Corruption? What Corruption?

 

If people charged with oversight look away, does corruption exist? If deporting migrants is all MAGAs care about, is Trump selling his “presidency” to the highest bidder not happening? If a crime falls in Trump’s forest, does it make a sound?

So sure is Trump of the hypovertebral cowardice of Republican Congressfolk and the yes-boss, how-high sycophancy of his appointees that he’s not bothering to hide the corruption, greed, and grift that, were it anyone else, would have led to bipartisan impeachment and removal. What Trump is doing makes the alleged transgressions of the “Biden crime family” seem like kids selling lemonade without a license.

Nevertheless, Republicans conducted years of made-for-Fox “hearings” about it; all up with which they came were crimes to which Hunter Biden had already confessed. Now? With unprecedented corruption screaming for investigation? Butkis. (sp?)

Had Joe Biden, right before taking office, created eponymous cryptocurrencies for himself and his wife and encouraged foreign governments to purchase them, had offered White House tours and private dinners to individuals who purchased the most, Republican outrage would be at eleven and he’d be removed from office in the blink of an “aye.”

For comprehensive explication of the trail-blazing conflicts of interest in Trump’s crypto-kleptocracy, read this. And this. Then this. I could hotlink this Trumpery till the cowed come home and still not cover it all.

And that’s before mentioning the influence-peddling his sons are pushing around the world: Twenty Trump-branded building projects in nine countries, all of which will be in position to seek presidential favors. And, as history shows, receive them. But Hunter made bank because of his surname, causing Jim Jordan (R-OH) and James Comer (R-KY) jugular-ballooning apoplexy. These potatoes, they are small.

According to MAGAs, proof that Trump “loves America” is that he donated his salary to the US Treasury last time around. That love now operates a government-underwritten cash machine. It’s estimated that his family members have increased their wealth by $3 billion since the election and his entry into the crypto game. Ever tried to wrap around how much a billion is? This should help.

Trump’s enforcers and acolytes don’t simply ignore it. They bend over backwards to justify it. Attorney General Pam Bondi, America’s bulwark against liberalism’s lawlessness, argues that accepting a $400 million plane from Qatar, a country that may have had a hand in 9/1, finances Hamas and the anti-US campus protestors that Trump arrests for speaking freely, isn’t a Constitution-defined emolument. Because he’ll only use it till he’s out of office, at which point he’ll keep using it. Or something. He’s gotta have it, though: it’s gold-plated. 

No matter that accepting a 250-foot-long, three-story plane from a shady government is risky. Other than disassembling everything, including its toilets, fold-flat seats, gilded staircase, and wiring, how could we be certain it doesn’t include spyware? Whether or not the gift-grift happens, Trump loves the idea and Republicans far and wide-bodied are all for it, too; falling in line like Boy Scouts for his every whim, even his Alcatrazific impossibility. 

None of this will make the tiniest crack in the enlightenment-proof wall surrounding Trump voters. The divide between those who live in that world and people inhabiting the one that exists is getting wider every day. Consider the “deals” Trump recently announced with the UK and, later, China. To MAGA, they confirm the brilliance of the artiste o’ the deal; the pendulumistic backs and forths, markets ricocheting like pinballs, ports, including Seattle’s, empty of cargo; all part of a grand plan working out perfectly. Which was to isolate and break China. Then not. Which was that tariffs would erase our national debt and eliminate taxes. Then canceled. Every U-turn, every message reversal accepted as if from Mount Sinai.

Reality-based observers have noted that when Trump’s tariffs on China were announced, it responded in kind, immediately stopped selling stuff to the US while opening new markets everywhere else. Their brilliance, as opposed to Trump’s dimness, meant that while shelves empty here and prices creep up, while Trump shamed Americans for wanting toys for their kids, China, selling elsewhere, flourished. Outflanked, Trump caved. His nonsensical tariffs on China were an ego trip over which, in full planetary view, he tripped.

It must be obvious to world leaders that, facing pushback, he backs down. Spin it his mouthers might, but spin ain’t spinach.

The fruits of Republicans’ attacks on critical thinking are seen as MAGAs are as happy over the flip as they were over the flop. Ensuring a steady supply of such easy marks, harbinger Oklahoma, already at the bottom rung of American education, will now teach their youth that Trump’s stolen election lies are truth, removing all the rungs above those unfortunate kids. Like the MAGAfied, they never had a chance. 

No, Man. It's An Island

 

San Francisco is where I learned the art and craft, the calling and commitment to life as a surgeon. Except for a detour to Southeast Asia arranged by my draft board, we lived there for seven years. Time for fun was scant, but we did manage, thanks to a couple of surgery professors and their heavy-keeled sailboats, a couple of exhilarating sailings on the Bay. We got close to Alcatraz Island, the occupation of which by American Indians was still going on, but the first time we took a tour was many years later, when, on a return visit, our young son announced he wanted to.

It was impressive. Among other niceties was a self-guided audio tour, voiced by prisoners and guards who’d been there. “Now go down ‘Broadway’ and stop in front of cell 120... Me and Mugsy was in here when we wasn’t in solitary.” Stuff like that. Sounds of yelling and taunting, clatter of silverware. Eerie, but impactful.

As part of the National Park Service, Alcatraz brings in over sixty million tourism dollars a year. With characteristic brilliance aforethought, His Majesty has revealed plans to resurrect it as a prison. Because, doncha know, he’s tough on crime. (Not his and his family’s, but there’s only so much crime a guy can tough on.)

A recent retrofitting of the dock cost around thirty-six million. Refurbishing and modernizing the buildings to current prison standards would be huge. Not to mention future operating costs for an island accessible only by boat, three times that of other prisons, which was among the reasons for shutting it down. Might that money be better spent reinstating Trump’s reckless funding cuts to life-saving medical research, or consumer protections, or Medicaid? But, as always, his reasons were succinct and thoughtful. 

That’s Donald “I can do whatever I want” Trump for you. Like announcing 100% tariffs on movies made outside the US. Out of which (or whose) orifice did he pull that one? How it’ll work, he didn’t reveal. Movies, he may not know, don’t come through ports to be unloaded by cranes. Add a buck to each ticket, maybe. What’s next? Getting Mexico to pay for walls around hurricanes?

But it’s no joke. With our Republican-controlled Congress, formerly eager to investigate government corruption but now strangely silent, producing no legislation at all while ignoring Trump’s usurpful, authoritarian acts, everything that’s happened since he took office has been by executive order. While not all are illegal, most amount to vindictive punishment of the vulnerable or those he perceives as enemies. Or sad ego-trips, like taking over the Kennedy Center, replacing the board of the Holocaust Museum, or renaming bodies of water, geological formations, and holidays. Plus lustful leers at Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal.

The authority for Trump’s nasty orders was available to preceding presidents, too, though none were granted immunity for the illegal ones, as the wise men of our Supreme Court did for him. (The women are wiser.) But, until Trump, everyone who’s held that office, even, for some of his time, Richard Nixon, had enough respect for the presidency and the law to recall the oath to which they swore.

Not Trump. As stated last weekend on Meet The Press, he isn’t sure he’s obligated to abide by our Constitution at all, assuming he knows what’s in it. “I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer.” It’s up to “his” lawyers to tell him, he said. Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, sycophantically prostrate protectors of the law. Who made a nauseating show of braggadocio after arresting a judge in her courtroom, intended to intimidate all judges into ignoring his lawbreaking, assuming what the judge did was, in fact, illegal. One minute it’s, “I run the world,” next minute he’s a helpless tabula rasa who knows nothing.

Nor will he get pushback from Republicans in Congress, who’ve said only this. Scores of judges from both parties have spoken up, forcefully, though. Not that Team Trump cares. Probably loving it.

Megalomaniac. Sociopath. Narcissist. Pathological liar. Based on direct observation, all of those terms have been applied to the person who, when he’s not golfing, occupies the Oval Office long enough to display yet another executive order, showily adorned with his ventricular-tachycardia-mimicking signature, offering nothing for anyone but himself. Plus, as he plans drastic cuts to military leadership and intelligence services, Vladimir Putin and all who wish us ill.

If Trump cared about country over self, which he doesn’t, instead of focusing on prisons foreign and domestic, movies, forcedly reverential parades, and honoring convicted seditionists, he’d attend to problems his mindless firings have created; like the fiasco at Newark’s airport, a major hub for access to New York City. We used it a couple of months ago. Not again. Not till Trump lays down his Sharpie and does something beneficial or thought-out for a change.

Making It White

 

In Trumpworld, the disconnect between rhetoric and reality, verbiage and common sense is so vast, the output so voluminous, that it risks becoming background noise; even in the face of the constant cozening, as Trump and his mouthies tell us, unflinching, that down is up, dark is light. “The greatest first hundred days of any presidency, ever,” Trump claimed, standing amidst the ashes of the economy, consumer confidence, gutted necessary government agencies, trust in America’s world leadership, but dripping with grifted coin by the truckload.

Under a blinding gaslight, fingers surely crossed behind his back, Treasury Secretary Bessent assures us that it’s “strategic uncertainty,” referring to the crashes and mini-recoveries and crashes again of markets, ignoring vacant ports and emptying shelves. Because there’s nothing business owners find more strategic than uncertainty. Consumers, too.

Even with the consistent inconsistency stumbling out of the Oval Office, this latest Trumpy thing called “pronatalism” is something special. Birth rates are dropping, is the worry. Unspoken but obvious, the concern is the end of America’s dominance by white people. Patriotic women, formerly and futurely doing business only as vessels of man’s seed, must submit to the duty knocking (up) at their door. The photo above, complete with Jesus and a bald eagle, is clarifying.

J.D. Vance is pushing it. So, too, is the right-wing media cartel. Elon Musk is making babies faster than he’s producing Swasticars. To them, it’s about incubating future voters. To capitalism, it’s about buyers. To Social Security, it’s payers-in. To Earth, though, it’s about continuing destruction of life-giving biomes, depletion of resources, and, eventually, making the planet uninhabitable for mammals like us. So, whereas there are non-political arguments on both sides of the population issue, from the political right it’s cynicism wrapped in racism tied with a red ribbon of hypocrisy.

The disconcerting disconnect is this: even as they push for more pregnancies, they’re legislating to make life miserable or even impossible for the newly born. Especially for economically disadvantaged ones, who, for the most part, won’t become their voters. But if those children do grow up healthy enough to vote, Republicans are making sure public education won’t prepare them to think critically, making it more likely they’ll vote their way.

Pronatalism is about inciting women to become pregnant, repeatedly. Especially, if they could make it so, white women. In the US, birthrates among whites are significantly lower than among Blacks and Hispanics. Thus the panic: “We’re losing to... them.” And, because MAGA is MAGA, pronatalism is also about shaming women who don’t buy in.

Making America great again includes returning to when making babies was womankind’s sole purpose. And, now, their duty. To Trump. Because, by his own words, he runs the world. 

Pronatalism shares space with the push for public funding of religious and home schooling: when the kids are ready, get them indoctrinated in far-right Christian nationalism and “conservative” values. Kill empathy in the crib. Produce children who’ve become unable to resist the idiocy, like this gob-smacker, for only one example.

To be pronatalist ought to mean being against the anti-life measures forced by today’s Republican Party. Instead, they’re all in. The list is long, broad, and far-reaching. For example, the DOJ has canceled grants for gun violence and addiction prevention, darkening the future for children of all colors and beliefs. Under Trump, because it’s what he does, HHS plans to end suicide hotlines for LGBTQ youth, which get over two thousand calls a day. That’s pro-death, not pro-life. And that’s far from all. A ProPublica report makes it clear:

“The staff of a program that helps millions of poor families keep the electricity on, in part so that babies don’t die from extreme heat or cold, have all been fired. The federal office that oversees the enforcement of child support payments has been hollowed out. Head Start preschools, which teach toddlers their ABCs and feed them healthy meals, will likely be forced to shut down en masse, some as soon as May 1. And funding for investigating child sexual abuse and internet crimes against children; responding to reports of missing children; and preventing youth violence has been withdrawn indefinitely. The administration has laid off thousands of workers from coast to coast who had supervised education, child care, child support and child protective services systems, and it has blocked or delayed billions of dollars in funding for things like school meals and school safety.”

Pronatalism’s children will be increasingly unsafe: cuts to research on childhood cancer and other diseases. Closing of vaccination centers, ending protections for minorities, unhealthier schools. Worsening climate change, uninspected food. Don’t worry, though, says Trump’s MAGAfied party. If you’re rich enough to protect yourselves from the consequences of our anti-life policies, go forth and multiply. Create voters for us. If not, you’re on your own.

Thoughts and prayers and all that.

Clowns To The Right Of Me

 

In fairness, no one could have seen it coming. No reasons to predict that appointing, to oversee Earth’s most powerful military, an alcohol-abusing, inexperienced, unqualified, sexually profligate (allegedly), threateningly-tattooed, weekend talk-show host on a network known for its troubled relationship with truth would be problematic. After all, America put into even higher office a convicted felon, sexual predator, and bankrupted businessman who got there by lying, cheating, threatening, and/or suing everyone in his way. Who, as promised, ended the Ukraine war on day one and cured inflation. 

No clues. No warnings for fifty members of a party once self-reported as partial to law and order and meritocracy to have voted against confirmation in hopes of being presented with someone only half-terrible. Plus, there’s the matter of consistency: the same slack-back body approved someone to run America’s most powerful law-enforcement agency who’d shown fawning deference to that failed businessman by refusing to prosecute him for one of his many life-destroying scams. And accepted donations in return.

Nor did they have the self-respect to refuse to put in charge of America’s health a brain-bitten, conspiracy-believing, steroid-pumping man with no background in healthcare other than promoting vaccine choices that led to dozens of deaths in Samoa, who couldn’t differentiate a credible scientific study from the morning line on a horse race.

Same with a director of the FBI who conspiratorially disparaged the agency, believing fantasies, who spends more time away from the office than in it, posing for pictures. And yet another picture-poser, playing pistol-packin’ dress-up, in charge of Homeland Security, who had her purse containing $3,000, her passport, driver’s license, and DHS ID badge stolen from under her nose. Plus another TV star and pusher of quackery in charge of administering Medicare and Medicaid. All approved with obsequious rapidity by “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”

Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski, whose mother’s relationship to my surgical practice HIPAA prefers I don’t detail (nor shall I discuss my surgical relationship with former Senator Dianne Feinstein’s family), bravely – and why should it require bravery? – voted against some, but not all, of those incompetents. She has since stated the obvious: that colleagues in her party are afraid of Trump; too concerned about primaries and power, future and fortune, to consider their duty to country. Which is exactly how Trump wants them. Exactly how dictators bulldoze and bully bodies theoretically empowered to hold them in check.

But, hey: if good people are being fired from the Pentagon, at least military cadets will no longer be reading Maya Angelou in their libraries, or around 800 other books containing scary words and liberal ideas ripped straight from the Sermon on the Mount. It’s unclear if the words of General Stanley McChrystal, who commanded operations in Afghanistan under Trump, are available in military academies, but, speaking of congressional cowardice, they’re worth hearing:

"When our leaders abandon character ... it tells people that principles are optional, that decency is weakness, that rules are for fools. It fosters a culture of fear, where hesitation replaces confidence, cynicism replaces trust, and self-preservation replaces the courage to stand for what is right. When those at the top abandon the standards that hold society together, the rest of us, knowingly or not, follow suit. And when enough people do, the foundation doesn’t just erode. It crumbles. We cannot afford to let this stand."

The General’s words describe exactly where we are. They apply not only to Republicans in power but to every remaining supporter of Trump. The sort that considers Maryland Senator Chris van Hollen a traitor for calling attention to the dangers of abandoning the rule of law, even for criminals or alleged criminals. The sort who no longer have the ability to tell right from wrong, truth from fiction; who, by following suit, are actively hacking at the foundations of society. Knowingly or not.

Seeing SecDef’s disastrous mismanagement and its deleterious effects in the Pentagon, one might wonder if any of the senators who voted for him have come to regret it. The question answers itself: of course not. Had they the inborn ability and insight to rethink decisions, to hold themselves accountable for their mistakes, they’d not have voted for him in the first place. Every day, they reveal themselves to be the opposite.

So, as others have said, a clown was placed in office and the circus came to town. Talk show hosts talking trash. Lib-stickers in lipstick. An “economist” who quotes himself in made-up names. An Education Secretary into the A1 sauce. A “border czar” who brags about flouting the law. There’s no one to blame but everyone who put them there. 

Finally: Pope Francis was a good, kind man whose life, unlike that of the fake Christians surrounding the fakest of them all, fully embodied the teachings of Jesus. And, therefore, not a MAGA favorite.

He’ll live on in the acts of goodness he performed and in the hearts of those who cherish his memory.

Time To Take A Stand

 

As it is axiomatic that there can be no followers of Jesus’ teachings who support Trump, so it is that there are no conservatives. And whereas there are plenty of Trumpists claiming to be one or the other or both, it’s no more true than if they professed to live on Mars.

Americans of every background and belief – excepting those who have no beliefs other than self-pity and selfishness and the certainty that they’re safe forever from Trump’s tidal wave of tyranny – ought to be sickened by what we’re witnessing from him and his cadre of sycophantic, Constitution-ignoring oppressors. Not just sickened: Taking to the streets. Figuratively, if not literally. Writing a column into the wind, even.

What Christian who accepts what Jesus actually said can countenance the spectacle we just saw in the Oval Office, where two despots congratulated each other for their lawless cruelty? Laughed and joked over the fate of an illegally deported man, incarcerated in a Salvadorian torture chamber. Only an unreachable Foxophile would believe that, had Trump told Bekele to bring the man back, he wouldn’t.

What conservative can accept scooping up people by masked goons and, ignoring due process, the most foundational American law, sending them to a brutal, foreign prison, forever? Or enjoy seeing the gloating pictures of the cruelty the White House produces? 

What law-respecting American, anywhere, would not be outraged by Trump’s plans to send “homegrown” – i.e., American citizens -- to the gulag, without (or despite) adjudication? With only Trump’s or Bondi’s or Patel’s or Rubio’s attestation to their criminality, all of whom lie prolifically in the face of all evidence to the contrary. 

It’s deliberate state-sponsored terror, meant to frighten potential critics into silence. In the US. By the US. It should be unconscionable to every American. For unrepentant MAGAs, it’s an existential disconnect.

If Trump and his confederates can decide who’s a criminal and who isn’t, no American should feel safe. Not Chris Krebs, who, for the crime of telling the truth about a non-stolen election, is subjected to Trump’s weaponized order for a DOJ “investigation.” Under Trump, truth is treason. About another retributive target, he said exactly that. To literal deathly silence from the wrong right.

Remember when “weaponization” was House Republicans’ favorite word? Evidently, it no longer applies, even as Trump attacks Democrats in Congress who’ve stood for justice? Suddenly, as Trump peels away Constitutional protections from us all, House Republicans are three-monkeyed. 

Nor can we yet ignore Trump’s idiotic tariffs. The ones, you know, based on the brilliance of King Arthur of the Deal; permanent not permanent, economy-growing destroying, paused by a genius chess-master as planned all along because people got “yippy” which was planned all along.

Remember the old saw of someone peeing on your leg and claiming it’s raining? It’s what Trump and his excusers have been doing since day zero. Not just about the price of eggs or shower-flow. Or “beautiful, clean coal.” For anthropomoistened lower extremities, nothing beats Marco Rubio, once considered within a standard deviation of reasonable, who offloaded this: “The alliance between POTUS and President Bukele has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.” Then he stood and removed his knee pads.

Trump’s abrogation of the First Amendment, facing no resistance from Republican leaders and their enabling media, makes those tariffs seem almost trivial. They’re only about money and food and livelihoods and the ability to retire. Trump’s flouting of the Constitution threatens the persistence of America as the Land of the Free. It hasn’t been the Home of the Brave for a decade: Cowardice has become the unifying characteristic of Congressional Republicans. Among Trump’s voters, though, it’s less about cowardice than the inability to process information in a way that leads to wisdom. Which is the nicest way it can be put.

“Big Law continues to bend the knee to President Trump because they know they were wrong,” announced Trump’s pressbot Karoline Leavitt. About what? Providing constitutionally-protected counsel to people resisting a lawless government? What’s wrong is that, like several media organizations, those lawyers agreed to government bribery, which Pam Bondi will never prosecute.

Addressing Trump’s tariffs, but equally applicable to the mindset of relentless Trumpists, conservative writer David Brooks wrote, “... Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence...” 

Here, it doesn’t much matter how MAGAs vote. But they might have friends or relatives where it does. Or children or grandchildren who, as they seek to survive the wreckage of what once was, will wonder why their progenitors did nothing. They should internalize Sun Tzu’s warning, presaging Trump, "An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes." Then, recognizing their complicity in this evil and remembering what it means to be American, do something.

Not So Tariffic

 

For those paying attention, it’s old news: Trump’s devastating tariffs, like everything else he’s ever said or done, are based on lies. That they were allowed reflects the cowering fecklessness of Congressional Republicans, who, as in all things Trump, kneel before him (or is it behind?)

Our constitution gives tariffs to Congress, except, per a fairly recent law, in cases of national economic emergency. Which Trump declared. When the US was outpacing all other countries in a period of steady economic growth beginning when Joe Biden ran him out of office. The biggest lie, of course, is that tariffed countries pay.

His calculations for the amount of tariff applied have been greeted with laughter. Touting a formula leaving heads scratched and jaws dropped, later festooning it with symbols that changed nothing, he equated trade deficits to tariffs. But, whereas some countries have tariffs on American imports (Switzerland’s is about two percent, e.g.), that’s not the whole story.

Trade deficits exist because other countries make products Americans want at prices they like, while America makes fewer, reciprocally. Deficit is a misnomer. It’s commerce. Nor is it, as Trump says, a rip-off. They give us goods, we give them dollars. Should we not avail ourselves of better TVs?

Trump’s Commerce Secretary foresees tariffs allowing Americans to be the ones screwing tiny screws into iPhones. What other tiny delights await?  

There was no emergency. Trump has been fixated on deficits and tariffs since he was bankrupting casinos and scamming suckers. It’s his bumper-sticker understanding of economics and his desire to abuse power for its own sake. “Look what I did,” he must be saying, surveying the detritus of the world’s economies. “Trump. I did that!”

One thing he got right: White House toadies and Congressional weaklings immediately fell in line, even though most had previously decried tariffs, rightly, as dangerous and inflationary, causing expensive trade wars. Which, Trump hallucinated, are “easy to win.” Now, it’s “We need to suffer to make things right.” Well, not so much “we” as “you.” Millionaires and billionaires all, are they suffering? Perhaps we’ll learn, someday, how many sold their stocks before “Liberation Day.” 

Trump’s economic slaughter of the western world is exactly the quid to their quo that Russia expected from him, making well-spent their investments in his two elections. On Russian TV, they’re giddy. 

Back in the USSA, senseless, vindictive cutting continues. The National Weather Service will end its translations of weather warnings. Because who cares if “those” people are harmed? Not MAGAs. Trump (because, theoretically, Musk works for him, as opposed to reality) even fired the doctor at NIH who provided the unreleased Covid-19 treatment that saved his life when he was deathly ill. Gone, too, are cancer researchers, vaccine experts, and other medical leaders.

Trump’s impeachment backstop, J.D. Vance is lying Trumpically about their next target, Social Security. He's a liar among equals.

Announcing the end of American greatness, The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last ended with this: “We have a deeply stupid government . . . But also, we have the government we deserve. The American age is over. And it ended because the American people were no longer worthy of it.” 

Is he wrong? Maybe. Though far too few, half a million Americans gathered in cities across America to protest his trumpling of the Constitution, the cruelty, the flagitious destruction amok in Kingdom Trump. When big enough, protests still matter in what’s left of our democracy. After it was revealed that Trump’s vindictive, bicep-flexing DEI purge included removing Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad from the Parks Service website, the outrage led to reinstatement. But much of our important and teachable history remains gone. The not-white parts.

Outrage? How about the DOJ no longer investigating cryptocurrency fraud, now that Trump et ux have their own brand. Coincidence or contemptible corruption? Same with cuts to the IRS and the DOJ tax division. Live free and donate, prosperous tax-cheats.

Trump has expressed his shoot-‘em dislike of protestors, but, like all dictators, he loves military parades in his honor. Reportedly, he’s planning one for his birthday. A friend and I exchange topical limericks. Here’s mine on that subject:

 

“It’ll stretch out for over a mile, 

Some in bunches and some single file. 

The question they'll ask 

While marching on past 

Is “When’s the required Sieg Heil”?

First, The Lawyers

 

“The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers.” It’s safe to assume Trump is as unfamiliar with Shakespeare as he is with the Bible, but he’s taken that proposition to heart. His Mafia-style extortion of protection money from some of America’s largest and, until a few days ago, most respected law firms has been of a single purpose: to rob people who oppose him of legal representation. It’s working.

And it’s part of a larger plan to block all avenues of escape from his authoritarian takeover of America. Nor is it just lawyers: It’s the entire justice system. Through Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, he already controls the DOJ. Panegyric Pam refuses to investigate the perpetrators of that security breach by Trump’s unqualified and incompetent clowns at the DOD. And she just ended an ongoing lawsuit filed under President Biden that sought to overturn a Georgia voting restriction deemed specifically targeting Black voters. She called the lawsuit, not the law, “an attempt to divide us.” And Trump just fired career prosecutors who’d been looking into his or his friends’ crimes.

It doesn’t stop there, of course. Trump wants to be rid of all judges who rule against him; true to form, Holy Mike Johnson, who loves everything about America except for everything about it, proposed getting rid of courts altogether – the ones who stand for the law. JD Vance and Elon Musk have been calling for judicial impeachments since before Vance embarrassed his way to Greenland and Tesla stock tanked.

As to that Hegseth-inspired security breach, well, according to Trump’s congressional henchfolk, it wasn’t a breach at all. Trump’s MAGA-speak communication director, Steven Cheung, combined spin, gaslighting, and outright lying in his defense of it.

We’re witnessing not just the word-for-word implementation of every regressive goal of Christian nationalists’ Project 2025 – that thing that Trump has never heard of, the goal of which is to blow up government and keep the leftovers for themselves – but total rejection of the rule of law, domestic and international. KKKristi Noem’s photo-op in front of Venezuelan alleged criminals violated standards dictated by the Geneva Conventions, to which the US is (so far) party: “Prisoners may not be publicly exploited for purposes of propaganda.” But seeing those people, most of whom were already imprisoned here, shackled and sent off to a horrifying El Salvadorean gulag is too much enjoyed by MAGAmericans to ignore. So the White House produces videos of it.

Describing the asymmetric advantage held by authoritarians, Bill Kristol, former Republican operative and Chief of Staff for Dan Quayle (I know; but still...) wrote: “The authoritarians break the rules, and the liberals restore the rules. The authoritarians cheat, and the liberals try to play fair. The authoritarians enjoy their ill-gotten gains, and the liberals try to restore a level playing field for all.” As should be obvious to anyone not Foxomagafied, that’s what’s happening. (Lest conservatives take offense, Kristol’s use of “liberals” refers to the “ism,” not the party. People who oppose authoritarianism. Americans of old, which used to include Republicans.)

Among my “conservative” friends who love what’s going on, one is a professor at a prominent East Coast university who feels his career has been held back because he’s a white male. He’s glad that people he considers unfairly privileged whiners get their due from Trump, especially trans people, for some reason. Another is a retired Marine with whom I get along well as long as we don’t discuss politics. He loves seeing stuck-to libs, and, like Trump, who “couldn’t care less,” he finds the economy-crushing effects of Trump’s tariffs and tax cuts a reasonable price to pay for the pleasure.

For phony Christians like Holy Mike, it’s about ideology and a hall pass to Heaven. For Trump, who has no values, it’s about power for its own sake. And revenge against critics. Because he neither understands nor cares about American history, forcing the Smithsonian to rid itself of “anti-American ideology” (i.e., our history) is the perfect example. (tinyurl.com/by2smith)

Same with threats to universities for what he claims are weak protections against antisemitism, about which he cares even less. It’s power over “elitists” who never accepted him. For the same reason, he allowed President Musk to fire the FDA’s top vaccine scientist and to make drastic cuts to the Mine Safety and Health Administration. To Trump, the hurt he causes is irrelevant. Only his narcissistic psychopathology is.

In Trump’s America, people whose only crimes are expressing opinions, or who are falsely accused, are abducted off streets by masked government men, jailed or disappeared, without the due process our laws require, against judicial orders, and lied about. A government that does that, without resistance, will feel free to do it to anyone it chooses. People unafraid to speak out are accused of defending terrorists. It’s North Korea. It’s Tiananmen Square. If any Republicans care, they’re keeping it to themselves.

Government, MAGA Style

 

Away for most of the week, I managed only a column with disconnected slices of MAGA. Pardon my pejorism:

Trump is great at bullying the weak. For example, making Social Security applicants apply in person now, instead of online or by mail, as before. Other than Trump’s needy ego, who benefits? Other than cruelty for its own sake, what explains it? 

But when it's Vladimir Putin, it’s clear who’s the top. After that “great” phone call, for which Putin made him wait an hour, laughing it off when reminded of the time, Trump announced various promises Putin had made. Putin denied making them and proceeded to break them all.

Trump hates to be humiliated; he strikes back at lawyers and journalists and politicians who fail to tow to his cows. But when Putin did that, Trump obsequiesced. MAGAs don’t care. They loves them some Putin.

Trump turned the Rose Garden into a Tesla showroom. His commerce secretary urged Americans to buy Tesla stock. Both are illegal under the Hatch Act. With Pam Bondi in charge of the Department of Justice-For-Some, they know their lawbreaking, past, present, and future, will go unpunished. Lauded, more like.

Preferring to spend his non-golfing hours threatening all who challenge him, Trump’s governance consists mostly of turning it over to Elon Musk. The morally weak, like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, news media, and some universities, caved fast. So has a previously respected law firm, agreeing to “donate” $40 million worth of fees to avoid facing his corrupt Justice Department in court. He wants judges who aren’t like Aileen Cannon impeached. Americans who believe in our Constitution should be appalled and worried. This does not include MAGAs.

He’s withholding federal funds from Maine until its governor offers a “full-throated apology” for her public challenge to him. Cutting off funds, threatening suits; previous presidents were more mature and less thin-skinned.

RFK, Jr, the science-illiterate, conspiracy-promoting head-case in charge of the public health thanks to Trump, said the flu pandemic of 1918 was caused by the flu vaccine. Which wasn’t invented till 1948. He’s hardly the most unqualified person now in high places. But MAGAs don’t mind. Nor, we suppose, since they didn’t object to ending cancer research, do they care about his ending research into the health effects of climate change. You know: the hoax.

To justify deporting Venezuelans without the due process our laws demand, Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Then, after law-abiding outcry, he said he doesn’t know who signed the order. This, after pretending that Biden’s pardons wouldn’t count if they were signed with an autopen. But Trump’s communication director said Trump personally signed it, and his signature is on the document in the National Archives. Is Trump lying as usual, or so demented that he doesn’t remember? Was it an autopen? In any case, it demonstrates how untrustworthy and not in charge he is. The prison to which he’s sending the Venezuelans is notoriously cruel and fatal. Or, as Secretary of Statements Marco Rubio called it, “excellent.” 

Then there’s the shocking security breach, when top Trump officials included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic in a top-secret, illegal meeting about war plans. Never heard of it, said Trump, still not in charge. Just doing their job, said Holy Mike Johnson. Lies, said Pete Hegseth. Then The Atlantic published the entire thread, proving it. Truth? Accountability? Prosecution? Not in Trumpworld. “But her emails!!” 

Social Security: When is a cut not a cut? 

DEI is anathema to dictators. Diversity? Not if it means including non-sycophants. Equality? Threatening to the wealthy. Inclusion? Trump considers liberalism and a free press his enemies, to be banished, not included. DEI has become, like CRT before it, an intentionally triggering term aimed at MAGullibles, cooked up with digestible disinformation. Anyone having a job who’s not straight, white, male, and Christian is a “DEI” hire. Trump’s drunks and conspiracists excepted.

Ridding us of the DEI scourge demands expunging minority heroes from DOD records. Disappearing the atom-bomber Enola Gay. Removing a Native American from the story of Iwo Jima. Mentioning slavery only as job training. It’s as cowardly as it is dictatorial. 

The prescient words of Edmund Burke, 1770, apply: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

Taking Dictation

 

Two months in, Donald Trump is not acting like a dictator. He’s become one. He’s assumed every trait he’s admired in the world’s worst: capricious, insulting, boastful, striking at enemies perceived and real, threatening, suppressing art, banning words, hiding history, bullying, raving like a lunatic. Fulfilling dreams born of a life of failures masquerading, he knows, as success. Hurting the weak, to feel strong. Punishing people and places that show concern for racial and religious minorities, unwinding protections for Americans of different sexual orientation, gutting departments that serve people about whom he couldn’t care less, including his enstupened MAGAs – people and things he considers useful only as ways to flash see-me power.

NOAA and the National Weather Service? Cancer research? Promising more “clean” coal (which doesn’t exist) plants to stick it to “lunatic” environmentalists. Is it all retribution for when, as a shady businessman and social pretender in NYC, his peers ridiculed him? For which he made up by sexual predation?

But why such an ugly start to this column? Maybe because I’ve just returned from NYC, where my brother, intubated in an ICU and unresponsive, faces uncertain recovery. While there, news didn’t stop. Each day, already emotionally taut, brought a new outrage from Trump and his coven of unqualified but willingly subservient people. Plans to undo climate-related and pollution-preventing regulations, hurting everyone but his grateful bankrollers, who slather him with flattery. Attorney General Pam Bondi promising, enthusiastically, to weaponize her department for Trump. 

Trump calling non-slavish news organizations criminal. Overt attacks on free speech, ho-hummed by the “patriotic” right. Ten Senate Democrats caving to Republican budget blackmail; House Democrats stood firm against it, a plan that cut social spending, increased it for the Pentagon, and granted more power to Trump and Musk to do their worst. That’s what ugly is.

We picked a good time to be with my brother. As a physician, I could provide context and translation of his situation to my sister-in-law, whose strength has been stretched to its limits. Always an optimist, she imagines him returning home. I can’t, but it’s too soon to say.

The chance of America returning home, however, is less than my brother’s. Because of the unhealthy mind of one man (not counting supra-president Musk) in a position and disposition to destroy everything that makes America what it is, we’re in real trouble. It’s governance by intimidation. Trump must imagine himself alongside Hitler, Mussolini, Putin, Stalin, Kim Jong Un, Viktor Orban, Saddam Hussain; arm in arm, grinning his signature, plasticized thumbs-up. 

To whom can we turn to undo the madness? Cowardly and avaricious elected Republicans, whose party once eschewed authoritarianism, have forsaken America’s foundational principle of separation of powers. Once outraged by President Barack Obama’s executive orders, they’re now mum as the word at Trump’s, who, in his first four years, issued as many as President Obama did in eight. The pace, now, is furious. In both meanings. Including helping to curtail free speech around the world.

Every day, there’s something worse. Even as their rights disappear along with those of the people they hate, MAGA voters revel in it. Their sources of what passes for news blind them to the implications if Trump achieves the total control he desires, facilitated by surrender of those who could stop him. Right-side submission is already complete. From the left, podcasters and YouTubers are issuing fighting words; but words (like these here ones) aren’t action.

Courts? Trump’s control of them, personified by Aileen Cannon, isn’t yet total, but he’s filled them enough to make them unlikely rescuers. One brave judge just took a stand against Trump’s ominous use of an antique act for extralegal deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members. Forcing the ultimate showdown, he ordered planes carrying them to turn around. They didn’t. Trump continues deportations, ignoring judicial injunctions, attacking judges personally after being ordered to follow the law. Time was, Republicans would denounce such dictatorial lawlessness. Not MAGAs. They wished for a mad king and got one.

Until he retired, my brother was a nationally recognized lawyer. Despite Trump’s vindictive, okay-by-Republicans attacks on lawyers who dared to defy him, he’d have stood up, too. My dad was an appellate judge who scrupulously followed the law even when he disagreed with it, leaving legislating to legislators, unlike Trump’s Cannonade. Ironically, when my dad was in a similar medical situation to my brother’s, I was our family’s physician-guide for painful decisions. For my brother, it’ll be his wife’s and daughter’s role, for which I’m grateful.

Bereft of feck, Democratic leadership is useless. The Republican party has thrown in with global enemies and, worse, home-grown ones, the ones rising to Trump’s occasion, willingly, anti-constitutionally, turning every strand of government into a bullwhip in his hand. Unable to tell Reich from wrong, nearly half of Americans appear glad for Trump’s corrupt goose-step to despotism.

Once, I believed America could protect itself from that, and would.

DOGE Ball

 

When I was a surgical intern, we had a patient, a young girl, maybe eight years old, who’d had a severe infection in her leg, necessitating removing much of the skin of her thigh. Her bandages required regular changing; because of the pain and her young age, it was being done in the OR, under general anesthesia.

A new drug had just been approved, considered safe to use outside the OR, because it provided analgesia and anesthesia without suppressing breathing. We tried it, in her room. The dressing change proceeded without evident awareness or pain by the girl.

That was half a century ago, and I still can hear her fearful howl as she awoke, an unearthly wail, as if she’d been forced to look through open gates of Hell. It was horrifying. If she didn’t remember, it had to remain in her somewhere.

The drug was ketamine.

Elon Musk admits – brags of – using ketamine recreationally, frequently. The man supervising a post-adolescent team of tech nerds is canceling people and programs without applying anything close to cost/benefit analysis, firing thousands of government workers via boilerplate emails. The man claiming he’s uncovered massive fraud, without producing a single example, shows all the signs of ketamine abuse.

Quoting: “Frequent, heavy recreational use—say, several times a week—has been linked to cognitive effects that last beyond the high, including impaired memory, delusional thinking, superstitious beliefs, and a sense of specialness and importance...” Like barging into world politics, planning to colonize Mars, taking a chainsaw to US government. And calling Senator Mark Kelly, R-AZ, a traitor for supporting Ukraine. If, in his chemically-addled brain, Musk thinks he’s finding “waste, fraud, and abuse,” he’s not. It’s irrational, wholesale firings followed by serial re-hirings when the essential nature of the employees is realized.

Waste, fraud, and abuse exist in the federal government. In Trump’s administration, it’s everywhere. His golfing weekends waste millions of taxpayer dollars each time he takes one. DOGE itself is a fraud; so is his bitcoin scam. Abuse is the operating premise of Trump’s and Bondi’s DOJ. No one except Trump, who’s dismantling the means to investigate his own corruption, is against finding and weeding it out. But it wouldn’t be Musk’s version, which lacks meaningful scrutiny of targeted departments or the importance of their work.

Case in point: firing National Park and Forest Service workers. National parks add billions of dollars to the US economy. Maybe Elon doesn’t like trees or bison; but they more than pay for themselves. The daughter of a friend had her dream job as a park ranger, for which her education made her highly qualified. Her performance had received laudatory accolades. Yet she was fired via one of those impersonal, cruel emails, accusing her, without specifics, of poor performance and lack of qualifications. Clearly no one had bothered to look. Like most of the touted firings, it was seemingly only to impress impressionable MAGAs.

If Musk’s narcissistic grandiosity and lack of empathy (he considers it a weakness) might be drug-induced, Trump came by his honestly. Which is the only context in which that word can be applied to him. Nature or nurture, it’s who he’s always been. But, even notwithstanding his multiple business failures and scams, his current disastrous behavior beggars understanding.

Since re-assuming office, his domestic actions seem to have in common only “because I can.” After his empty praise of veterans, gutting the Veterans’ Administration is an unexpected example. Killing cancer research; censoring science; destroying the EPA and the Department of Education: those were expected, but no less disastrous and irrational. Promises to the contrary, it appears Medicaid is also on the block. Social Security, too? 

As to his on-again, off-again tariffs, the effects of which he’s never understood, were his “advisers” afraid to contradict him? Vengeful authoritarians have a way of throttling dissent. Example: The oft-professed holiness of Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House and God, would, you’d think, render him reluctant to lie as blatantly as he does. As the stock market continued its freefall, as prices rise and jobs disappear, Holy Mike shifted blame by saying it will take time to repair the damage caused by President Biden’s terrible economy. As if Trump’s bizarre bungling has nothing to do with it. As if historic job creation, unprecedented corporate profits, taming the pandemic, enormous stock market gains, and rebuilding rotting infrastructure equate to “terrible.” “Envy of the world,” people said. Because it was.

Gaslighting enough for a million hot-air balloons, Fox “news” is referring to the upcoming “Biden recession.”

When MAGA voters are convinced by Foxotrumpic disinformation that Trump is playing four-dimensional chess with our economy, when they prefer authoritarianism over democracy and are okay with weakening the US to the benefit of Russia, it’s hard to foresee a way out. If there were an obvious, brilliant plan behind all of this, stock markets would be rising, not tanking. Mismanagement does the opposite. 

Betrayal

 

From my never-ending reach for common ground comes a fact so incontrovertible that we'll all agree: under Trump, America has sided with Russia and others of our adversaries. Supporting facts: The Oval Office encounter with Volodymir Zelensky, in which both Trump and Vance attacked him aggressively and angrily. (That the ambush was pre-planned seems obvious; admittedly, that invites disagreement.) Also: the UN resolution that Russia was the aggressor when it invaded Ukraine. In voting "no," America joined Russia, China, Hungary, and fifteen other retro nations. Despite US opposition, the resolution passed overwhelmingly. Such is the respect for the US that Trump has engendered.

Those events occurred; on that much we agree. We can also agree, because it's true, that Russia was delighted with the Trump/Vance vituperation of the man leading a country bravely defending itself, under relentless, deadly siege. Reflecting the exhausting disconnect that now characterizes American politics, some see those events as disturbing, depressing, embarrassing, and indicative of the end of America standing for good in the world; for democracy, for morality, for generosity. They recall that, in getting Ukraine to relinquish its prodigious arsenal of nuclear weapons several years ago, America agreed to protect it thenceforth. They dislike seeing their country renege on such a critical commitment.

Others see it as peachy.

What happened is on record. The question is, is it good or bad? Putin is a ruthless dictator. He imprisons his political enemies, except when he has them killed. His unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is cruel and immoral, bombing shopping malls and hospitals, deliberately. Children's hospitals. Kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian children, removed to Russia for who-knows-what purpose? Either you revile Putin for those horrors or, like Trump, you admire him. Either you see him as a continuing threat to cyber security and election meddling, for another example, or, like Trump, you're fine with turning him loose.

Your choice: It's a free country. For how long it remains so depends, at least in part, on whether a voting majority of Americans finds siding with Russia good for our country and morally superior to helping Ukraine in its fight to maintain democracy and independence.

In response to a statement that we're witnessing the collapse of the American ideal, Garry Kasparov, Russian world chess champion and courageous critic of Russia, replied (paraphrasing), "We're not seeing the collapse of the American ideal; we're seeing its betrayal." It's a significant, if subtle, difference.

"Collapse" suggests it was inevitable; that our democratic republic was impermanent from its founding. "Betrayal" accurately implies it's been forsaken; in this case, by a man who never understood or valued American ideals. Though it depends on reasonably well-informed voters, democracy isn't intrinsically flawed. With its election lies and so much more, Trumpism is making it so. As rapidly as it's happening, it ought to be reversible, which is why Trump and his destructors are trying so hard to prevent its resurrection. By lies, dishonest media, vote suppression, and a weaponized DOJ. Plus a blatantly dishonest SOTU speech. During which, it must be said, the Democrats' response was stupid.

Trump sees the world not in terms of right and wrong, but whether transactions enrich himself: material; land; aggregation of wealth. Hotels in Gaza. Kingly tributes. Bitcoin. "You hold no cards," Trump bloated to President Zelensky. There's no clearer confirmation of who Trump is. For him, "cards" are tangible items of value. Such ephemera as being right, heroically defending against a brutal aggressor, undergoing horrendous sacrifices to save their country? To Trump, not playable cards.

Until a few weeks ago, the American ideal had meaning; was, at least in part, central to our international presence. It was reasonable to believe it had staying power. Instead, Republican leaders of all pronouns are praising Trump's and Vance's crude attack as courageous, great for America. Manly. They disparage President Zelensky as ungrateful, greedy, incompetent; lie that he's never thanked America, which he has, many times. But, unlike the adulators with whom Trump surrounds himself, the Ukrainian president refused to grovel.

Mirroring the counterfactual Trumpian claim that Ukraine started the war, Marco Rubio intoned, as his soul departed his body centripetally, that President Zelensky owed an apology for "antagonizing" Trump. Are there no MAGAs who find that outrageous, who recognize in that reality-reversing statement the disdain with which Trump and his osculators see their voters? "America First" is their second-biggest deception: For Trump, it means "Trump first, America last."

Here's another proposal on which we should agree. Let's judge Trump's and Musk's and their cabinet members' actions thus: Are they helping average Americans? Have they fortified America's standing and influence in the world? Conversely, to what extent are they benefitting Trump, Musk, polluters, and/or Putin but not the rest of us?

My answers: in no way; the opposite; a whole lot. Convincing arguments to the contrary welcomed. This might help. Or this. And this.

Conning The Conned

Notwithstanding its faults - slavery, native American genocide, Japanese internment, misogyny, persisting racism, favoring the wealthy, the Electoral College - I've always believed America was a respected and trustworthy force for good in the world. By votes of its people, it made efforts to correct those faults, showing the world that, unlike dictatorships, democracy's ills can be self-healing.

Trump's first election challenged those beliefs, but he'd lost the popular vote and, four years later, was rejected and ejected: beliefs restored. Then, despite January 6 and his election lies, threats, mishandling Covid-19, and promises to punish anyone who'd challenged him, he was elected again, though more votes were cast against than for him. Now, only weeks into his second term, Trump's America is, observably, no longer a force for good. Predictable from how he campaigned, America is siding with enemies, forsaking friends and the health of our planet. Once-true beliefs have become untenable. It's hard to take.

Amidst a brave war for democracy in a land murderously invaded by a dictator whose political opponents tend to become dead, America has switched sides. If it still existed, Trump would have us join the Warsaw Pact; his kind of people.

Knowing it can no longer count on us to stand for and protect freedom, the free world recoils. Trump's besotted party, which once condemned Russia's criminal dictator, now praises him. For reasons about which there's speculation but -- not yet -- no revelation, Trump has always done Putin's will. Confirming the obvious, Russian state television's Vladimir Soloviev just said it's "no coincidence" that, after his conversation with Putin, "the phrases [Trump] is saying are so deep and so correct. They are in total alignment with the way we see things."

MAGA is Trump's most dangerous con job. Pretending to make America "great," he's blinded millions of gulliblized voters from seeing that he's eliminating every aspect of its greatness, including standing for freedom around the world. People who've never understood or accepted the value of America's founding principles see what's happening and love it; trying to descale those eyes is wasted effort. But we're approaching the point at which the machinery to bring the world's greatest democracy back into being will have been dismantled forever. More people need to join those speaking out. The need isn't subtle.

Dictators have in common controlling all centers of power: first, the military and law enforcement, to make good on threats. Then the press, legislators, investigators, and judges. With no resistance from Republicans and willing capitulation by others, Trump is remaking all of those entities, purging people who've stood for the Constitution, replacing them with his most loyal sycophants, guaranteed to do his bidding. Which they already are. The latest example: selecting as FBI deputy director former Foxer and current right-wing screamer Dan Bongino, who describes himself as "all about owning the libs." For MAGAs, that's all a resumé needs.

Thanks to America's most hypocritical senator, Trump has our Supreme Court mostly in hand, too. And he's been removing from office everyone whose job it is to keep the government from illegal overreach. JAGs, there to keep the military within legal constraints; inspectors general, ethics overseers, and US Attorneys who'd been investigating him. Moving us further toward autocracy comes his delusional executive order granting interpretation of laws only to himself and his Attorney Genuflector. In their silence, Republicans, other than Alaska's Senator Murkowski, have purged themselves. 

MAGAs hear Trump refer to himself as "the King," see the White House officially picturing him wearing a crown and rejoice. "Command us, Your Majesty. We believe your promises, even as they go unfulfilled. Attack those we fear or hate and we'll ignore the harm you're doing, including to ourselves." (Sick, but not sic.)

Ironically, the victim of the biggest con of all is Trump. The Project 2025 creators he's hired have convinced him he's in charge, encouraging his monarchical madness. Meanwhile, they're getting him to implement their true agenda: erasing the vision of America's founders, in which they've never believed, that individual freedom, defended by the law and by separation of powers, should be paramount in a democratic republic; that ultimate power resides with the people.

It's starting to feel like this: Following Project 2025 page by page, the Projectors are securing their anti-American dream of a Christian Nationalist theocracy, by and for only straight, white, native-born, wealthy males; limiting the vote, if they could, only to them. So certain they were of Trump's malleability, they published their plan pre-election. With no pushback from them, free to use the presidency as an ego-fondling, tribute-providing ATM, Trump ceded to them the real power. Especially Elon Musk: boastfully, recklessly ruining lives, barely denting the federal budget, lying about reasons and results; convincing MAGAs they're seeing patriotism at work. 

Time is short. Watch this speech by Illinois Governor Pritzker. Its truths are self-evident, its warnings a cri du couer. Stay for what begins at 4.00.