When Do Clothes Make the Man?

The so-called United States of America* seems to have entered a new phase of being. Let us call it a state of quantum politics.

Quantum physics, we are told, is the study of how matter and energy behave at the most fundamental level. Quantum politics is the study of how power behaves in an unprecedented environment where traditional legal and moral restraints have been removed, and a significant portion of the public has seceded from reality.

Tuesday night provided a fine specimen of this new regime in operation. The person recently re-installed at the head of the Executive branch—despite two prior impeachments, a slew of felony convictions, and widespread agreement among those who don’t drink the cult’s Kool-Aid that he is the last person on Earth who should have the job—told the assembled members of Congress that “the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over.”

To its credit, his audience did burst out laughing. Back in their districts, though, their constituents probably didn’t think the joke was all that funny. There, government workers are being fired left and right—but not at random. Elon Musk, the unelected bureaucrat whom the president was conveniently ignoring, is firing them according to some bloodless algorithm, while his many government contracts are raking in two million dollars a day.

It seems fair to ask how the hell we got here. Some say it is thanks to the Hand of God, which spared Trump from the assassin’s bullet. We have a different story.

Our predicament, we believe, is the result of an escalating series of billionaire-friendly rulings on campaign finance law, issued by a meticulously-constructed Supreme Court assembled according to plans drawn up by a shadowy cabal of businessmen half a century ago. They allowed Musk to legally place a $100 million bet on a candidate who had previously managed to somehow go bankrupt running not one, but a series of casinos. When Musk won the jackpot last November, his net worth was around $260 billion. He staked 1/2600th of his fortune on a man who cheats at golf, is now $83 billion richer, and gets to fire whomever he pleases.

Is this what our sainted, slaveholding Founding Fathers truly had in mind? We doubt it. Could this be quantum politics at work? We believe so.

Let us test our thesis with a little experiment, by way of an age-old question: do clothes make the man?

A little over a decade ago, then-president Obama appeared at a press conference while neatly dressed in a tan suit. This, according to politicians and pundits on the right, was in inexcusable afront to the nation’s dignity.

When Musk showed up in the Oval Office three weeks ago, though, wearing an “Occupy Mars” t-shirt under a peacoat, that same crew of critics voiced no objections. While the president sat mute, Musk stood and explained how the government works now. †

As they say, life comes at you fast. The planetary alignments seem to have shifted over the next couple of weeks. By the end of February, personal attire had regained the level of critical importance it had during the reign of King Louis XIV.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, perhaps distracted by the demands of fighting off Russia, had the gall to wear his usual attire to the Oval Office: quasi-military olive drab sweater and pants. Brian Glenn, Chief White House Correspondent of Real America’s Voice, and therefore an awesomely important personage in his own right—belligerently asked Zelenskyy, “Why don’t you wear a suit? … Do you own a suit?”

Trump then threw him out of the White House—not Glenn, which might have been appropriate, but Zelenskyy.

In response to Trump’s inexplicable trade war, the Dow plunged 650 points on Tuesday. That evening the president said, with all the grace of a man stepping on a rake, “I look at the Democrats in front of me, and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy.” He was wrong, of course. As Jimmy Kimmell noted: “You could quit.”

Sadly, even that unlikely event probably wouldn’t do the trick. Between Musk’s DOGE and Trump’s trade war, he has turned a tornado loose in our metaphorical trailer park. After de-funding FEMA first, of course.

* The name alone is a problem. At least, it is if you’re aiming for truth and accuracy—which, we must admit, in the context of today’s news media, is the equivalent of having a white people problem. “Oooh, look who’s getting all precious and fastidious. ‘Is it The United States is? Or is it The United States are?’” Be easy, critics, or we’ll just give it the name it deserves: “The Nutball Circus.”

† That must have been “Bring Your Child to Work Day,” because the head of DOGE had his four-year son X Æ A-Xii in tow. By the time the event was over, the Resolute desk had acquired a layer of mucus from X Æ A-Xii’s nasal passages. The notoriously germophobic president has since ordered that the 150-year old desk be “lightly refinished.” None of this seemed to bother the right wing’s pearl-clutchers, but if we had the time we’d FOIA the GSA and find out what that little breach of decorum cost the taxpayer.