25-April-2025

This sign came to me in a message this morning. Clever. Impactful. Definitely, a ‘sign of the times‘. This is not the America I grew up and took pride in. We had other issues, racial inequality and Vietnam and pollution, but the overall system of government worked as it was supposed to. ‘Hate’ existed, but it was not championed by the president or a major political party.

Historian Heather Cox Richardson had an interesting analysis in her daily post.

Trump was the logical outcome of the myth of cowboy individualism embraced by the Republicans since President Ronald Reagan rose to the White House by celebrating it. In that myth, a true American is a man who operates on his own, outside the community. He needs nothing from the government, works hard to support himself, protects his wife and children, and asserts his will by dominating others. Government is his enemy, according to the myth, because it takes his money to help undeserving freeloaders and because it regulates how he can run his business. A society dominated by a cowboy individual is a strong one.

Leaders who pushed this ideology knew it attracted voters. Once they were in power, they could slash government programs and cut taxes and regulations that kept wealth and opportunity accessible to poorer Americans. They argued that a society works best if wealth and power are concentrated among a few elites, who can direct capital more efficiently than government bureaucrats can. Their rhetoric worked: from 1981 to 2021, $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. But those same people talking about individualism to secure votes also knew that the world has never worked this way. In the twenty-first century, U.S. security and the economy depended more than ever on coalitions and government investment.

China won the battle for global leadership in less than 100 days without firing a shot …thanks to Trump and his MAGAts. America is no longer reliable or attractive as a global partner. China has moved in to fill the vacuum.