January was devastating. But, now I'm feeling optimistic.. cautiously.

Like many of you, I spent most of January being horrified by the levels of craziness unleashed by our newly elected child president and his goons. I spent countless hours doomscrolling to ensure that I catch every bit of mayhem, because I couldn’t get myself to disconnect. My friends and family worried for my well being, but mostly just watched me go through my process, hoping that at some point I’d be over it. Some of them intervened, but I promptly ignored them. Because, you can’t get something out of your mind by force. Right? You have to go through the process.

Come February, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to do something. You see, I’m an organizer at heart. When I see chaos, I organize, so I can see more clearly. So, I did just that. I started a tracker, a simple google sheet to track all of the child’s executive orders, and I put it out into the world for what it was worth. Before long, I started to get support and appreciation from the Substack community 🙏 along with requests. And within 5 days, it went from a simple list of executive orders, to one that included memos, proclamations, congressional actions, cabinet member actions, resistance actions, followups and much more. Organized for easy consumption and scannability. Without my knowledge, I started to see structure amidst all the chaos. I started to see hope.

Yes, something clicked yesterday, and I started to see hope. I suppose we all have a bit of weakness for hope. We look for it in everything. But I think this is real. Bear with me.

I think in just one month, the child president and his minions have set themselves up to fail. And here’s why I think that.

1. He was too loud: You see, the 2024 election loss demoralized the democrats. Between Nov and Jan, there was a lull. People on the left accepted defeat, made peace with the new reality and braced for impact. They outraged a bit in private but there wasn’t the same level of resistance as in 2016. It didn’t break people’s minds like 2016 did. So; being exhausted after the 8 year long battle, the resistance decided to nap a bit.

The child, if he were a smart one, would have noticed this, and taken advantage of it. He would have tiptoed around the sleeping resistance and broken things quietly. He would have gotten his way if he did. But, this child is not smart. This child is loud, messy, impulsive, egotistic and largely clueless.

Instead of pushing for long lasting change by legislative means, using the Republican congress he had just won, he decided to sit down with a pen and paper and solve everything with an executive action. Patience is a virtue the child does not know. Mistakenly believing that he has an overwhelming mandate, he broke too many things too quickly.

The noise has now woken up the resistance. Democrats in congress who might have been willing to work with him, now stand in steadfast opposition. Judges all over, are pre-emptively restraining his orders. Employees in his administration are standing up to him in defiance. Citizen journalists are popping up on every street. Protests are raging in every capital. And it is only getting started.

2. The butterfly effect: is a chaos theory concept that describes how small changes can lead to large consequences over time. It was first described by a meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz in 1972 in a paper titled "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?". It refers to a characteristic of complex systems, where small changes in the beginning can lead to large and unpredictable differences in outcome.

In our case, we have just witnessed a largely naive administration just set off a number of butterfly wing flaps. Each of those flaps, implemented without consideration to consequences, has enraged a different group of people, all activating to fight back. And this group is armed with some of the best lawyers, economists, scientists, administrators, bureaucrats, journalists, experts and most importantly, the facts. If I were a betting person, I’d bet that most of the next four years of this administration might go into dealing with the consequences of those flaps.

3. He is ineffective: There is a reason the child chose executive action as his weapon of choice as opposed to longer lasting legislative changes. Other than impatience of course. It is because Businessmen cannot govern. I have another article coming up which goes into the systemic differences between Business and Government, which explains this better. Stay tuned. For now, let’s just say - this administration knows how to specify what needs to happen, but does not really know how to work through the details of an actual policy in a manner that it can actually pass through legislature.

Executive action cannot effect long lasting change. Any action this president takes, will be reversed by the next administration. To have anything last beyond your term, it needs to become the rule of law, and the chances of that in this administration seems to be getting bleaker by the day, as infighting among Republicans and an extremely opposed Democratic base, leaves them with just not enough votes for almost everything.

All this is to say that, I am starting to be cautiously optimistic that much of the worst from this administration might just be nearing an end.

So, do we just chill now then?

Absolutely not. All of the above is predicated on the fact that this newly awakened resistance will fight as hell to limit the damage. So, we must continue to fight. But, we fight like we are fighting to win. We fight the right way. We fight to ensure we’re never in this situation again.

Ok, and if we do that, then all will be well?

Unfortunately not. There will still be some long lasting damage. In fact, I worry about the following the most.

1. We don’t have four years to waste on the Climate crisis, and this level of disruption will have real and long lasting consequences. Hopefully, the rest of the world continues to make progress while we backslide, and we are also able to do what we can without the government, albeit less effectively for the next few years.

2. Everything the child breaks will take time to put back together. Agencies dismantled, employees fired, decades of institutional knowledge lost. Some of them might never come back. Some of those butterflies will create tornadoes that we’ll face for years to come.

3. The profits that Trump and his goons will rake in during this administration by gaming the system, will likely never be recovered. We might never be able to hold them accountable too. As hard as that pill is to swallow, I’m willing to think of it as a very very expensive lesson; if we are just able to learn that lesson.

4. And that brings me to my largest worry. Trump is a symptom. Of a condition where a wealthy few have figured out how to influence information systems, and perhaps even voting machines to win elections. Here’s all the necessary evidence, before you think I’ve lost it. For as long as we have algorithms (including AI) controlled by a few, that determines what we see and what we do not, we will always have a powerful few that can game elections. How we go about solving this, is unknown to me at this point.

But hope is alive. And after the January I’ve had, hope is everything. If you are like me, and if you got this far, I hope reading this made you feel a little bit lighter. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Meanwhile, Keep fighting. Stay strong! Peace.