FEBRUARY 2, 2025 –
(Cont.) Now that we’ve seen what destructive disruption we’re in for under Trump 2.0, the question, of course, is “What do we do now?” To a large extent, how that question is answered depends on where we have skin in the game. Notice, not if we have skin in the game, since all of us have some kind of skin somewhere in the political game underway in the White House.
Whether you’ve overstayed your visa or sneaked over the border or have some other form of ICE target on your back, you’ve got so much immediate skin in the game, you’re probably in hiding.
If you’re a middle class parent trying to make ends meet and save for your kids’ educations, not to mention your own retirement, you’ve got more than enough to keep you awake at night, now that Trump has pulled the tariff trigger which will have the same effect as pushing the inflation button. (Wait, a sec! Isn’t that why many people voted for Trump less than three months ago—because the Biden and Harris had caused so much painful inflation?)
If you’re a medical research fellow at a major university, closing in on the cure for some dreadful disease, you’ve got major skin in the game as D.O.P.E. . . . did I get that right? No? . . . Oh, yeah, D.O.G.E, synonymous with Musk, seeks to pull the government financing for medical research right out from under you.
If you’re a semi-retired professional, such as I, you might be feeling relatively secure in your above-the-waterline stateroom, but you worry about what kind of world your grandchildren will inherit. After hearing about Trump browbeating Fed Chairman Powell over interest rates, however, you realize that you’ve got immediate skin in the game. You worry about a blowout in the bond market, a bear market in equities. Can your retirement portfolio avoid sucking big wind because of bone-headed moves by the Trump-Musk team?
On this last point, the good news is that markets didn’t crash after many months of gloom and doom predictions by The Economist in the 1990s[1] or when debt and equities should’ve gone over the cliff when the Covid lockdown threatened to shut down the global economy or the day after Trump’s inauguration. Perhaps the best investment advice I’ve ever come by appeared in a general article in the business section of The New York Times early in Trump 1.0. The gist of the advice, which was directed at (mainstream) lefties like me was, don’t let your politics get in the way of your investment decisions.
I’ve stuck to that since January 20. It helps to have a cool hand as a financial advisor—one who’s equally critical of Democrats (for having let certain issues get in the way of winning and for having failed miserably on the messaging front) and Republicans (for all the obvious reasons). But still . . . from a financial perspective, markets hate uncertainty and irrationality and with Trump you get a double cheese and bacon burger of chaos and stupidity. Until our financial advisor calls and says in uncharacteristic panic that the ship’s going down, so sell, sell, sell, I’m not going to leap quite yet.
But what should we, what can we do to save ourselves from what Trump and Musk have unleashed? Late today I saw a notice to join a nationwide effort to “march,” starting at noon on February 5, in all 50 state capitals. “If you cannot call out,” says the notice, “wear something blue.” The notice doesn’t say what the march is all about, but presumably the “blue” goes with “Democrat” and “march” goes with “protest against the Trump-Musk Administration.” In our neck of the woods, the weather forecast for next Wednesday calls for a balmy 28F with the possibility of snow showers—perfect “march” weather in February. I’m inclined to participate, except . . .
What, exactly, would I be protesting? In fashioning my homemade protest sign, which of the multitude of EOs—thus far—would I feature? What kind of sign would the person to my right be holding? What about the person to my left? The notice says, “They can’t suppress everyone flooding the system with the same message. One voice.” But therein lies the problem. In what appears to be a deliberate strategy—despite its appearance solely as the work of a disordered mind—the Trump-Musk Administration is working overtime at keeping everyone (including, I dare say, Republicans in Congress) off balance.
It gets back to a variation of the bed-of-nails phenomenon unique to Trump—until Musk moved in with Trump (after paying $290 million in room, board and tuition). One or two spikes in the bed, you’d know what to protest. Faced with a whole bed of nails, you can’t effectively mount a protest against each of the nails. The only practicable protest has to be against the entire bed. The problem with that generalized protest, however, is that less than three months ago Americans went to the polls. A plurality voted for the monster, and the popular vote translated to an electoral vote victory. If Republicans became complicit in a gigantic lie in 2020, Democrats did not follow suit in 2024. Trump won, fair and square. But now we’re “one voice” against him? The electoral train, unfortunately, left the station on November 5, and “One Voice” was definitely not on board.
Once Democrats figure out how to stop ringing their hands, they need to beat Trump – Musk at the only game they know: drawing attention to themselves, except instead of Democrats drawing attention to Democrats, they need to draw relentless attention to the scores of millions of regular Americans who will be harmed by the havoc and nonsense created under Trump 2.0. If Trump – Musk insist on “flooding the zone” with EOs, regardless of legal authority, Democrats need to inundate social media, mainstream media, and cable opinion channels with gripping real life stories of the consequences—intended and unintended—of “Rule by Monarchical Fiat.” Day in and day out, the lead should be, “Here’s someone whose life, job, health, finances, education, housing, transportation, et cetera ad nauseam, were upended today by Executive Order No. D.U.M.B.” Only when fires are lit under the people who (a) actually voted for Trump – Musk; (b) voted for a third party candidate because . . . why, they “didn’t like Harris”?!; or (c) didn’t vote; only when all these folks come to their senses will resistance be effective. And only if resistance is effective will catastrophe be avoided.
But the hour is late.
Coupled with this campaign of “attention snatching and holding,” Democrats need to recruit and train a new generation of leaders at local and state levels, starting with the next mid-term election. The time for hand-wringing over the Trump – Musk inaugural and subsequent flood of insanity is already over. The time to begin the big Democrat win in 2026 is today. Party leadership should start by examining how Democrat Mike Zimmer pulled off his special election victory just last Tuesday (with 52% of the vote) in Iowa State Senate District 35—a solidly red district which Trump had carried by a 21% margin less than three months ago. Could that be the canary in the coal mine for Republicans? Let’s hope so.
As always, we need to take deep breaths and renew our faith in the future. Nothing and no one is forever, including a 79-year-old president who, if you’ve noticed at his latest few big public appearances (Jimmy Carter’s funeral; Trump’s own inauguration; the prayer service at the National Cathedral the next day), has trouble staying awake when seated. Who knows how long Edict Musk will tolerate the swamps of Washington in the summer heat. We just might feel as if we’ve won the $500 billion lottery when MuskMan discovers that his Nazi salute brings bigger cheers when practiced in front of the AfD on the other side of the Atlantic. Also, if Mars isn’t “forever” away, the round trip takes 18 months, and there’s a chance he could get lost on the way or the way back. We can’t bank on his extended absence or disappearance, but Trump just might insist on it.
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] I was a subscriber back then. For weeks running, the editors believed that a stock market crash was imminent and kept predicting it. When they realized that a crash was probably not in the cards, they finally surrendered but with humor—on the magazine cover. The artwork featured an upward line on a graph depicting the DJIA over the past number of months. The headline read simply, “Crash, damnit!”
