Analysis Paralysis Turns One Year Old
What a year it has been...
Like so many others, I fell into a fitful sleep on the night of November 5th, 2024. While I was stunned and saddened that the country had, once again, put itself in the hands of a person who was not only the worst President in my lifetime1 but also one of the worst people on the planet, I was not surprised. After all, throughout the campaign it seemed that the media, and the country, had memory-holed not only the trainwreck that was the first Trump Admin, but also January 6th and all the shit Trump did and said throughout the Biden administration.
I spent the time between the election and the Inauguration vacillating between anger and apprehension: anger that we were going to have to deal with yet another four years of petulant behavior, corruption, global embarrassment, and divisive bullshit; apprehension because I was worried that he would behave far differently than he did the first time around… that he would not put anyone in his admin who would try to stop him from acting on his worst impulses. Mainly, however, I was in a fog, just trying (and usually failing) to just get on with life and try to enjoy the holidays.
Even before the inauguration we started to see that our fears were justified. A ban on TikTok was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden. It was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the law. And yet rather than the ban going into effect, President-Elect Trump basically cajoled Congress into ignoring the law that they had just passed. Then, the Friday before his inauguration, Trump announced a meme coin, giving himself an opaque way for basically anyone to directly put money into the President’s pocket, anonymously.2
Inauguration Day just made everything worse. Trump immediately issued dozens of Executive Orders undoing basically everything he could from the Biden administration, mainly out of spite. He unilaterally changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico. He created a fake agency (DOGE) that immediately started the very real task of gutting the Federal Government by firing hundreds of thousands of employees. But worst of all he pardoned each and every one of the nearly 1,200 insurrectionists who attacked the US Capitol on January 6th, including some people who had been found guilty of seditious conspiracy (with sentences up to and in excess of 20 years in prison) and those who savagely beat police.
Nearly every night of the first week of T2.0 I lay in bed, finding sleep an impossible ask as the thoughts raced through my head in the darkness of my bedroom. It was affecting my work and home life. I was tired, cranky, angry, and on edge. I knew that I had to do something, but I didn’t originally have any idea what that would, or could, be. My loved ones tried to tell me to “let it go, just don’t watch the news”, but that’s just not how I am wired. I am far too online for my own good at times, I know this. But I also can’t just put my head in the sand and hope that everything works out.3
I don’t really know how or when I decided to start writing stuff down, but it made some sort of sense to me… if I could get my thoughts down “on paper” maybe it would give me some peace when I tried to sleep. I originally had no plans at all to share any of this with anyone except maybe my wife. After I started to jot some things down, I mentioned that I was doing it to a couple of like-minded friends, and to my surprise they asked if they could read my stuff. And, well, that’s how it all got off the ground as I published my first piece on January 28th, 2025.
There is a great irony to all of this…
Throughout high school and college I despised writing. The erstwhile 5 Paragraph Essay was the bane of many an English grade. I tried all of the tricks of the slacker trade: increasing line spacing and font size, reducing margins, you name it in my quest to avoid completing writing assignments. I dreaded the Jordan Rule courses at FSU, those which required several multiple-page papers in order to pass. And yet here I am, using that very same medium to try to maintain my sanity. I would give anything to find out what Delores Cottingham (10th grade) or Nancy Johnson (12th grade) would think about this site.
The Year That Was
Although I have not done any marketing other than linking my BlueSky Profile to the site and sharing it in a couple of text chats and one Discord server, I have picked up around 60 subscribers (and 140 followers) from four countries this year. While in the grand scheme of things that’s a tiny number, I am still honestly floored by it, especially since at least half appear to open nearly every email newsletter that I send out. I published a tad over 90 pieces last year and those drew around 4,300 views. Again, I am floored by this.
The Future
Unfortunately, Donald Trump and his minions are still in control of our country, so I am still going to be writing. I am going to try a couple of new things this year though.
I have said from the start that this site isn’t intended to report the news. I am not a journalist, I have a day job, and there are waaaayyyyy more folks out there who can do that kind of reporting far better than I ever could. I don’t plan on changing that. There are a couple of more targeted things that I am going to try out though.
The Corruption Chronicles
From a strictly grifting point of view, Trump 2.0 has already become the most corrupt administration in our nation’s history. By several accounts the Trump family has leveraged his second term into a four-billion-dollar windfall. That’s folding money. I am planning on posting a weekly-ish column that identifies a single bit of grift4 and does a bit of a deep dive into the specifics of the corruption. I’d like to think of this as a one-stop shop for tracking the myriad ways that Trump is fleecing the American taxpayer to enrich himself, his family, and friends.5
The Lawlessness Ledger
We have heard the term “lawless” thrown around a lot since January of last year, but I wonder if folks think that only means criminal laws that have been broken. In my view, so much of what this administration has done, such as blatantly ignoring court orders, flouting the Constitution, suspending Due Process and ignoring Congress fall distinctly into the lawless category. Of course, there may likely be actual criminal violations of the law happening as well (Boat strikes, DHS murdering citizens, etc.).
To that end I plan on a similar piece of content, where one article will illustrate a single example of this administration’s contempt for the laws of the land. Again, time permitting, I would like to try to write one of these a week. I am sure I won’t run out of content…
What will likely happen is that I may alternate these two types of columns each week. That may be more realistic of a plan, at least for now.
There are other things that I have thought of, but these would be a pretty significant step forward in what I do for the site.
Thank You All
I am not a journalist. I don’t do this for a living. I don’t adhere to any sort of consistent schedule. I started this to vent, to get the noise out of my head, and yet you are here with me. I can’t express enough how amazing it is to me that there are folks out there who feel like I do and are willing to read the thoughts that I commit to this digital page. While I know that we all wish that there was not a need for a site like this, as long as that need exists, I plan to keep contributing. I hope you all stay along for the ride. We will get through this.
Take Care and Stay Strong, Together.
While there may have been an argument to be made back in 2021 that Trump’s first term wasn’t the worst of all time, he has been sure to strengthen his grip on that title after 1 year of T2.0.
The Trump Coin has subsequently lost about 95% of its value. While the President certainly cashed out, quite a few of his supporters were probably still standing on that rug when it was pulled. I’m sure they don’t blame him though.
Trust me, I know that there is very little that I can actually do about a lot of this, but I can’t just wish it away either.
Think Trump Coins or Qatari Jets.
Well, “close associates”. I don’t believe that Donald Trump has any friends. At least not any that are still alive.