January (So Far) Is The Cruelest Month

In 1922, T.S. Eliot wrote that “April is the cruelest month…” as the opening to his poem “The Wasteland.”  Respectfully, Mr. Eliot, but April’s got nothing on January 2025.

In just the first 10 days of the Trump Administration, 2.0:

- Trump pardoned 1500 January 6 rioters, including those jailed for the most violent acts. Unsurprisingly, many of them are already back in jail for other various crimes.

- De facto president Elon Musk has thrown two very ugly, very public Nazi salutes, but is being hotly defended by Trump’s minions.

- Trump (illegally) fired 17 Inspector Generals, the guys responsible for monitoring corruption in the government.

- Offered a shady buyout offer to entice Federal employees to leave their jobs to be replaced by Trump loyalists (and of course, Trump always honors his promises…).

- Nominated talk-show host Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. For his part, Hegseth pinky-swears he’ll stop drinking now that he’s gotten the gig.

- Put a sudden freeze to approved Federal funds sending chaos through vital programs ranging from Medicaid to Meals-On-Wheels to cancer research to suicide hotlines for veterans. The reason given was a “needed” review of anything even vaguely “Marxist.” If you’re calling it “Marxist,” you’ve already lost.

- Had the official portrait of Trump’s former Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, removed from the Pentagon. Milley rightly stood up to Trump, but now SecDef Hegseth has added that he’ll have the record of this respected four-star general “reviewed,” even threatening to have him stripped of a star. (#petty)

I’m tired just reading this, and my list doesn’t include unlawful immigrant roundups and plane crashes (which the president promptly blamed on “DEI”) But that’s the point. The Trump Administration’s entire plan is to exhaust us with a daily firehose of insanity, cruelty, and chaos.

On that note, I’m reminded of another poem, Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in which the aforementioned characters lure tasty oysters to the shoreline: “And thick and fast, they came at last, and more and more and more/All hopping through the frothy waves and scrambling to the shore…” Good for oysters, not so much for toxic Trump Overload.

For his part, respected reporter Jim Acosta departed CNN before they moved him to the graveyard shift where he could ostensibly do less damage to Trump. In his sign-off, he stated that, “I will not give in to the lies. I will not give in the fear.”

Wise words to get us all through (heavy sigh) the next 47 months. Pace yourself.

Cindy Grogan is a writer, lover of history and "Star Trek" (TOS), and hardcore politics junkie. There was that one time she campaigned for Gerald Ford (yikes), but ever since, she's been devoted to Democratic and progressive policies.