And it’s not just the big picture things but little things that add up and affect everybody regardless of who they are.
Think about the number of food safety issues we’ve had the last few years (onions in McDonald’s burgers, listeria in ice cream, bird flu affecting egg production, etc).
That’s no coincidence. The first Trump term saw a rejection or downgrading of FDA inspectors - less money to hire, job cuts, fewer inspections. COVID exacerbated this trend. But the philosophy - to the extent one exists - is that regulations are bad and industry will police itself to maintain their business (HA!).
Things have recovered slightly in the last couple years but not to pre-Trump levels. And now that he’s back? Goodbye 20th century food safety standards, welcome back to Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”.
Ok, so maybe some of that happens. But we still have the CDC around to identify and track salmonella and e. coli outbreaks, right? …oh wait, they don’t like the CDC, either, do they?
No, we’re not going to hit a dystopian nightmare overnight, but the little creeping bits of awfulness in food safety have been accumulating for years and the brief reprieve they’ve gotten is going away again.
Good luck getting a dozen safe eggs for $0.89 when bird flu devastates millions of chickens and the remaining eggs are contaminated with salmonella and there’s nobody around to figure any of that out.
And that’s just in food safety.
What about the NHC or NOAA or the NWS or any number of other organizations that we actually do rely upon in subtle ways that have more of an impact than we realize? They’ve already been weakened and haven’t recovered from the first go around. Remaining staffers are doing their best, but they’re about to be hit again.
So, yeah, there’s the big global strategic picture. And the philosophical bits about protecting the most vulnerable of us. And maybe average straight white dudes don’t see an immediate effect from those.
But those straight white guys are still going to be affected, whether they realize it or not (generally, not - most Americans are kinda dumb) by all the mundane daily stuff they take for granted that is already slightly worse than it used to be and will continue getting ever so slightly worse until one day they realize it’s all gone to shit.
And I bet they still blame Democrats when that happens and still grouse about unions and unnecessary bureaucracy and regulations.