On the platform of the Joseph R. Biden Train Station in Wilmington, DE, the working folks wait for the early train into Philadelphia. It’s an express, and it runs on time, but still takes about an hour, as it passes through pleasant-looking towns, depressed industrial areas and other places that look to be nearly in ruins, mostly closed, boarded up or crumbling buildings. At the university all the young, white passengers get off. At the hospital all the black people decamp.
My destination is a bit further up, in the middle of town. Philadelphia, the home of freedom and the City of Brotherly Love, a city I’d not ever visited, is also the site of the Italian Consulate that has jurisdiction over the state where I live.
There’s even a picture of Joe Biden in the train station, but it didn’t catch my eye until I got back from the city later that morning. Like the town, the area and the station itself, it’s a modest and unimposing photo that shows a younger Senator Biden. There was a certain poignance to it all, traveling to apply for a foreign visa while getting this glimpse of a bygone and decaying America, where they never bothered to update the train station’s plaque to mention that their beloved native son became President.
That’s too bad, because around the third year of his presidency it was pretty frequently said that Biden was at least a very consequential president. He did a lot of good. But year four of his presidency had that same awful flavor of a decent TV series gone terribly awry and going off the rails in its final season. That’s what it – and he – ends up being remembered for. Joe Biden bears an awful burden on his shoulders now for decisions he made as president and candidate, but it’s far from clear that he knows that. What is clear is that much like the train station that bears his name, it is now of little consequence what he thinks or knows.
Consequence, on the other hand, is a word and a concept that America is getting to know intimately these days, in all its multifaceted aspects. Those of us who are old enough to remember the Reagan years or even the presidency of George W. Bush might recall the feeling of a sudden and decisive shift in the culture that took place around the nation. Both presidencies brought with them strong popular sentiments that expressed themselves not only politically, but in entertainment and fashion (think Rambo and Izod) as well as behaviorally, as in the nativist consumerism of the Bush years (SUVs and big houses). The same thing was certainly true to an extent in the first Trump presidency. Likewise, politically and economically all three presidents’ policies had drastic and long-lasting (negative) effects on Americans.
So, while on one hand there is some precedent for the current situation, on the other hand, what is being done – not just how – is so extreme and so unprecedented that it is by nature something new and different, but also massive and menacing. Nobody is swaggering at the moment, because everyone is too floored, too bewildered and thrown to feel anywhere sure enough about anything to get overconfident. The national mood makes the old “W. The President” stickers seem quaint. Then again, George W. Bush made up a story that led the nation into a disastrous war and an economic crash. Donald Trump is clearly doing his best to outdo him on both fronts, and he looks to be succeeding.
Where do we live now? Some of things taking place in our names in this country are (or rather until recently once were) unthinkable: deporting innocent people to foreign gang prisons, arresting and confining tourists and legal visa holders, denying entry to musicians and scientists, rounding up foreign students. The deportees were supposed to be the “worst of the worst”. Gang members taking over whole towns, invasive immigrants eating people’s pets, remember? Where are all these awful actors? Instead, like cowards, the US government now disappears and imprisons the innocent and the vulnerable, destroying lives and families, and to date, with no other clear result or purpose other a wanton cruelty that is making a lot of people think twice about visiting the United States of America.
Where do we live now? Why have we left millions of people around the world to die from hunger and disease? Why are entire – and urgently vital – swaths of the national health care system being eliminated? Why, in the world’s wealthiest nation, do we need to cut local food buying programs for schools and families in need? To save a billion dollars? Why dismantle NOAA and NASA? How is paying people to stay home on “Administrative Leave” an efficient use of resources?
What is being done to the US government doesn’t make much sense unless one squares it with the idea that America was “great” only during the late 1890s, when tariffs were the only source of revenue and there was no personal income tax. Back then, the government didn’t really do much other than maintain defense, so it really didn’t need much money. The progressive income tax is a direct result of the idea that a national government should help its citizens and create services. It would seem reasonable to suggest that this idea itself, long loathed by the billionaire class, is what is really on the chopping block. Eliminate the income tax, the IRS, Social Security, Medicare; all of it. If you define all human and scientific services as “waste”, there’s a lot to cut, and it doesn’t really matter how.
To wit, the Administration will soon propose a massive defense budget, and plenty of money for ICE and the border. But that is it. For everyone else in the federal government, “you’re fired!”
It’s a bit glib to resort to phrases such as “buyer’s remorse” in a situation like this, but one has to wonder if the millions of Americans who voted for this president really think that what is happening to our country right now is making our country “great”, never mind “again”. It’s also easy to say, and oft repeated, that the president is merely doing what he said he would do during the campaign – “promises kept”, as the propagandists like to put it. However, once again, while on one hand this is undeniably true, on the other hand, the details and scale of the actions go far beyond their campaign labelling. For example, “cutting two trillion in government spending in two years”, which was the original stated mandate of DOGE, hardly describes what has really happened or what DOGE is actually doing. Needless to say, what was originally sold as an expert efficiency advisory board of sorts (remember Vivek Ramaswamy?) has drastically exceeded that original purview.
In its utter hatred for anyone or anything dependent on the US government in any way, the current dominant political thinking obviously holds a special place of contempt for Europe, now painted as simultaneously being the ultimate freeloader (NATO) and the ultimate shakedown artist (the EU). The idea that the EU was created to “rip off” the US is so backwards, ignorant and offensive that it is hard to even understand how it could be said at all. This, however, is the official view of the President of the United States and his entire cabinet. Their arrogant loathing comes through even more acutely in the words of Vice President Vance or Secretary of State Rubio.
The choice of the phrase “Liberation Day” to announce the new tariff regime (such as it was for a few days) is itself another swipe at Europe, and even more so at the country that has adopted me, where people still remember what “liberation” from real fascism means. Like the rest of the insults emanating from US leadership, it’s petty and puerile, but at the same time it’s serious, and like everything else that is being done and said in the seats of American power, its consequences are real and growing.
Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, it only took a few minutes to accomplish my errand, but the decision to apply to live in another country is also serious and will have real consequences (in this case good, hopefully). I walked back to the train, among the homeless folks sleeping on the streets and the symbols of a nation I no longer recognize, thinking of how my forebears came to this country from eastern Europe just over a century ago to build a better life away from danger and tyranny, and the odd sensation of a pendulum swinging back as I plan to reverse their steps and head back to Europe.
My visa was approved on April 3, the day after the ridiculously named tariff announcement. My own personal liberation day. Who knows what this country will become: consequences are a given, but unpredictable just the same, and things can go in all kinds of directions. Everything is in flux and uncertain, fraught. I am only sure of one thing – that I do not want to stay to find out. Nor will I.
L’articolo Liberation Day proviene da ytali..
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