Bloggerlife.blog

03/02/2025

Today’s blog – Lynn Murphy Mark

The spaghetti factory

This is not a blog about cooking, although I live with Jan who is a super spaghetti sauce cook. She puts a few ingredients together and out comes a savory sauce that has been popular with anyone who has ever sampled it. I hope she makes some soon. 

The spaghetti reference is to a somewhat sloppy technique to see if the pasta is fully cooked. Who has not thrown a loop of spaghetti against a wall to see if it sticks? If the pasta doesn’t adhere to the wall then it needs a few more minutes of boiling. That’s an urban legend anyway. Turns out you can have a piece of pasta with a sticky exterior and an uncooked interior that might stay on a wall for a nanosecond before it lands on the floor. Not a very efficient test after all.

Instead, the reason for mentioning pasta at all is that we are right here, right now, living with an administration that is creating serious trouble every day. As an idea is brought forth, it is thrown out to us to see what will stick. A few items have raised such a ruckus that the administration has withdrawn the idea. Like the whole tariffs on Mexico and Canada, for example. Much bluster and bravado accompanied 47’s announcement. When he got what he ”wanted” from our neighboring countries he backed down – for now. This is a typical bullying tactic. I foresee that this will continue until our presence in the global community is vastly altered, and not in a good way.

As for president musk’s takeover of the various government departments, apparently this is just the beginning. According to Heather Cox Richardson, “…he intends to cut government workers and to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to make budget cuts and to find waste and abuse in the federal government…” The intent is to “use AI coding agents to write software that would, for example, change the way logging in to the government systems works.”. I know just enough about Ai to be very concerned about this.

I remember the painful times during the COVID pandemic when gradually most Americans knew of someone who had been deeply affected by the virus. It is the same with 47’s tactics – before long we will all know someone whose life has been altered by an executive order. I already know two people in this leaky boat. A person I work with at the International Institute has been furloughed indefinitely and the service she supervised is no longer available to us. Letters advising people to resign from their positions have affected thousands of people and a friend of mine has received his very own copy. 

Every day it’s the same question, “What has he done today?”. The answers are disturbing at best and terrifying in their implications. Apparently the process for dissolving the Department of Education will soon be an executive order. This can only be done with the assistance of congress. So far the republican majority has fallen in lock-step behind whatever 47 wants. It appears that congress no longer upholds the will of the people, unless those people are MAGA constituents. I have a daughter with a career in public education, so I’ll be asking her what this actually means for her workplace – a public school in Queens, New York. 

Some higher education institutions are contemplating hiring freezes. To me this comes at a terrible time for my son, who has finished his PhD in Philosophy and is searching for a University position. This is all personal.

Then came the ridiculous proposal that the United States should take over and “own” the Gaza strip. This is not a humanitarian gesture. Follow the money, as 47 decides to build the “middle eastern riviera” along the shores of Gaza. In his deluded mind, he can build his ugly gold buildings up and down the coast. And the Palestinian people? Who cares? Send them to some other country to live. They are expendable, as many of us Americans will soon be. 

I try to avoid hyperbole when I can. But writing about 47 and his minions feels like one grand conspiracy theory that is actually becoming real. Oddly, as I listen to Tracy Chapman this morning, and write these words that are disturbing to me, she is singing her song called, “Talking about a revolution”. It is an anthem for people to rise up and take what is ours. This is what will be needed in the coming months and years. 

I believe that 47’s whole point is to throw so much at us that we will soon become inured, hardened by frequent exposure, especially to something bad. It will take an iron will on my part not to cave. I hope you will join me in the search for appropriate countermeasures. Now Tracy is singing, “Stand by me”. “No I won’t be afraid just as long as you stand by me.”.