Well, it's Christmas 2025 and another year is coming to an end. Now well into the fourth quarter of my life it feels much different this year. While I still celebrate Christmas, it is not the same with no children around. Our children are grown, and the grandchildren are all over the country from California, to Arkansas, Missouri and Kentucky. No one sends Christmas cards anymore to set around the house, and the tree has fewer and fewer presents each year. But Christmas is about Christ and for that I am truly grateful and blessed.
Over my life I have seen a great deal of change in my life and the country which I live. The things that a second term as President for Donald Trump have occurred are truly mind boggling. As a black man, growing up in a black community, after WWII and during what is known as the Civil Rights era it is truly astonishing. All my life I can truly say that white Americans have always felt that they are the superior "race" and all others are not as good as them. While in America one of the guiding principles that our democracy was built upon was that all "men" are created equal. While it was written, it was never ever practiced. Not for anyone who wasn't an Anglo-Saxon, wealthy, or even a man.
I think things really got bad when something happened that I never expected to see in my lifetime. The election of an African American President, Barrack Obama. While other countries have had women and people of color as leaders, because of America's history I did not see it coming. That is when the rich and white supremist found a leader, or conman, to fight for them. Donal Trump was obsessed with this, and he used his money and mean spirit to do everything to denigrate him and his policies for change. Make America Great Again was born with an ongoing barrage of lies, misinformation, and insults over the next eight years. Trump part one began with a bang and ended with a botched pandemic response and an attack on the Capital when he lost reelection .
Things weren't great under Joe Biden but as was the case with Obama, he was able to get us through the Covid pandemic and kept the economy afloat while we tried to recover from the supply chain problems and inflation. Immigrations which was a hotspot political got out of control as the pendulum swung from the Trump era restrictions and "build the wall" to open asylum for immigrants needed to escape the gangs and corrupt governments in South America. Everyone wanted a better life in America. Those policies were not sustainable and added ammunition for the America first mantra of Donald Trump and the Republicans.
So now in 2025 Donald Trump was voted back into office and our democracy has been almost unrecognizable. He has shut off the influx of immigrants at the southern border, but the system is still broken. He has spent more money of trying to deport "all" immigrants. While saying that he was going after the worst of the worst, which everyone could support, every day we see people who have been in the country since childhood, now making an honest living and serving the community, being sweep up by a masked military force, even when they are going to court to continue their attempt to "do the right thing to become a citizen". It's true that many of the people have no record at all, are being separated from their families, and sent to countries where they have never lived. Trump has used the USA military to go into American cities and uses them against citizens. This was not what the National Guard was intended for and something that I would see on the news going on in autocratic and underdeveloped countries.
The office of the Presidency has slipped to the point where it is ok to be a convicted criminal who outright lies, bullies, and denigrates anyone who doesn't agree with him on anything. The moral fiber of our country is at it's lowest point in my opinion with three more years of Trump possible. Trying to be open minded I actually read the Project 2025 plan that the conservative Heritage Foundation put out for Republicans to follow. This is the policy Trump said he didn't know about or had read. There are intelligent authors of the plan. I agree with several parts of it which include the reduction of government and bureaucracy, however I totally disagree with the implementation. It talks about place so much power into the executive branch and particularly the President that the country would become an oligarchy with one individual having immense power, eliminating the checks and balances of our government. The Republicans are following the plan completely, with items like eliminating the department of education, establishing a new department of war, eliminating vaccines, moving away from alternative forms of energy, moving on Venezuela.
Yes, 2025 will be a watershed year for America democracy and whether we continue down this path. Will we continue to follow the best grifter I have ever seen, or will we become a mock democracy like some other countries I have seen. All great societies have arisen only to fall. The Greeks, the Romans, the Chang, and most recently the USSR. Will America be the next great society to fall. I hope not for the sake of my grandchildren who are in the first quarter of their lives.
