Here’s the story you’re being told:
Elon Musk and his crew of techno-bros are running roughshod through the government, firing thousands of civil servants left and right in an effort to cut $1.5 trillion from the budget.
The $1.5 trillion cut (primarily in social services for lower-income Americans) is the only way to finance the massive tax cuts Republicans want. These Republican tax cuts are aimed almost entirely at the richest among us, while the rest of us will pay more.
So it’s all about tax cuts for the rich versus benefits for the rest of us, right?
Wrong.
Yes, that tax vs. benefits part is true… but that’s only part of the story. And it’s arguably the least important part. If Trump/Musk really cared about the budget, they certainly wouldn’t be cutting the IRS, which is the biggest moneymaker in history. Despite being drastically underfunded and understaffed (according to experts), the IRS collected nearly $4.7 trillion in 2023 on a budget of $12.3 billion.
That’s a 382% return on investment. Yearly. Compare that with your Tesla stock. So the idea that all of this cutting is about saving taxpayer funds… is pure bullshit.
It’s about something larger – much larger.
Anyone who’s crossed swords with Trump knows that it’s not sufficient for him to merely win the negotiation. That’s not enough. He needs to humiliate the other side, and the more he can make them grovel, the more he gets off. This is sadistic, psychopathic behavior, but it’s straight out of the authoritarian playbook.
Trump has used ritual humiliation to make the GOP his personal tool, and the list of Republicans he has mocked publicly is long. In classic autocratic tradition, the more submissive Republican elites are with Trump — supporting him through impeachments, indictments and a coup attempt that sent them running for their lives — the more he openly scorns them, losing few opportunities to cut them down.1
This dovetails perfectly with what America’s extreme right-wing has wanted for years:
A permanent, subservient underclass that has no political power, no rights and who can be easily controlled.
That’s the right-wing dream. And if it sounds like the plantation to you, well, you’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s happening right in front of our eyes. Trump is using every possible opportunity to humiliate anyone and everyone who might even consider standing against him. It’s only a matter of time before Trump openly defies the judiciary, just like one of his idols, Andrew Jackson did. Jackson’s forced migration of the Cherokee in open defiance of court rulings was known as the “Trail of Tears,” and it killed thousands of defenseless, innocent Native Americans who did nothing more than live as they had been living for centuries.
Andrew Jackson is one of Trump’s heroes. In fact, one of the first things Trump did upon taking office was to hang Jackson’s portrait in the Oval Office. ‘Nuff said.
It’s not about tax cuts for billionaires, people. That’s just a sideshow. It’s about obedience. And the cruelty is the point.
Chekov’s Gun
“Chekov’s Gun” is a narrative storytelling principle. It basically says that in a play, if you see a gun on the table, you know it’s going to be used later in the story.
The Trump military purge in last week’s so-called “Friday Night Massacre” is the political equivalent of Chekov’s gun. Trump is laying it right out there on the table for all to see. And if you’re in doubt as to what his intentions are, note that Trump had Hegseth fire the military lawyers who might have been potential “roadblocks’ to his (presumably unconstitutional) orders. Done and dusted.
So if this is all about tax cuts for billionaires and “waste, fraud and abuse,” why is Trump in such a rush to set himself up as a dictator? What do you think?
Face it: Trump will use the gun. It’s all over but for the shouting. It’s just a matter of when. He will not take no for an answer; he will do exactly what he wants regardless of what anybody says or does. With the military backing him up, the courts won’t stop him. Congress won’t stop him. People in the streets won’t stop him. There are no meaningful limits on his sick, twisted, sadistic, ignorant, vengeful mind. Trump now has the potential to rival Hitler, Stalin or Putin when it comes being the worst of the worst, but Trump also has the best military in history at his disposal, as well as a nuclear arsenal that could destroy the world.
But Trump is not a strongman. In fact, he’s anything but. Lacking the courage to fire people face-to-face, Trump fired people in his first term by sending them a memo, tweeting it out or even announcing the firing on live TV without even having spoken beforehand to the person he was letting go. In truth, like so many bullies, he’s really a coward.
So the people to really worry about are the people Trump has do his dirty work for him, people like Stephen Miller, now Trump’s Assistant Chief of Staff. Miller was the mastermind behind Trump’s inhuman family separation policy, with as many as 1,000 children still separated from their families as of today.
Hitler did not run the death camps; he left that to others. And Hitler’s cronies fell all over each other in trying to outdo each other in monstrous cruelty, all in the service of Der Führer.
Likewise, Trump has surrounded himself with sadistic, corrupt incompetents who have sworn loyalty to him and only him. Where it will end is anyone’s guess, but the last time, it took a World War and the combined efforts of the Allies to bring Nazi Germany to heel.
This time, there isn’t anyone who could stop the US. China and Russia are loving every minute of America’s descent into fascism, and the European Union has other things to worry about.
A fascist US led by an unstable nuclear-armed tyrant bent on world domination should scare the living shit out of everyone on the planet. But Republicans are just fine with it. They think they’ll be spared. Good luck with that.
The only people who could stop Trump are Putin, Musk and Trump’s other right-wing cronies who have hitched their star to his. They could make him an offer he couldn’t refuse… over a nice cup of Polonium tea. Now that Trump has done their dirty work in destroying American democracy, my best guess is that one way or another, they’ll eventually force Trump to walk the plank and install Vance, who can run for president in 2028 without the mess Trump would create by trying to make himself president for life.
Democracy gone. Problem solved.
The 2026 Elections
So, it’s now all about 2026, right? The Senate is probably a bridge too far (see here), but with the GOP holding such a slim majority in the House, Democrats should be able to flip it, correct?
Well, I don’t mean to be a wet blanket here, but the current two-seat edge Republicans currently hold will likely increase to five after special elections are held. So for 2026, just imagine what millions of dollars in unregulated Republican campaign contributions can do. And then there’s the right-wing media ecosystem. Musk and Fox News could make Mother Teresa look like Jeffrey Dahmer, so smearing any Democrat who looks like he/she might win an election is child’s play.
But in fact, the fix is probably already in. If you think I’m exaggerating, read this.
Now throw in a few discreet threats of violence against promising Democratic candidates – and their families – and you’re really in business. I mean, who you gonna call when you get a not-so-friendly visit from the thugs. The FBI?
In truth, though, Trump wouldn’t even have to work that hard to eliminate his political opponents. He could just have them assassinated.
“What?” you ask. Oh, yes. In probably the most fucked-up Supreme Court ruling ever (out of many fucked-up Supreme Court rulings), five justices ruled that Trump could – legally – assassinate his political rivals if he wanted to. I kid you not.
So if push comes to shove, perhaps Trump will pay homage to his idol Vladimir Putin and have a few people shoved out of windows himself. It would all look like accidents, of course, and the already-cowed press wouldn’t be allowed to get too curious. In fact, you might not even hear about it in the media at all. But to those who matter, the message will be clear as day.
You don’t think Trump would stoop to having people killed? Really? Frankly, I think he’s salivating at the thought. Give it time.
Game it out, people. And then ask yourself why the mainstream media isn’t connecting the dots. But I think you already know the answer.
It’s because the media knows they’re next. Here’s why:
Accurate reporting on the economic fallout from Trump’s policies will tank the stock market. And Trump can’t have that. The media is already bending the knee, but this is where the irresistible force will meet the immovable object – something will have to give. In a financial downturn, you can have upbeat economic news or you can have accurate reporting… but you can’t have both.
Trump will try to keep up the pretense up of a booming economy for as long as he can by fudging government statistics (amongst other things), but the financial community will see through it before long. And the markets will react.
That’s when all hell breaks loose.
And that will be the excuse the right-wing has been waiting for to step in and take control… permanently. After suffering through the reign of the idiot baby-man in the White House, a grateful nation may well gladly welcome their new oligarch overlords. All hail President Vance.
And bye-bye American Democracy. It’s been nice knowin’ ya.
That’s what it’s really all about. You heard it here first.
The only possible way out of it – and it’s a long shot – is a complete reimagining of the Democratic Party, who is completely clueless both as to what’s really going on and what to do about it.
But that’s another subject for another time…
