Prior to last November’s election, Americans’ demand for rapid ‘change’ became a frequent loud refrain. Many who voted for Trump voiced extreme dissatisfaction with our American status quo, saw Trump as a provocateur and ‘change agent,’ and wanted exactly what he was selling: Massive Change.
The hackneyed line ‘Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it’ has never felt more appropriate.
The 2020s have been a horrendous nightmare
Let’s be honest: so far, this decade has been a real bitch… or bear, or bastard, or benighted mess. Pick your favorite nasty ‘b’ word.
All around the world, fascism and autocracy are rising fast, while democracy and European-style ‘social democracy’ are fading or on the ropes. 2020 and the new decade started with a bang — more precisely, the COVID-19 pandemic — and 2020-21 saw the first-ever refusal of a U.S. president to concede an election, followed by the first-ever insurrection and massive riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Now fast-forward to March 2025. In the intervening years most of our lives have not improved — far from it. Rather, many things in our lives and around us have been sliding downhill fast.
That’s the thing — the very uncomfortable and dangerous thing — about ‘change.’ We can blithely and hopefully ‘wish for change,’ but we never know just what we’re going to get going forward. ‘Change’ can easily go either way and be intensely negative as well as positive. It’s a seemingly neutral term, but in real life it’s always accompanied by several not-so-positive events or experiences, such as intense anxiety, fear, anger, and ‘ungroundedness.’
When we wish for wholesale ‘change,’ what we’re really doing is opening our society and personal lives to massive, ongoing disruption. Change is hardly ever easy, and the deeper and more impactful the change, the more it tends to offend, hurt, and provoke strong fear and anxiety.
Change can be a real [insert ‘b’ word].
How to dismantle the government and wreck our society
To be clear, I am not defending the status quo or railing against major social changes. In truth, I think our American social, economic, and political systems all desperately need major changes.
Yet change is hard and always comes with intense repercussions and, quite often, unexpected consequences. And all of this happens even with very positive and desired changes. When the changes are too disruptive or oppressive and turn negative… well, the ‘intense repercussions’ and ‘unexpected consequences’ can be far worse.
Take Trump’s promise to dismantle the supposed ‘deep state.’ Once inaugurated, he immediately dispatched Elon Musk and his DOGE ‘muskrats’ to start pruning or dismantling key parts of the federal government. Over the past six weeks, Musk and DOGE have summarily fired or accepted forced resignations from over 100,000 federal workers and illegally shuttered several federal agencies, including USAID and the CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). And both Musk and Trump say they’re “just getting started.”
Yep, we’re getting ‘change,’ all right — but it’s (predictably) turning out to be massively dangerous, callous, cruel, and inept ‘change.’ The now-infamous image of Musk prancing around a stage brandishing a giant chainsaw and whooping and grinning says it all. He’s ‘all in’ with enacting sweeping changes, and he’s gleefully using a brutal, indiscriminate ‘chainsaw’ approach rather than a well-planned, reasoned ‘scalpel’ approach.
Some say about MAGA: “The cruelty is the point.” They may be right. Musk and his nerd teams are fanning out through the entire federal government and whacking away, slicing and dicing at will — with hardly any forethought, comprehension of the systems they’re messing with, or basic human compassion and caring. And the U.S. is descending into mass anxiety, fear, and building rage.
. . .
Another example: Trump and Musk are busy firing or otherwise getting rid of thousands of Social Security Administration employees. Veteran SSA employees worry that most of the experienced programmers who can deal with the agency’s ancient COBOL-based programming will soon be gone — and that massive problems and disruptions will quickly follow.
Soon, Social Security recipients across the nation may find their monthly SS payment not showing up as or when expected. Many millions of us who depend on that income may suffer greatly — as our anxiety and fear go through the roof.
Not quite the changes you had in mind? Maybe it’s a good idea to qualify the type of ‘change’ you truly desire, and also elect people who won’t smash through all systems and guardrails en route to grabbing unfettered power for themselves. Maybe the character and morality of the people we elect has a profound effect on the type of ‘change’ they envision and throw at us. Just maybe (no, definitely).
Mass disruption and insecurity loom large
In the February 24, 2025 edition of Time magazine, I came across an unsettling article titled “Insecurity is the new inequality,” by Alissa Quart, the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
She states that Trump’s second term has “already been accompanied by a cascade of unnerving political and natural events” (including the devastating L.A. wildfires). She lists quite a few disruptive changes, including the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accords; multiple firings of Inspectors General; the pardoning of all Jan. 6 rioters, even those who were violent or actively seditious; and increasingly alarming raids and heavy pursuit of ‘illegals’ and brown-skinned immigrants in general.
She then observes,
Indeed. I couldn’t agree more. “Uncertainty all the time, at every moment.” Her thesis is that the vast majority of Americans — all of us who are not millionaires or billionaires — have been thrust into an accelerating ‘age of insecurity.’ She approaches this subject mainly from an economic point of view, but I’d argue that it extends far beyond that and into every aspect of our lives and society.
The elephants in the room: climate change and related disruptions
For instance, the tragic L.A. wildfires have been directly linked to mounting climate disruptions, and many other severe weather events have also been tied to climate change (yes, there’s that ‘c’ word again). Change can be, and often IS, quite a negative proposition. And the intensifying effects of climate change/disruption, so far, are overwhelmingly negative and fear-inducing.
Yet climate change is just one of many disruptive and anxiety-producing patterns accelerating around us: Supply-chain problems. Mounting crop failures. Intractable and insufferable Washington gridlock. The ever-increasing expense and unavailability of comprehensive health care. Skyrocketing prescription prices. Micro-plastic pollution showing up everywhere, even in our brains. A torrential ‘firehose to the face’ of lies, disinformation, distractions, online misinformation, and uber-manipulative ‘influencers’ performing their schtick.
Then there’s our president, who seems dead-set on wrecking our society and undermining our self-governing capabilities — while amassing more and more fame, wealth, influence, and unfettered dictatorial powers.
And there’s much, much more — as you can easily imagine if you contemplate our current bizarre ‘reality’ for a minute or two.
We’re slipping into a moral, psychological, and emotional quagmire
Unlike Ms. Quart, my primary concern is the moral, emotional, and psychological aspects of all these rapid changes and impacts. Over the past decade, I’ve watched with growing alarm as many Americans succumb to hateful far-right propaganda, resurgent racism and misogyny, and a growing desire to ‘burn it all down.’
Trump, MAGA, and his allies love to make noise — loudly and persistently — about ‘rooting out the deep state’ and ‘burning it all to the ground.’ But they never say anything (of course!) about the intense pain, fear, and anxiety their anarchic version of ‘change’ will unleash or has unleashed.
Plus, they have NO long-range plan to replace all the crucial things they ‘burn down’ with better, more workable solutions. Their vision seems both stunted and vengeful— to say the least.
But, it gets worse. The Trump/MAGA version of rapid-fire ‘change’ is destructive and dangerous on every level: emotional, social, political, even spiritual. The changes that Trump and MAGA are creating — fast — concentrate even more power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy and unscrupulous oligarchs, and increasingly put our collective fate in their greedy, power-hungry hands. All while stealing power and wealth from minorities and women — in fact, from the vast majority of Americans.
Big mistake. One of the worst mistakes ever (especially in a putative democracy).
Change, change, and more &%#!*% change!
It’s indisputable that we are collectively entering a period of ongoing, accelerating, and massive changes. Our economies, our societies, our climate, and our personal lives are all facing intense and accelerating disruption.
From this point forward, we’re going to see and experience far more ‘change’ than we’d ever thought possible — much of it negative or difficult. Stability and security will increasingly become… a thing of the past. Contentment and enjoyment of life may soon follow, as painful, disruptive changes take over and dominate our lives.
To paraphrase Trump’s infamous boast to his GOP supporters that they’d ‘win so much they’d get tired of winning’ — we’re going to experience such frequent and often devastating change that we’ll be sick to death of upheaval and constant ‘change.’ We’ll see so much change that soon we’ll never want to hear that word ‘change’ ever again.
After a few years of wild, out-of-control change, we’ll yearn with all our hearts for a respite and a bit of lasting stability. But that is probably not in the cards. Change is what we wanted, change is now accelerating, and heavy-duty change is what we’re all going to be living through for the foreseeable future.
Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.
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This post was previously published on Bouncin’ and Behavin’ Blogs.
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