It is believed that the phrase “May you live in interesting times” originated in China. But it didn’t start there. It likely happened when a British diplomat in the 1930s described that time as an era of turbulence, danger, and chaotic change.
That certainly suggests our own time of danger and chaos, caused by a regime that can only be called dangerous, chaotic, and crazy. It’s an unprecedent and frightening time that belies our history, our Constitution, and threatens our future, as well as the world’s.
It’s a time when our president is so mentally deranged that he attacks the Pope, uses ugly profanity in public, spews extreme vitriol aimed at anyone he sees as a threat, defies the Congress and the courts, and advances emotional and physical violence against women, immigrants, children, peaceful protesters, and even U.S. citizens. He has a compulsion for self-adulation, the latest being the building of a huge arc de ’Trump that looks like the Brandenburg Gate, and a portrait of himself as Jesus Christ. On and on it goes.
No wonder Representative Jaime Raskin has introduced a bill to remove the president under Section 4 of the 25th amendment, which already has support from numerous members of Congress who signed as co-sponsors when he threatened to destroy “a whole civilization” on Truth Social. The challenge is to get most of the president’s cabinet to declare him unfit and to have two-thirds of the House and Senate to agree. It’s a long shot and some have said it won’t happen till Hell freezes over. But it seems to me that it’s beginning to look like Hell has already frozen over.
Rep. Raskin has already demanded that the White House physician conduct an immediate, comprehensive evaluation of the president’s cognitive fitness, with full public disclosure of the result.
The impacts of the president’s policies are Draconian. For example, cutting the budget for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has had profound consequences for healthcare globally. The agency provides clinical guidelines, monitors infectious disease outbreaks, supports health worker training, and deploys staff to combat infectious diseases. The CDC also works with other countries to stop threats at their source. According to the CDC cuts in resources and staff have resulted in the departure of over 30% of its workforce while significant budget cuts have eroded expertise in epidemiology, lab science, and communication, diminishing the nation’s ability to respond to emergencies and leading to fears of increased preventable disease.
Further, cuts in vaccine development, medical research that could reduce the mortality rates for cancers, chronic diseases, and dementia, as well as healthy longevity means that people will experience illnesses that could have been treated or cured, and many of them will die prematurely.
Here’s another important example. The Trump administration has resulted in the dismantling and weakening of numerous environmental protections and public health standards because the administration is promoting coal production and relaxing regulations for the fossil fuel industry. Under the EPA Administrator deregulatory efforts are ensuring “regulatory relief” to businesses enthralled with profits at the expense of clean water and clean air. The agency is also repealing prior legal actions that regulated gas emissions from cars and trucks, as it reverses climate policies that were put in place to decrease air pollution.
Further, the EPA is removing protections for millions of acres of wetlands that were in place under the Clean Water Act. The list goes on. The Interior Department has begun weakening regulations that controlled mining and oil drilling, including removing protections in place in the Gulf of Mexico. Environmental research is also threatened with dissolved funds.
FEMA is also a disaster itself due to prioritizing corporate profits over public health. Originally intended to support state and local responses in the event of climate change induced disasters, which are occurring more frequently, the Natural Resources Defense Council point out that “This is not reform, it is sabotage. There will be ”more suffering.
And the Forest Service, which controls 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering 193 million acres, is at risk. In a New Yorker magazine story environmentalist Bill McKibben shared this: “Sound science is anathema to the Trump Administration.” He cites the shutting of the Service’s nine regional offices and the removal of its headquarters in Washington, D.C. to Utah, where Senator Mike Lee wants to sell huge tracts of lands to developers. “Gutting the Forest Service couldn’t come at a worse time,” McKibbens said. “This winter was the hottest ever recorded across the Western U.S. and that has left the mountains in the West, where Forest Service lands are primarily concentrated, with the smallest snowpacks in recorded history, which is linked to wildfire danger.”
There’s so much more one can cite, but here’s a final chilling one. At this writing, it seems a Supreme Court Justice may be retiring. That would give Donald Trump the chance to seat another conservative justice for a lifetime appointment.
If that doesn’t feel like a Chinese Curse, I don’t know what will. As a Chinese writer said in 1627, It might be "better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos."
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Elayne Clift writes from Brattleboro.