[photo: The billionaire and now Trump adviser grew up amid the collapse of white rule, attending an all-white school and then a more liberal one]
The good news is that young people are resisting the giant knives of 10 million cuts deployed by a South African seemingly pro-apartheid fellow with his dodgy DOGE.
We have multiple prong crises in the United States, and that unelected “death by 10 million cuts” Musk is just the tip of the spear in this next iteration of a dying Empire.
Yes, think Empire for the USA, and forget about Hollywood versions of what “empire” might mean.
The case can be made in many ways, first with the dispossession of Native Americans and relegation of many to reservations and theft of millions of acres is pretty imperialist. The US fought a war with Mexico in the 1840s and stole a third of it. Fifty years later, it fought a war with Spain and claimed the majority of Spain’s overseas territories.
But this idea of empire isn’t just about stolen land. Many see the enslavement and then economic chains put upon Africans and African Americans as empire on steroids. That amazing US intellectual WEB Du Bois argued that black people in the US looked more like colonized subjects than like citizens. Malcolm X and the leaders of the Black Panthers agreed.
Oh, empire is also about sanctions – economic warfare to many in the global south. Currently, the European Union is splintering because of the drawdown of support by Trump and Company. Europe (I lived and worked there, including UK) was swamped by US commerce/advertising/junk.
Soft power of the Empire.
Joseph Nye popularized the term in his 1990 book The Fate of Leadership: The Changing Nature of American Power, defining it as:
“When a state persuades other nations to do what it wants, it can be called ‘soft power’: it does not need to use attacks or threats to subjugate others.”
Nye developed the concept further in his 2004 book, Soft Power: The Tools of Success in World Politics. It contains the following lines:
“Seduction is always more effective than coercion: many values, such as democracy, human rights and personal empowerment, take on a very attractive appearance.”
In his article ‘The Benefits of Soft Power,’ Nye defines “power” as follows:
“The ability to influence others to achieve desired results: ‘soft power’ – persuading others to behave as desired depends on the ability to influence people. ‘Soft powe'” is based on the ability to demonstrate certain advantages. Its resources are tools based on attraction, which will make others willingly follow your path. Conventional power politics usually means that one country’s military or economy surrenders to another. And in the information age, success depends on someone’s story winning over everyone else’s.”
There are ironically many other March celebrated dates to consider in regard to the eviscerating of safety nets undertaken by the billionaire class working with and for Trump.
Take Women’s History Month. It’s celebrated throughout the month to recognize the role of women in American history, but the Trump Administration is largely soldiered by white men.
Then, this National Reading Month is supposed to celebrate reading throughout the month. Trump is not a reader of books, for sure, as many biographers and close people to him have said. The recent state of the union address was replete with lies and complete upside down false information from this Trump.
So, National Read Across America Day (March 2) and International Women’s Day (March 8) has taken up no space on Trump’s sixth grade reading level social media posts.
Finally, think hard about another March recognition — National Employee Appreciation Day.
The death by thousands of cuts come close to my home, to this county, and to many of the professions I have worked under with various levels of intensity. My current work with adults with developmental disabilities is now fraught with clients fearful of Medicaid and housing assistance cuts. And support staff cuts.
This is the chaos Musk (some biographers say, 110 IQ there) and his henchmen are unfolding. Many in the DD Community are going to Salem to lobby for holding the line on the measly amounts of public (safety nets) assistance they receive.
This is what five-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader recently said on a radio program (Democracy Now) after Trump’s address to congress:
“Trump’s administration is going to move to slash Medicaid, which serves over 71 million people, including millions of Trump voters, who should be reconsidering their vote as the days pass, because they’re being exploited in red states, blue states, everywhere, as well. Yeah, they have to cut tens of billions of dollars a year from Medicaid to pay for the tax cut. That’s number one. Now they’re going after Social Security. Who knows what the next step will be on Medicare? They’re leaving Americans totally defenseless by slashing meat and poultry and food inspection laws, auto safety. They’re exposing people to climate violence by cutting FEMA, the rescue agency. They’re cutting forest rangers that deal with wildfires. They’re leaving the American people defenseless.”
A war on American workers, for sure, and I doubt anyone in the Trump Coterie could stand two minutes in a real debate with 91-year-old Nader without screaming, lying and stomping off. Nader’s history has been to protect the American citizen against ruthless corporations.
He’s a fighter for workers’ rights and protections. He wants protections for the American family and those less fortunate.
Trump favors the super-rich and giant corporations. As Nader stated,
“What Trump did last night was set a record for lies, delusionary fantasies, predictions of future broken promises — a rerun of his first term — boasts about progress that don’t exist.”
One favorable bit of news is that I will be hosting my radio show on Lincoln County’s KYAQ-FM, 91.7. It’s on at 6 pm, Wednesdays, and I’ll be getting into many topics not typically covered on local shows. I’ll talk to the dispossessed and laid off National Parks workers. I’ll talk to our coastal people, too, and for one of my shows in April I will talk up National Poetry Month with our state’s literary jewel, Kim Stafford.
Finding Fringe: Voices from the Edge will celebrate our activists and social and economic justice warriors. Expect science and sociology, as well as politics and arts and letters on my show. Now that’s how we celebrate reading and workers – highlighting authors and our local workforce. Deaths by a million cuts we all must fight here and now, and forever.
And this is not an essay vaunting the Democrats.
“The Democratic leadership don’t know how to deal with a criminal recidivist, a person who has hired workers without documents and exploited them, a person who’s a bigot against immigrants, including legal immigrants who are performing totally critical tasks in home healthcare, processing poultry, meat, and half of the construction workers in Texas are undocumented workers. So, as a bully, he doesn’t go after the construction industry in Texas; he picks out individuals.” (Ralph Nader, 2025)
You can get the radio shows after the fact, but for now, you get to hear some that have not yet aired on the community radio station, but which are on my Podcast channel:
A slave abolitionist, Frederick Douglass said, “Once you learn how to read, you will be forever free.”