“Hottest Country in the World”
One Year In: The Damage Report
It has been one year since America reinstalled Donald J. Trump like a corrupted operating system nobody bothered to patch. One year since we decided, as a nation, to click “Remind me later” on the warning that said:
This update may permanently damage your democracy.
Reader, the democracy is making a weird noise now.
I keep thinking about how we talk about presidencies like they’re weather patterns. “Stormy.” “Unsettled.” “A little turbulent.” This isn’t weather. This is arson.
So let’s do a calm, sober inventory of what the first year of Trump’s second term has actually done—to the U.S., to the world, and to our collective blood pressure.
I. The Damage (A Non-Exhaustive List Because There Aren’t Enough Trees)
1. Government by Whiplash
The country is now run almost entirely by executive order, emergency declarations, and “because I said so.” Agencies are gutted, refilled, re-gutted, and re-renamed like a bad HGTV flip.
The federal workforce is hollowed out. Expertise is treated like a personality flaw. Loyalty is the only résumé item that matters.
The result? Slower services. Worse enforcement. Less competence. More chaos.
Which, to be fair, does seem to be the point.
2. Immigration as Theater of Cruelty
We are once again doing immigration policy as performance art for angry people on cable news.
Mass detentions. Militarized enforcement. Legal residents caught in bureaucratic meat grinders. Families separated. Communities living in fear. And a constant background hum of “Don’t worry, they deserve it” propaganda.
History will not be kind about this part. It never is.
3. The Tariff Fairy Tale (Or: How to Make Everything More Expensive and Blame China)
Trump re-ignited trade wars like a man trying to put out a kitchen fire with gasoline.
Tariffs are back. Retaliation is back. Supply chains are jittery. Prices are still high. And Americans are, once again, paying for it while being told that “other countries are paying the tariffs.”
They are not. We are. We always were. We always will be.
4. The Climate: “Drill, Baby, Drill” While the House Is On Fire
Environmental rules are being rolled back like it’s 1973 and we just discovered leaded gasoline was “probably fine.”
The U.S. has effectively rage-quit climate leadership. Fossil fuel expansion is the crown jewel. Long-term planetary stability is, apparently, a hobby for losers.
The rest of the world notices. They are not impressed.
5. Foreign Policy: The Extortion Era
Allies are treated like vending machines that didn’t give him his chips.
NATO is constantly insulted. Europe is constantly threatened. Aid is constantly held hostage to “respect.”
Global trust in the U.S. is… let’s call it “fragile, but in the way glass is fragile when it’s already shattered.”
6. The Normalization of Lawlessness
January 6th criminals are rebranded as “patriots.” Political violence is winked at. The rule of law is treated like a suggestion from a very boring librarian.
The message is clear:
If you’re on the team, the law is optional.
This is how democracies rot. Not all at once. But out loud.
II. The Lies (Or: A Man Who Treats Reality Like a Vibe)
Trump does not lie occasionally. He lies industrially. Systematically. Like it’s a manufacturing process.
Here are 20 of his greatest hits from Year One, presented in human language:
The Economic Fantasy Division
- “Other countries pay the tariffs.”No. Americans do. Importers do. Consumers do. This is not complicated.
- “Tariffs are slashing the deficit.”They are not. The deficit is still huge. Math remains undefeated.
- “Tariffs could replace income tax.”This is like saying vending machines could replace agriculture.
- “We’re bringing in $30 billion a month from tariffs.”Even if true (it isn’t), it still wouldn’t fix the deficit.
- “We’ve secured $18–$22 trillion in new investment.”This number is imaginary. Like a child’s net worth when they own three Hot Wheels.
- “We built the best economy in history again.”No, you inherited one and then destabilized it.
- “Prices are falling rapidly.”They are not. Ask anyone who buys groceries.
- “Inflation is basically gone.”It isn’t. It’s uneven. And wages aren’t keeping up.
The Border Apocalypse Cinematic Universe
- “Countries are emptying their prisons into the U.S.”No evidence. None. Zero. This is a movie plot.
- “This is the worst border crisis in history.”It is not. There are actual statistics for this. He ignores them.
- “Illegal crossings are at the lowest level ever.”They were not.
- “Everyone coming is a criminal.”They are not.
The January 6th Rehabilitation Project
- “Nothing happened to violent offenders.”They were prosecuted. Many were convicted. This is just false.
- “They destroyed all the evidence.”They did not. Mountains of it are public.
- “These were peaceful patriots.”We all own televisions.
The Strongman Telephone Fantasy
- “Xi called me.”China said he didn’t. This happens a lot.
- “World leaders respect me more than anyone.”They fear instability. That is not respect.
The Magical Thinking Wing
- “Stopping fraud would balance the budget.”Even if you eliminated all fraud, it wouldn’t.
- “Biden did nothing with the Abraham Accords.”He continued them. Reality is stubborn that way.
- “We’re cutting $800B without touching healthcare.”That is mathematically impossible. Like a unicorn, but with spreadsheets.
III. The Real Cost
The real damage is not just policy.
It’s the constant erosion of truth.
The training of millions of people to treat reality as optional.
The normalization of cruelty, corruption, and chaos as just “how things are now.”
We are being psychologically ground down.
Democracies do not usually die in a single explosion. They die in a long, exhausting fog where people get too tired to keep arguing that 2 + 2 still equals 4.
IV. The Part Where I Refuse to Be Quiet
I am 73 years old. I have seen bad presidents. I have seen stupid ones. I have never seen one who treated the concept of truth itself as the enemy.
This isn’t about party.
It’s about whether reality still matters.
And I, for one, am not ready to live in a country where facts are optional, cruelty is policy, and the national motto is:
“Eh. Close enough.”
Julie Bolejack, MBA
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