Tomorrow is January 20th, 2025. It is inauguration day. Donald J Trump’s big return to office. It’s also Martin Luther King Junior Day. I’ll be celebrating the latter and not the former. I’m assuming Trump will do his best to attempt to blur the two events. As if a hack businessman who shills for actual billionaires over the needs of the average person and certainly the poor, is what MLK was dreaming of… Where is my evidence of that? I have none.

Today Tik Tok was turned off in the U.S.. apparently Congress has been concerned that the Chinese are exploiting the data in some dubious ways, and potentially weaponizing that data against America. It’s ok for U.S. businesses to exploit all of your data to sell you things or to supply the F.B.I. or C.I.A. with evidence, so long as they aren’t working against the interests of the U.S. at the benefit of foreign agents. I’m no expert on internet legal fine print but that’s certainly what is happening. Most of our data is for sale for whoever wants to buy it, and I’m sure there are some foreign bidders working through U.S. shell companies. Where’s my evidence? I have none.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, have all tripped over themselves to get in Trump’s good graces. Big donations to his campaign and inaugural funds, promises to turn off algorithms that fact check or mute conservative messaging online because it is dubious or not relevant to the user. Whatever. Where is my evidence? I have none.

Look, I’m not going to do the work of compiling facts. That’s journalism. I’m blogging here, this is as close as it gets to hearing me think. There is very little filtering or editing, this is stream of consciousness at best. It wouldn’t matter anyways, the people who support Trump do not take facts, they follow their feelings. Like most con-men, carnival barkers, or populists, tomorrow’s president traffics in fear & fantasy. He ran a campaign on the terror of immigrants coming to murder your family and transgender people coming to force your kids into genital mutilation. The thoughtless masses determined that this would be a better bet for the economy than having a clear minded woman at the helm.

If these people were dealing in facts, there would be a very different incoming administration. The new president was the last and only president than lead an insurrection against Congress to try to illegally seize power after losing an election. His supporters still feel that election was stolen, because he told them it was. Where is their evidence? They have none. Not because they’re not journalists, but because his lawyers had none, inquiries from Congress had none. A bipartisan January 6th commission determined that there had been a carefully orchestrated attempt at a coup by Trump, his lawyers, senators, congresspeople and numerous state and city officials. That commission report it astounding, and terrifying. Nobody who should have watched it did, because their dumb dumb leader told them it was a witch hunt over an election that was stolen from him.

It’s not that he convinced his people that the election was stolen from him, he convinced them it was stolen from them. They are the ones who voted and lost, and Democrats snatched it away. That personal grievance, that shock of losing, the embarrassment of picking the wrong horse, it’s all wiped clean by the denial. You don’t need evidence for conspiracies, you just need anomalous data and a strong enough wish for a different cause to an effect.

Let’s face facts, in round 2 of this president, he has dumped most of the career politicians and is constructing his cabinet out of billionaires and media personalities. For someone who rails against the “main street media” his staff is they, at least the subservient members. The billionaires are adorable. Most have become rich by operating cut throat monopsonies (businesses which monopolize over both the consumer and supplier, squeezing both to maximize profit) which are all technically illegal if the antitrust laws in the U.S. were ever executed. At this point it won’t happen.

The government does not operate like a private industry. Often the government does work that is simply not profitable and therefore not desirable for private companies to do. The conservative dream has always been to sell that unprofitable work to third parties where they will manage it at a discount to the taxpayer.

How does a third party take work that is too costly to earn a profit and turn it into a business model where they can sell the service for less than it costs? Simple, by not delivering the service. Your local utility company is probably a private business, you wouldn’t have to look far to find it was like publicly owned in the recent past. Is it a good deal? Well, you probably pay about the same for the service when adjusted for inflation, but you’re tax dollars are likely also being spent on the upkeep or the system architecture because of the company had to cover all that, they wouldn’t earn a profit. So you pay twice so that they can stay rich. Do I have evidence? No, you’ll have to do your own “research”.

So media personalities and billionaires will be our leaders. My bet is that these people will not be competent in these roles. Billionaires, believe it or not, are not smarter than average people, they just have an unquenchable thirst for wealth that would give normal people pause. Media personalities? They’re primarily driven by ego, they will drive whatever they believe will make them look important or intelligent. There are very few actual skills in this bunch and I suspect that we’ll see horrible ideas, fail to launch for 4 years. That and they’ll break things that people don’t want broken, and tell you that you’re better off for it. (Spoiler alert, you won’t be.)

I’ll end on this. I can get very obsessive with politics. Many of us can. Do yourself a favor as this all unfolds. Either get politically active, or stop following the news. If your plan is to track the play by play constantly, but make no effort to enact actual change, you’re wasting your time and happiness. Turn it off and be happy. Or, if you truly want things to turn out better, get up and go out, and meet your people, and talk to your politicians (no matter how local), and help your community, and complain to people in power, and protest, and send campaign contributions, and move the needle. You can do all of that, you can do a tiny bit and it can accumulate when others follow suit. Learn how to engage, teach your neighbor and your friends. Be a part of the solution rather than idly watching everything come undone and wallow in helplessness. Pay attention to the least fortunate, to those who have little money, or little political power, or who are being scapegoated against. Protect the immigrants, the people of color, the LGBTQ people, the indigenous people, the public servants, the students, the veterans, the poor, whoever might be on the losing side of justice.

It’s probably what Martin Luther King Jr would recommend but I don’t have any evidence of that. So maybe tomorrow you can dig through some of his writings and reflect.

Wishing you all, a great Martin Luther King Junior Day.