Focusing on the relevance to our struggles with tinnitus, Trump's massive cuts to the CDC and FDA will have serious implications for future treatment approvals (Auricle anyone?), research, and clinical trials. One of the many positions eliminated was the director of the Office of Product Evaluation and Quality at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, the very office responsible for approving medical devices.
How will anything get approved to help us if the office overseeing it has no leadership?
Yet again, to all the Trump supporters, why the silence on this? You are here in the forum, surely suffering immensely and looking for relief as soon as possible. So where is the outrage? I am simply baffled.
Is it really that hard to see through the smoke and mirrors? Trump is following the classic playbook for dictatorship. He is attacking:
- Arts and leisure (budget cuts to Parks and Recreation, privatization, and drilling in national parks)
- Education (cuts and attempts to dismantle the Department of Education)
- Healthcare (cuts to the NIH, CDC, and FDA)
- Civil rights (removing protections for women, minorities, and other vulnerable groups)
For the first time in history, elected representatives were denied access to the Department of Education, while Elon Musk, who was not elected, was inside. Armed guards were even called in to prevent access.
He is trying to privatize the USPS, which would allow him to control access to information and its distribution. He is flooding the courts and Congress with executive orders, many of them illegal or unconstitutional, to keep them overwhelmed and distracted. He pardoned criminals who attempted to overthrow the government and murder elected officials. In the past, such acts of treason would have led to execution, yet he let them go.
He is installing loyalists in high positions of power while using scapegoats, immigrants, to distract his base from what he is doing behind the scenes: tax cuts for himself and his allies, consolidating power, and making more money.
My grandmother was a teenager during World War Two. She is almost 95 now, and she has warned me from the beginning that she has seen this before. She lived through it once already. Every red flag is being raised. Every checkbox is being marked. Historians are sounding the alarm.
Many people I know voted for him for the economy. But with all his executive orders, he has not lowered grocery or gas prices. They are actually higher. Look at the price of eggs. And he is making it worse by limiting the government's ability to communicate with farmers and study the bird flu epidemic to prevent its spread.
Your taxes will likely go up under his tax plan. The diversity equity and inclusion protections he abolished? Those probably helped those of us who need accommodations for tinnitus and other hearing related conditions. Now they are gone.
You know who else did all of this? Came to power during economic hardship with no real qualifications for political leadership. People said, but he is different. He is going to change things. I am sure Germans could tell you a little about that one. Replace illegals with Jewish and you can figure out the rest.
But Trump is a businessman. He will fix things.
Besides the fact that he has a long history of failed businesses, since when do we glorify CEOs as being good for the average worker? They are the ones who lay off employees while increasing their own bonuses. And the United States is not a corporation, nor should it ever be. We do not need a CEO, which is just a euphemism for a dictator. We need a leader, someone who strengthens alliances, Trump did the opposite, unites the country, he has divided it even further, and helps ordinary people live without worrying about government and politics because it just runs in the background while we live our lives.
Every action Trump takes is the opposite of what a good president would do. We are once again the laughingstock of the world stage. His base only fuels even more extreme ideas. In Arizona, proposed legislation would require men to give consent for women to access birth control and reproductive healthcare, straight out of The Handmaids Tale. Should I pull out my red coat now? Blessed be the fruit, indeed.
I feel lucky I had my baby last year. With the deletion of CDC databases, references my doctor would have used to check for side effects, tinnitus anyone?, medication interactions, or vaccine information are now gone.
For those who say, just ignore it, turn off the news for the next four years, do not care about politics, we do not have that luxury. Ask the German citizens who were forced to dig mass graves in the ruins of concentration camps how ignoring it and just living their lives turned out.
Trump's presidency is a nightmare worse than I ever imagined. How can anyone still support him? How can they not see past his theatrics to the real harm he is causing? I am baffled and exhausted.
Let us hope we are still able to hold an election. And that someone will be able to pick up the broken pieces of the United States he leaves in his wake.
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