We had thought we would lead off this issue with the incoming administration nearly shutting down the federal government more than a month before it even takes office.
How naïve and unimaginative of us.
What’s a little domestic turmoil when you’re annexing Greenland, occupying Mexico, and re-taking the Panama Canal?
Even that may just be the small stuff. At this time of year when the separation of church and state is observed with a wink and a nod at best, even we are on our knees, praying that the soon-to-be inauguree was too busy on December 16th to read the Wall Street Journal column headlined, “The U.S. Should Show It Can Win a Nuclear War.”
Rupert Murdoch, that paper’s owner, has been a tumor growing in America’s brain since January, 1983. That was when Donald J. Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, convinced Ronald Reagan to let the Australian billionaire evade existing limits on media ownership. The damage has been incalculable. Without his propaganda operation softening our brains, the Republican Party’s turn towards Gingrichism might not have been so successful.
That approach is now passé, though. Mere ruthlessness and avarice no longer cut it. Warping the minds of the electorate, and pressuring the government from the outside is a chump’s game.
Now we must aim higher—to the stars! Yes, the fake billionaire has spoken: he’s put a real billionaire—Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet—in charge of slashing $2.5 trillion in wasteful federal spending on old, sick, useless people. After all, what have they done for us lately?
The time for direct plutocracy is here, as evidenced by the incoming administration’s budgetary priorities. Immense tax cuts—which, under the obsolete rubric of “trickle-down economics,” have repeatedly been proven useless in creating new jobs—nevertheless remain highly popular among the obscenely wealthy. Unfortunately, the Trump tax cuts of 2017 expire next Tuesday. The plan is for Musk to starve enough senior citizens to offset the cost of a new round of tax cuts, to put smiles on the faces of those who have everything.
By the way, if you’re worried about Musk’s habit of taking ketamine, which the DEA calls a “dissociative anesthetic that has some hallucinogenic effects,” don’t—NASA doesn’t seem to. This summer it awarded SpaceX an $843 million contract to destroy the International Space Station. What could possibly… ?
It can be a bit dizzying, rummaging through recent events like this. Sometimes it seems as if things have gotten a little off-kilter, even without taking ketamine. A calm re-assessment shows, however, that our path to this bewildering juncture has really been quite reasonable.
The American people, battered by stagnant wages, soaring housing costs, ruinous child-care expenses, and random five-figure medical bills, went to the polls last November and showed, by a razor-thin margin that has since been inflated by the winner into a sweeping mandate, that they can’t take it any more and desperately desire change. In far too many cases, even spare change would do.
Obviously the government, as then configured, was in no position to help. It was already straining under the burden of having bailed out the banks yet again. What else could voters do, under the circumstances, but ignore the fact that the new/old president had racked up 25 percent of our national debt in his previous four years in office? Like a busload of helpless gambling addicts they rolled the dice again.
The rapid transformation of the government as we once knew it, which is now being undertaken without resort to all that dusty old folderol laid out in the Constitution, is meeting with broad approval within the party that now controls every branch and twig of said government. It’s like a self-defenestration.
Take the sudden appearance of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency. Since the “Department” is unofficial, and therefore essentially fictitious, there’s no need for its boss to be confirmed, or to carry the traditional title of Secretary. A Texas Congressman saw a need and filled it, conferring on Musk the title of “Prime Minister.”
Of course he did. “Godfather” is spoken for.
Certain parties suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome are suggesting that Panama is on #45/47’s hit list because he’s in trouble with tax authorities there. Imagine! A person of his wealth, stature, and integrity, trying to weasel his way out of such an obligation. It’s simply too absurd.
No doubt anyone making such a baseless allegation after January 20th will be facing stiff charges from Attorney General Matt Gaetz. Oh, wait—that’s right. Gaetz withdrew before the House Ethics panel blew the whistle on his habit of paying underage girls thousands of dollars for illegal drugs and sex.
Nine years ago next month, a guy who played a billionaire on TV said “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Many didn’t believe him, but he seems to have been right.
Five years later he was in a position to say, “Be there, will be wild”—and it surely was.
What comes next is anybody’s guess. What he says may be irrelevant; what he does bears watching—no matter how odious that task.