The chaos taking place in Washington reminds me of Bananas, Woody Allen’s comedy about revolution in a fictitious Latin American republic. Only it isn’t funny. This chaos, led by a megalomanic and his gang of incompetent lackeys, is taking place in the world’s most important country.

It is alarming for many reasons; not least it’s cruelty. The administration’s arbitrary policies are inflicting fear and suffering on a host of innocents: immigrants, trans people, civil servants, foreign aid recipients, and workers and business people subject to arbitrary tariffs. Not only do Trump et al. seem oblivious to the pain they cause, they seem to enjoy causing it.

This is particularly true of the president’s billionaire henchman Elon Musk, head of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been dismantling large swaths of the federal government with gay abandon, firing civil servants by the thousands. And then being forced to hire many back.

It turns out many of those released have been essential workers. Those who had to be immediately rehired included workers involved in food safety, those responding to the bird flu outbreak, technicians securing the country’s nuclear warheads, and so on. Others were returned to work due to political pushback.

And then this week a federal judge ordered half a dozen agencies to “immediately” reinstate thousands fired last month, calling the effort a “sham.” Senior District Judge William Alsup stated, “It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie.” The haphazard and arbitrary manner in which the firings have been carried out could hardly have been designed to be more insensitive and callous.

Perhaps the attitude of the Trump crowd toward civil servants is best exemplified by his new director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought. A Christian nationalist and major architect of the infamous Project 2025, Vought has made his views abundantly clear, “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

A primary target of DOGE has been foreign aid, leading to perhaps the cruelest of cuts. Over 80 percent of USAID’s programs, the agency that funds most of the nation’s assistance, have been trashed. Decades of progress against health crises such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, Ebola and malnutrition are threatened. Grants for UNICEF programmes targeting polio were terminated, as was funding to the UN Population Fund, which oversees reproductive and sexual health programmes. Crucial aid operations in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, including the world’s largest camp, will be squeezed. The cutbacks raise fears for millions of lives across the Global South.

Ironically, Musk himself has benefitted hugely from the American government. A study by the Washington Post revealed that he has received more than $38 billion (in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits) over 20 years on behalf of his Tesla car company and SpaceX aerospace company. The less for the deserving poor the more for Elon Musk it seems.

Immigrants have been subjected to similar barbarity. Hundreds have been deported—handcuffed, shackled and in chains, even though few have any criminal history. Loaded on military cargo planes, they are flown to their home country or, in some cases, to other countries. Three hundred were sent to Guantanamo Bay as an advance of 30,000 Trump threatened to send there and then removed when the legality of the move became questionable. Another haphazard effort reckless of people’s lives.

Among his first actions as president, Trump issued a series of executive orders banning gender-affirming care for young people and barring transgender people from serving in the military. Kate Cole, an Army sergeant and trans woman who has spent more than half her life in the Army, including combat in Afghanistan, said that the new policy will destabilize the military. To say nothing of what it will do to her career and those of many of her comrades.

Trump’s infamous tariffs will affect millions of careers and lives adversely. Workers will lose jobs, businesses will lose business, even go bankrupt, and standards of living will suffer on both sides of the border. All this misery for nothing more than a narcissist’s ego.

I posted previously about the Episcopalian bishop, Mariann Edgar Budde, who made a plea to the president at his inauguration service urging him to show mercy toward those frightened by his policies on immigrants and LGBTQ+ people. Trump was not amused. Rather than show a little grace and acknowledge the bishop’s concern, he was outraged, referring to her as “a radical left hard line Trump hater.”

His ire was not surprising. The good bishop also plead for dignity, honesty, and humility, all characteristics Trump manifestly lacks. He and his minions play games with other people’s lives and hold in contempt those who fail to share their dogma. And as Bishop Budde said in her sermon, “Contempt fuels our political campaigns and social media… But it’s a dangerous way to lead a country.”