Commenter GrimJim makes the case, using my own writing:
Ian, I am beginning to think that someone working for Trump and Musk must have read your works.
That, or they read the same books you have used as the groundworks for your own beliefs.
Particularly, on how to run a revolution:
https://www.ianwelsh.net/7-rules-for-running-a-real-left-wing-government/
and
https://www.ianwelsh.net/revolution-basics-1-who-cares-what-you-think/
And I am sure there are more. I know you’ve posted about how you have to run a purge first thing.
They are essentially following your playbook.
Media Law: They already own it and are locking it down harder. The Masters of Media are going to kneel to Trump or be punished.
Banking Sector: Already own it and are reformatting it further, and Musk has now gained access to everything that the Feds knew and manage, completely outside of legal channels.
Administrative Class: Purging the government and quickly gaining power over the industrial administration that was not already onboard.
Distribution and Utilities: Same, even showing off that he can screw with state-level works by pouring the water saved for California’s farm on fallow fields.
Reduce Your Vulnerability to the World Trade System: Again, making them kneel or alienating them so much that they will no longer be part of the system.
Be Satisfied with What You Can Grow and Make: That’s what the tariffs are all about. Stupid way to go about it, but that’s what they’ve got. Maybe they figure they will provide required subsidies to important (oligarch-owned) interests once everything is under their control, and masses of Poors have died off in the coming financial cataclysm.
Obey the Laws of Purges: In progress, the worst is yet to come.
“Why should I care what you think?” They don’t. They’re showing that in no uncertain terms and have even stated so in black and white to the courts. We will know that this process is complete if/when SCOTUS somehow decides against them, “The Supreme Court has made their decision; now let them enforce it!”
They are following the formula to a T.
The Republic is almost finished; I think we can stick a fork in it very soon.
I’m less sure, though parts of this are definitely true. Let’s deal with the quibbles: Trump isn’t doing tariff wars for the reason a left wing government under the WTO-Neoliberal-Sanctions regime would. They know that sanctions and trade can be used to destroy their economy. America isn’t in that position. Tariffs and tariff threats are about something else. In some cases, making countries bow, in other cases Trump appears to believe tariffs are free money, and there’s probably also an attempt to re-shore industry. Biden was already Cannibalizing European industry through high energy prices forcing energy sensitive industries to relocate to the US after the NordStream sabotage. Tariffs, for countries with trade surpluses with the US, are intended to have the same effect.
I think a lot of this comes down to something we’ve talked about before. “You go for the King, you’d better not miss.” I warned, repeatedly, that prosecution of Trump was an all-or-nothing matter. You either take him out, completely, or you’re fucked, because you’ve destroyed an elite norm against going after ex-Presidents seriously. (Note that Trump said he’d prosecute Hilary Clinton, but never did.)
Trump’s first actions have included a purge of law enforcement and prosecutors who went after him, the people who tried to help him steal the 2000 election, and his January 6th shock troopers.
What the hell did Democrats expect? That they could prosecute Trump and his people and that if he got back into power he’d shrug it off? How fucking stupid are these people?
If you prosecuted Trump, you had to make it stick and throw him in prison and take every red cent he had. You don’t go after an ex-President who still has a power base without making sure you finish him off.
The bloody fools.
In some respects Trump is just self-protecting. He has to take control of the Justice system so that when he leaves office he’s safe, at least, from any sort of Federal prosecution and with his loyalists in charge of the Justice system, attempts to end-run using the State system can be countered by simple threats. “If you do, we’ll go after your people, and we’re a lot more powerful.)
Trump is taking control of government: the treasury system and all expenditures, and the legal enforcement system. No one will be prosecuted who he doesn’t want prosecuted. No one will get money whom he doesn’t want to get money. Anyone he does want prosecuted will be and anyone who wants to have money, will have money.
Is it a coup? That depends on intention. Does he intend to step down in 2028 and allow free and fair elections? Or does he intend to make sure that elections are only a fig-leaf and he, or more likely given his age, his chosen successor is essentially appointed?
Trump could just intend to punish his immediate enemies and make sure the government does exactly what he wants, or he could intend to turn this into a permanent Republican state, with at least his successor chosen by him.
If he really wants to be safe, well, he needs to appoint his successor.
GrimJim is right about the court system. There are two plays: one is the Supremes wave thru his stuff, but the really dangerous moment would be if he was ruled against and he said “The Supreme Court has made their decision, now let them enforce it!”
Since he’s taking control of the federal enforcement arms, the idea is that no one will obey the courts if Trump disagrees. Their loyalty will be to him.
State governors may try to resist, but Trump can crush them if he so desires.
I admit I never saw Trump as this dangerous, mostly because he’s fundamentally incompetent. But he’s been mishandled by Democrats and the (not so) permanent state. Tulsi Gabbard looks likely to be confirmed, and her job is to do to the intelligence apparatus what is being done to the FBI and DOJ: make it Trump safe. If anyone takes out Trump, it will be the intelligence apparatus. He threatens them, just as JFK did, and they may act. That said, JFK threatened from the left, and intelligence services do love to serve a right wing tyrant. Trump may restrict their foreign games somewhat, but he will give them domestic power they have always wanted.
So, America gets out of this only if Trump either doesn’t really intend a coup and is just being a petty tyrant who wants to go back to the spoils system for government, or if his and Musk’s incompetence brings them down.
We’ll talk more about this as time goes by.
GrimJim
While Trump’s focus is certainly on revenge, his people — the 2025 folks, as others have noted — and the Republicans are going to go all the way with this. He and they have to, because if they don’t, with all they are doing, they all go to jail after they lose power.
It is, as I stated earlier, a Republican coup. MAGA/2025 coup, really, but the rest of the Republicans are happy to be along for the ride, because it guarantees them power, and locks out or completely destroys the Democrats, for as long as US power lasts.
I don’t expect Trump to step down in 2029, as I don’t expect there will be any real elections in 2028. The Democrats being outlawed, and non-Republicans not being on any tickets, the ballots, if there are any, will be like those in other dictatorships — merely performance art. Though at lower local and state levels, and for the House, party members will get a choice of which Republicans to choose from (Senators will go back to being chosen by the state legislatures, as every amendment after the first 10 will be repealed, and most of the first 10 will be pared back severely for anyone not a member of the Party).
Revelo
Trump’s rise is the culmination of the coup that was launched in the 1960’s to roll back the New Deal. Trump and company can do whatever they want as long as it is in line with what traditional Republican donors want. Trump doesn’t need to lock in a successor, he just needs to lock in permanent Republican control of federal government. And he will. USA will revert to what it was in the 1920’s: government will be competent and fair when serving or mediating between oligarchs, but utterly unresponsive to the needs of the poor.
Trump/Musk will be allowed to scam the rubes by using official office to promote crypto and other pump-and-dump rug-pull schemes, but they won’t be allowed to hurt the other oligarchs by tapping the US Treasury directly or getting too many laws passed to benefit themselves at the expense of other oligarchs.
Larry
I think there’s a big chance Trump does in office. He’s never been the healthiest person and he’s pretty damn old. So he’s shooting his shot at what is not exactly clear. I agree he’s trying a coup,but America is a big messy country and there isn’t a strong issue to get uninterested people behind him.
They are obviously trailing Baron as Trump’s successor, but he’s pretty young and hasn’t done much beyond wave at adoring MAGA fans . That to me aligns with him trying to appoint a successor.
His pivot to project 2025 just isn’t popular with a large percentage of the American population. Tariffs and egg price hikes are going to massively erode his popularity
In addition,he seems to be appointing incompetent people to do the job while letting Musk run wild. Tulsi Gabbard left public Google docs of foreign meeting agendas? Yeesh.
I don’t know the chances, but if Musk breaks payments to a huge swath of Trump’s base or he seriously craters the economy, I can see an opening for Congress to turn on him and actually check him and or impeach him. This seems to be Trump’s biggest blind spot,his trust in Elon.
mistah charley, ph.d.
In my opinion the Trump 2.0 difference is the broligarchs. Who needs Brownshirts in the Streets? This is the 21st century and the young men gain complete control of the government apparatus by seizing the computer networks. The billionaires are protecting themselves from any diminishment of their power and wealth that a government of, by, and for the people might enact if people ever woke up.
Sad, in a way, but sadder days loom. Ask any chatbot of your acquaintance what the implications are of taking seriously Catton’s “Overshoot”, Murphy’s “Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet”, and Bendell’s “Deep Adaptation” and “Breaking Together.” May peace be with us all, one way or another, eventually.
GrimJim
Formula for a Coup — Anglo-American Style:
1) Have the Executive capture all fiscal powers reserved for Congress in the Constitution; Congress and SCOTUS remain supine.
2) Capture all media, so that only your message gets out.
3) Destroy the existing international order by alienating all allies and paying off all enemies; establish isolationist policies; all the while, crashing the dollar.
4) Make the oligarchs whole; control any sort of safety net to the necessary cadre middle class; immiserate other middle class and the poor, create a cashless society and destroy independence by complete government control of payment systems (through officially licensed cryptocurrencies).
5) Immiserated masses riot; suspend posse comitatus, suspend civil rights, declare martial law, outlaw all non-Republican political organizations.
6) Make any criminal sentence longer that 20 years “slavery for life.” Use soldiery and slavery to keep remaining free proles in line.
7) Only licensed party members may vote.
Fin.
different clue
Clever magnetic words are not the same as genuine analysis. But sometimes clever magnetic words and phrases can magnetise brains not yet reachable by genuine analysis and might even get them prepared to handle genuine analysis someday maybe.
So I offer the suggestion of calling this ” Elon’s Crypto Coup” or the “Crypto Coup” or the “Crypto Bro Coup” or something like that. ( I have seen a theory that part of Musk’s motivation is to effectively destroy the dollar as a currency and the Dept. of Treasury as a department, and forcibly put the United States onto the Bitcoin Standard or at least the Blockchain Standard at the very least. Elon and the other crypto bros could harvest trillions of dollars by abolishing the dollar itself and making Crypto the “new money”.)
If that seems worthless, people can ignore it.
Joan
This made me think of the poem Shine, Perishing Republic by Robinson Jeffers.
GrimJim
The Long Coup
When I say that this is a Republican coup, not merely a Trumpist coup, you need to look at the make-up of the current coalition of Republican factions to really see what is happening.
First, there is DONALD TRUMP himself, with his own interests. These are simple and base – mostly revenge against anyone who prosecuted him for on his illegal acts; destruction of the system so that it cannot act against him if he ever loses the presidency; grift and graft; and as always, elevation of his ego.
Then you have to break it down by faction; all the factions want much of the same thing, for different reasons, though some factions are opposed, and who gets serviced depends on who is best servicing Trump at the moment.
The most immediate and powerful faction is the TECH-BROS, as Elon basically bought Trump’s campaign, and he has bedazzled him with all the Tech-Bro BS that goes hand in hand with what Trump wants – because the Tech-Bro world is essentially one vast Ponzi grift, and Elon is turning on the money spigot for Trump.
What do the Tech-Bros want?
Nothing less than the utter destruction of the very concept of a nation-state and all that entails. Destroy the whole system, let anarchy reign. They want to wipe the slate clean, so that they can have untrammeled power to rebuilt the world in their vision from the ground up.
They want it all gone. The ultimate exercise in “Creative Destruction” and all that. They want to take the shattered remnants and transform it into their own perfect little societies, a series of arcologies and techno-utopias, where they and their core cadre are served and preferably worshipped by an eternal underclass. They are the perfect merging of technology and Randian Objectivism – utter psychopaths who will happily murder billions to get whatever they want.
They make classic REPUBLICAN “CHAMBER OF COMMERCE” CAPITALISTS, the “Moderate” Republicans, that MAGAts now call “RINOS,” who now look like Marxists by comparison.
Speaking of which, there are some of those still around. They generally have no idea what they have unleashed, just like so many industrialists who backed Hitler, thinking they could control him and the Nazis. They shall reap the whirlwind, in time. The smart ones – no less evil, but merely opportunists and not True Believers, and possessing at least some grasp of history – bailed when they saw what was coming.
Their primary goal was the destruction of the New Deal, and a return to the unfettered laissez-faire Capitalism of the pre-Roosevelt era. Musk is using this as the sweetener to keep them in line; that’s his whole schtick with DOGE – eliminate all regulation, eliminate all taxes, etc. They’ll get that, and more than they bargained for.
Then you’ve got the TRUE BELIEVERS, the core Hard Right Republicans, an alliance of White Christian Nationalists, Lost Cause Dixiecrats, the Deplorables, and the like, who have been fighting to restore the Confederacy since 1865. The core cadre of these folks abandoned the Democrats under Johnson and were picked up by the Republicans under Nixon with the Southern Strategy. Modern Christofascism is a more modern development, amore virulent form of the Lost Cause, that developed from the Thermidorian reaction to the Civil Rights movement.
They’ve all merged, and formed a massive coalition to bring back White Power, return Blacks to slavery, put women “back in their place,” and “deal with” anyone else that does not fit in (LGBTQIA, Asians, Native Nations, Muslims, etc.). And of course, show the world how the US is “exceptional,” mostly by stomping on their faces with a jackboot. The leaders want to return the US back to the era of Masters & Mudsills; the middle-class Prosperity Gospel members are the core of the True Believers in a White Christian Nation; and the MAGA Poors who go along because they are either truly hateful and evil or thoroughly propagandized by FOX, OAN, and so forth.
They, too, will get what they want, as the destruction and horrors they will unleash will play into the hands of the Techno-Bros, who are so filled with ideals of their own awesomeness that they cannot imagine the whole thing getting out of hand such that they lose control.
Which it will, because they all ignore the wolves at the door.
First, of course, Climate Change. That will, in time, make all of this moot; it will certainly bring an end to human civilization, possibly even the species itself. But that will take a bit more time than the time frame we are dealing with.
Second, and more immediately, the Fall of the American Empire. All of these factions are utterly blinded by their own delusions as to the nature of the Empire and how it works. The United States commands more than 25% of the worlds resources, even though it produces less than 5%. The way that works is through the Empire.
And they are destroying the very necessary organizations that hold that Empire together.
Trump is not the only fool in this. He thinks that his blustering and his “art of the deal” will actually work. It never actually produces results; he just believes his own lies.
And now he and Musk are disassembling the very structures that keep the Empire running.
I’ve said it before – it is a vast ramshackle house of cards, that no one quite understands how it all works anymore, and mostly keeps going on through inertia.
After WWII, the world needed the US and its massive industrial infrastructure, and its science, and everything else, because the world was buried under the rubble that was all that remained of two centuries of industrialization.
Now, the world does not need the US; at this point the US is nothing more than a parasite, as other centers have caught up and surpassed it, some (China) through the suicidal greediness of the US elite, who are no less misled by their “Masters-of-the-Universe” delusions than Trump and the Tech-Bros.
But that is the way it is with empires.
And the US has been an empire for a long time. The US started as an empire from the Treaty of Paris, when it inherited the lands between the western border of the 13 Colonies and the Mississippi. It did not start really acting like an Empire until the Mexican-American War, Blaine’s “Big Brother” policy, the Roosevelt Corollary, and the formation of the Banana Republics.
Everyone equates the US with Rome. The US is not Rome.
The US is Byzantium to the UK’s Rome.
And we are not at the Fall of the Roman Republic and the Rise of the Roman Empire.
We are at the Rise of the Angelos Dynasty and the Fall of Byzantium.
We are in the Imperial Endgame.
The question is, who will be our Turks? The Chinese? The Russians?
I think it will be ourselves. For we have always been our own worst enemies.
Purple Library Guy
Americans are so fucked. Well, an awful lot of them asked for it, so I’m having a hard time feeling really sympathetic.
different clue
@Purple Library Guy,
An awful lot of Americans asked for it and an awful lot of Americans did not ask for it.
I myself asked against it by voting Harris, as did every other Harris voter.
Is there a way to focus the pain on that awful lot of Americans who asked for it? Or at least some of the pain? In many areas, no. In some areas, yes?
If so many illegal alien farm workers are deported or “self-deport” that the illegal alien based farm industry collapses and goes bankrupt and into liquidation, turning all the “farmers for Trump” into paupers, is it worth being cynical enough to support regarding the illegal farm workers as sacrificial pawns to be deported if it can result in sweeping all the “farmers for Trump” off the board as punishment for their having asked for it not just for themselves but for us as well? To me, that is a serious question.
If foreign friends for boycotting America were to focus their purchasing boycotts and their travel boycotts on those parts of America which voted for Trump, would that focus the pain onto Trumpistan to the point of torturing the Trump supporters into changing their minds? If not, would it still weaken Trumpistan relative to Harrisonia enough to grown Harrisonia’s political power against an economically weakened Trumpistan? That is something which our foreign friends for boycotting America can either think about or not, as they so choose. Perhaps foreign friends for boycotting America can figure out how to extermicott all of Trump’s properties in their own countries.
Meanwhile , Americans who dislike Trump’s rolling coup and Musk’s concurrent carjacking of the Treasury ( where all the money is) but see no way to exert power against it might keep watching to see if cracks and levers come into view here and there. Perhaps Americans against Elmo Twitler Musk can inflict some concurrent pain on Elmo by extermicotting Tesla or at least trying to, and attriting and degrading twiXtter if we can, and other such things. Perhaps Americans against Elmo can figure out how to make “owning crypto” as uncool as “having syphilis or gonorrhea” is considered to be.
I hesitate to say ” contact your Representative and/or Senator” because that seems like a sick joke and a laughing troll-face mockery of Americans against Elmo at this point. ( I gather some people are beginning to refer to “Elon” as “Elmo”. Will it spread enough to where Elmo himself hears about it? I don’t know).
Tc
“He and they have to, because if they don’t, with all they are doing, they all go to jail after they lose power.”
Isnt that what we thought in late 2020 when we saw the coup attempt taking shape? Took 4 years to get those charges most of the way to going to trial. Legal consequences are not a consideration. See also the supine posture of Jeffries and Schumer. They are not serious people. The takeover is a fait accomplis. Its all over except the screaming, to paraphrase a famous serial killer (i forget which one)
I had been despairing all day, but with the Bibi press conference and the reactions of the never-trumpers plus the “centrist” dems having fits of recrimination against us “holier than thou” genocide opponents for tanking the dems in the election I am at least reminded what filth the neolibs and zionists are and that there is a silver lining of schadenfreude at their distress that I almost forgot to savor.
Z
Miriam Adelson’s Personal Pedicurist got his swagger back now that he’s got the mac daddy dollar to sling around … rumor has it that he has to wrap it twice around his ample waist before he dangles it or else it will drag on the ground like a tail behind him when he’s strutting about.
And he’s laying it down, all right!
Had the audacity yesterday to start rapping about beginning a US sovereign wealth fund … funded with Uncle Sam’s finest paper and ink, of course … and chirping about buying TicTok off the Chinese with it!
But who can stop him when he can dish out as much as he needs to please?
Ain’t much, if anything, out of this pimp’s league!
He gets tickled by the preciousness of pretty Greenland? Well, give that sweetie a wink! And load up five reams of paper and two cartridges of ink!
He takes a shining to lovely Canada and her tasty terrain? It’s all goooood, baby! There you be! Hot off the presses for you, Candy!
And what you gonna do if and when Donald T and his mac daddy diminishes and they ain’t the largest talk in town no more? Think you gonna to get back the bling Donald T’s already bought? You kidding me? That mondo pimp is keeping it!
Z
Tc
“They’ve all merged, and formed a massive coalition to bring back White Power, return Blacks to slavery, put women “back in their place,” and “deal with” anyone else that does not fit in (LGBTQIA, Asians, Native Nations, Muslims, etc.). And of course, show the world how the US is “exceptional,” mostly by stomping on their faces with a jackboot. “
FWIW I think all this stuff about racism and antigay stuff being behind all this is WAY overblown. Yes, that kind of prejudice is common among ignorant people, esp the upper class ignorami that live in the fox news bubble. But there are lots of black and brown folks who vote for this stuff too. I think whats going on is folks see the end of life as we know it in this country/on this planet coming and they are retreating into magical thinking, be it Q-anon idiots, crazy fundy messianic religious stuff, or the tech bros and their delusions of somehow managing and surviving the coming collapse, while ironically accelerating the doom they fear so much.
NR
I honestly don’t know what can be done. What center of opposition is going to emerge to this takeover of the government? Democrats are predictably useless and working-class Americans love the taste of boot.
Seattle Resident
Speaking of what Larry said, yes, if Musk starts messing with people money through the treasury, particularly those red states, that just might endanger the republican majorities, particularly in the house. They’ll have to get cracking soon on those electoral reforms before the 2026 midterms to keep the coup on point.
GrimJim
“Shock and awe” is how Trump described what he would do to the United States.
That term originated with the Iraq War, vis a vis what the US did to Iraq.
The US destroyed Iraq, bombed the Hell out of its infrastructure, slaughtered hundreds of thousands of its people, then occupied the country for decades, and turned it into a shithole state, divided by various ethnic and religious militias.
Think about that…
Daniel Lynch
Ian said ” the intelligence apparatus. He threatens them, just as JFK did, and they may act. That said, JFK threatened from the left,”
That is the Camelot myth but Sy Hersh’s destroys that myth in “The Dark Side of Camelot,” a highly recommended read not just to learn about JFK but how corrupt America was even then. JFK was a right winger who expanded and empowered the CIA.
Otherwise I agree 100% with the “if you go after the king …” point.
Feral Finster
“If the rule that you followed led you to this, then of what use was the rule?”
-A. Chigurh
Feral Finster
Anyway, let’s wait for the inevitable falling out between Musk and Trump.
mago
Thought I dropped a comment here yesterday, but if I did it got bumped.
Just wanted to say that a Big Mac cheeseburger with a side of fries and a Pepsi is dietary suicide leading to another form of toxic succession.
Ok. Let’s do Gaza, Mars and Pluto.
Can’t believe we’re taking this as real, but it’s what we’ve got.
Over to you Walter common tater . . .
Jessica Rooney
“JFK was a right winger who expanded and empowered the CIA.”
The case can be made that the Cuban Missile Crisis and the experience of having so many of his advisors advising him to become the biggest mass murderer in history that changed him and that those changes were why he was assassinated. For example, the planned genocide in Indonesia was stalled by JFK and green lit by LBJ shortly after the assassination.
For example, in “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters” by James Douglass
In this telling, the Camelot Myth did not need to be true for the ruling class (or its top hands-on administrators) to fear that JFK was too far left.
bruce wilder
“The working class wanted Trump” or “I voted Kamala to avoid this” display a remarkable lack of political awareness, even self-awareness.
The “working class” scarcely exists as anything but a dubious demographic category. It has no active political agency or power or agenda or set of desiderata. The capital fact of American electoral politics at the national and state levels for a long time has been the complete disregard of politicians for voter preferences. What any large group wants simply does not matter. But, it isn’t as if “the working class” has any organized being. Maybe, we can impute to “the working class” a desire for higher wages at the lower end of the wage spectrum, but what does that have to do with Trump?
Kamala Harris offered the possibility of continuing a federal administration where a quiet coup had already taken place, but never acknowledged. Her only evident qualification was her empty-headed disinterest in anything to do with actually governing anything except happy hour. No one outside the mostly anonymous inner circle knew for sure who was running the government “under” Biden — it certainly wasn’t Biden himself. Kamala promised more of the same absence of effective authority in nominal leadership. To say you supported continuing in place the previous coup d’etat as an alternative to the exercise of power by a duly elected President — this doesn’t make much sense.
Hvd
What “quiet coup” are you talking about? That is frankly nonsense. Maybe the pendulum had swung by a bit too far but there were counterbalancing forces in play to a certain extent. Lots of problems persisted and the democrats were/are exceptionally dense but how is a loud coup by a fascist executive clearly overstepping all reasonable bounds in support of graft and unchecked power preferable? If you are arguing for the more rapid decline of a hegemon that has lost its way I might agree with you but somehow get the feeling that’s not what you mean.
eg
I can see the epitaph now: “No friend ever served me, and no enemy ever wronged me, whom I have not repaid in full …”
Mark Level
Thank you for your comment, Bruce W. You beat me to it. “Vote for Kamala” is to reward the Dimmiecrats for an open Genocide. The Dimmies no longer even pretend to support anyone who is not in the billionaire camp. Think the bloated pig JD Pritzker (he makes Trump look physically svelte) booming from the stage of the DNC, “I’m a REEEAL Billionaire” to the shrieks and seal-clapping of the clueless PMC in the stands.
The Dimmies spit on the upper-middle class, the middle-class and especially the working class & poors. This is hidden only from the comfortable & clueless. They spit on migrants to emulate their (R) betters, and pretend (a few) to feel bad about doing so. The Biden Admin was a straight repeat of Bush Jr’s unending and failed foreign wars, and immiseration economically of the majority of Americans.
With the majority of ordinary people, Kamala had the voter appeal of an old dishrag, even when she had her horrible career of kicking down the California working class, black men, supporting pedophile priest rapes, etc. she was never popular with anyone but oligarchs & dipshit ShitLibs. “Brat Summer”? (Charlie XCX ain’t no Taylor Swift, who certainly isn’t a real artist but at least has people who can sling the lowest common denominator, which is a very large # of people.) As somebody said, “Now she’s not even a has-been, she’s a never-was” except on paper.
The new Chair of the DNC is Ken Martin, a wannabe-Ken Doll who is so anodyne nobody would notice him on the street, but he brags that his mom is Jewish and that he is a bloodthirsty Zionist who wants the Palestinians in their homeland removed and exterminated. (He’s from my home state of the last 4 years, Minnesota, but I’d never heard of him. He’s never done anything for anyone beyond the Donor Class and hate-filled Zionists, that much is clear.)
Going back to Biden-Harris, all the failed regime change wars meant a shitty economy for the majority, esp. the precarious “working class” and the abandoned poors, and everyone living in the real, material world knew that. (It also meant the destruction of Europe, not that that was in any way a campaign issue, but it’s worth mentioning in passing.) The Dimmies now inhabit the proverbial “Ash-Can of History” and they lack the charisma & relatability of the charming Oscar the Grouch. They aren’t going to crawl out of that Trash Can any time soon, if ever.
Ralph Nader once said, “The real purpose of leaders is to create more leaders, not more followers.” Nobody in the Long Con of American politics in the 2 major parties ever has (nor ever will) displayed such good sense. Supporting a poisoned vessel or an empty vessel for some psychological delusion (“He’d be fun to have a beer with”) is deeply masochistic and ultimately self-destructive. Grown-ups and serious people know better.
Revelo
I’ve been thinking more about Trump and Israel. USA deep state support for Israel is because of control of the east Mediterranean, which is an overland gateway to Persian Gulf oil/gas. So all USA Presidents must support Israel for this reason, though they don’t have to condone genocide or ethnic cleansing or apartheid concentration camps. Carter was an example of moderate support for Israel.
Trump’s obseqiousness to Netanyahu recently (pulling out the chair for him to sit, wearing blue tie while Netanyahu wears red, awkwardly bumbling his prepared speach about ethnic cleansing, etc) is more than just support. Possibly Trump is playing dealmaker who wants Netanyahu to give Trump and family development rights to Gaza worth several billion dollars. Or maybe Mossad has some really spicy Kompromat on Trump. Trump was involved with Epstein and was a womanizer when younger and probably preferred as young and tender as possible (right down to puberty age), like most womanizers. Pager Netanyahu gave Trump might have been a coded warning, not so much a death țhreat as threat of that Kompromat being leaked.
different clue
People who read all the words in my comments without cherry picking the words of their choice will see or remember that the way I put my choice was . . . between 4 years of Brezhnevian stagnation ( to give me and perhaps others to get a few of our survival ducks in a row) or an immediate transition to shock-and-awe Yeltsinian burndown and runaway piratization of whatever was still left to piratize. Plus complete legalization of total pollution of everything, etc.
4 more years of pregnant pause would have given people with more organizing energy and ability than I have to perhaps lay some groundwork for new better movements and parties and green culture reset and spreadout going forward.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
There are none so dumm as those who will not think.
There are none so lost as those who will not read a map.
You show them the moon and all they see is your finger.
Show some people a mirror and they’ll mistake it for a window.
Every. Single. Time.
At some point, Whataboutism becomes tiresome and boring.
It is good that we have a commenter on here who meets all our Trumpanon Magasbara needs so thoroughly and generously that no one else feels compelled to help.
KT Chong
If the only way to take down the Deep State — its institutions like USAid and the CIA — is to have a coup, I am all for it.
Coup away.
different clue
@KT Chong,
USAid and CIA are only secondary to President Musk’s concerns. His primary goal is carjacking the Department of Treasury so as to get his hands on all the trillions of dollars which flow in and out of it in the recurrent payment systems.
Drool drool . . . all that beautiful money . . .
I think President Twitler ( and co-President Thiel and any other Silicon Co-Presidents that President Twitler can bring on board) have as their dearest over-the-horizon sacred goal to be the abolition of governments and the abolition of governmental currencies in every country they can reach . . . and the forcible replacement of money with crypto. Silicon billionaires’ crypto.
No more dollars for you. You’ll take your pay in bitcoin and dogecoin and $Trumpcoin and you’ll like it . . . if the Musk coup succeeds.
Still all for it?
different clue
Personnel choices at DNC are even worse than at first glance.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/parkland-shooting-survivor-david-hogg-013400287.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
David Hogg . . . David Hogg . . . hmmmm . . . .
Of course I am sorry for David Hogg’s loss. And I am sorry for his trauma.
That being said . . . David Hogg is a nasty little drama twerp whose deepest and mainest cause is Liberal Fascist Pig Gun Control. In ideal theory, this will mean no guns allowed for those liberals and leftists who have been driven to wake up, smell the covfefe and realize they need a gun culture of their own.
Do the Liberal Fascist Pig Clintonite Shitobamacrats for gun control think they will disarm and de-gun the center and the right? The White Power ChristiaNazi Gilead Republican right? They are welcome to fuck around and find out. Let General Hogg lead from the front in the Democrat War On Guns, if they decide to launch one.
Oh, and what about those members of the LBGTQ+ community who are down with the Pink Pistols organization. https://www.pinkpistols.org/ In the event of a War On Guns, which side will they be on? Fuck around and find out.
And how about Black Guns Matter? https://www.facebook.com/blackgunsmattermajtoure/
Liberal Fascist Gun Control is also White Racist in its own way, and Black people know it. Does David Hogg think that the Black Guns Matter community will give him all their guns? Let him fuck around and find out.
I don’t think the Democrats will elect another President for another hundred years.
bruce wilder
realism and integrity matter
representative democracy does not work without a modicum of both
I don’t think the U.S. has had sufficient realism or integrity in its politics for democracy to work, for at least 25 years, basically since we agreed to pretend that George W. Bush had been elected in Florida while letting Fox News project the winner without actually counting the votes.
For much longer than that, Americans have had a bad case of political narcissism feeding the delusion that we were “exceptional” and “the good guys.” Graham Greene’s The Quiet American exposed the malignant naïveté at work in Vietnam 70 years ago and almost ten years before LBJ faked the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify escalating the senseless killing. (How many Americans remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident as fake?)
In 2003, it was WMD. (How many Americans remember that the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis and Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with it?) In 2008, a sinkhole of debt created from fraud was backfilled because the sky was falling and the Committee to Save the World said the rich were not rich enough. Trump claimed Obama was born in Kenya. In 2016, Hillary and the FBI and CIA launched Russiagate. Then, the COVID vaccine was going to save us from the pandemic that couldn’t possibly be a lab leak. And, Biden was sharp as a tack.
Immigration couldn’t be settled in Congress, because no one could decide who was putting children in cages (apparently, everyone since forever) or even if immigration was actually running out of control. Good thing for Trump that he thought to look at the numbers on a chart at the right moment. Unusual, but good timing.
Last week I think it was, some horrible Democratic Senator was trying to get Trump’s DNI nominee to call Snowden a traitor.
CIA tool USAID and its massive network of corrupt and corrupting NGOs exemplify the virtue-signaling narcissism of “good intentions” as a cover story for mind-numbingly stupid schemes to undermine and destabilize other countries for fun and profit.
I am with KT Chong: coup away.
But, like dc, I think Musk — the greediest man on earth — may have ulterior motives and deeper purposes. No doubt the democrats will bring to bear the same lack of integrity and basic competence that they demonstrated in their lawfare campaign against Trump.
Fun times.
GrimJim
I am fascinated by how many people are so blase about the coup.
It is, after all, a never-ending coup.
When, not if, they cross their Rubicon — in this case, some point at which everyone associated with Trump will definitely go to jail, if not be torn apart by families of their victims — they cannot ever lose power and will do everything under heaven and earth to hold onto power.
They’ve already pissed on the Constitution. What makes you think they won’t nuke it?
Based on Trump’s strongest allies, the end result will be an Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christian Theocracy.
And if you are not an Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christian Heterosexual Male, you will be nobody.
Less than nobody.
If you are black, you will be a slave.
If you are brown you might be given a chance to flee the country — if not, you will also be a slave.
If you are a woman, you will be chattel.
If you are non-Christian, or non-Heterosexual, or somehow do not fit in their definition of what a “person” is, you will be dead.
They have been very open about this.
They have been working toward this goal for decades.
Musk and the Tech-Bros think they are using them to destroy the government in order to bring about the anarchy that will allow them to create their “technocracies,” but it is the other way around.
Trump will keep Musk around until he no longer needs his “creative destruction force,” then he will be gone.
And that’s when the Dominionists will be ready to make their move.
Gilead will seem to be a lovely little fantasy compared to the reality they seek to create.
GrimJim
What is happening to the military right now?
We all heard about Hegseth. We all heard his various proclamations.
But to really take over the military, they need to purge every upper ranking officer of whom they are not absolutely certain of their loyalty to the Cause.
That is every man and woman of Colonel rank and above… if they are not cadre, they must be purged. Ir otherwise sidelined. Maybe moved to bases outside the US?
That will be the last chance for the military to obey their oath to the Constitution.
And everything we’ve seen so far has been big and showy and directed to cause as much outrage as possible.
In other words, the carny’s “Look here, not there” kinds of moments that Trump is so very good at.
What else are they doing? What else is being destroyed or undermined, without so much as a whisper?