Schwab: Silence is golden but not on Sid’s list of resolutions

Because I don’t want my grandkids to think I was among the silent as democracy crumbled around us.

By Sid Schwab

Kicking off a multi-million-dollar campaign to sell their cheaply-bought, self-enriching, middle-class deceiving, poor-people-harming tax cuts, it’s fitting that the Koch brothers began with an ad featuring a young girl thanking Trump for “allowing” her to say Merry Christmas again.

In the alt-universe, the apparitional war on Christmas remains a favorite manipulation, perfectly illuminating their (the Kochs’, Trump’s, McConnell’s, Ryan’s, Hannity’s, et kleptera) confidence in their ability to distract bedazzled voters from their rapacious, destructive agenda.

Allowing! Well, clutch my pearls and call me Sarah! Because until Trump, borne to us on wings of angels, beleaguered Christian-Americans had been prohibited — under penalty of (?) — from saying those sanctified words, even amongst themselves, evidently. Kenyan brain implants. Inserted as you watched Fox “news,” neuro-receptors ironically impervious to disturbances.

Confident that the programmed will continue to buy the fiction of attacks on Christmas and other imaginary horrors, Republicans are relentlessly undoing environmental protections, blessing the poisoning of ourselves and our children. As they deploy voter suppression laws across the land, as they remain silent about (or, improbably, ignorant of) the effluvium of lies coming daily from Trump, they distract the distractible, via a phony “war.” (For those who believe the lie that Obama eschewed the words, it’s disproved in two seconds of Googling.)

Allowing! Believe it! For, whilst you turn your gaze to heaven, R’s have more regulations to extinguish. Like ones penalizing nursing homes for lousy care. Which they just did. Say it loud: Merry Christmas! (Not you, Grandma. Hands off the call button!)

Allowing! All praise be to Trump, giver of those things which He hath not yet taken away. How sweet the sound, how long the silence.

In this, the most believer-dense democracy on earth (teetering, but not yet pushed over the cliff), wherein Christianity is sprinkled on laws like ash from fires ravaging parched land, and where prayers in the Cabinet Room are led by a neurosurgeon-cum-housing expert giving thanks to God and Trump (not necessarily in that order) for erasing budget deficits after the signing of a bill increasing them: people will weep in agreement, thank Dear Leader for allowing them, once again, to mouth those forbidden, commercialized words. (Not fake news: during Barack Obama’s presidency, when an actual president was tweeting “Merry Christmas,” Trump tweeted “Happy Holidays.” You can look it up.)

Around that Cabinet Room sang they their hosannas and genuflected them their knees. (Only missing were 50-foot posters and a stiff-armed and -legged military parade.) And He smiled upon them. (More of a smirk, really, but it warmed in them that which had replaced their souls.)

So cocksure of his deceptions is Trump that he hied himself to Mired-in-Loco immediately post-signature to announce to his pals, “You all just got a lot richer.” Fast flew he, outracing his biggest lie of all, that the bill was about helping the middle class, that he and his buddies would suffer. So anxious he was to reap his millions, he signed the bill this year, allowing its effects to commence in 2018 instead of 2019; those who care to look may feel the hurt in time for the next election. Oops. (“Oops” assumes cultists will find their way out of their thrall, to search beyond the promises. Shall one hope?)

The thing about predictions concerning what I and nearly all analyses consider a regressive, budget-busting, Koch/Trump/Corker-enriching, capitalism-threatening tax bill is that at some point we’ll learn who’s right. If I’m wrong, I’ll admit it, loud and clear. Will Trumpists, if it’s they? It would require unprecedented rejection of claims of fakery, but there’s a first time for everything. So, while we await the reckoning, let’s take a moment: The year is almost new, a time for resolutions and resolve.

Here’s mine: knowing the unlikeliness of puncturing the reality-resistant bubble in which Trumpists live, I’ll keep trying. Because, years from now, wandering amongst the rubble, I don’t want my grandchildren (or theirs) to think I was among those gone silent as democracy crumbled around us; when our government, helmed by an amoral, ultracrepodarian mammothrept excused and enabled by an avaricious, conscienceless Congress, turned away from science, from the needy, from inclusive governance; polluted our land, ignored the climate crisis, dismissed our future as less important than making themselves and their paymasters “a lot richer” now. While average Americans paid the price.

Silence is acquiescence. So, no.

Email Sid Schwab at columnsid@gmail.com.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Opinion

toon
Editorial cartoons for Wednesday, July 9

A sketchy look at the news of the day.… Continue reading

A Volunteers of America Western Washington crisis counselor talks with somebody on the phone Thursday, July 28, 2022, in at the VOA Behavioral Health Crisis Call Center in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Editorial: Dire results will follow end of LGBTQ+ crisis line

The Trump administration will end funding for a 988 line that serves youths in the LGBTQ+ community.

Welch: A plan to supply drugs to addicts is a dangerous dance

A state panel’s plan to create a ‘safer supply’ of drugs is the wrong path to addiction recovery.

Douthat: Conservatives sacrificed own goals to pay for tax cuts

Along with its cuts to Medicaid, long-held GOP priorities were ignored in the Big Beautiful Bill.

Comment: Supreme Court porn ruling a naked change to speech rights

The majority ignored a 20-year-old ruling that overturned an age-verification law similar to the Texas law.

Comment: With Voice of America silenced, who’s next?

The Trump administration saw VOA as ‘radical left’ media. It’s the mark of authoritarian governments.

Comment: Michelle Obama is quitting politics. Or is she?

She may be stepping back from campaigns and speeches, but her new podcast is in itself a political act.

toon
Editorial: Using discourse to get to common ground

A Building Bridges panel discussion heard from lawmakers and students on disagreeing agreeably.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, June 27, 2025. The sweeping measure Senate Republican leaders hope to push through has many unpopular elements that they despise. But they face a political reckoning on taxes and the scorn of the president if they fail to pass it. (Kent Nishimura/The New York Times)
Editorial: GOP should heed all-caps message on tax policy bill

Trading cuts to Medicaid and more for tax cuts for the wealthy may have consequences for Republicans.

Alaina Livingston, a 4th grade teacher at Silver Furs Elementary, receives her Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic for Everett School District teachers and staff at Evergreen Middle School on Saturday, March 6, 2021 in Everett, Wa. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Editorial: RFK Jr., CDC panel pose threat to vaccine access

Pharmacies following newly changed CDC guidelines may restrict access to vaccines for some patients.

toon
Editorial cartoons for Tuesday, July 8

A sketchy look at the news of the day.… Continue reading

Comment: Students can thrive if we lock up their phones

There’s plenty of research proving the value of phone bans. The biggest hurdle has been parents.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.