Imagine if you will, a president inwardly resonating a tranquil bliss, godlike, situated in lotus posture aloft the White House, his eyes closed and directing the chaotic turbulence below through his celestial powers. I hope that picture brings relief -- however brief. When my rational mind shuts down, I find fanciful escape hatches like this for entertainment. Lucky you.
To buy into this image, you must extend yourself to believe, as I have not, that Trump has available to him a level of being that transcends the pain and turmoil below. That his Cinderella eventually gets the prince and that his Dorothy awakens from the nightmare to find a loving family. At scarcely 11 weeks into this term, can you make any sense of the foreboding signs?
I read over the numbers cross-eyed: 140,000 terminated federal employees (plus their families) and counting. This equates to just under $15 billion in payroll cuts. Nothing yet to get excited about because that number is virtually invisible on Musk’s radar; his overall goal is a trillion in budget cuts. Lest we entangle ourselves in moral dilemmas, I won’t mention the $750 million we collectively fork out for a single B-21 Raider stealth bomber -- nearly a 100 of them are on the DoD’s wish list.
Cornell law professor Bob Hockett isn’t buying into the fairy tale ending either: “They are rapidly turning the government into something more like a shareholder-controlled corporation … the whole point of the public sector is to provide essential human goods without being constrained by shareholder profit demand.”
Our friends who brought us social media and AI are our government’s venerable shareholders. About 60% of Musk’s DOGE sword-wielding operatives are made up of his private sector employees (and most of those from SpaceX) along with his Silicon Valley techno-oligarch buddies. Zuckerberg, Bezos and Nadella did not attend the inauguration to be cocktail waiters. A “radical meritocracy” is their preferred spin on this corporate takeover of government.
As hundreds of government-owned buildings are going up for sale and federal lands are being earmarked for private development, Musk is mass emailing the rabbits who have burrowed deep into their holes: “What have you done in the last week?” he demands. The courts are not amused and largely not on board with the boardroom takeover of the federal government. Two dozen lawsuits have been filed while Musk is feeding “USAID into the wood chipper.” A bevy of conservative lawyers have never been busier as part of the DOGE team.
On the theme of burrowing into holes, there is a venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, funded by the CIA, that in microcosm serves a handy template for direct public-financed capitalism. Over $500 million funneled directly to hundreds of startup companies that produce security and spy technology for Homeland Security, hence the James Bond “Q” from the British Secret Service arm of the same name. This serves Musk well as the business model to apply to USAID’s $40 billion budget -- after the wood chipper is turned off.
While reciting mantras from above, what does his vision actually look like down below? Do the peasants wake up from their slumber to find fields of marigolds and tulips outside their windows? Does the noble class of billionaires share the champagne? Do people care for one another in community and extend their sense of the sacred to all of nature?
The questions themselves are delusional, but that is what desperation does, it throws up far-fetched realities. We don’t have to wonder. Peter Turchin’s insightful study in his book "End Times" takes an historical look at the ingredients of societal collapse. The elites at the top society square off, they compete for fewer and fewer positions of power and wealth while the immiseration of the masses intensifies. The republican values of civic virtue, the sovereignty of individual citizens as the source of all authority, are swept aside.
The acting U.S. president briefly interrupts his meditation to call for the impeachment and defunding of “lunatic” judges. No, we need not wonder.
Along with the careers that Musk is tossing into the wood chipper, he is also sifting through government contracts he deems wasteful and tosses them in as well. One such gem is a $1.6 million DEI contract aimed at developing “strategies for implementing social emotional learning.” Far better than canceling this contract, amend it so that its intended audience are the president and his cabinet.
After years of globetrotting, Broadman finds himself writing from his perch on the Palouse and loving the view. His policy briefs can be found at US Resist News: https://www.usresistnews.org.
