With Trump as pilot, America is experiencing emotional turbulence
With Trump as pilot, America is experiencing emotional turbulence
For your safety and that of your fellow Americans pay attention to what's happening
By Chauncey DeVega
Salon Senior Writer
Published July 18, 2025 6:30AM (EDT)
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The agencys border guards have been turned inward. This is a defining feature of democracies that are collapsing into authoritarianism.
Trump and ICE now have their Alligator Alcatraz, a de facto concentration camp in Florida, and they are building a much larger system of gulags all over the country. According to the Guardian, acting ICE director Todd Lyons wants to study how Amazon delivers and ships so many packages each day so he can apply the same techniques to human cargo. These are all signals that the administrations deportation plan has escalated. Next, the citizenship of naturalized citizens who are deemed to be the enemy, the Other, will likely be taken away.
On the plane, I shifted in my seat. Did some poor soul who was being kicked out of the U.S. and deposited in a foreign country they escaped from as a child and which is now alien to them sit in this same spot? Are they the source of the sour smell, the particular stink of fear and anxiety that has been bothering me this entire flight?
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In a recent essay, Thom Hartmann summarizes the dire peril of our present moment, arguing that America stands today at an extraordinarily dangerous crossroads, including the possibility of economic calamity, fascism and a third world war. He points to Trumps big, beautiful bill more accurately called the big ugly bill because of the harm it will do to the American people and how it has masqueraded as tax reform. In fact, it was looting, he says. But its potential ramifications are far more ominous.
This isnt just bad economics, Hartmann writes. Its dangerous geopolitics.
History shows that when working people lose access to opportunity and stability, populism and extremism rise. They demand scapegoats and embrace demagogues. In early 20th-century Europe, economic collapse and inequality paved the way for authoritarian regimes. The result was two world wars.
Were now staring into the jaws of what political scientists call the Thucydides Trap: when a rising power (China) threatens a dominant one (the U.S.), and conflict becomes almost inevitable. Combine that with economic unrest, and its a recipe for disaster.
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https://www.salon.com/2025/07/18/with-trump-as-pilot-america-is-experiencing-emotional-turbulence/