The Village Oak Tree

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The Village Oak Tree

A Focus on a couple of Things that affect the rest of us less privileged People

Terrance Ó Domhnaill

Feb 12, 2025

Transcript

Fáilte

Welcome to The Village Oak Tree

I am your host, Terrance Ó Domhnaill.

With the weather outside frightful all across north America today, and with all of the chaos the new U.S. government is creating all across the world and domestically, mainly Donald Trump and his trusty sidekick, Elon Musk, it's a wonder more people aren't speaking out.

But they’re starting to. More and more people across the world are starting to speak out against all of this chaos and that’s a good thing. Even in Ireland, were the majority of the industries are American owned. I plan to be one of those speaking out here.

My focus will be on how all of this will affect the average person everywhere in the world. I will pick out some stories to bring to your attention every week, to try and point a spotlight on all of this madness. And that is going to be the thread going forward this year. The state of average people's lives as we try to duck what's coming.

Once I have brought you the stories and commentary for this week, I ask everyone to stick around through my commercial break, so I can read you another chapter of The Priest, from Michael Campi.

So, come sit you down next to someplace warm and listen to me tell you a little of what the media isn't telling you.

Last week, I talked about how everything is coming at us all at once and we are still seeing that this week. I want to focus on a couple of things that will have a dramatic effect on individual citizens, no matter what you believe in, as far as politics or religious beliefs.

I want to start out with Trump tariffing or doing away with things that will cost the average American more at the grocery stores, the gas pumps and, in the case of my first story by my friend Mitch, the new higher cost of online ordering.

I'm going to quote a little portion of his article that explains what I'm talking about.

"Part of 47’s tariffs on China included revoking the ‘De-Minimis’ exemption.
If you missed what that is, it’s an import exemption where there are no duties imposed on small packages valued at less than $800.
Once a small package costs less than $800, there were no taxes or tariffs — after it gets past customs, it’s yours free and clear.
Not anymore.
Now there’s a tariff of 10% on all small packages entering the USA. That means that after you pay Temu or Shein for your items, when they get here in the USA, there’s an additional 10% to be paid and you’re the person responsible for paying it.
You’ve just become an importer."

He says it so clear for us here that I don't feel the need to repeat this. What that means in a more direct way, is that everything we want to buy through any online shopping sites or in the stores themselves, that have been imported from China, will now cost a lot more. This includes stores like Walmart, Dollar General, The Dollar Store, Target, and so many others that all of the lower income and not so low income people depend on for their basics to get through the week with.

Think of all of the plastic products that we buy every week. How many people consider where they are made? A few people, but for the most part, we don't ask those questions. All we care about is that when we need something to get through our week and we expect it to be on the shelf at a reasonable price.

Now, affordable pricing is going away. I get why Trump wants to do all of this, if you can believe him. He says it's to force American and other corporations to return their factories to the U.S. in order to bring good paying jobs back to the U.S. Like things used to be thirty and forty years ago.

Anyone with any common sense knows that these factories are never coming back to the U.S. They left because it was more profitable for them to move to countries where they could employ cheaper labor. Despite new labor laws being passed in places like Mexico and China, the price of labor is still cheaper that what it would be in the U.S. even now.

Americans became spoiled years ago and now that's coming back to haunt them.

In another major hit to the U.S. economic problems, I have an article from Lena Petrova, who writes in her Substack page, World Affairs in Context, a new article talking about what Trump's proposed new tax laws would do to the national debt. As a lot of us have talked about in the past, the U.S. has, probably the largest national debt of any country in the world. These new tax law proposals will only make that debt increase dramatically, which directly effects the average consumer more so than any of the morbidly wealthy oligarchs.

As we see more and more average citizens struggle to take care of themselves as jobs are being cut in the technology sector, the manufacturing sector and now the civil service sector and so forth, more and more people are starting to wake up to the fact that they have been conned once again by the ruling elitists. It's starting off slow but it is starting to make some waves.

The biggest (in my estimation) things that the average person should be concerned with are Trump's plans to do away with USAID, the federal department of education, and his pick to head the office of OMB. This is the office that sets up the fiscal budget of the U.S. In other words, what the government will spend its money on.

This guy, Russell Vought, was one of the primary masterminds for the infamous project 2025. He is a noted Christian nationalist. If he convinces the federal government to promote protestant Christian Nationalism as the primary religious ideology in the country, there will be a lot of persecutions of those who don't follow the doctrine, whatever it finally comes out as. Trump is already setting up a task force to root out anti-Christian discourse amongst federal employees. Once that is established, it's not going to be a hard sell to start deploying this across the country within the next couple of years.

There're a lot of very hardline Christians in the U.S. that would get behind this very quickly. They may be a minority now but, with the federal government behind them, it isn't too hard to imagine new state laws cropping up discriminating against non-Christians, and maybe even Catholics in the near future. Where does that leave the very large Muslim community in the U.S.? What about the very real, very small, minority of other religions, such as the Wiccans, Druids, Buddhists and atheists? Although some would say that atheists are not a religious group. But they would still have a target on their backs like the non-Christians.

Will we be arrested someday and put into camps for our beliefs? Or will we be forcibly exiled? It sounds dystopian but that is part of the manifesto of project 2025. And Russel Vought is now in charge of the nation's purse strings. Kristi Noem is the head of Homeland Security, and Pete Hegseth is in charge of the defense department. All of these and more in positions of major power within the federal government that would get behind a Christian nationalist executive government in a heartbeat.

Something else that is being proposed that will have a major impact on the average citizens of the U.S. if Trump gets his way. Doing away with the department of education. He can't do away with it altogether without congressional approval but he can strip away all of the funding. Which means no federal money for the states to pay for public education. Trump wants the states to take care of their own public education. He supposedly told his new education secretary that he wanted her to be the secretary in name only. He would pay her to not have a job basically.

That brings up a big issue as there are a lot of states who can't afford to fully fund public education in their states. They rely heavily on federal education subsidies and if Trump strips those out of the budget, there will be a lot of school closures and a lot of kids unable to go to school anymore.

Think about some of the poorest states, such as Louisiana, Idaho, Alabama, Mississippi, Maine, Missouri, Oklahoma, and so many others that will not have enough money to keep schools open, other than the private schools that rely on wealthy parents who can pay for private tuitions. Even the school voucher programs would get cut in states like Arkansas and maybe even Florida.

Then what? In Arkansas, they proposed recently to lower the working age to fourteen so more kids could go to work, if they so choose. Is this were these states are heading if the federal education subsidies go away? Putting teenagers to work in places that the undocumented immigrants used to work, who have now been deported? Can you imagine the kids from the poorer families, whose public schools have now been shuttered due to lack of funding, being told, they will have to go to work on dairy farms, and other agricultural jobs or end up in work camps to keep them out of trouble? Having to work in the meat packing plants that the immigrants used to work at? And so many other low paying, menial labor jobs because they can no longer go to school and have to become productive? Can you imagine your hotel maid or restaurant waitress being a fourteen year old kid?

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see this if the states start closing down public education due to lack of money.

The institutes of higher education will also take a hit. Imagine universities and colleges being forced to only allow students in who can afford to pay the full tuition? There would be a lot of colleges that would close up without that government money. Those that are left, would become elitist campuses and we're right back at a feudal society once again. Where only the wealthiest can afford a higher education.

Everyone else will have to suffer with nothing more than a rudimentary level of reading and mathematics. Just enough to do whatever job they are trained to do. Much like serfdom in the middle ages. Any education in the poorer states would have to come from home schooling and if the parents can't do that because they have to work, a lot of the kids will become illiterate within a generation or two.

Let's talk a little about USAID. Most of the noise from mainstream media is talking about how much NGO's and humanitarian organizations depend on funds from USAID, to feed and care for refugees around the world. How a lot of people will starve and so on. While there may be a little truth to this, the independent media paints a different picture of USAID.

There are a lot of journalists with direct interactions with USAID overseas who tell a different story. They're telling anyone who will listen, about how the U.S. CIA took over USAID decades ago and turned them into a propaganda outlet. In other words, telling NGO's that if they want aid money from them, they have to promote the American narrative of democracy and Christian values, while the CIA destabilizes governments and foments coups and even wars.

I think, and a lot of other people do as well, that shutting down the funding and closing the doors of USAID to restructure them is not necessarily a bad thing but, as we now know, the U.S. will not likely do that. I also think that just shutting them down without considering the consequences for the hungry refugees overseas and the domestic hungry people in the U.S. was not very smart either.

I watched a recent episode of The New Atlas and the people talked about how USAID isn't completely shut down, just the aid parts. The shadowy CIA guys are still operating as if nothing has changed. Their funding didn't get cutoff. The host told viewers that the USAID offices where he is in Bangkok, Thailand are still going strong. I imagine it is like that around the world.

But as we are watching in real time, Trump and company does not care if people go hungry anywhere. It's all about the fleecing of America. Taking what they can, using quick and dirty moves before anyone can make any counter moves against them. A large amount of these so called, executive orders, are being challenged in the courts finally, but the rampage is still ongoing. Again, it's all about moving quickly and with maximum distraction in one direction, while they work quietly in another direction to strip the federal government of any semblance of a democratic body. And as the new VP told reporters, no judge has the authority to stop Trump and Musk from doing what they want. That got a lot of attention. Isn't that what judges are for? To stop anyone, including the executive branch, from breaking laws? Will people figure out the smash and grab and stop it before they run off into the dark?

I found a ProPublica article that talks about how Trump and his minions have in all probability, broken laws. Do you think Trump cares about whether he breaks any laws right now? It doesn't look very good right now but there is some movement happening. We will all just have to wait and see.

My friend mentioned to me the other day that, rather than moving north away from Florida, they are actually contemplating moving back to the Caribbean. He had told me before that where they are from, Trinidad, is now overrun with criminals and gangs. It's not safe anymore. But there are other little countries in the Caribbean that offer a better standard of living than the U.S. does now. At least as far as being dark skinned immigrants in the current atmosphere. He's worried that someday soon, even though being naturalized citizens, that may not be enough to save him and his family from persecution.

All marginalized people in the U.S. are now starting to become very afraid of our futures. The transgender folks are being hit especially hard right now in a lot of states and directly from the federal government. With new bans on sports and military service, plus the attempt to move trans females to male prisons, that was stopped by a judge thank goodness, it's only a matter of time before this minority group may get the boot and be told to live within the gender as depicted on their birth records or leave the country, or worse.

I found an article from the CBC Canada by one of their famous news magazines, The Fifth Estate. They have been publishing stories about life in Canada for as long as I can remember. This story is about a little prairie town in Alberta, Canada with a serious LGBTQ+ problem. Half of the people, and I mean almost exactly half of the people in this small, 18000 population town are doing all they can to make any LGBTQ and transgender people as unwelcome as they can. Forcing businesses to close, relocating the local library in order to deter gay and trans people from congregating in a safe place, banning library books and so on. All of this is coming from the United States. The U.S. is so corrupted by all of this divisiveness, that it is now spilling across the border. Now, these sentiments were already there but the Americans gave these Canadians permission to bring their prejudices out in the open. As the article talks about, this town in Alberta is not a one off. This open bias in Canada is showing up more and more now as the Americans are showing the world their true colors, which some Canadians thinks it's okay to emulate. These might be some of the same Canadians who think being a new U.S. state or protectorate would be a good thing for them.

If project 2025 does come to full fruition someday, other marginalized peoples may also have to make a choice. Conform or leave. If not, bear the consequences of government sanctioned persecution. From a personal perspective, I'm more worried about this than anything else. I sympathize with the LGBTQ+ peoples in the US. and Canada But, we're also talking about the millions of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and other religious communities who may be effected if the Christian nationalists take over the government under Trump's watch.

Remember, Trump is an ardent admirer of autocratic leaders like Putin, Kim Jong Un and Victor Orban. If he could remake the U.S. in their images, he may think that will cement his legacy in the history books forever. It doesn't matter if that legacy matches someone like Vladimir Putin or Adolph Hitler. It's all about that historical legacy that will live on in infamy after he's dead.

In Russia, Putin is on a purge to rid Russia of gay people. In Hungary, Orban did all he could to shut the borders and persecute the Roma people. Commonly known as Gypsies in western cultures. We all know what North Korea thinks of South Korea. We see lots of other autocratic leaders do similar things around the world. Trump is just following in the footsteps of those leaders he admires the most.

He doesn't care about the Christian nationalists in any sort of ideological way. They're just tools to get him what he wants. Which is to cement his historical legacy of being one of the world's strongman. The absolute leader of the strongest country in the world, for now anyway. Trump knows he doesn't have that many more years above ground so it looks like he plans to do all he can to elevate himself into history as far as he can push. That's how he gets to live forever. For these morbidly rich narcissists, that's all they have left to take from the world, once they have all of the material wealth they can accumulate. This is how they live forever in the history of the world.

Think about it. Isn't the world still talking about the Egyptian pharaohs and Roman emperors? This is part and parcel of ancient history. Venerating ancient rulers. This is what people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk strive for when they've achieved all they can in this world. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are buying their way into the history of the world for future generations to read about, good or bad. For people like them, morality is not a concern. Only living forever in history.

Remember what I just said about how Trump and company could care less about anything that doesn't involve some kind of a deal somewhere that benefits them? This also applies to the trying to save the environment from these corporate predators. The new Interior Secretary is planning to open up as much public land as they can get away with in order to exploit the resources underneath. That means that any national park land that might have some mineral resource underneath is fair game now.

Imagine oil drilling rigs in places like Yellowstone National park someday soon, or cutting down the redwoods in Sequoia national Park for their timber, and so many other places we have taken for granted as being protected from corporate predation. Trump is sweeping away any protections for anything that might offer a profit for his corporate donors.

So, if any of you have any desires to visit one of the natural wonders of the United States someday, you had better go now, while there is still something to look at. If they keep going the way they are right now, there might not be much left to see by the end of the next four years. My wife and I are planning to go see all of these wonders out west this spring before everything disappears for good.

Thank you for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed it and that you'll return again to talk about the world we live in.

Please like, subscribe, reply and share the videos or audio podcasts, however you watch or listen. The goal here is to resist the people who want to take our freedoms away from us. I appreciate everyone around the world, no matter who or where you are. Together, using independent media like this, we can resist the authoritarian oligarchs in the west.

As I say good bye this week, I wish to leave you with this Irish blessing as we go about our lives and try to stay warm in the meanwhile. "May we find the will to resist those who try to put boots on our necks." Slán go fóill.

References:

Buying from Shein or Temu?

Guess what? Now you’re an Importer.

🌬️Mitch in Medium.com

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The Village Oak Tree

A commentary and discussion with the occasional guests about current news from around the world, veterans affairs and other topics. Some controversial.

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