Elect Cruel People, Receive Cruel Gifts On Valentine's Day

A plurality of Americans who voted for Trump and Musk to "own the libs" and feel great again are receiving pain, higher costs, and illnesses on Valentine's Day instead of flowers, chocolate, and love.

(Yes, this is a real tweet sent by the White House.)

Most people hope to receive sweets, gifts, a card, or at the very least a loving gesture on Valentine’s Day. It’s a sign of a healthy, reciprocal relationship in which our bonds are acknowledged through symbols and acts of affection. However, if you’re a masochist, then you’re perfectly fine receiving humiliation, punishment, and Death. For those Americans who voted for Trump and the minions of the MAGA cult, they are willing to suffer today just to “own the libs” and achieve the fleeting, illusory high of temporarily “feeling great” again.

We’re three weeks into the second Trump Administration and, unsurprisingly, it is a dumpster fire on top of a burning train heading off a cliff. The United States of Amnesia assumed “It wouldn’t be that bad” and “We survived four years of Trump, so we can survive another term.” They also foolishly believed American institutions and guardrails would stave off a man who openly said he wanted to be “dictator for a day” and kept teasing us he wouldn’t leave after his second term. (He won’t, folks.)

It seems elections have consequences.

If you elect stupid, corrupt, criminal people in service of a right-wing authoritarian agenda, then you can expect to win stupid prizes. This includes measles, TB, bird flu, and destructive and unnecessary trade wars with our closest allies. The rot starts at the surgically repaired bald, orange scalp and spreads throughout the land resulting in a brain worm inside the head of America’s new secretary of Health and Human Services.

Yes, RFK Jr., a notorious anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist who was called a “predator” by his own cousin and has extolled the virtues of heroin, is apparently “the best and brightest” - as described by Affirmative Action hire Pete Hegseth - to make America healthy again. (For his part, Hegseth is hell-bent on being as incompetent as possible. He publicly gifted Putin everything without any concession while alienating our European allies and throwing Ukraine under the bus.) RFK Jr’s confirmation comes at a time when vaccination rates of American children are declining thanks to right-wing conspiracies and attacks on science. Red states, like Texas, are seeing a surge in measles among unvaccinated kids and some of us might live long enough to see Polio become great again.

Speaking of being “pro-life” and saving children, President Musk is investing in the future of our country by gutting the NIH, cancer funding, USAID, and ripping through the Education Department. Not to be outdone, Linda McMahon of WWE fame is set to become our next Secretary of Education where she will fulfill her goal of destroying the Department of Education to root out “waste, fraud and abuse.” This includes her admitting to being open to defunding schools that teach Black History during Black History Month.

However, “waste, fraud, and abuse” are perfectly fine when done by MAGA. Musk is set to receive $400 million of American taxpayer dollars to make “armored Tesla” vehicles. His Cybertruck is an unintentional target of universal mockery and his space rockets keep exploding, but when you buy the President for $290 million, you too can build more defective, explosive toys. Also, more tax cuts for the wealthiest people on Earth like Musk aren’t wasteful according to Republicans and their recently proposed budget plan. Instead, they plan on making America great again by cutting $1.5 trillion from Social Security and weakening Medicaid and Obamacare which are major lifelines for Republican voters in red states. Meanwhile, the prices of eggs, groceries, and gasoline are up and the cost of living will inevitably rise as Trump implements his tariffs, which the WSJ has said will lead to “the dumbest trade war in history.”

I feel like I’m living on the dumbest Earth in the multiverse, and I want off this timeline. Unfortunately, here I am and here I will remain. It’s always been up to the rest of us, the “DEI hires,” to fight for a country that doesn’t fight for us, to be welcoming when we’re not welcomed, and to continue loving even when the love isn’t reciprocated. That being said, I’m no masochist. I have no desire to eat a shit sandwich and lie to myself and the world and say it tastes like biryani.

On this Valentine’s Day, I hope everyone reading can find time for self-care, love, and invest in people and community that will lift you up and give you kindness, honesty, and decency even though a plurality of Americans elected a corrupt circus of villains who only seem capable of dispensing cruelty, lies, and pain.

On today’s episode of DEMOCRACY-ISH, Danielle and I go into more depth about the consequences of electing Musk and the MAGA circus, and we even offer hope by referencing a great movie from the 1980s - The Neverending Story.