My Sunday roundup of useful articles and ideas from the past week—re-upping content that might help us figure out what's going on, what comes next, and how to get through it all.
By the time his first term ended in disgrace, Trump had made America sicker, weaker, and poorer.
This time around, he's not wasting any time to achieve the same result.
Making America sicker
America now has a Health and Human Services secretary in RFK, Jr. who has a famous name and an even more famous brain worm.
If anyone's likely to eat your dog or cat, it's him.
Kennedy is the leader of the "Make America Healthy Again" movement which encourages parents to avoid the poison of vaccines while making their kids strong by drinking raw milk.
So-called experts (remember them?) think the MAHA movement may actually kill you and your kids, pointing to stubborn facts such as:
- Avian flu has now been confirmed in dairy cattle in 16 states.
- A measles outbreak is racing through the unvaccinated in West Texas, with more than a dozen kids already hospitalized and "no end in sight."
- There are 67 confirmed cases of "active tuberculosis" in the Kansas City area, with cases simultaneously hitting a "20-year high" in Nebraska.
- A surge in whooping cough cases, which recently hit a 10-year high nationwide.
We're also having the worst flu season in 15 years, which is alarming when you remember how badly Trump bungled his first flu season in 2017-18.
Back then, due to Trump's neglect—and the corruption scandal that forced his first HHS secretary to resign—thousands of Americans died needlessly of the flu. It was a deadly foreshadowing of why Trump would be the worst president possible to lead us in an actual pandemic.
If you're worried about the next Trump pandemic, the appointment of RFK, Jr. is just the tip of the iceberg.
In addition to allowing Elon Musk to make the next pandemic more likely by creating havoc at HHS and the CDC, Trump has also taken multiple steps of his own to create a nightmare scenario should we face a new or mutating pathogen. He's withdrawn the US from the WHO, destroyed USAID's ability to respond to international infectious disease threats, and fired half of the CDC's most essential "disease detectives."
Trump has also delayed CDC reports on the spread of bird flu in humans. He's developing concepts of a plan that will include punishing cuts to Medicaid. And he's taking ongoing steps to align America's healthcare policies with the Christo-Fascist agenda laid out in Project 2025.
When the next Trump Pandemic begins, Americans will have to rely on the same quality healthcare Jesus once delivered.
Because we'll all need a miracle to survive.
Making America weaker
Trump gave America's enemies another series of wins this week.
The confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence of February 12 caused celebrations in Russia, facepalms among our allies.
Trump immediately called Putin to start discussing how much of Ukraine he might want to keep. Pete "Day-Drinker" Hegseth took the ball and ran with it, upsetting even some Republicans by suggesting Putin's wishlist could be the starting point of any peace negotiations.
Then JD Vance decided Valentine's Day was the best time for America to tell Europe that we're breaking up with them.
Unless of course they're willing to dress up in that sexy Nazi uniform that Donald, JD and Elon all find such a turn-on.
Abandoning Ukraine. Dumping our allies. Embracing the Nazi resurgence in Europe. Making America a "laughingstock" on the world stage. Turning entire continents against us.
All of these things make America less loved, more isolated—and weaker than ever under our mentally feeble dictator Donald Trump.
Making America poorer
As I wrote last week, Trump's first three weeks back in office had already brought us closer to "The Next Trump Crash."
In week four, new data showed that Trump is flooring the gas pedal as America hurtles toward the next brick wall.
Inflation soared.
Retail sales slumped.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that he's in no rush to reduce interest rates.
Trump and the GOP made clear they have no plan to reduce the cost of eggs, or gasoline, or housing. Instead, they want to put another $4 trillion on the national credit card to pay for more tax cuts for the rich.
Meanwhile, Trump tariffs will "blow a hole in the auto industry," according to Ford CEO Jim Farley.
And we're still not ready for what McKinsey now calls "the AI job apocalypse."
The elites are attacking
The oligarchs have a plan. They want all the data. They want to create a digital surveillance state to keep the peasants under control. And they need as much land as possible for themselves so they can retreat to their doomsday compounds if things go sideways.
Led by Elon Musk (who wants to win it all) and his team of criminal racist hackers, they are executing the plan quickly.
That includes shutting down the investigations that could hamper their businesses and moving quickly to enable bribery and corruption at every level.
Many people are coming up with alternative versions of what DOGE really stands for.
One thing it also means is "Decapitating the Office of Government Ethics," explains Senator Adam Schiff:
The empire is collapsing
"The billionaires, Christian fascists, grifters, psychopaths, imbeciles, narcissists and deviants who have seized control of Congress, the White House and the courts, are cannibalizing the machinery of state. These self-inflicted wounds, characteristic of all late empires, will cripple and destroy the tentacles of power. And then, like a house of cards, the empire will collapse...."
That's how Chris Hedges' recent article "The Empire Self-Destructs begins." Hedges also wrote the 2007 NYT bestseller American Fascists.
You can hear his recent article here, as read by Eunice Wong:
The Empire Self-Destructs - Read by Eunice Wong
We share the pathologies of all dying empires with their mixture of buffoonery, rampant corruption, military fiascos, economic collapse and savage state repression.
Chris Hedges
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