giuliani was found in contempt of court by another federal judge earlier in the week, who ruled that Giuliani was failing to turn over his assets to help pay off his nearly $150 million defamation judgment...

With regards to Giuliani's failure to stop repeating the falsehoods that the court trials revealed as lies, this is how damaged the entire Republican Party / Far Right is when it comes to the Real World. Having built up this huge (false) Narrative that Republicans are honest and true and the liberal Democrats are lying cheaters over the decades, when it comes time to prove that Narrative in places where lying isn't allowed - courtrooms - that Republican Narrative falls apart.

Only, the Far Right wingnuts can't ever admit they were wrong (even if they were genuinely misled by others). Admission of lying or deception in one part of that Narrative draws that whole Narrative into dispute and it would collapse on themselves.

And the Far Right profits from that Narrative. Their talk shows, their podcast, their political campaigning and fundraising all draw on the Narrative that "Republicans can never lose, Republicans are the TRUE Americans, Everyone on the side of the Liberals and Democrats are evil Communists looking to eat your babies." 

Look at Rudy. All those millions of dollars that he's supposed to turn over to his defamation victims: All of that earned by decades of Republican pandering, all of that earned by decades of demonizing others not of their tribe. Giuliani can't stop lying about the results of the 2020 election because doing so destroys his audience, and he loses even more money down the road.

As a side note, you'd think that after trump won re-election this 2024 that the "damage" done by his losing in 2020 would fade away. But no. Remember, trump (and the Far Right) can never admit they lost, so even now trump and his lackeys are gearing up further legal attacks against those they still claim "stole" trump's "rightful victory".

This is the pit in Hell that Giuliani made for himself, by the by. He volunteered to be trump's legal attack dog and now he's paying the price in ways that trump can't save him (unless trump and his corrupted DOJ decide to undo centuries of civil court jurisprudence).

If only 77 million voters understood the corruption they voted back into power this election cycle. If only our fellow Americans realized the contempt trump and his Far Right MAGA base have for the Real Truth: Truth based on Facts and Reality.

We're entering into a dark age of disinformation, constant lying and gaslighting, coming at us from all angles and entering every nook of our lives, even into a judicial system that's supposed to stop lying and deceptions as a means of upholding the Constitution and the laws that preserve our rights and our responsibilities.

Gods help us.

I doubt God will help Rudy. He's doomed to either admit his lies or keeping lying straight into a jail cell.

A Thimbleful of Justice But I'll Take It

This may seem too little, too late, but at least the New York state criminal matter into trump's hush money felonies ruling will reach a conclusion before Inauguration Day as Judge Merchan will issue sentencing this Friday January 10th (via Ximena Bustillo at NPR): 

In a decision Friday, New York Judge Juan Merchan noted that his inclination was to not impose a sentence of incarceration. In the filing, Merchan noted that if a sentence was unable to be given before Trump took the oath of office, the only other viable option may be to postpone proceedings until after Trump's presidential term is over.

In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, officially labeling him a convicted felon. The decision also comes after Merchan ruled last month that Trump is not immune from a conviction in the case...

After about a day and a half of deliberations, 12 New York jurors said last May that they unanimously agreed that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels to influence the 2016 election.

Following the verdict, Trump virtually completed a routine pre-sentencing interview with the New York City Department of Probation. The prosecutors for the Manhattan District Attorney's office, who prosecuted Trump, and Trump's legal teams each submitted sentencing recommendations last month. Those documents have not been released to the public.

Trump also turned his attention to mobilizing donations for his campaign and mounting legal fees by using the conviction as a fundraising tool. Within 24 hours of the guilty verdict, Trump's campaign boasted raising millions of dollars. Trump and his legal team have also vowed to appeal the conviction, a process that could take years...

In a sane world, that May conviction should have been the end of trump's efforts to regain the White House to avoid all legal accountability. Instead, too many other Americans don't seem to give a rat's ass about ethics or character or the necessity of more honest, less criminal leadership. /fume

But if America is supposed to stand for Truth and Justice -if the rule of law and loyalty to the constitution matters more than loyalty to any one person - then it matters that trump face some measure of justice so that history - so that our better angels of our nature - can denounce the lies and gaslighting that trump and his followers will use to wipe away the facts of his sins.

As Austin Sarat notes at Salon:

Merchan has set an example of resistance on the cusp of a second Trump presidency. His ruling will serve this country well as we enter a period in which the occupant of the Oval Office intends to bend judges and others to his will and in which serving him will be the standard against which government officials, journalists, and others will be judged.

Before looking more closely at Merchan’s decision, let me say more about the role of history and memory in a democracy.

Writing in 2019, Jeffries Martin observed that in a democracy, respecting and learning from the past is a singular virtue. “Historical work,” Martin explained, has “long served as a major intellectual bulwark for democratic republics….” He conceded that such work would not in itself “preserve our democracy. But when fostered in a critical and democratic spirit, they constitute an important piece of what we might call a culture of resistance and liberty.” 

In a democracy, we can argue over what history means or what parts of the past should be venerated and which should not be, as fights over monuments have shown.  But, no one gets to re-write history or erase memory to suit their convenience or serve their partisan purposes. In authoritarian or totalitarian regimes, history and memory belong to the powerful. Rewriting and whitewashing the past, whether of a nation or its leaders, is standard operating procedure. As Jason Stanley puts it, “Authoritarians…erase history… seeking to separate us from our own history to destroy our self-understanding and leave us unmoored, resentful, and confused.”

Once Merchan's sentencing is a matter of record, trump can try to lie and deceive and ignore it as much as he wants, but it will exist as a counter to the false narratives of his "greatness" that will undermine his attempts to literally rewrite history. trump and his lackeys/followers will attack anyone who refers to the ruling, to anyone who openly points out how trump is a convicted felon - and the implications of his failures at both business and deceit - but those attacks will run into the reality that right there in Westlaw (and the legal court references at your law libraries) there is proof trump is a crook.

Merchan has already noted that he will not seek to impose any jail time - either that trump will face only fines and probation, or if any jail time occurs it will be suspended until after his term of office - but trump now faces the possibility that his future - which may be shorter than he thinks because the 22nd Amendment says the presidential term limits is two and nothing about them being consecutive - is not going to be all victory parties at Mar-A-Lago rolling around in millions in cash.

Unless trump decides to act up in court this Friday and compels Merchan to hold him physically in contempt.

One can always hope.

The pity of this tiny amount of justice getting delivered unto trump is how tiny it is. he WAS facing federal charges and Georgia criminal charges in other matters, but now his impending presidency closed shut the federal cases and may prevent the Fulton County office - once they figure out if the DA can oversee the entire case any further - from keeping his charges active (they may still bring to trial the other defendants in that election interference / fake electors cases). 

Any justice that may arise here is that the Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is required to issue his (final?) reports on those inquiries, much like Mueller did with his report, only except this time it's unlikely Attorney General Merrick Garland will redact the ever-loving hell out of Smith's reports the way Barr did to Mueller's.

Which is why trump is now pleading - demanding - that Garland delay the release of those reports, so that HIS puppet Matt Gaetz Pam Bondi can commit massive redactions and rewrites of Smith's findings and hide trump's sins from the public and from history itself.

For the love of God and Truth and America, Garland: Release the Smith Reports in full, without serious redaction (only the names of the innocent and the witnesses who need protection from trump's wrath). And re-release the Mueller Report unredacted while you're at it, so that Barr and trump can wriggle in public disdain for those sins as well.

Truth and Justice, goddammit. Those aren't just words. They're supposed to define what America stands for.

Never Forget: trump's Treason

On January 6th, 2021, donald trump betrayed his oath of office and incited a mass riot to break into Congress and disrupt the vote count certification so he could steal the presidential election results.

In a sane and just universe, trump would never have been allowed anywhere NEAR the White House again. he should have been put on trial within weeks of the assault on our political institutions and the sanctity of the Constitution. Hundreds of the MAGA rioters - around 1,600 of them - had gone through exactly that, either pleading out or getting convicted with serious jail time. trump should be rotting in prison alongside them.

And yet, no. Biden's Justice Department led by Merrick Garland dragged their feet, resisting the necessity of holding trump accountable because of whatever "good faith" political decorum - the refusal to hold presidents accountable for ANY acts at all - still informed their world-view. It took a hotly contested congressional inquiry to force Garland's hand and appoint a special prosecutor to pursue the matter. And while Jack Smith did bring charges eventually, the electoral calendar swung back around to where trump ran for the presidency again - in spite of his insurrectionist misdeeds - and won the damn thing even with a majority of Americans knowing he was a crook, rendering any further federal criminal charges moot (because the courts determined Presidents are immune from criminal charges while sitting in office).

And now, trump is trying to rewrite history. he lies about the level of violence that happened that January 6th, declaring it was all "a day of love". he calls each of the imprisoned rioters "patriots" and "heroes" and will likely pardon every one of them as soon as he's in the Oval Office (arguably after he issues executive orders confirming mass deportations, declaring war on Mexico, and insane tariffs on Canada).

There were 140 police officers assaulted that day. Property damage in the millions. Seven people dead, including one Capitol Police officer who was driven to suicide from the trauma of that day. There was no love that January 6th. Just violence, rage, fear, and the closest collapse of our nation's existence since the Civil War.

trump reveled in that violence, enjoyed spinning the narrative to twist it into his great day of dominance over the American spirit, and will do everything in his power to relive that moment through further acts of violence and illegality upon our nation and the world.

To the 77 million Americans who voted for this insurrectionist: what the actual hell. You saw this. January 6th was on the front page of every paper, on the news broadcasts of every channel. And you STILL VOTED for the son of a bitch.

There will come a future when we are free of this trumpian madness, and there will be a reckoning for you and this nation for the sins trump will inflict upon us.

Until that day, fuck you. You're going to earn the nightmare we're all about to endure. 

Day One of Not In the Mood

There's a reason why I'm not thrilled to be entering into a new year this 2025. Actually there's several.

Just the painful reality that a court-convicted sex offender and criminal felon will be entering the White House to represent the entire United States. donald trump may have been President before, but it was through a fluke of a broken Electoral College system. This time, too many fellow Americans happily voted for this monster knowing full well all the crimes he'd been convicted (and the ones charged on him that will now ever see a courtroom). Just this fact alone hurts my soul, and I know I'm not the only one.  

There's the horrifying damage trump and his Far Right lackeys can and will inflict on our nation, on our system of laws and protections. I know there are experts telling us that our institutions are firmly entrenched, that there are limits to many of the changes trump and his MAGA extremists want to enforce (to break our government altogether). The thing is: these bastards are going to try to wreck everything no matter what, far worse than what they tried the first time around because this time trump has more Executive powers granted to him by his allies at the Supreme Court. This time around there are NO adults in the room to rein in trump's more sadistic desires, only fellow sadists pandering to trump's obsessions and destructive urges.

trump is still out here spewing anti-immigrant outrage and lies, providing every proof that he intends to enact a massive deportation scheme that will tear apart families, capture and punish innocent lives - especially children who did nothing wrong - even the ones who ARE natural-born Americans, and betray every aspect of America's better ideals and aspirations. We're about to become a national prison, hunting and caging 20 million people because the Far Right views them as animals, without care to the immorality of such acts.

trump will take the American economy - still the strongest on the planet even with all the concerns about inflation (which has been dropping all year, thank you for not asking) - and break it through overt acts of corruption and stupidity. Forcing the federal reserve to buy into Bitcoin using billions of taxpayer money without any proof of its value; Twisting the stock market to favor trump's own holdings and generating enough uncertainty to cause meltdowns and panics; Harassing businesses with threats to perform shakedowns; Worst of all, pushing for tariffs that won't raise revenues but will trigger trade wars with even our biggest international allies.

trump will preside over a federal government - from the Executive to the Legislative to the Judiciary - under full control of a hard Conservative Republican Party obsessed with Culture War dogma that will affect our public education, our health care, our civil rights, our Social Security and Medicare safety nets.

trump is going to preside over yet another massive train wreck of an administration, and there's no sign that anyone is going to be in a position to stop him before he hurts millions and steals billions.

Welcome to 2025.

The fires are already starting.

Where the Rich and the Racist Disagree

Update: Many thanks and Happy New Year to Batocchio at Crooks & Liars for adding this article to Mike's Blog Round-Up! Stay safe everyone, and meet me in Gainesville FL this February 1st for the Sunshine State Book Festival. ;-)

As part of the ongoing American meltdown this winter, we're witnessing a very public and very nasty spat between donald trump's MAGA voting base and trump's billionaire buddies. There's a quick refresher at NPR's All Things Considered with Stephen Fowler commenting:

So for people who are not terminally online, here's a quick recap. Trump made a number of smaller staffing announcements for his second term earlier this week. One of them is a high-profile tech entrepreneur named Sriram Krishnan, who's worked at Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. Far-right activists started trashing the pick on the social media site X, pointing out that Krishnan was born in India, that he previously made comments advocating for more green cards, and devolving into a lot of racist and anti-immigrant attacks on foreign workers that come to the U.S. on these H-1B visas...

the debate over H-1Bs and legal immigration and what Trump might do about them is not something new. In his first term, Trump said that certain visa programs were being abused to bring in foreign workers to replace American workers. He suspended the H-1B program during the pandemic for the same reason, but this time around, things could be different. People in the tech industry, with the Musk-Ramaswamy viewpoint that the U.S. needs more of these top workers no matter where they're from to keep an edge in fields like AI - they're more in Trump's ear and his good graces this time around.

There's also interest in reforming the visa process not just for these tech workers - from lawmakers across the aisle who say it's an overly complex system chock full of carveouts that benefit certain industries and, like Trump has said, are being abused. But there's also a lot of conservatives, especially among the base of the GOP, that shape primary elections, who believe Trump's hard-line immigration stances means reform should primarily come in a reduction of immigrants...

Fowler mentioned the "devolving into a lot of racist and anti-immigrant attacks" but didn't discuss it in detail, considering how that racism is foundational to the Far Right anger towards even legal migrants (like we saw during the elections with the spiteful attacks towards Haitian migrants in Springfield). Steve Benen over at Maddow's Blog (MSNBC) digs a little deeper:

It was against this backdrop that the president-elect announced early last week that venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan — a proponent of green cards for skilled workers — would work in Trump’s incoming administration, serving in a top artificial intelligence policy post. The news was not well received on the Far Right.

A highly controversial MAGA activist named Laura Loomer — who spent at least part of the year as a member of Trump’s inner circle — condemned the decision to hire Krishnan, pointing to his support for the H-1B program, which provides temporary worker visas for high-skilled tech workers. An ugly back-and-forth, which some have labeled the “MAGA civil war,” erupted soon after.

On one side of the divide are prominent far-right voices such as Loomer and Steve Bannon, who have spent the last week clashing with figures such as Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. They all remain Trump allies, of course, but they’ve also targeted each other in caustic and personal ways, culminating in the world’s wealthiest individual publishing a tweet in which he urged many of the president-elect’s supporters, “Take a big step back and f--- yourself in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”

Subtle, it was not.

We are witnessing the divide between the massive and anger-driven Far Right voting base that has been stirred up by fearmongering and racism to hate ALL immigrants (unless they're from Norway) and the upper elite billionaires of the Far Right who have fed all that fearmongering and racism to their masses while profiting - and hoping to profit even more - from that very immigration system that brings them cheap - and indentured - labor. From Janice Gassam Asare at Forbes (paywalled):

The support of H-1B visas by billionaires like Musk, Ramaswamy and others should come as no surprise. On the surface, these work visas seem like a win-win, allowing highly skilled workers in specialized fields to contribute to the U.S. labor force while being granted the ability to stay in the country. What isn’t talked about enough is the exploitation that these workers often experience. The Economic Policy Institute reported that a majority of H-1B workers are paid below median wages. Not only is paying employees lower wages advantageous for employers, but workers on H-1B visas may be less likely to report workplace harm and mistreatment due to fears of how the loss of an H-1B job could drastically impact their life. It’s not outside the realm of possibilities that because of what’s at stake, many H-1B workers are more compliant and less rebellious than American employees, which would naturally make them a more enticing hire. 

Billionaires like Musk need to rile up the voting base to keep them compliant and voting Republican - so that the Republicans can then gift those billionaires massive tax cuts and easy access to the federal pork barrel - but they need the current immigration system to hire thousands of workers who can't fight for better wages or defend themselves in a legal system skewed against them. This is a dynamic vulnerable to rebellion by the MAGA base when they realize their racism has limits. Back to Asare:

Ramaswamy and Musk’s posts on X have sparked a bitter debate among Trump’s supporters. Some Trump supporters have resorted to spewing racist and xenophobic rhetoric online based on fears of a “browning” America and anxieties about being replaced. Instead of uniting across party lines over class struggles and society’s collective disdain for rising inflation, racism has reigned supreme. At the end of the day, capitalism trumps nativism and regardless of one’s party affiliation, the almighty dollar rules. Many of Trump’s supporters may feel hoodwinked; voting for him because of his immigration promises, only to learn that Trump and his billionaire allies are more focused on how foreign workers make American businesses more profitable...

At the moment, this schism is mostly relegated to the social media arena where the MAGA haters are expressing their fury towards their GOP masters. There is no sign that this will translate into the Far Right voters from abandoning the Republicans altogether (after all, where can they go?), or any political factions in Congress turning against trump and Musk to make them suffer for their pro H-1B stances. 

But this all highlights one real fact: The voter anger that supported trump this 2024 wasn't really about inflation, or economic anxiety. It was about hating others who weren't privileged, who weren't viewed as American, who weren't "born here" and "needed to go back where you came from."

It was always the racism. It was always that fear - unjustified, uncontrollable - of the dread Others - even among the non-White communities - that the Far Right demonized for political gain.

That racism won't quiet down any time soon. In the coming year, we are going to see our fellow (White) Americans at their worst, on a scale we haven't seen since the Civil Rights battles of the 1960s.

Gods help us all, as that rage will consume more innocent lives and destroy more communities than the Far Right believes will happen.

Stay safe this 2025.