Month: January 2025

I’m going to have to break this one up into several parts because I do not have the time to cover it all in one day. I don’t know about the other services, but in the Navy, we had to learn basic firefighting skills (see the Forrestal disaster), so I’ve held a fire hose. While it’s now been well over 30 years since boot camp, I remember the feeling of trying to not lose control of it any second.

You know, I seem to remember when Obama and Clinton were in office, Republicans complained about them “ruling by fiat” by signing “too many” Executive Orders, Presidential Memos and Presidential Proclamations. I don’t think any president in my lifetime has signed 26 EOs plus a ton of memos and proclamations. This article does a good breakdown. Biden only did 9 his first day, and 22 total his first week. That had been a record until this week.

I went to WhiteHouse.gov to look up something, and EWWWWWW. There’s a very nationalistic video that plays the first time you go to the main page, ew, ew, ew. [There is a difference between patriotism and nationalism and deifying a “Leader” that this video does. I’m a little frustrated, because the EO’s don’t list their EO number like a NORMAL president, just his bombastic titles. And it’s sometimes difficult to tell if it’s an EO, PM or PP. Anyway, here’s some things he’s already tried to do:

1. “Ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity” – As with a lot of Repubilcans’ laws/statements, this is exactly the opposite of what it says (see: “Right to Work”). The order is saying DEI/DEIA policies “violate the text and spirit” of civil rights, calling it “illegal preferences and discrimination.” He is revoking Executive Orders and Presidential Memos back as far as 1965’s Equal Employment Opportunity order. This is a nightmare. It is framed over and over again as protecting civil rights, when it very clearly does the opposite. Essentially, if you aren’t a cis-hetero white guy, you don’t deserve a job with the government or any government contractor. Read the full text, it’s setting us back 60 years. With this, he’s also ordering all DEI staff to be placed on paid leave, starting TODAY, Jan 22, 2025. At least they’re getting paid, at least for a little while. What’s even more wild, is all the media I can find on this is either neutral or IN SUPPORT of this. Insane. What happened to that famed “liberal media”?
2. Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation. This is more of the same – DEI is hurting the FAA, so they need to stop trying to recruit marginalized people.
3. Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion. He bloviates about how there were too many “illegals” (read: undocumented) people entering the country under Biden. This is . . . . not true. Politifact rated Vice President Kamalea Harris’ statement in October 2024 of “As of today we have cut the flow if immigration by over half” as TRUE. Politifact says that between December 2023 and the end of September 2024 it was down over 70%. And, of course, DJT killed the bipartisan border bill last summer.
4. Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness – renaming things back to Confederate “heros” and removing Native American names, especially from Denali in Alaska. This one has been fairly well reported.
5. Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists (doesn’t he have ANYONE on his staff that can write better titles?) This is the one where he wants to invoke the Alien Enemies Act – which, we all know what happened the LAST time that was invoked, right?
6. REFORMING THE FEDERAL HIRING PROCESS AND RESTORING MERIT TO GOVERNMENT SERVICE (I did a copy/paste and, yes, it’s in all caps). They sure do have a different definition of “merit” than I do. This is more of the same from #1. Diversity bad. Within 120 days, OMB (interestingly, the real page for this reroutes to whitehouse.gov, it’s like the OMB doesn’t actually exist), OPM, DOGE, and “assistant to the president for domestic policy” will develop an entirely new Federal Hiring Plan that prioritizes efficiency, “passionate about the ideals of our American republic” and “prevent the hiring of individuals based on race, sex, or religion”. Again, read the full text, if you can take the time. He also wants to decrease the time to hire to 80 days. That part would be nice, but in order to do it, well, they’d need to hire a lot more HR people, especially since also wants to make sure the Secretary and Director levels are involved in every step of the hiring process.
7. Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing – how many times is he saying the same goddamn thing? But the scary thing? A lot of people don’t realize that veterans’ preference in federal hiring can come under this and the federal government is the largest employer of veterans and disabled veterans. Honorably discharged vets get a 5-point preference in hiring. Veterans with 30% or more disability rating get a 10-point preference. If you’re removing DEI preferences, that effects a whole lot of people, many of whom voted for this.

I’m going to stop there because I am so worked up, if I’m going to sleep at all tonight. . . . I can’t talk too freely about some things that will affect me directly, but this is really scary on multiple levels. I know a lot of this is being reported heavily, but I think a few are going under the radar. I want to read them all myself, and writing helps me process.

I want to remind people that during the Holocaust, Jewish people were not the only victims. Disabled (mental or physical) people, Romani, political enemies, LGBTQIA people (and research!), communists, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses (that one was new to me), people of color, political dissidents, anyone they could call “undesirable”, which eventually became . . . . . . a lot of people.

I am not being alarmist. Other people ranging from far left to centrists are not being alarmist and hyperbolic. I feel like I haven’t been loud ENOUGH.

I was one of those people that had an interest in WW2, from a perspective of “How did everyday Germans let this happen?”, looking to make sure we could avoid it. I read Albert Speer’s Inside the Third Reich on my own in high school. I read about The Third Wave experiment by Ron Jones (there’s a good movie, a novelization, and a German mini-series about it). I’m rereading They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer now. I had lessons in recognizing propaganda in history, English, and government classes. I guess I understand now that not everyone had that. But there was soooo much media about how bad the Nazis were when I was growing up. It was something to be avoided at all costs.

I know that there was a fascist faction in the US back in the 30s/40s. I know about the Madison Square Garden rally, I remember in the 80s and 90s the paramilitary groups, far right groups coopting skinhead and punk culture, infiltrating the military and police. Even then they were mostly targeting lonely young men, much like they are doing now. But I really thought we, as a society, were done with that. More fool me, I guess. They kept infiltrating, more quietly. And now here we are.

I started this in the morning before work. It’s starting to get late now and I’m losing steam. I’m hoping to publish mostly on Wednesday and Sunday, but this first week or two of the administration, it will be more.

What does this have to do with witchy and spiritual shit? Hang out a while and I’ll get to that. Hint: Witchcraft is, in and of itself, an act of rebellion.