Conning The Conned

Notwithstanding its faults - slavery, native American genocide, Japanese internment, misogyny, persisting racism, favoring the wealthy, the Electoral College - I've always believed America was a respected and trustworthy force for good in the world. By votes of its people, it made efforts to correct those faults, showing the world that, unlike dictatorships, democracy's ills can be self-healing.

Trump's first election challenged those beliefs, but he'd lost the popular vote and, four years later, was rejected and ejected: beliefs restored. Then, despite January 6 and his election lies, threats, mishandling Covid-19, and promises to punish anyone who'd challenged him, he was elected again, though more votes were cast against than for him. Now, only weeks into his second term, Trump's America is, observably, no longer a force for good. Predictable from how he campaigned, America is siding with enemies, forsaking friends and the health of our planet. Once-true beliefs have become untenable. It's hard to take.

Amidst a brave war for democracy in a land murderously invaded by a dictator whose political opponents tend to become dead, America has switched sides. If it still existed, Trump would have us join the Warsaw Pact; his kind of people.

Knowing it can no longer count on us to stand for and protect freedom, the free world recoils. Trump's besotted party, which once condemned Russia's criminal dictator, now praises him. For reasons about which there's speculation but -- not yet -- no revelation, Trump has always done Putin's will. Confirming the obvious, Russian state television's Vladimir Soloviev just said it's "no coincidence" that, after his conversation with Putin, "the phrases [Trump] is saying are so deep and so correct. They are in total alignment with the way we see things."

MAGA is Trump's most dangerous con job. Pretending to make America "great," he's blinded millions of gulliblized voters from seeing that he's eliminating every aspect of its greatness, including standing for freedom around the world. People who've never understood or accepted the value of America's founding principles see what's happening and love it; trying to descale those eyes is wasted effort. But we're approaching the point at which the machinery to bring the world's greatest democracy back into being will have been dismantled forever. More people need to join those speaking out. The need isn't subtle.

Dictators have in common controlling all centers of power: first, the military and law enforcement, to make good on threats. Then the press, legislators, investigators, and judges. With no resistance from Republicans and willing capitulation by others, Trump is remaking all of those entities, purging people who've stood for the Constitution, replacing them with his most loyal sycophants, guaranteed to do his bidding. Which they already are. The latest example: selecting as FBI deputy director former Foxer and current right-wing screamer Dan Bongino, who describes himself as "all about owning the libs." For MAGAs, that's all a resumé needs.

Thanks to America's most hypocritical senator, Trump has our Supreme Court mostly in hand, too. And he's been removing from office everyone whose job it is to keep the government from illegal overreach. JAGs, there to keep the military within legal constraints; inspectors general, ethics overseers, and US Attorneys who'd been investigating him. Moving us further toward autocracy comes his delusional executive order granting interpretation of laws only to himself and his Attorney Genuflector. In their silence, Republicans, other than Alaska's Senator Murkowski, have purged themselves. 

MAGAs hear Trump refer to himself as "the King," see the White House officially picturing him wearing a crown and rejoice. "Command us, Your Majesty. We believe your promises, even as they go unfulfilled. Attack those we fear or hate and we'll ignore the harm you're doing, including to ourselves." (Sick, but not sic.)

Ironically, the victim of the biggest con of all is Trump. The Project 2025 creators he's hired have convinced him he's in charge, encouraging his monarchical madness. Meanwhile, they're getting him to implement their true agenda: erasing the vision of America's founders, in which they've never believed, that individual freedom, defended by the law and by separation of powers, should be paramount in a democratic republic; that ultimate power resides with the people.

It's starting to feel like this: Following Project 2025 page by page, the Projectors are securing their anti-American dream of a Christian Nationalist theocracy, by and for only straight, white, native-born, wealthy males; limiting the vote, if they could, only to them. So certain they were of Trump's malleability, they published their plan pre-election. With no pushback from them, free to use the presidency as an ego-fondling, tribute-providing ATM, Trump ceded to them the real power. Especially Elon Musk: boastfully, recklessly ruining lives, barely denting the federal budget, lying about reasons and results; convincing MAGAs they're seeing patriotism at work. 

Time is short. Watch this speech by Illinois Governor Pritzker. Its truths are self-evident, its warnings a cri du couer. Stay for what begins at 4.00.

King Me

 

If I were to discover that any thought I had or any demand I were to make would be actualized, I wouldn’t use that power to rename bodies of water. Because I’m not a psychopathic narcissist, I wouldn’t decide to take over a national artistic institution and declare, like “Soviet Realism” back in the day, what art is and is not acceptable. Or threaten to shut down news agencies; not even Fox.

I wouldn’t stop sending food to starving people around the world or issue edicts intended to harm LGBT people. Or, for that matter, anyone. Nor would I ban words. I wouldn’t demand that critical information about diseases and science be removed from circulation. Because my grandchildren’s future concerns me above all, I wouldn’t denude the Environmental Protection Agency or push for more pollution or end support for renewable energy. No one who’s not a walking ICD-10 would do any of those things.

In the wake of a sudden spate of airplane disasters, firing hundreds of people at the FAA responsible for maintaining air traffic control infrastructure wouldn’t happen. Same with nuclear safety workers, meat inspectors, forest rangers, federal inspectors general, and ethics watchdogs. Given the rapid rise of influenza, bird flu, RSV, and who knows the next one, I wouldn’t gut the CDC. Only a lunatic would.

Because consumers benefit from protection from usurious banks, I wouldn’t defenestrate the CFPB. I wouldn’t threaten to end FEMA or dismember the IRS as a favor to my rich, tax-avoiding friends if I had any, which I don’t. Close to last on my list would be imposing inflationary, economy-killing tariffs and lying about how they work. None of those things would make me feel good about myself.

I wouldn’t prevent people from using whatever pronouns they like. Arresting migrants, documented or not, who’ve been here for decades, working, paying taxes, raising American children, wouldn’t happen. I wouldn’t pretend I could rewrite the US Constitution by declaration; or claim to be for free speech while shutting it down, coming from people who disagreed with me.

There’s no way I’d hire an unimaginably wealthy megalomaniac, paranoid, nasty, and conspiratorial pusher of blatant lies, to bring disarray to every agency, like a can in a kidney store, firing people willy-nilly, for show, often mistakenly and without justification, with no evident plan for the aftermath. Nor would I turn my office into an ATM. 

For a day or two, I might relish knowing that no matter what I did, no one in my house or in power at the other end of the street would raise alarms; instead, they’d toss their integrity like a used Kleenex, heaping praise on me like the Second Coming. Propose my birthday as a national holiday, want my head on Mount Rushmore, when, if I did those things, the proper place would be on a plate. But it wouldn’t last. It’d be embarrassing. If people compared me to Jesus I’d demand they pray for forgiveness and never blaspheme again.

Like any decent American given that power, I’d seek ways to improve lives rather than shatter them; bring together people of all backgrounds, establish gatherings in every city to air differences and find paths to common ground. Having appointed competent, dedicated department heads, I’d insist that their purpose is to serve all Americans, not themselves. Rather than cutting funds for education, Head Start, healthcare, food, and research, I’d increase them, because, directly and indirectly, we all count on them. To pay for it, I’d end subsidies to oil companies and several corporate tax breaks, and return rates to where they were during President Obama’s booming economy. Or Clinton’s, when they produced a surplus. And I'd do the same as Trump

with the Pentagon's budget. Imagine that.

So here we are. In Earth's greatest putative democracy, a pathological, vengeful liar, having spent a lifetime bullying the powerless, was again handed the world’s most powerful office when there was no mistaking his lust for unbridled power. Given, in effect, unlimited wishes by a genie, having the opportunity to do enormous good, he chose unchecked harm, and not just at home. Via VPJD, he insulted NATO, all but cutting it loose; praised European fascists; sold out Ukraine to secure Vladimir Putin’s territorial aims, handing the “most powerful” title to him and China's Xi.

Knowing Trump as we did, even those who voted for him because they relished “sticking it” to people they dislike, it was obvious that giving him that kind of power would be sending a shark to swimmers wearing chum suits. Cruelty isn’t unintended: it’s the point and purpose. Making life so miserable for so many people, I couldn’t live with myself. No moral human could. For Trump and Musk, though, and Stephen Miller and Russell Vought and Kash Patel, et awful, it’s their raison d’etre.

RFK, Jr is too delusional to be doing it on purpose, but the suffering he’ll inflict could be even worse.

Is Enough Enough?

 

If a dictatorophilic “president” refuses to obey the law, and when his party in Congress doesn’t care, who’ll stop him? The Constitution is but a piece of parchment. What can believers in democracy do? Roll it up and smack him with it? The weakness of constitutional democracy is “Consent of the Governed.” It works only when citizens and their leaders willingly submit to its laws.

When our government, established by men who escaped tyranny and sought to prevent it here, ignores it, who’s there to enforce it? The Supreme Court? The body that granted Trump nearly unlimited immunity, gutted the Voting Rights Act, and grafted words onto the parchment saying that unlimited, unaccountable political donations are free speech? That decided corporations are people? Ignores Justices Thomas and Alito’s corruption?

If the Court were to declare any of Trump’s or President Musk’s actions unconstitutional, Musk, Vance, and Holy Mike Johnson have been clear: they don’t care. SCOTUS can direct US Marshals to arrest people who ignore its rulings, but they’re under the aegis of Attorney General Bondi, whose first actions were to do Trump’s bidding in going after prosecutors who lawfully targeted his crimes. We’ll find out soon enough whether Trump will uphold the Constitution. And whether Trump’s foresight-deficient voters will rejoice if he doesn’t. 

Until Republicans restrict it to Republicans, the ultimate restraint on leaderly lawlessness is the vote. But, following successful, long-term efforts by rightwing media, that’s failed, too. Which leaves only the slimmest of hopes that the taken-in will take back out; something toward which the Foxified have shown no inclination. They need to understand how democracy protects them, which they don’t. They need to realize and care what’s happening to it, which they can’t. They need to seek sources of accurate information, which they won’t. If Trump, who just opined that CBS and 60 Minutes should be abolished, deplatforms all but Foxoid media, they never will. Free speech, which Rs once claimed Ds were against, is in the eyes of the office-holder.

I’ve mentioned The Bulwark previously, a group of former Republicans boldly calling out Trump’s unfitness and the dangers he represents. Among them is Bill Kristol, founder of the conservative Weekly Standard, former Fox “news” contributor. Presumably to silence him, Elon lied that he’s on USAID’s payroll, using that as a reason to take it down. Swallowing the lies like seals do salmon, mixing and neologizing metaphors, Muskovites jumped on the slandwagon. 

To complaints about Musk’s illegal neutering of USAID, Trump has assured us that Elon gets nothing out of it. Well, except that he happened to be under investigation by USAID’s inspector general. And that, by diminishing its benefits to America’s image abroad, he enhances China’s. Which might have something to do with the fact that Elon does billions of dollars of business there and hopes to keep doing so.

Yale Law School grad Veep Vance’s response to a judge enjoining Musk’s illegal incursions was that it should be ignored. Musk called for the judge’s impeachment. The response of Congressional Republicans to this anti-constitutionalism can be summarized in no words. MAGA voters? Even fewer. “Ominous” would be mine.

MAGA was founded on xenophobia, homophobia, and anti-diversity. Because Trump is making good on it, his supporters find damage anywhere else irrelevant, if, jubilant about deportations and anti-trans actions, they notice or care.

They may soon, though, if any of them experiences credit card or banking fraud. Immediately after confirmation, Russ Vought, Trump’s head of the Office of Management and Budget and Project 2025 mainliner, disbanded the Consumer Fraud and Protection Bureau. Of the four million people to whom it has refunded over $1.8 billion fraudulently taken, surely many are Trumpic. Who benefits from killing it? Banks. Republican donors.

Nothing is more confirmatory that Project 2025, whose playbook Trump (“I never heard of it”) and his appointees are following page by page, is about enriching the rich and ignoring or intentionally hurting everyone else. Likewise, defunding the National Institutes of Health. Even people who reject science and distrust allopathic healthcare will be hurt. Losing access to its publications harms physicians and their patients. Research funding is being limited, threatening progress in cancer treatments, among others. It’s inexplicable and malicious. For countless Americans, including Trump’s idolizers, it could be fatal. 

So what is it, MAGAs? Are you okay with Trump’s march toward plutocratic autocracy because you think you’ll be fine? You know the aphorism, right?

If not, you should.

Let Me Count The Ways

 

The US Agency for International Development is a “criminal organization,” says President Musk, so, illegally bypassing Congress, he’s ending it. Cowed Republican members say nothing.

USAID represents about one percent of the federal budget. It’s the world’s largest provider of food to the hungry. It distributes schoolbooks and vaccines, promotes democracy and good will toward America. In ending it, Trump, ceder of the free world, passes leadership to our adversaries.

It’s what happens when a “president” who knows little and cares less, hands our government to the world’s richest man, unelected, given no powers by Congress. A man who, like Trump, loves dictators and seems to enjoy hurting the powerless.

It’s not only Musk whom Trump loosed upon us. He’s putting in charge, if Republican Senators forsake their duty, people who should never run important agencies, who’ll weaponize them for Trump, as opposed to President Biden’s non-weaponization about which Trump’s cadre of liars lied endlessly instead of legislating.

It’s not as bad as predicted, though. It’s worse. And, like the cliché about drinking from a firehose, it’s impossible to take it all in. Intentional, most likely. Having limited space, we’ll mention only a few transgressions with which we’re being hosed.

Most consequential is what’s happening at the DOJ and FBI. At Trump’s bidding, those critical law enforcement agencies are being turned into Soviet-style tools of repression; agents and prosecutors who did their Constitutional duty are being replaced with ones who won’t. They’ll destroy the lives of innocent citizens while lessening America’s ability to confront terrorism, home-grown and foreign, endangering us all. It’s rule by threat and intimidation.

When federal crimes are suspected, the FBI investigates. If suspects lie or refuse to cooperate, this may include obtaining search warrants. When evidence of crime is uncovered, the DOJ prosecutes; if they make their case, a jury of citizens, chosen by both sides, convicts. It’s how American jurisprudence, till now, has worked. For Trump’s multiple crimes, those steps were followed. People who did their sworn duty are being fired; many will be “investigated.” It’s conceivable that Trump’s minions threaten jurors, too.

If approved, his disingenuous testimony to the contrary, Kashyap Patel will recast the FBI as KGB. (Maybe not the juror thing.) Nothing coming from Republican members of The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body suggests he’ll be rejected, so thorough is their surrender of integrity and respect for the law.

As Florida’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi’s refusal to prosecute Trump’s pre-presidential crimes, after which her campaign received a generous donation from him, means it’s naive to believe she won’t do the same with the DOJ. In fact, hot off the presses, she already is.

While the FBI and DOJ focus on serving Trump’s pathologies, what will happen to their central mission of protecting America from threats within and without, and prosecuting actual criminals? From the once and former “party of law and order,” their silence is profound. But expected.

A sampling of other transgressions deserving mention, for none of which is there space to do justice:  

Like the abortive rollout of curtailing practically all government spending, which lasted about one day before Trump was made aware of the predictable consequences, his tariffs on Mexico and Canada went on hold before they happened. Trumpists, of course, assign it to Trump’s cosmic superpowers. Or was it that the markets crashed, his pals lost lots of money, and his benefactors screamed about the negative effects on their businesses? Whatever the reason, Trump’s justifications changed approximately hourly. Which is uncharacteristic of well-reasoned, purposeful plans.

No concession, the 10,000 touted troops Mexico will send to the border are fewer than it sent in previous years. For the interested, here’s an expert’s discussion of the tariffic dangers.

Trump’s heartless, fact-free accusation and purely political response to the air tragedy over D.C. has been hashed aplenty. Was it intended to forestall mention of his scrapping the Aviation Safety Committee? In any case, his lack of empathy for the victims was the opposite of presidential. But pure Trump.

Whatever one thinks of gender pronoun use, Trump’s banning them from government communications seems to violate the First Amendment. Same with LGBT-related words. As opposed to, say, Facebook banning Trump, about which Trumpists continually connipted.

If briefly and clumsily, Trump banned distribution of life-saving HIV drugs. This harbings life (or death) under RFK, Jr, who’s one step away from confirmation.

Removing security details from Milley, Bolton, and other intended targets of assassination by Iran, is just short of doing it himself. But they weren’t nice to him.

Banning public communication from the CDC will harm all Americans, even MAGAs. Same with shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Samer with purging helpful information from other government sites.

His “turning on the water” in California accomplished only badness.

When his hotels are built in Gaza, will the Mediterranean become "The Sea of Trump"?

Though incomplete, this list makes clear: Trump’s ego and donors are top priorities. Lawfulness is at the bottom. The public weal has no ranking at all.

Bought any eggs lately?