The new administration is going full steam ahead with massive layoffs, dismantling federal agencies and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, arguing that ability must be the sole criterion for hiring. However, for management positions, loyalty is favored as the main criterion for the selection of new staff, while their qualifications are completely ignored.
Za "Time" from Las Vegas
On the United Airlines website, next to the name and date of birth of ticket buyers, there is a blank field where the gender of the passenger is entered, like a remnant of a world that is disappearing under the onslaught of the president's executive orders. Donald Trump. It's only a matter of days before this company replaces that designation with a choice between male and female, as ordered by the federal government, because no one wants to resent a vindictive government that is no longer an anomaly, but choice of majority America.
Regardless of what they chose to put in front of their name, those who traveled from New York to the West Coast these days spent those few hours of flight in a time when Volodymyr Zelensky was not a dictator, Canada and Greenland were candidates for new federal states, and Gaza in plans to become the Riviera of the Middle East.
This political, social and cultural turn of America is now seen by the inhabitants of other countries of the world, with the difference that they are not able to hide from the new world that is being born in the neon colors of cities like Las Vegas - in casinos, night clubs, bars and Venetian gondolas sailing on an artificial lake in the heart of the Mojave Desert.
When they return home, they will see how many things have changed in the meantime. The differences between yesterday's allies and enemies have almost disappeared, and a deep understanding is being established between the American and Russian presidents.
"If Vladimir Putin were on the American political scene, he would be a member of the 'Proud Boys', a white, Christian nationalist, a staunch opponent of immigration and a staunch enemy of the LGBT community," says New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. "I would vote for Trump and be a part of what happened on January 6, 2021."
But even without the presence of the head of the Kremlin as an indisputable authority for authoritarian regimes, the hands of the US president accumulate more and more power day by day, and his function is no longer subject to any institutional control.
RULE OF DECREE
Since taking the oath of office, Donald Trump has been his own Sharpie with a felt-tip pen, which this company produces specially with his autograph, he has so far signed about a hundred presidential decrees, which is more than the total number of such acts that were issued by Joseph Biden, Barack Obama, George Bush Jr., Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr. during the first three months of their mandate.
Despite the fact that many of these decisions were at the top of the list of his campaign promises - such as stopping immigration, cutting spending, lowering prices, introducing tariffs or lifting restrictions on fossil fuels - Trump has not even tried to pass them through legislation in Congress, where Republicans have a majority in both houses. For that, the White House would have to negotiate with the Senate and the House of Representatives, and Trump, despite having spent his entire life in the real estate business, has never shown much negotiating prowess or willingness to compromise.
Such management style is consistently implemented by the Secretariat for Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, who has been given the authority to reduce the costs of the federal government. The wealthy have never had too much empathy for others, because otherwise they would not have acquired what they have, so the owner of "Tesla" recently sent a letter to the addresses of more than two million civil servants, asking them to state in five points what they did during the past week.
As with previous DOGE actions, when they demanded access to information on social security recipients or access to taxpayers' personal data, the message caused chaos and confusion as employees subsequently received completely contradictory instructions from their superiors. While, for example, the heads of the Cyber Security Agency advised an immediate response, the directors of the State Department recommended that employees ignore this message. At the same time, billionaire Elon Musk is using his X platform to threaten federal workers with firing if they don't send in answers - which is against all laws.
This is no longer strange, considering that the citizens of America can find out on Donald Trump's private social network Trut Social, in addition to all the official channels of communication of the White House, that he talked with Putin about Ukraine and the Middle East or that he just replaced the Chief of the General Staff of the US Army, General Charles Brown.
Meanwhile, the current administration continues mass layoffs, abolishes federal agencies and programs for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), arguing that ability must be the only criterion in hiring. However, for management positions, loyalty is favored as the main criterion for the selection of new personnel, while their qualifications are completely ignored.
Other criteria are also applied extremely selectively and arbitrarily. When it comes to those who stormed Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 and were sentenced to long prison terms for conspiracy - one of the most serious crimes - for Republicans it is "part of the past", and "we should look to the future". However, for those who once in that same past resented the president, it represents a sin for which there is no mercy. Essentially, there are no rules - it all depends on a case-by-case basis, according to how Donald Trump sees it.
The dismissal of some certainly leads to the spread of fear among others that they will end up the same way if they don't listen to what they are told, although no one should be too surprised by all this. Trump is only implementing what he announced - much more effectively than in his first term - because he had four full years to prepare for what he is doing now.
When he was recently asked, as if in some kind of anecdote, how he came to the conclusion that the policies of diversity were the cause of the plane crash in Washington, the president replied that he has "common sense", which "unfortunately, many other people do not".
Somewhere in those labyrinths of "common sense" it happened that Serbia voted against Russia regarding the UN resolution submitted by Ukraine and the EU on the occasion of the third anniversary of the aggression, and that Washington and Moscow were on the same side for the first time. This turn on the international level is no less than a radical change of American society itself, because what Trump is doing is much more reminiscent of neo-imperialism than of old-time republican isolationism, for which America has always been in the first place.
Trojka
Based on everything the president says, one gets the impression that he would prefer to be in the company of that secret member of the "Proud Boys" who sits at the table in the Kremlin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, so that the three of them together divide the world into spheres of interest in which everyone will do what they want. This does not mean that America did not primarily look at its own interests even before Trump, only that it was usually wrapped in words about democracy, security and human rights.
No matter how much Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of the few members of the new cabinet with integrity, tries to translate what the president says into an acceptable language of diplomacy, "America first" no longer excludes territorial expansionism or the right of the strongest to do what they want. This is clearly seen in the pressure on Ukraine to allow American companies to exploit natural resources in exchange for the $86,7 billion in military aid that has been sent since the beginning of the aggression.
American citizens have never cared too much about foreign policy, but the impression has been created that taxpayers' money is being squandered on nonsense around the world. It's not that simple either, because if you ask anyone in New York whether it's better for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to spend seventy billion dollars on helping others or to fix the main city bridge "George Washington" first, whose carriageways are full of holes and whose concrete edges are covered with garbage, it's more than clear what the answer will be.
SLEEPING DEMOCRATS
While the country is radically changing the value system on which it rested for many years, there is almost no resistance to the new leadership. Sporadic protests against mass layoffs by the administration have been reduced to gatherings of a few hundred demonstrators in the largest cities. Challenges before the courts are expected, but essentially there is no opposition from civil society or the Democratic Party itself.
After several weeks of silence, which was more a sign of hopelessness and apathy than thinking about a new strategy, a few days ago citizens received a message on their mobile phones that, after the defeat in the 2024 elections, the Democratic Party is looking for a new path and wants to hear from the voters who they would like to see at its head in the future. In the continuation of the survey, questions are asked about whether the party should decisively oppose Trump, how worried citizens are about the future if "the collapse of democracy continues" and whether they would fight against "exceeding the powers", with the obligatory call to send money to help achieve these goals.
The poll questions, as well as the politics of the Democratic Party, still lack the courage to admit that the system they built did not work for the vast majority of American citizens - and that they lost the election because of it. The Democrats paid the price for repeating that "everything is perfectly fine" while people struggled and feared that things would get worse. The bill has arrived for denying reality, double standards and calls for equality as the rich get richer and citizens try to survive paycheck to paycheck.
STRAWS
Although many have given up on politics because they know that fundamentally nothing can change before the next mid-term elections, not everything is so hopeless. One of the presidential decrees banned the use of paper straws, which even environmentalists claim were completely dysfunctional, full of toxic dyes and glue.
In Vegas, cocktails are again served in glasses with plastic straws, it is one of the few cities where the consumption of alcohol on the streets is not prohibited.
Straws are important, but the system you live in is also important. No one will return to power asking to re-establish what was. That's over for good.
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