Fear and Loathing

Where, When, How Does It End?

I am old enough to recall a number of world events that altered history forever.

I remember one morning during recess in Grade 5, listening to a friend’s transistor radio broadcasting coverage of John Glenn’s first sub-orbit of the earth in 1962. A transformative moment for the American space program and the world – notwithstanding the Soviets’ success with Yuri Gagarin the year before.

I was in gym class in grade 6 on November 22, 1963, when the gym teacher, appropriately named Mr. Mallet, casually announced Kennedy’s assassination.

“Oh, by the way, class, President Kennedy has been shot.”

Ten years later, while working a summer job on a nearby air force base in my hometown of Ottawa, I settled onto a couch in the unoccupied Officers’ Mess to watch the Watergate hearings on TV – the beginning of the downfall of a corrupt president.

I recall the daily coverage of the war in Vietnam splashed across the evening news every night and visiting the U.S. capitol in the summer of 71 where I walked into a store that sold what it claimed to be baggies of the blood of US soldiers killed in Vietnam. I kid you not.

I remember the Iran Contra hearings on TV in the late 80s – the exposure of a government-orchestrated guns-for-money deal between the Reagan CIA and Iran in order to finance the Contra rebels in El Salvador who were trying to overthrow the government of Daniel Ortega.

I was witness to history on many occasions.

Yesterday, I was witness again to something, the likes of which I have never, ever seen before: a U.S. president shouting at another world leader, going red in the face with anger, and doing it in front of live TV cameras. It was stunning and raw.

This post is not about Friday’s circus act for the cameras, clearly orchestrated by a president to demean a man he has loathed since 2019 when a new President Zelensky was ordered by Trump to dig up dirt on President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, so that Trump could use it against Biden in the upcoming election campaign.

Zelensky resisted and Trump, in anger, attempted to halt the release of billions of dollars in military and other aid to Ukraine. He failed because Congress had already passed the funds. That was when Congress had some balls.

So, in a way, it was public payback time for Trump and his wrestling tag-team partner, Vance.

There is a superb opinion piece in Saturday’s New York Times written by Bret Stephens, who does a far better job than I could of enunciating what transpired. I encourage you to read it.

What I do want to concentrate on with this newsletter is homelessness.

Earlier this past week, The Art 2 Aging had the privilege of interviewing Sheila Callaham, founder of the Age Equity Alliance, a global initiative to ensure age equity in the workplace. Sheila is also a regular contributor on aging and ageism to Forbes.

In our conversation, which you can hear on Friday, March 7, Sheila remarks that in America today, there are roughly 800,000 homeless people, roughly half of whom are over the age of 50.

And when Musk and DOGE are finished gutting the federal civil service, as many as 300,000 more Americans will be out of work. While DOGE claims it’s “only” firing probationary employees, how many of them are over 50, that unfortunate age when ageism kicks into gear for job hunters?

What chance will thousands of them have trying to land another full time position with a salary approaching what they were earning in the government? Are they destined to live in their cars under overpasses, or live in cheap motels that rent rooms by the week?

Brian Goldstone, author of “There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America,” refers to the “working homeless” in his riveting piece in the Saturday New York Times (say what you will about The Times’ sometimes soft coverage of the Trump administration, their opinion writers still have teeth).

The working homeless are those with full time jobs that come with erratic hours or minimum wage salaries, making it virtually impossible to rent even modest accommodation.

Goldstone says this is happening not just in the poorest regions of the U.S. but in the affluent cities in America as well.

He cites the National Low Income Housing Coalition which reports that the average hourly wage needed to afford a modest two-bedroom house today in America is $32.11 while millions of Americans earn less than half that.

“A few statistics succinctly capture why this catastrophe is unfolding: Today there isn’t a single state, city or county in the United States where a full-time minimum-wage worker can afford a median-priced two-bedroom apartment. An astounding 12.1 million low-income renter households are “severely cost burdened,” spending at least half of their earnings on rent and utilities. Since 1985, rent prices have exceeded income gains by 325 percent,” he writes.

What is happening more and more is that the poor are getting poorer while the wealthy, well, we know how this sentence ends.

Against this already sad, demoralizing backdrop, is what the Republicans’ new budget is attempting to do: slash billions of dollars from programs like Medicare, Medicaid (you know, the really useless programs that simply waste money daily) and other social programs in order to finance Trump’s latest tax cut gift for the already wealthy, which, of course, includes him.

I just don’t know what to make of it. Now, some of you may say, “well, why do YOU care? You’re a Canadian, so butt out!”

However, America is our largest trading partner (although, there is plenty of action being undertaken to change that as fast as possible) and the Trump tariffs are going to hurt us when they kick in on Monday, March 3.

We were at the whim of this erratic man and his tariffs during his first term but there were guardrails then and, for the most part, they held.

This time: no guardrails. No restraints. No courage.

Anything could go. But we as Canadians will be okay, ultimately. And Canada will remain a sovereign nation.

What lies ahead for older Americans, fired by an unelected maniac doing the bidding of an elected maniac, is where growing danger lurks.