Mid-March, you may have seen how Viceroy Donald Trump made a big show of killing the Department of Education, accompanied by the Education Secretary, Mrs. Smackdown herself, Linda McMahon.
The fun thing about this was that somebody had the idea to stage the event at a public schoolroom, with a whole bunch of small children around him, so they gave him a tiny “Resolute Desk” on the same vertical level as the kiddie desks, meaning that Trump appeared to be at the same grade and emotional level as the schoolchildren, which is about right.
Of course the executive branch can’t actually kill an agency created by Congress, but it can do the next best thing and completely gut its funding and personnel, like it’s doing with everything else in Washington.
While that was a substantial policy change, it is probably more telling that one of His Majesty’s other royal proclamations this month was that he rescinded all pardons that Joe Biden made prior to leaving office, ostensibly because he used an “Autopen” as if Trump has never auto-signed anything. If you’re wondering why no one else thought of this, it’s because no one else thinks you CAN cancel a pardon once it’s given, because of double jeopardy and other aspects of common law that apparently no longer apply in America now that Khmer Orange has reset the calendar to Year Zero.
It should have occurred to people that if you’re going to arbitrarily override a pardon and blank out the point that a future president can do the same thing to you and the people you pardoned, then the only reason you can be safe in doing that is if there are not going to BE any future presidents. As it is, Congress is beholden to Trump and they are the only path to legally removing him via impeachment. Some courts, including conservative judges, have ruled against him, but they have no power to enforce their directives against the executive branch. Basically we are going to be stuck with the Clownboy Caesar until he dies, which may never happen, since he can always sign another executive order to make himself immortal. After all, the laws of this country have no power over him, why not flip off the laws of physics?
And even if God lapses in His sadism for a moment and allows His favorite Son to come home and sit at His right hand, that just means JD Vance takes over, and he’s a sincere religious fanatic, as opposed to Trump, whom we all know is just a religious fanatic for the money.
But then if Trump could make himself immortal, he wouldn’t be trying so hard to disguise his real age. He’s the only White guy I know who gets darker as he gets older. And among the many, many articles on “Signalgate” one point gets kind of buried: The Cabinet members discussing the Yemen strike are acting on the passive assumption that Trump approves their actions but he doesn’t seem to be included on the details. Heather Cox Richardson, March 25:
“The messages reveal that President Trump was not part of the discussion of whether to make the airstrikes, a deeply troubling revelation that raises the question of who is in charge at the White House. As the conversation about whether to attack took place, Vice President J.D. Vance wrote about Trump’s reasoning that attacking the Houthis in Yemen would “send a message”: “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.” To go back to the Keith Olbermann thing, it’s quite possible the Cabinet did this conference outside classified channels not (just) to avoid having it be subject to access by official government investigation but to avoid Trump being involved. After all, it’s not like this particular Senate is going to hold them to account.
Meanwhile, several outlets have reported the story of Jennifer Mooney, a Canadian actress who came over the border to apply for a work visa and was detained for almost two weeks with limited contact with attorneys. There was another story of a German citizen who was detained at the airport, “stripped naked, and forced into a cold shower”. He is now “reportedly” locked up in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Wyatt, Rhode Island.
These are white people, ladies and gentlemen.
In his Substack, Robert Tracinski quotes a Wall Street Journal article:
“The Wall Street Journal reports:
A lawyer at advertising conglomerate Interpublic Group fielded a phone call in December from a lawyer at X. The message was clear, according to multiple people with knowledge of the conversation: Get your clients to spend more on Elon Musk’s social-media platform, or else.
Interpublic leaders interpreted the communications from X as reminders that the recently announced $13 billion deal to merge Interpublic with rival Omnicom Group could be torpedoed, or at least slowed down, by the Trump administration, given Musk’s powerful role in the federal government. …
“We now see brands returning in quite significant numbers, because the easiest route is to just spend a minimum viable amount on the platform,” said Ebiquity’s Schruers, “Not because they want to advertise there and run their ads adjacent to the content on X, but because they are afraid of the legal and political ramifications of not doing so.”
This is a circular trade—money for power for more money for more power—typical of the corrupt logic of authoritarian regimes. Musk uses his political connections to shake down advertisers for money, which he then uses to prop up the media platform that is the source of his political power.”
How’s that for a free-market economy?
Of course Musk is doing this because his real cash cow, Tesla, is imploding in the public eye, not just because of his noxious political allegiances but because of minor technical stuff like having to recall all of his Cybertrucks because their doors are falling off. Last week Musk had to have a employees’ meeting, telling everyone to “hang on to your stock.” This matters insofar as Tesla is one of the few auto manufacturers with no unionization at all, and keeps wages down by compensating workers with stock options – which are now nosediving. “National car shopping site Edmunds said this week that Tesla owners are trading in their electric vehicles at record levels.”
A real capitalist would accept the results of his actions in the marketplace, including the marketplace of ideas. But as with other examples of the elite, Musk would rather not be a real capitalist. Unlike most of these people, he has an entire government to shield him from the consequences of his actions.
If you technically have a smaller government but it is more under the control of one unaccountable individual (who may be indebted to an even less accountable individual) and that person seeks more unitary control over the country, that is not a gain for liberty.
But failing to grasp the distinction accounts for a big part of the woke Right’s internal contradiction and American authoritarianism’s main difference from old-style fascism. The new Right wants to be both fascist AND libertarian, and contrary to the current ownership of the Libertarian Party, that’s just not gonna work. Why? Because people expect government to give them stuff. And that is how fascists traditionally cement their support. Fascists clear marshes. Fascists build Autobahns. Fascists have Four Year Plans and Five Year Plans. Fascists have Lebensborn agencies to encourage the birth rate. Trumpniks ban abortion on one hand but take away the support structure for women and infants on the other. Statism is socialism, but if it makes life worse, then statism is fine.
If you make people more dependent on government and then turn around and make government undependable, that is not a recipe for success in elections.
But again, you don’t do this sort of thing if you plan on having competitive elections.
If there’s no consistent philosophy to this, why is it done?
The Occam’s Razor answer is: Because they can.
As we say, the cruelty is the point. It’s not like there is any other one.
Many Americans, including former conservatives like myself, have long joked that since Reagan, the premise of Republican election campaigns is that government IS the problem and not the solution, and then once they get elected, they do everything they can to prove it. As with so many other things on the Right , the Musk-Trump regime is simply taking the previous standard and stretching it to the most absurd extreme. In this case the formula is to use government to make everyone’s lives a living hell, and then, because people are conditioned to be dependent on government and authority, cast themselves as the saviors who will solve the problem that they created. And if you think that doesn’t work, how did Trump win re-election four years after giving us all Trump Virus? ™
This is the sort of belief that can only be justified by a religion that believes in quid pro quo from God and still has to justify why God doesn’t always (or usually) provide it. The idea that you can get anything you wish for if you just pray hard enough. And if God doesn’t grant your wishes, you just have to accept it, because who knows God’s plan? What happened was going to happen anyway. You have no agency.
It’s a very convenient philosophy if you’re trying to justify autocracy against its manifest record of incompetence and failure. But it was Voltaire who said “Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”