If you’re paying even minor attention to the news these days, you may find it deeply unsettling.
Even if you voted for Trump, you must know in a place you perhaps won’t admit even to yourself that the first few days of this administration have been a disaster.
Amongst the parade of idiots and monsters taking positions in the federal government include:
An anti-vaccination Cabinet nominee for Health and Human Services who has claimed that chicken soup is the best cure for measles, Wi-Fi exposure causes “leaky brain” and brain damage (two separate things), COVID was genetically engineered to target blacks and whites (but spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people), and pesticides cause children to become gay and transgender.
And that’s just the tip of the RFK iceberg. I haven’t even mentioned the blender full of baby chickens and mice, the brain worm, and the ursine roadkill stuffed into the trunk of his car.
We also have a nominee for Defense Secretary nominee who has a history of drinking problems, serial adultery, paying hush money to women who have accused him of sexual harassment and assault, and running companies into bankruptcy.
Except for the drinking, he actually sounds a lot like Trump.
And then, yesterday, Trump’s sweeping freeze on trillions in federal spending for grants and loans caused Meals on Wheels to shut down, threatened school lunch programs, closed Medicare’s online portals, shuttered Head Start programs, sidelined important research into technology and medicine, and had many other disastrous results.
It is just the kind of thing the Trump administration likes:
Ending food assistance to children and the elderly.
Preventing older Americans from accessing their healthcare.
Closing preschools.
Ending research into things like cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s.
Even the pathetic, subservient Republican members of Congress objected.
Eventually, a judge ended the freeze, and Trump backed down.
It’s not been a glorious start to Trump’s second term.
But I am here to report some good news:
Remember the murder hornets?
Amid the pandemic and lockdown came news of murder hornets — insects the size of garbage trucks — killing pollinating bees and threatening the future of American agriculture.
Not to mention scaring the bejeezus out of many of us.
I’m happy to report that murder hornets are no more.
State and federal officials — the same public servants and scientific experts the Trump administration despises — have successfully eradicated murder hornets from the United States.
We won!
Five years after first being spotted, all nests of murder hornets have been destroyed, and no trace of the insects has been found inside our borders.
It’s an accomplishment of multiple levels of government working in concert to attack a serious problem that could have threatened food supplies in the United States.
It is just the kind of thing that good government can do for the American people when it isn’t marginalized, maligned, and eroded by the very people charged with protecting and preserving our institutions.
Just a little good news amid Trump’s current trainwreck.
As Mr. Roger’s famously said:
“Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
Even when the news is filled with narcissists, sycophants, and idiots.
