It’s US presidential pandemonium!
No one knows what is going on, or where we are going, or what will be there when we arrive.
An ageing reality TV show star has returned for his finale, and surrounded himself with the wealthiest Bond villains on the planet.
They seem to be having lots of fun destroying the stuff that keeps the social fabric intact, while punching down.
There’s simultaneous tariff wars on trusted trading partners, while the vast unwieldy US bureaucracy is being dismantled at a quick pace.
The chaos needs some explanation, so the ageing reality TV show star is pivoting from his message of ‘making prices lower’ to it’s all ‘turbulence’, while things break and get glued back together.
Stocks are down, fascism is up, and it sort of smells of 1930.
The Trump administration just deported, or ‘disappeared’ more than 200 Venezuelans from the US to a mega-prison in El Salvador.
This was without trial and is against federal judge orders.
Maybe humans – en masse – are destined to rhyme history?
We’ve been here so many times – ‘strong’ leaders undermine democracy, then tell us that democracy is weak and we need them instead.
Then the purges begin.
Weirdly, there’s just horror and disbelief as to what is unfolding – no-one seems to have any answers about what to do.
Tesla Takedown
The Tesla Takedown movement is one reasonable response, which has reduced Musk’s overblown capitalisation a smidge.
His counter-response was a cheesy caryard sales pitch on the Whitehouse lawn. Is that winning?
So apart from hating on Teslas, there is no organised opposition.
The US Democrats are a shambles, having pursued agendas that middle (white and generally poor) Americans don’t care for.
What they do care about evidently, like everyone else, is the cost of living.
It’s the same across the globe.
The housing crisis is everywhere. Food, fuel, power, and consumables went through the roof after Covid, and have stayed high ever since.
This rant is not ‘the politics of envy’– it’s the politics of justice and wanting to create a place where humans can thrive collectively.
It should be clear by now that it doesn’t matter how much money billionaires have, it’s never enough.
The link between being distracted by billionaires and declining standards of living is yet to be made en masse.
Billionaires need to be taxed like buggery till they shut up.
Hans Lovejoy, editor
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
