By Michael Woyton
It’s pretty head turning when an elected official in the federal government says something that many of us have been thinking lately.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who’s been in public service for decades, spoke Monday to a leadership summit in Anchorage and was asked by someone, “What do you have to say to people who are afraid or who represent people who are afraid?”
The senator took a beat and said, “We are all afraid, okay?”
Subscribe to On Second Thought for free:
She continued, “It’s quite a statement. But, we are, we’re in a time and a place where, I don’t know, I certainly have not, I have not been here before. And I’ll tell you. I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.
“But that’s what you’ve asked me to do. And so I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability. And sometimes it will be viewed in a way that, well, that’s pretty confrontational.”
Murkowski said that she still has to figure out how she can do her best to help those who are also anxious and afraid.
Many of the questions the senator received at the event dealt with the uncertainty felt by many people who work in “the public sector, nonprofit services and social safety net programs since the start of the second Trump administration in January,” according to reporting by the Anchorage Daily News.
Murkowski described it as “head spinning,” adding, “It seems that just when you’ve made a little bit of progress on one issue that had caused so much anxiety, there’s another one.”
She used the word “unlawful” in criticizing some of the administration’s policy measures and service cuts.
“It is as hard as anything I have been engaged in, in the 20-plus years I’ve been in the Senate,” she was quoted as saying.
Well, welcome to the club, senator.
Yes, it’s head spinning to pick up one’s phone in the morning and see what the convicted felon who’s living in the White House has said or done overnight.
Yes, it’s head spinning to log in to a 401(k) account and see that, yet again, a lifetime of savings has been plundered because the grifter-in-chief thumbed his nose at longtime, trusted trade partners, sending the markets into a tariff-induced uncertainty.
It’s more than head spinning to see that people with valid status to be in this country are being rounded up by masked, unidentified thugs and spirited away to another country being led by a dictator, leading even citizens to wonder if they go abroad, will they be allowed back in.
How is it not head spinning to read that a raspy-voiced, former heroin user, conspiracy theorist appointed to lead the United States Health and Human Services Department is pulling the plug on medical research into heart disease, obesity, HIV, to name a few?
Hell, co-presidents Musk/Trump are taking funding away from Medicaid and National Institutes of Health research into developing cures and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s and opioid abuse so they can give larger tax cuts to billionaires.
Now, Trump wants to follow in Richard Nixon’s shoes and weaponize the Internal Revenue Service in order to eliminate Harvard University’s tax exempt status because it would not bow down to him and let him ruin run the prestigious institution.
And what could be more head spinning to us all — and I hope that includes the conservative members of the Supreme Court who gave an adjudicated rapist and con man immunity — than watching members of this administration filled with ass-kissing sycophants in the Department of Justice say to the judges that they will not follow rulings handed down by courts.
Yes, Sen. Murkowski, we are all afraid and rightfully so.
What are you going to do about it?
And how can we help?
— — — — —
Find and follow me on BlueSky through this link.
Lead art: Screen grab from Anchorage Daily News YouTube page
On Second Thought 