There is so much noise out there right now that it’s actually getting hard to concentrate. The internet has brought on a new set of rules about how we evaluate something as big as a new President in office. Gossip, and laughing about the latest funny meme, does provide some comedic relief and distraction to a heavy time, but we have real problems to consider as a Dictator takes shape in what we consider to be our free world democracy.
As such, I’ve compiled this handy cheat sheet list for you to make things easier and help guide you on where to spend your energy. There are more line items to be added and the list will be updated as needed as the story unfolds. Here’s a list of things to be filling up your thoughts with and things to be mindful of but not let it overtake your feeds, dialogue, and minds while we have a lot to concentrate on that is of most importance right now.
10 Things to Focus On:
1. Are taxpayers going to have to pay for his double life of living in New York and traveling to Washington to conduct business? Does this happen at the city, state, or federal level, and are we actually responsible for his “opting-out” of living in public housing (in which we definitely pay for)?
2. Are taxpayers going to get hit with this wall he’s looking to build between the US and Mexico? I’m not being snarky, but if he’s all about “Made in America” and then planning to offload the bill to Mexico (which they 100% will not pay as reiterated by the Mexican President numerous times), shouldn’t he be using Mexican supplies and labor for this wall?
3. Are his conflicts of interest (ie investments in the pipelines) already rearing their ugly head, and what can be done about it? He has no plans of releasing his tax returns ever now that he’s President. What other conflicts exist that will not only aid in filling his pocket but come at a huge cost to our environment, infrastructure, etc.?
4. Is Trump starting to (operative words) focus on intelligence briefings finally or is he continuing to opt out of participation? What are the short-term and long-term ramifications of that?
5. Will Betsy DeVos pave the way for the future of your children’s education? With no experience in taking out student loans for her or her family, no experience in higher education, public education outside of private and charter schools, no experience handling a budget of that mass quantity, what does this mean not only for the current students but a decade-long (your kid’s) education?
6. What are the repercussions of his cabinet shushing the EPA and ignoring climate change?
7. When the ACA is gone, what happens to the millions of American’s who rely on it for care? What does this mean to your parent’s health care in regards to Medicare and Medicaid? Since there is no replacement planned right away, what does this all mean from a tax implication standpoint to the rest of American’s (forget the humanitarian aspect of putting millions of people’s health in the lurches)?
8. While Trump is focused on bringing back the jobs of yesteryear (factories, pipelines, you know the kinds of jobs your grandfather had), and not focused on the future (creating industries and technologies that will propel our lives further and create NEW jobs to support that), what does this mean for the long-term stability of the nation? Not this year or even during his term, but decades to come as a result!?
9. Women and men’s healthcare and reproductive education as it relates to sex education, contraception, STD education, and resources + abortion. For the right, let’s clarify that we’re not asking to have the government pay for killing innocent children in uteruses, we’re asking for all of the things that lead up to the prevention of that happening. And when something happens where a woman has to make a hard choice about HER body, to have the resources available to her(s) (and him/their/them) to make the choices that are right for THEM.
10. The biggest one that should be on everyone’s minds is what are his ties to Russia? There is a lot of speculation and noise around this topic, but just like Hillary went through several rounds of Benghazi interrogation and scrutiny, we need to ensure this is as thoroughly investigated and tried until we uncover the truth.
Now I know this is a short list of many other topics that can have multiple bullet points under each, plus additional ones I haven’t even discussed including defunding the arts, but for now, to keep it simple, those are the ones I deemed worthy of our brain power at the moment.
5 Things to be studious of but not to the point where that becomes the news you share (we’ll file these under personal/distractions/symptoms of a dictator/sociopath):
1. His wife and anything having to do with her stink faces or behavior in general as it pertains to matters unrelated to tax paying dollars.
2. His son and children at large as it relates to personal unless it has to do with conflicts of interest or tax paying dollars. I mean the mere thought of his daughter cameo’ing with her friends in the White House to “up their IG game” is humorous and also horrifying, let’s table those areas of interest as we have larger fish to fry at the moment.
3. The size of his…audiences (clean out your dirty minds), whether or not he’s paid people to participate in his fanfare/ etc.
4. His Twitter profiles — between the rants and inconsistencies, we give him power by talking about it. Now, I have been an offender of this one, as what he says gets under my skin on Twitter but we can’t give it power and attention like we need to do with so many other things he’s doing to affect our lives and future generations.
5. Fake News/Made Up Memes — I’m sure at some point, we’ve all shared news that is not Legit. That’s ok, we all make mistakes. Now, more than ever, before you go hitting that share button or posting the myriad of articles across your social media feeds, just verify or do enough research to ensure that what you are putting out there is as true to the story as possible.
If for some reason there is a point that was left out, but you consider to be more important, please leave a comment below as I’ll be updating this post as often as possible. Thanks for reading!
