The United States will have an old new (or is it new old?) president after Donald Trump is sworn in on January 20, 2025. Disclaimer: he is not my president.
Many, including me, find themselves living with a nagging sense of helplessness and hopelessness. I have to be extremely careful not to be sucked into the Trump Circus that leaves me in “via negativa” and controls my life.
My plan is to envision the next four years as a multiringed lousy circus. I am an observer, watching quietly and hoping to find a bit of humor occasionally. For example, the Circus Master has promised to be a one-day dictator. That’s humorous, especially knowing who he is, because he would be the first one-day dictator in the history of humankind.
He has also boasted that he’ll sign more executive orders on his first day than any other president. One of his biggest “orders” will be to deport some eleven million undocumented people living in the United States. That equals to all the residents of North Carolina. Equally as humorous: envision driving through that state, but no one is there.
To envision that almost impossible task and its outcomes, let me take it to a personal level. It involves our cleaning lady, Maria (not her name), who has cleaned our home for fifteen years. She, her husband, and her two sons came to the United States from Mexico in 2009 seeking amnesty. The cartel in their state was demanding their sons join or their parents would be killed. In Mexico, she was a university-educated social worker, and her husband was an attorney. Shortly after she arrived, she started a house-cleaning service. Today, she cleans thirty houses a month. If it weren’t for Maria, some of her clients would not be able to stay in their homes.
Her husband and youngest son (age twenty-three) are licensed contractors. They are a model family who follow the rules and spend most of their money on our economy. They also pay all necessary state and federal taxes, from which they’ll never receive any benefits.
Now envision Trump’s Circus beginning. It’s the middle of the night. The border patrol shows up and whisks the mother, father, and son away to a holding cell to await deportation to their cartel-ridden Mexican state. The family is detained, but no one knows where. The immediate consequences: thirty homes have no cleaning service, and some of her clients might be forced to move to inferior housing.
Maria’s husband and son were in the middle of a remodeling job. The clients have an unfinished mess with no end in sight.
They have been model tenants. Now their landlord has no rental income, and his rental is full of their furnishings. Their five vehicles will sit and rust. The state and federal government will receive no more tax money. Merchants will lose their business and income, and our tax money will pay for this bedlam.
This scenario only includes three people. Let’s multiply that by eleven million other undocumented folks. What do you see? Food rotting in the fields; grocery store shortages; empty housing with landlords declaring bankruptcy; almost all construction has stopped; restaurants, hotels, hospitals, and schools are all short of staff; and much more.
The circus will get worse when tariffs are imposed, the USPS is privatized, the FBI is left with a skeleton crew, the federal Department of Education isn’t, profit-making businesses run Social Security, and on and on.
And on January 8, 2025, the Ring Master announced that he would take over the Panama Canal and Greenland, by force if necessary, and Canada would become the fifty-first state. I can’t wait to watch those circus rings in action.
I see no other way to live through this circus than to watch and find humor, even though it probably is not funny.
Any ideas?
PeaceLoveJoyHopeKindness
Bil
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P.S. People often ask me provocative questions about current events, both religious and secular. I have found that some of these questions are being asked universally. I’ll be periodically alternating regular articles with one of those questions and my answer. I invite you to send me your question to bilaulenbach@yahoo.com.