Most of us have seen old Westerns set in the nineteenth century on television or in the theater. There are wagon trains, cattle stampedes, gunfights in the street, saloon brawls, hangings, stagecoaches and so on. Today, we no longer have wagon trains, cattle stampedes and stagecoaches, but we still have gunfights in the street, saloon brawls and at least attempted hangings by criminales trying to stop Congress from certifying a lawful Presidential election (2021.)
There is a familiar motif to movies with stagecoaches. First of all, the coach is usually full and for a western stage, that might be six people, but more comfortably, only four. Secondly, the stage carried something valuable like a payroll or gold. Third, the stage invariably gets attacked by bandits or Indians. Next, the person riding shotgun up front with the driver gets shot dead and falls off the stage followed by the stage driver who takes a bullet in the right upper arm, dropping the reins in the process. This means that a passenger must climb out of the coach and straddle the horses to recover the reins before the coach crashes and rolls of the side of a cliff. The crash comes from one of the wheels of the stage flying off the axle after hitting a rock or pothole on the trail or from the crazed horses taking a turn too sharply. All of the passengers survive the crash, but one may have a broken arm or concussion.
The passengers in the stagecoach in old Western movies are predictable as well. Passenger “A” is a woman. She either plays an innocent, helpless female headed west to find a husband or to join her aging aunt or uncle. Alternately, the woman can be a saloon girl. Passenger “B” is some well dressed but rude young man sneaking whiskey from a small flask who tries to take advantage of Passenger “A.” He keeps trying to get the woman to drink his whiskey until one of the other passengers growls at him sternly to “Leave her alone!” Then, there is the cattle baron, the drummer (or parson or shopkeeper), the sheriff and his prisoner. If John Ford directed the movie, it was shot in Monument Valley.
The scariest part of the movie is when the horses are out of control. One horse tries to outrun the other even though they are teamed together. A term of four or six horses can pull a stage between 25-35 miles per hour.
Now, I actually have a soft spot in my heart for stages. The last town I lived in Texas, was part of the Butterfield Overland Mail stage route, as noted in Apple AI:
“Established in 1858, the Butterfield Overland Mail was a key stagecoach service that connected St. Louis, Missouri, and San Francisco, California. The route passed through several states, including Texas, and helped facilitate communication and transportation across the expanding American West.”
My former residence was prominently located on the route.
The current administration in Washington brings to memory team of frenzied horses pulling a runaway stage. The problem is, there is no competent leadership guiding them. The stage is symbolic of our country and there is a good chance of a stage wreck in the short term.
I understand and fully agree that a president has the authority to downsize a bureaucracy. He may add a department, and remove or consolidate two others. On the other hand, he cannot ignore the Pendleton Act (1883) which replaced Jackson’s spoils system with a merit system. According to Digital History
“The Pendleton Act stipulated that government jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit. It provided for selection of government employees through competitive examinations. It also made it unlawful to fire or demote covered employees for political reasons or to require them to give political service or payment, and it set up a Civil Service Commission to enforce the law.”
I know that Donald Trump finds President Andrew Jackson to be personally inspiring. Whether it is because Jackson refused to enforce an opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court (Worcester v. Georgia, 1832) or because Jackson wiped out thousands of people of color, namely the Cherokee Indians (plus Choctaw, Chicksaw and Seminole) during the Trail of Tears march in the late 1830’s is a matter of debate.
Donald Trump has hoodwinked many Americans into thinking he is a successful businessman, despite multiple bankruptcies and failed business ventures into hospitality services, academia, airlines and so on. His prowess in dealmaking is also called into question when he cannot control his own party in the House of Representatives, yet alone reach an accommodation with Democrats in Congress. And his cabinet picks are as mysterious as they are laughable in some cases.
The wild horses in the stagecoach example seem seem symbolic of the Lost Boys that form Sheriff Musk’s posse. They are moving at breakneck speed, firing or laying off tens of thousands of trained, experienced employees and replacing them with people who are personally loyal to Donald Trump. Thousands of these former employees are getting the boot, in some cases only to be immediately rehired a matter of hours later. Today, in the middle of the tax season, 6,700 IRS employees were fired. There is nothing crazier than this except for Mr. Trump’s foreign policy. Long term friends and allies of the U.S. are beginning to view the U.S. as a potential threat. Mr. Trump’s demands of Ukraine to cede their mineral rights and for other countries to pony up money for defense smacks of a shakedown or a protection racket scheme. People in neighboring Canada might have sang the U.S. National Anthem along with their American friends at sporting events in the past. Now, they boo our anthem with disgust and a sense of betrayal.
Donald Trump is the thirteenth President of the United States that I personally remember being in office, going back to my visits to Gettsburg, PA as a child during the Eisenhower Administration. Some subsequent presidents were such a Nixon and Reagan were Republicans and some such as Carter and Clinton were Democrats. I would trust any twelve of them to run this country over Mr. Trump.
My advice is for everyone to hold on tight because it will be a terrifying forty seven months ahead if the past thirty days is any indication. And it’s not just a stagecoach that will be in ruins. It will be our country! Now is the time for true patriots to peacefully call for truth, transparency in government, common decency, restoration of our democracy including separation of powers and checks and balances. Make your voices heard before it is too late.
There is danger ahead! Slow down this stage!