By DAVID NORLIN
Saline County Resident
Denial is not just a river in Egypt.
For those who are still in it, cutting through the chaos is one way out, even though the chaos is confusing, on purpose. In Topeka or D.C., just following bills is, well, debilitating.
Near-daily executive orders are in reality executive disorders. But we can wake to this truth. It’s not conservatism — it’s corruption. On steroids. Remember the frog in first lukewarm, then boiling water? The heat is coming up, less gradually every day. Will we jump out in time? Every day reduces the chance.
Through the fog, we must fully grasp — and admit — where we are. Unfortunately, President Trump’s mindset is easy to discern.
As felon-in-chief, he continues to purge the Justice Department. In the nouveau regime, crimes are not crimes if they say they’re not. They’ll first get rid of the people who once said they were. Removing truth-tellers’ salary, pension and security detail should do it. In short, they’ll make opponents’ lives as miserable and insecure as possible.
They are not stopping there.
No more wasting money on the little people. They’re on their way to cut our Social Security and Medicaid, and perhaps Medicare. The co-president of Public Citizen, weighing in on Trump’s Social Security lies in his address to Congress, said these are “the prelude to vicious cuts.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) summed it up: “This is their core agenda. (It’s) reverse Roosevelt. They are no longer even hiding it.”
Farmers, consumers and the entire economy are terrorized with tariffs, at the whim of Trump’s on/off button. (Pick your news source.)
National Republicans’ lockstep mentality is echoed by the Kansas’ monopoly party. Kansas legislative leadership seeks to dilute the vote by deluding the people. They and their docile (or worse, complicit) gang of enabler-legislators seek to block troublesome votes by removing the three-day mail ballot grace period, shutting out thousands of votes.
They would make our Supreme Court selection by election, with justices bought by the same mega-donor dollars that installed them. This would chill rights to education and women’s reproductive freedom.
How does this get a pass from the public? By misinformation. By appealing to collective (mostly white) prejudice. And by assaulting and defunding education, especially higher ed. Universities are called universities for a reason. Designed to promote universal understanding and values in education, too often they have suffered at the whim of moneyed interests. Public financing is key to even private college funding.
Nonetheless, the Trump Administration just cut $400 million from Columbia University’s budget, drastically affecting “research and other critical functions, impacting students, faculty, staff, research, and patient care” because students took a stand for Palestine. This is a blow. More than a quarter of Columbia’s $6.6 billion in annual operating revenue comes from federal sources, according to its 2024 financial statements.
Call it what it is. Mafia thuggery and bullying, until universities knuckle under.
The Kansas Legislature monopoly party marches in lockstep with their congressional colleagues. Salina’s Republican Rep Steven Howe got off on a good foot with his appeal for Republicans tore-examine their votesfor Donald Trump come the 2024 election.
However, he was shortly back on the bandwagon. Howe’s crusade and “investigation”against universities’ diversity, equity and inclusion policies put him firmly in the Trump camp and resulted in that witch-hunt becoming state law.
This year, Howe introduced a bill aimed at weakening tenure protections at Kansas universities. His action was “at the behest of Steven Lovett, general counsel at Emporia State University,” where 30 tenured or tenure-track professors were fired in 2022. ESU is “embroiled in state and federal court battles” as a result. Lovett’s seeming conflict of interest in this action was questioned, even by an ESU spokeswoman.
There is little doubt whose side Howe is on. He even moved in his House committee “to add $2.2 million to the ESU budget for legal expenses in (Lovett’s) faculty firing case.
Spreading chaos and retribution is also blatantly obvious in Trump’s complete board replacement of the Kennedy Center. He named himself board chair for the country’s premier performing arts center, now to become the Trump Center for the Conforming Arts. In that action, he decried DEI and the center’s leadership and performances. It might feature WWE wrestling next.
As Nietzsche said, “Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”
Once we get past denial, this bullying culture must be faced up to, to face them down. It can be as simple as no. As a legal immigrant friend of mine said yesterday, “The more no’s they get, the smaller they become.”
May it be so.
David Norlin is a retired Cloud County Community College teacher, where he was department chairman of communications/English, specializing in media.
The views and opinions expressed in this editorial article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Salina Post or Eagle Media. The editorial is intended to stimulate critical thinking and debate on issues of public interest and should be read with an open mind. Readers are encouraged to consider multiple sources of information and to form their own informed opinions.
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