The Madness of King Don

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."
-Mark Twain

I heartily endorse Sam Clemens' sentiments with only one caveat. What if your government no longer needs your support? What if you have a "co-equal" branch of government populated with craven and timorous , and sometimes simply dumb, invertebrates who, along with a minority but adulatory portion of the populace, will echo and defend even the most fatuous and dopey ideas emanating from your leader's pie hole?

What if we are living through a version of the brilliant play and film, "The Madness of King George" minus the thinking man's sex symbol, Helen Mirren in her prime?

In just two months, we have seen anyone with brown skin, bad guy or not, dragged away to a hell hole prison in El Salvador, where they can provide a backdrop for some glorified TikTok video by our Homeland Security spokesmodel Kristi Noem, and her tight shirt and $50,000 Rolex.

And let's add to that, any legal, foreign student with a funny name who has the temerity to speak out on a political subject, you know, like any other student. Just say you're not a fan of Bibi and you get a free ticket to a lovely high security facility in sunny Louisiana.

And then, he wants to bring back statues of known traitors to the country and take control of the arts and schools to push a version of history and theater that is 'suitable for all audiences.' No parental guidance, or guilt required.

The Federal Communications Commission is now threatening Disney over DEI claims, I guess for that black mermaid or something.

And of course, a ketamine-addled billionaire is in charge of a posse filled with Clearasil-infused subadults, deciding the fate of the governing structure of the richest republic in history.

They really call middle-aged, very experienced professionals into the office they also sleep in, and demand they justify themselves. And then like some puerile Nero they give a thumbs up or down on a person's career.

The thumbs down, by the way, have been followed by some immediate re-hirings as the kids didn't know what they were doing. The savings they are claiming are a fantasy and not backed by any real evidence. "Trust us," says the unelected, South African trust fund immigrant, who grew up rich during apartheid and bought the right companies at the right time and is thus dubbed a genius.

That next company will apparently be run by his growing assemblage of children by several women.

Eager acolytes like our Texas Governor and doltish Lt. Governor are saluting smartly and marching, well sort of, in step.

School vouchers will no doubt become law and put an incredible strain on the public school system they don't like in the first place. They will benefit the wealthy and make it even tougher for the average kid to get an educational leg up. But hey, the world will always need plumbers, mechanics, and lawn guys, since the immigrant lawn guys will all be gone. And of course, we'll keep sending reluctant troops to the border.

And let me pause in my screed to acknowledge that the flow of illegal immigrants on the border has indeed been reduced to a trickle. We didn't do it alone, of course, and notice it didn't require a wall of any sort. But the influx has been reduced tremendously and that was indeed one of Trump's goals.

We have had hearings on Public Broadcasting, chaired by the woman who always wants to be the centaur of attention, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. They were completely predictable and painted PBS and NPR as agents of Satan, brainwashing kids and adults with one-sided propaganda.

Now, having a commute worthy of ancient Hebrews in the Sinai, I listen to a lot of NPR and you know the phrase I most often hear after an interview with some current or former Democrat?

"NPR contacted the Secretary/Senator/party representative, but have not gotten a response."

If you want your voice heard, your point of view represented, take the effing phone call and say "Yes, what time?"

The new "Attorney General/MAGA PR" person Pam Bondi, has not done an interview with any TV outlet except Fox since taking the job, despite numerous invitations.

But these hearings were tiresomely familiar, confirming to me that Marj is simply a one-trick pony.

Now, you might be wondering. "We voted for this guy because the lingering inflation from the pandemic was still bad and we need to get the economy back in shape." OK.

But did you vote to break up NATO? Did you vote to forcibly, if necessary, take over Greenland and the Panama Canal? And, by the by, if Greenland is "essential for our national security" as Trump says, how in the world did we survive and win the Cold War without it?

'Did you vote to alienate our two biggest trading partners, with infantile insults and tariffs? Did you vote for thought police watching over every campus and TV station? Did you vote to cut money for farmers, kid's school lunches, food stamps for single moms and college loans? Did you vote to increase the price of cars and TV's?

Did you vote for a tariff-triggered recession, for crying out loud?

Well, that's what you're getting, along with perhaps an end to the VA, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

We also have an administration for whom "Rule of Law" is an antiquated and quaint notion, easily ignored. Don't like a judge's ruling? Impeach them. If a law firm represents someone who opposes you, punish them.

If your team screws up and talks about an impending attack on an open messaging app, ignore and defend their amateur-hour shenanigans. And of course, don't investigate the monumental screw-up. Or as the Onion put it...

Did a loon with a famous name lead the charge to make people hate actual medicine? Make that nutter head of HHS just as a measles outbreak is happening. We have plenty of cod liver oil.

So, the question that occurs to me is, why? I know about the monster tax break, primarily for the wealthy, and I know about Musk's self-enrichment by sending government contracts his way because he has access his competitors don't.

But really, why is this happening?

Two reasons, really. Firstly, Project 2025.

The reduction of our federal government, which is the way it is thanks to a 250 year rolling referendum of the American people, has long been a goal of certain Shiite Libertarians for years.

Grover Norquist, who founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 at the urging of President Reagan, declared in 2001:

“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

In one of Professor Heather Cox Richardson's typically brilliant essays, she points out...

Far from saving money for the United States, as Jacob Bogage at the Washington Post reported on March 22, billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” has cost the government $500 billion, 10% of what the Internal Revenue Service took in last year. Bogage reports that the administration has demolished the IRS, firing nearly 20,000 employees, especially in the divisions that focus on enforcement, and dropping investigations of corporations and the richest taxpayers. Officials project that these changes will result in more tax evasion, and they are expecting a sharp drop in tax revenue this spring.

In fact, the US has spent more this year than the Biden folks spent by this time last year. And the market is imploding, inflation is on the way back, and consumer optimism is the worst it's been in 12 years.

In a televised Cabinet meeting on Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she planned to “eliminate FEMA,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency that responds to national emergencies like hurricanes.

Good luck to my old friends in Houston this hurricane season.

Trump is smart though in one way that King George wasn't. He picked things, immigrants, liberals, PBS, that a lot of people dislike. And he is dealing with them with Executive Orders, not using his rubber stamp congressional majority. The orders are like royal edicts.

Which brings me to the second reason. Authoritarians are in, man.

Trump and Putin are currently dividing up Ukraine so we get the rare earth minerals, Vlad gets his Lebensraum or living space, to translate from the original German, and Zelenskyy gets a one way ticket to, I don't know, Paris, I guess.

Then there are all the strongmen running countries these days. China’s Xi Jinping, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Belarus’ Aleksandr Lukashenko, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, India’s Narendra Modi, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Myanmar’s Min Aung Hlaing and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, to start a partial list.

Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel has started the Hamas war again and according to experts quoted in the New Yorker...

Netanyahu coalition’s transparent concern is an old one: to advance annexation and sustain theocracy—and to preëmpt, respectively, Palestinian independence and Israeli liberalism.

“Establishing a religious autocracy on the ruins of Israel’s already battered democracy has always been and remains the government’s primary mission,” the Haaretz editor Aluf Benn wrote, earlier this month. The government is now “approaching this task anew,” but, this time, it is “facing less protest and a weaker opposition.”

The hostages, and the Israeli justice system will pay the price for this.

Then there is this guy in Argentina, Javier Milei, who gave Musk the giant chainsaw to play with at a recent Nuremberg Rally...

I'm sure I've missed something, and after another glass of wine, I'll probably think of it. In the meantime, keep your voter registration current, and double-check to see if the Social Security website is down again.

I can't imagine why that keeps happening.