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.

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?

A Musky Odor

 

I offer belated Merry Christmas wishes. And Happy Hanukkah. Also Kwanzaa. Let’s leave National Cookie Day, Ugly Sweater Day, and the hundreds of other December “Days” to those who observe them.

That Christmas fell, as always, on the 25th and, in a rare confluence, Hanukkah began on it, with Kwanzaa only a day later, feels like an event of celestial significance, like a transit of Mercury, planetary conjunctions, or solar and lunar eclipses.

It might remind us to celebrate, every day, the evanescent and improbable gift we’ve been given of life on this fragile, verdant (so far), life-sustaining (for now) planet; but a grain of sand on an infinite, possibly otherwise lifeless desert. And a reminder of humanity’s wasteful, ultimately useless fixations on political, religious, and racial differences.

In this holiday season of joy, reflection, and perspective, it’d be sacrilegious to focus on the tribulations about to befall us when virtual POTUS-elect Elon Musk takes the reigns of governance while PINO-elect Trump fulminates feebly, arguing agency.

But I will.

Because, whereas what goes on down here amounts to naught across the cosmos, affecting nothing beyond our imperiled atmosphere, it matters immeasurably to those of us currently alive and, more importantly, to our progeny.

Honoring the season, I’ll not comment on those who claim to love God more than the rest of us do while offering unwavering support for the most ungodly leaders this country has ever seen. Including those who, like Holy Mike Johnson, flaunt their prayerfulness like a bloody shirt, while showing little concern for our diminishing earthly abundance, respectful stewardship of which their professed religion demands.

Consider Elon Musk, who embodies the worst of what’s to come in a Trump “administration.” Unelected, wealthy beyond imagination, conspiratorial, nasty, undeservedly egotistical, and Nazi-adjacent, having received zero votes and occupying, at best, a filamentous position in government with no legislative role at all, he issued a last-minute warning about an agreed-upon budget bill on which both sides had been working for weeks: “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in two years!” And lied about its contents. Then, when Republicans fell in line like scared children, he tried to blame the potential government shutdown on Democrats.

Trump, it’s said, doesn’t like the implication that Musk is in charge. But, absent Musk’s willingness and ability to spend whatever it takes to defeat its Republican opponents (pocket change, to him), the bill would have passed. Belatedly, Trump chimed in, for appearances.

Whatever this is, it’s not democracy. It’s rule by threat and intimidation. Because Trump defers to the more wealthy and successful, practically unlimited power rests with the world’s richest man. What he wants, he’ll get. As long as he stays out of the way of Trump’s prosecutorial plans, Trump has no reason to stop him, and Congressional Republicans have neither the integrity nor courage.

So why might Musk have been so anxious to kill the bill? It’s been well-publicized that the stripped-down version that finally passed eliminated funding for childhood cancer research and for making cancer drugs and other treatments more accessible. Other than characteristic Republican post-birth, anti-life policies, and to ensure enough spending will be cut to allow his and the oligarch fellowship’s tax cuts, there’s a less well-known reason. Also stripped were limitations on and regulations of investments in China, where Musk has huge holdings in factories and plans for more. That bit of prestidigitation handed him millions.

Plus there were regulations on “deepfakes,” computer-generated images of people saying and doing things that aren’t real. Musk’s more-influential-than-Trump’s social media platform, X/Twitter, is full of that stuff. And it’s a big part of rightwing disinformation campaigns. Another win for him, and for disinformers everywhere. And he isn’t even the most dangerous. But, according to Putin’s Tucker Carlson, anyone voting against Putin’s Tulsi Gabbard is an “enemy of the United States.” 

This is government bent to the will of a few very rich people, with no regard for the people who, deluded and distracted, put them in office. No one expects hardcore Trumpists to be bothered by any of this, and they never will be. For the rest of us, though, it ought to signal a maybe-final call for awakening and resistance.

Nevertheless, Happy New Year. I hope it’ll show I’m wrong about everything.