We are discovering today that the election of a president has consequences, and not just in far off Washington, D.C., but here in Washington state and right here on Whidbey Island. We recently witnessed the arrest and incarceration of an undocumented member of a family on South Whidbey, part of a series of arrests ordered from Washington DC in recent days.

Also in recent days tens of thousands of federal workers have been laid off nationwide on the orders of the new president and his administration. Billions of dollars in federal projects have also been frozen and stalled, maybe never to be restored.

Some of those projects are local projects. Our Congressman, Rick Larsen, told some of us at an online town hall meeting recently that two projects in his district to upgrade port facilities crucial to the shipping trade, projects totaling over a hundred million dollars, are among those frozen. That means there are local construction workers who won’t be receiving a paycheck. Families will be hurt. Some are probably struggling to pay home mortgages or rent or maybe even to pay for groceries or gas today, and at a time when prices for many essential goods are rising.

There seems like a touch of intentional cruelty to many of the federal firings. They often come as a brief email to a worker’s computer station, announcing his or her termination and immediate eviction from an office and termination of all communication. Even some of those in leadership have been terminated in a rather ugly fashion. The commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, a respected four star admiral in charge of a substantial fleet of ships and thousands of men and women, was suddenly notified of her termination and evicted from her federal housing with only three hours notice to gather her possessions and vacate the premises. The cause for such a disrespectful act of petty cruelty? She offended the new administration by being a hire of the former administration and a woman in traditionally a man’s workplace.

It is a good moment to remember that anyone who tells you they know what is coming next doesn’t know. Who would have thought a few weeks ago that the president would engage in disrespectful, provocative speech aimed at our good Canadian neighbors? Suggestions that they should bow to the president’s will and become our 51st state almost seemed calculated to enrage them. Now almost every man, woman and child in Canada is rallying around cries to boycott U.S. stores and products. Our thriving cross border tourist and commodity trade here has all but dried up. Don’t expect to see Canadians coming down to enjoy our parks or towns here on Whidbey or downtown Seattle hotels, restaurants and entertainments this year. And the new tariffs on products will hurt us all on both sides of the border.

Both abroad and at home there is a rising anger at the new administration. Some 75 of us right here in sleepy little Langley came out on Presidents Day to protest the new president’s actions. Many of us are outraged that an unelected foreign billionaire, never properly vetted or confirmed in his post, has been allowed full access to our personal financial information, business transactions, healthcare filings, tax filings, social security information and the like, all in a dubious belief that he is uncovering fraud and abuse.

So far he has only made preposterous claims of widespread fraud and failed to produce anything of substance. It appears to be little more than a ruse to gain access and control of our personal and public federal finances. At the same time that he claims that his funding freezes and firings are cutting waste, his own multibillion dollar contracts with government remain untouched by cuts. And he continues to try and sell us on boondoggles and schemes like the preposterous proposal to colonize the distant dead planet of Mars.

In my travels and work over the years I have seen what we are experiencing today here in America played out elsewhere in the world. We aren’t the first society whose people has suffered at the hands of a small group of wealthy individuals who took advantage of the population’s gullibility, managing to gain control of most of the valuable natural resources and viable industrial enterprises. The new billionaire class then goes on to install a government of, by and for the elite few. Not too long ago I would have said that such a thing could never happen here. Now I don’t know. We are about to find out more about who we are and what we will and will not tolerate in the days ahead.

Dr. Michael Seraphinoff is a Whidbey Island resident, a former professor at Skagit Valley College and academic consultant to the International Baccalaureate Organization.