Abby Zimet
In this
so-called holiday season, welcome to America's "Mump regime,"
governance of, by and for the oligarchs in which an erratic unelected white
supremacist gazillionaire whose new hobby is buying presidents is cosplaying as
shadow president to cash in - and fuck kids with cancer - alongside a senile
grifter selling everything in sight: Bibles, sneakers, perfume, hotels, cabinet
seats, diplomatic posts and democracy itself. Beware: Just to be clear,
"We now have a criminal enterprise, not a government."
With the tsunami
of dark money and corporate coercion engulfing our politics, it's unsurprising
that ever-mercenary-president-elect-in-name-only Trump is assembling the
richest administration in history, or what Jeff Tiedrich calls "a
fucktangle of oligarchs (named) to his Confederacy of Sewer Clowns." So
far, there are 13 billionaires; of course they include Space Nazi Musk, the
richest man in the world, and biotech kingpin Vivek Ramaswamy, who've been
tasked with "improving the efficiency of government" by running it
like a pitiless business and gutting vital services for millions of
non-billionaires - food, heat, health care, education - in the name of brutal
profit and an imaginary mandate to launch "a hostile takeover" of
government “on behalf of the American people.” So much for Trump's garbled
"voice" of a working class - the rent is too damn high! - struggling
to buy gas, eggs, bacon, butter, and other basics (let's get real) foreign to a
guy who's likely never stepped foot in a grocery store.
Because all he
really wants to do is help rich fat cats get richer and fatter, they're
flocking to gilded Mar-A- Hell-Go to kiss his gaudy ring, homage (albeit fake)
the thin-skinned, unloved son of a tyrant is relishing: "Everyone wants to
be my friend." The latest is Jeff Bezos, whose flagrant fawning so mirrors
Musk's thatJimmy Fallon posited, “To settle who he loves more, Elon and Bezos
are going to put Trump down in the middle of the room and see who he goes to
first: ‘All right, here boy!’" But Musk is clearly more central, and in
many ways more scary: A likely illegal alien and white supremacist who grew up
in apartheid South Africa, made a fortune from a car that kills twice as many
people as the industry average, and though foreign-born found a way to power by
giving a useful idiot $277 million to become his puppet master. A good
investment: Since the election, Musk has made $170 billion, most from Tesla and
SpaceX investors eager to see him end all those pesky safety and labor rules
that cut into profits.
Buying Trump was
so profitable Never-Elected Pres. Musk is already malevolently branching out.
He's threatening people in Congress, including "jackass" moderates of
both parties, with unseating them by throwing money at potential primary opponents
if they dare to disagree with him. Governing by threat, tweet and financial
heft comes so easily to the guy who quickly turned Twitter into a
bigot-invested haven for hate akin to "a Munich beer hall hall in
1933" that he's even telling Germans how to vote - for Nazis. "Only
the AFD can save Germany," he posted in defense of anti-immigrant fascists
who want to purify Europe by casting out people it considers lesser, if not
subhuman. Weirdly, he did it on the same day 100 years ago Hitler was released
from a Bavarian prison, and the New York Timesdeclared him a
"tamed...sadder and wiser man" than when he'd tried to overthrow the
government. "No longer to be feared," they added, "it is
believed he will retire to private life and return to Austria, the country of
his birth."
Cartoon
by Mike Lukovich for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Of course the
Space Nazi isn't just meddling in Germany's politics. Last week, utilizing what
Adam Kinzinger called "all President Musk's vast government
experience," he tried to kill a painstakingly forged bipartisan spending
bill to keep the federal government running, something he admitted he has zero
interest in 'cause how cool to just blow up everything and see what happens?
Slamming the spending package as "one of the worst bills ever
written" while offering no reason for the claim, he offered up his Very
Important Opinion in over 100 posts, seemingly oblivious to its possible
impact: hundreds of thousands of federal employees working without pay at
Christmas, and oh yeah potentially eliminating funding for pediatric cancer
research. Scott Fitzgerald on The Great Gatsby's Tom and Daisy: "They were
careless people. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back
into their money or their vast carelessness (and) let other people clean up the
mess they had made."
In the end,
relative if desperate reason prevailed, Congress cobbled together a stopgap
compromise bill, and Shadow President Musk outmaneuvered Trump, who likely
never knew it. Trump, who had mostly just demanded the debt ceiling be raised
(again) so he could fund tax cuts for his plutocrat pals, got nothing. The
world's richest economic vampire, having been given "free rein to
clownfuck America's government," got much of what he wanted, including
killing reforms to bring down drug prices and restrictions on U.S. investments
in China, where he has massive investments and his sordid bottom line
"depends on staying in China’s good graces." The idea of making him
pay his fair share of taxes out of his billions to help with a soaring debt
somehow never came up, and funding for kids with cancer still got stripped,
because fuck kids with cancer. The online response from a righteous father
whose daughter is a Stage 4 liver cancer survivor: "Fuck these ghouls to
the lowest depths of hell."
The messy tussle
over the usually straightforward task of keeping Congress running serves as
both a harbinger of the mayhem awaiting us as a GOP clown car of fools and
hacks try to run the government, and a reflection of a surreal historic moment
when, for instance, we kinda have three presidents, and will for a while: In a
recent poll asking voters who, in authority if not title, will be president
starting Jan. 20, Musk got 57%, Putin got 30%, and Trump got 8%. "How to
call this thing that is coming to America in a month?" asks Timothy
Snyder, author of On Tyranny. Snyder came up with the "Mump regime" -
apt because it hints of illness - also "Trumpomuskovia" and "the
pro-polio party." And while Trump aides are furiously insisting to media
he's still the boss, many others have noticed "what Musk thinks tends to
eventually be what Trump thinks" and argue, "If you have to explain,
you're losing." Thus did the Lincoln Project, deciding "the (First)
lady doth protest too much," salute "Vice-President Trump."
To be clear:
Vice President Trump is no more coherent than convicted felon, adjudicated
rapist, and candidate Trump; aka, "Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants is
deteriorating by the day." In his hallucinatory first post-election
interview with Meet the Press, he raved, babbled, lied, made up stuff:
"We're going to do something with the border, very strong, very
powerful...Our country is a crime pod....I saved Obamacare" (Welker: You
tried to kill it, sir)...(After harassing the president of Mexico) I called the
border and said, ‘How’s the border looking?’ They said, ‘There’s nobody here.’
They couldn’t believe it..." His 2nd grade report on watching one of Elno
Skum's rockets: "It's coming down so fast...Then all of a sudden the jets
go on....Then it's almost stopped it...I said, what the hell's going on? Nobody
ever saw this before." In a Sunday speech on smoke backstage: "I
said, Hey, are there any steps in front of me? I don't want to go. I go down.
That would not be good. We don't want to do nice and slow. But I just want to
thank you."
But demented or
no, grifters gotta grift - especially with a half-billion bucks in legal debts
- so he's still hawking crap. Some are hefty gigs: Loathsome spawn Eric was
just in Abu Dhabi at a Bitcoin confab to peddle their new crypto venture, en
route to two $7.5 billion luxury hotel deals in Saudi Arabia, bone-saws
notwithstanding. Following a long tawdry trail of failed Trump steaks, water,
vodka, casinos, digital trading cards - "It’s your favorite president with
some exciting news" - $1,500 guitars, $900 to $100,000 watches, $400
"Never Surrender" gold sneakers, "Fight Fight Fight"
cologne - "It's not just a scent, it's a statement" - he's returned
to flogging his sticky-paged, made-in-China God Bless the USA and Lee Greenwood
Bible - with Jesus' words in red! - like the 3 a.m. shift at Home Shopping
Network to celebrate his own miraculous election. "Faith is coming back to
America, and FAST!" he proclaims. "The perfect gift for this
Christmas." Just $59.99, autographed for $1,000. Get yours today!
And if not a
Bible, how about Panama? Or Greenland? Having threatened to turn Canada into
our 51st state, Trump just randomly decreed Panama reduce its
"ridiculous" fees for the Canal or the U.S. will reclaim it "in
full, and without question." In a post clearly written by someone else -
it used "magnanimous" - he charged Jimmy Carter "foolishly gave
it away for One Dollar" (wrong again) and the U.S. can't let it "fall
into the wrong hands," like China's. When Panama's president insisted the
Canal belongs to them, Trump turned middle-school bully with, "We'll see
about that!" and a picture of a U.S. flag over the Canal. Like King Kong
beating his chest, then he abruptly returned his feeble attention to Greenland,
demanding Denmark sell it to America because "ownership and control of
Greenland is an absolute necessity" for "National Security and
Freedom throughout the World." So a fragile "President
Juice-Box" goes all Imperialist tantrum and vows to annex other countries
to prove his manliness: Haven't we seen this before?
White
House staff bring dinner to President Musk- Image from meme on Bluesky
To many, the
preternaturally thin-skinned Trump's flailing and posing seem inspired by his
crush on and insecurity before a younger, richer, thinner, brasher, crueler,
more articulate, more government-subsidized, more skillfully manipulative, more
viciously cost-cutting, better-dancing and did we say way richer diva and alpha
dog with even more staggering conflicts of interest who sure seems to be
calling the dubious shots. And he has rockets! Oh no, are people laughing at
him, his most dreaded nightmare? Social media is on it with a flood of memes,
mash-ups, cartoons, titles. Trump is President Musk's First Lady,
vice-president, chief-of-staff, mascot, fan-boy, dupe on bended knee. None of
that tearful groveling, "Sir, sir, how do you do it, sir?" Rumor has
it the richest oligarch in the world might even buy Mar-A-Lago, at a
fire-sale-price from the aging Art of the Deal buffoon, so he can launch
freebie rockets from there while fueling bigotry online. One sage: "We
were all afraid Trump was the next Hitler, but it's Musk."
There's so much
speculation about who's running the malevolent circus that a tweet circulated
last week of Trump clarifying, "I am the president-elect"; he's
grateful for Musk's help, but "time to stay in your lane." It was
fake, but he's rattled enough by Musk's soaring profile he did speak up Sunday
at Turning Point's lunatic Gathering of the MAGAlos. Monotonically drugged, he
lauded Musk for his future efficient cutting of pediatric cancer research
before adding, "No, he's not taking the president" (sic). Whipping
out his imaginary accordion, he cited the "new hoax" he'd ceded the
presidency to Musk. "No-o, that's not happening...I can tell you," he
said to silence from the crowd. "And I'm safe. You know why? He can't - he
wasn't born in this country. Ha ha ha!" Yeah, totally normal. To confirm
that, it seems we're to call Mar-A-Lago at 561-832-2600 and ask to speak to
President Musk. Another good, normal action: Write to Vice President Donald
Trump at 1100 S. Ocean Blvd, Palm Beach, FL 33480 asking him how to get tickets
to President Musk’s inauguration. It'll be America's shining hour.
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