Even his most ridiculous executive orders have an ugly affect on politics around the world. We can\u2019t just ignore the US president. But nor can we succumb to the momentum of the right<\/p>\n
The problem with Trump\u2019s America is that everything happens so fast, and across too many categories. There are moves so stupid and trivial that you can lose hours wondering whether there is a long game or if it\u2019s all just trolling: renaming the Gulf of Mexico, bringing back plastic straws. There are moves so inhumane, causing so much deliberate suffering, that they are hard to fathom. The cancellation of USAid is so consequential that reaction has almost frozen in place, as the world figures out which immediate humanitarian crisis to prioritise, and waits for some grownup, such as the constitution, to step in. Into that baited silence steps Elon Musk, with a hoax about the agency<\/a> having been a leftwing money-laundering organisation. Then everyone hares off to react to that, first debunking, then considering, what it might mean, for a man of such wealth and power to have come so completely unstuck from demonstrable reality. This is not an accident \u2013 and yet it has no meaning. So why is he doing it? To galvanise a base, or make a public service announcement that observable reality can\u2019t help you now, so get used to having it overwritten by fantasy? It\u2019s an understandable thing to worry about.<\/p>\n Then there are the chilling direct legislative moves against sections of US society: banning the use of any pronouns<\/a> that are not male or female in government agencies, defunding gender-affirming medical care, signalling a ban on transgender people in the military<\/a> with an executive order that says being trans \u201cconflicts with a soldier\u2019s commitment to an honourable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one\u2019s personal life\u201d. There\u2019s the assault on immigrant rights, which is vivid and wide-ranging from the resurrection of Guant\u00e1namo Bay as a for ever holding-house, to the shackled people deported to Punjab<\/a>, to the reversal of a convention<\/a> that schools, churches and hospitals would not be raided by <\/strong>Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even his most ridiculous executive orders have an ugly affect on politics around the world. We can\u2019t just ignore the US president. But nor can we succumb to the momentum of the right The problem with Trump\u2019s America is that everything happens so fast, and across too many categories. There are moves so stupid and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}