Years later a relative mentioned he had, a few years previously, received a $100,000 grant from the US Dept. of the Interior- think National Parks and Monuments- to explore, curiously, “environmentally” ways to dry coffee beans in Honduras. Being pretty well versed in Honduras by then, I already knew the conclusion of the story: he made one or two trips to Honduras, handed over some seed money to a couple of locals who ended up being con men, and it all just vanished into the ether. My relative did nothing wrong and was undoubtedly sincere, but to this day I don’t really understand what the Dept. of Interior had to do with drying coffee beans in Central America. Or maybe I do now that the DOGE is so prevalent in the news. I imagine it being ostensibly a “green sustainable” project helped secure the grant.

There has been outrage and furor over everything Trump since he was re-elected, most recently manifested by widespread protests throughout the country under the umbrella of “Hands Off,” meaning “Screw you Trump (though they tend to use the “F... you” version of Screw you), keep your hands off government programs.” There are a myriad of items Trump has been admonished to keep his hands off including schools, international students, social security, consumer protections, immigrants, cancer research, transgender rights, NATO, public lands, women’s rights, Medicaid, libraries: pretty much everything and anything involving government spending.

I looked through images from these protests and noted a variety of signs in addition to those beginning with “Hands Off,” which included scatological terms, a female genitalia word that rhymes with “Trump” (Trump is a c..t), and lots of fascist, Nazi, anti-billionaire slogans, etc; nothing unexpected. Though I can’t back this up statistically, as I looked through image after image the protesters were almost uniformly white people- I have nothing against white people and have plenty of white friends, but I think this is significant. Considering the socioeconomic status of white Americans, especially those who can afford to get geared up and travel to protests, I suspect there were a disproportionate number of affluent white people attending the “Hands Off!” demonstrations. Wealth, privilege, white skin, progressive anger and activism, and demands to spend lots of government money seem to go hand in hand.

Presumably there were speeches made at the Hand’s Off! protests, and probably reflective of the numerous slogans and an underlying message of “F...k Trump!” Presently I’m going to suggest themes and ideas that likely weren’t expressed at the rallies:

Screw you Trump, if you stop government funding for Planned Parenthood, we have the will, the power, and the money to do it ourselves! Screw you Trump, if you stop government funding for public broadcasting, we have the will, the power, and the money to do it ourselves!………..and so on.

There has been much fury expressed over Trumps immigration policies, such as deportation of illegal immigrants with criminal records and canceling visas (and in some cases “green cards) for people vigorously and, at times violently, protesting in support of Hamas. As we know, millions of illegal immigrants were welcomed into the US in the last few years, criminals or not, with $billions of government money allocated to support them. With this in mind, I doubt this was said: We hate billionaires such as Elon Musk, but we love of billionaires and people with 100’s of millions on our side, and they have made the following pledge- “We will use our essentially unlimited resources to support any and all illegal immigrants and refuse any and all government money in this mission. Additionally, the millions of progressive people who have great wealth, though less than ours, pledge to open their lives and homes to immigrant families and individuals with no expectation of government support. We have the will, the power, and the money to do it ourselves. All we ask is that you agree not to deport illegal immigrants who aren’t criminals, because No One Is Illegal! Your big concern is that the Democrats encouraged mass immigration as a means to cultivate future voters; in compromise we agree that nobody who entered this country illegally will ever be granted citizenship, but otherwise they should be allowed to remain.”

I doubt representatives from the American Library Association stated, “Yes, the reality is that learning English to function in an English speaking culture is necessary for future success. With this in mind, we plan to make available our nation’s libraries to teach English, using 10’s of thousands of volunteers who will teach them purely out of a sense of duty and compassion, and any funding required for this undertaking will come exclusively from private sources.”

I doubt elite college presidents (average salary for the 8 “Ivy League” universities about $1,418,000) proclaimed, “We will refuse government grants to fund our scientific and medical research. Rather we will use the $billions upon $billions we have in our various endowments and foundations. Furthermore we will lower our enormous tuition and fees to affordable levels for students with promise but without money, and not require any student without means to go in debt, simply because it’s the right thing to do, and we clearly have the money to do it.”

I wonder if any of the speeches included something like, “We cannot deny there has been massive fraud and waste and simply inappropriate spending of tax dollars over many years. However we ask that Trump doesn’t act unilaterally to correct this problem but include us in the process- we are willing to admit financial reality and offer compromises; we too are against waste and fraud.”

Not to sound racist, but progressive privileged wealthy white people (PPWWP) face an ongoing dilemma: a conflict between not diminishing their wealth, material possessions, comfort, convenience, and recreational pursuits and wanting to be perceived as generous, compassionate, and altruistic. They find resolution in signaling support of the latter three by demanding they be accomplished via extrinsic powers- the collective of the people (the taxpayers)- and therefore absolve themselves of personal responsibility. The caveat is that whatever compassion and altruism is bought with other people’s money must be consistent with their world view, and in the correct quantities. In fact, for many PPWWP, their very sense of what they perceive themselves to be- generous, compassionate, and altruistic- directly correlates with government expenditure, and any threat to this engenders outrage. Hence, the “Hands Off!” coordinated protests; they are a little cathartic, boost the self-esteem of PPWWP, and are kind of fun. Perhaps best of all, they allow PPWWP to publicly demonstrate they are good and righteous, and hate all the right people.

Unfortunately, being good, righteous, and compassionate vicariously doesn’t address the fundamental problems caused by the greed and selfishness that have seeped into our society over the past several decades, and accelerated over the past several years. Our trajectory is not sustainable, politically, economically, or culturally. At the moment the US national debt is closing in on $37 trillion, a number so massive it’s incomprehensible, but like serial adultery, alcoholism, and gambling addiction, if we just pretend it’s not there then all is well. In a way we have become addicted to this debt and all the comfort, convenience, entertainment, and cheap material crap from China we can buy, the fact that it’s all gossamer notwithstanding.

The PPWWP and their Hands Off! protests is clear evidence that emotional maturity is not inevitable. We can pretend selfishness is compassion and greed is altruism, but demanding everyone else pay for your version of compassion and altruism defines selfishness and greed. No doubt PPWWP make feel-good donations, perhaps $50 to NPR, $100 to Planned Parenthood, and maybe a couple of hundred to their preferred progressive Democrat candidate: by nature PPWWP love to listen to The Splendid Table NPR show, crave abortions, and are enamored by the politician who views women as oppressed until all women’s sports records are held by people with XY chromosomes. But if they want to avoid blatant hypocrisy (which they don’t) they would send not $100s but $10s of thousands of their own money to replace any cuts to the funding of their pet programs.

Instead of holding silly Hands Off! signs en masse, having BLM bumper stickers, No One Is Illegal yard signs, flying rainbow flags, and writing “F...Trump” in every other sentence of a Facebook posting- superficial actions demanding superficial things designed to make PPWWP feel good about themselves, how about:

Fully sponsoring a deserving but underprivileged person in college. I don’t mean helping pay for books, but the full deal- tuition, fees, room and board. Are you willing to pay $10’s of 1,000s to accomplish this? How about an impoverished young person with great potential form a poor country? Are you willing to either pay the full amount at an in-country university, or pay for the process of obtaining a student visa to bring them to the US to study, and guarantee the entire cost?

Take a family of illegal immigrants into you home and provide all their needs as if they were your own family.

Find a remote small town anywhere in Africa, one that will never receive traditional electricity, and fully fund a solar based electric system.

Pay for the establishment of a safe water supply in any impoverished village in the world.

Locate a poor grandmother taking care of numerous grandchildren in a “Third World” country and provide an ongoing subsidy so she will have enough to sustain themselves and educate her children.

Use a significant portion of your wealth to establish vocational training and an associated business to provide wealth and opportunity for an impoverished community.

The possibilities are endless if, and it’s a big if, you- the progressive privileged wealthy white person- are willing to divest yourself of a real chunk of your money and, as the saying goes, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. But the reality is you will never do it because the most precious thing in your life is your socioeconomic comfort and prestige, so “Hands Off” demonstrations and meaningless signs and slogans will have to suffice.