The odds are that someone you know has been affected by either the executive orders issued by Donald Trump, the cuts ordered by Elon Musk, or both. These aren’t obscure demands affecting only people you’ll never meet. They are hitting your relatives, people who started a new government job, or somebody who becomes ill and loses their federal job.
In 1993, Will Smith starred in the film Six Degrees of Separation, in which a con artist shows up on the doorstep of a rich family. The film is based on the real-life story of a man who convinced several people in the 1980s that he was the son of actor Sidney Poitier. There is also a parlor game based on the idea that all people are six or fewer social connections away from each other. We’ve reached the point in America where someone you know, if not you yourself, has been adversely affected by the Trump executive orders that his voters thought only affected other people.
A son or daughter might return to their parent's home after being fired from their “good government job,” being told the reason was their poor performance and not to pay for a tax cut to the rich. Your child might be exposed to measles, which was once considered eradicated in America. MAGA attacks on vaccines have allowed measles to make a comeback.
The Black employee hears the whispers they were a DEI hire and not qualified for their position as they “didn’t earn it.” The promotion they were expecting went to a white male based on merit.
Your Hispanic friend is stopped on the street and asked for his papers to prove his or her citizenship. Even if they have proof, it’s still questioned. Perhaps your workplace gets raided by I.C.E., and the brown people among you are singled out for a review of their credentials.
People you know are being DOGE’d. They might not even work for the federal government, but their firm depended on government contracts to survive.
If none of these things have touched your life, consider yourself lucky, but there’s one area of your life where you couldn’t escape MAGA: the cost of groceries. Food prices have risen dramatically between Trump’s tariffs and inattention to the bird flu, including temporarily firing those working on the cure. Depending on their needs, people buy eggs (if they can find them) from non-traditional sources, either in bulk or in selfies.
Nobody voted for a reduction in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, but cuts in those areas must happen if we are to afford a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. While Trump keeps saying he won’t cut Medicaid, the bill he pushed to do just that has already passed the House of Representatives and is moving toward the Senate. And wait until white women discover they were by far the biggest beneficiaries of all the things now called DEI.
So, if you’re Black, brown, yellow, red, LGBTQ or a white woman, you may already recognize all the ways MAGA has come for you. If you’re rich and in any of those categories, your benefits will probably outweigh the ills, unless you die from the ills. If you’re a billionaire and a white male, you’re golden. Then again, you already were, this country was designed for men like you.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of William Spivey's work on Medium. And if you dig his words, buy the man a coffee.