Now that the Trusk administration is firmly ensconced in the ketchup-spattered Oval Office we can now take stock on where the country is headed. Government agencies are being obliterated in an attempt to justify the usual Republican tax cuts for the rich in the face of a massive, out of control national debt.
Efforts are underway to put an end to free speech, hoping to dampen the ancient president’s risk of carpal tunnel syndrome resulting from his nightly rambling tirades on his iPhone. The legal system is being weaponized to facilitate the punishment of those who have dared to do their jobs and stand up to the administration’s illegal machinations.
The military, now headed by a draft-dodger, is being purged of all but suck-ups to the Kingfish. We are now dumping on our NATO allies and our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, while sucking up to the likes of Vladimir Putin, a former agent of the KGB. We now routinely threaten to seize the land and resources of other countries, by force if necessary. We are scaling back on the IRS, consumer-protection agencies, the SEC, and any and all other obstacles to the rich getting richer. All this and more in the first month in office. Now that’s what I call progress!
Mark Jones
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Mar 6-16, 2025.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
[Remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962]”
― John F. Kennedy
Don’t worry, give it time When enough Americans start missing meals, you’d be surprised how quick what seemed like insurmountable differences start to melt away and people come together. This should concern the Washington elite.
As someone who has lived in both the Midwest and proud to call aggies my friends and having been born and raised on the California coast, there is common ground. As someone who has worked in oil refineries and having graduated from college, there is common ground. As the son of a carpenter and and grandson of a protestant minister, there is common ground. All these so-called regional and cultural difference mean nothing when we are all in a bread line. And we can be assured breadlines are next. Our economy is collapsing and for those in Washington on both sides of the aisle, this can’t come fast enough. Their corporate benefactors, with the blessing of Congress, intend on stealing anything not nailed down. This will be much worse thank 2008 or 1929. The problem for our elite is that there is a precedent, they can’t remove the memory and deeds of FDR. His reaction to the Great Depression was to directly employee MILLIONS of Americans by the federal government. This is the worst fear of conservatives, but what choice do they have? We have no factories, wages are a joke, and the public has way more access to information that than people of the 1920s.
We need to be reminded, the U.S. government is ours, all of ours. It doesn’t belong to a small handful of powerful interests, to do with it and to us as they please. The public agencies being torn down are ours, we paid for them. The services they provide are ours, not theirs. They don’t need public education, they send their kids to private schools. They don’t need Medicare, they actually have first class insurance or pay for services out of their own deep pockets. They don’t need paltry social security checks, they have vaults full of cash and intergenerational wealth. They don’t need the USDA, they own organic farms. They don’t need the FAA, they own their own jets. They don’t need food stamps, they own grocery monopolies. They don’t need functional highways, they have private jets.
In closing, I must remind Americans of the lyrics of a song by Woody Guthrie:
“This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway;
I saw below me that golden valley;
This land was made for you and me.
I’ve roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding;
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said “Private Property.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.”