The Center Cannot Hold

 We are in Yeats' poem more than ever.

Things fall apart
The center cannot hold

As Paul Krugman points out, business leaders and markets are skittish because Trump is talking crazed nonsense, and he might actually mean it. A scary sample passage:

Most alarming of all, if it’s real: People within the administration appear to be floating the idea of restructuring U.S. debt via a “Mar-a-Lago Accord” that would force investors holding Treasury bills — short-term debt — to exchange them for 100-year bonds. This would effectively be a default on U.S. debt. Since the whole world financial system rests on the perceived safety of U.S. Treasuries, which are universally accepted as collateral for many transactions, such a move would threaten global economic chaos. But is the administration serious about this idea? Nobody knows.

How can a country careen from insane idea to insane idea and not fracture? How can bad idea pile upon bad idea and not crumble? 

At the root of populism and its fatal flaw is the antagonism towards expertise and  education. The problem is, we have created a world that relies on expertise and education and the batshit insanity that seems to buffet the government daily (thousands of staffer cut from Social Security!) means that there will come a moment when things really break open. We already have a dead child from measles. If Social Security checks don't come out, because Musk broke the whole thing in the name of efficiency, then shit will get very real and very painful very quickly.

The thing that gives me pause - because I've always been OK with the "find out" portion of FAFO - is how we will be able to put stuff back together with that bloated orange gasbag infesting the White House for four more years.

Huge If True

 My mother died of pancreatic cancer, and we sort of knew when the diagnosis came down that this would be her fate. It was roughly seven months from diagnosis to death.

Now, there's some trials that suggest there is an mRNA vaccine that can attack pancreatic cancer cells.

Again, there's a long way from early trials to having a treatment, but this could be the cutting edge for cancer treatments going forward.

Luckily, we don't have an anti-vax crank running HHS or a chainsaw wielding maniac ripping up Federal funding for cancer research...

Post Policy Politics

 The policies that the Trump Administration are proposing or implementing are - in a word - unpopular. At the linked post, Scott Lemieux suggests that Trump never would've been re-elected if McCain had voted for ACA repeal, and I think that's correct. Krugman makes the same point with regards to Medicaid. If Republicans go through with their budget proposal - not a guarantee - then they will poleax their own voters.

Trump voters consist of three groups, roughly speaking. First are the MAGA Deplorables. Fuck'em. Second are Reluctant Republicans. Fuck them, too.

The third group...I don't know. These are your low information, low socioeconomic status voters who have been suckered by the reality TV show con artist. These are the people who show up in the Leopards Eating Faces Party meme. They think they are voting to "run America like a business" and see college graduates worrying over pronouns as the Real Elitists. They've been suckered. They are cannon fodder for the Broligarchy. 

Ultimately, an enduring (as in a decade or more) coalition of Democratic majorities is going to need some of those voters. I have no idea if Democrats can actively reach them, but if the GOP insists on its budget, they won't have to. 

Vaccines and MAGA World

 Yglesias looks at vaccines, especially in light of the fact that a child died of measles yesterday. I had my flu shot, but we had a terrible flu season, I coach wrestling which makes it easy to vector and sometimes a vaccine is imperfect. 

In order for vaccines to work most effectively, we need as many people as possible to take them. Vaccines - arguably the greatest advance in the history of medical science alongside antibiotics - work both by reducing your vulnerability and by preventing spread. If 95% of people are vaccinated, then a disease can't get momentum or mutate as easily.

Left unsaid in Yglesias' analysis is the fact that the anti-vax movement has now taken up residence in the political right in this country. This is part of the broader ideological sorting of certain groups. Gone are the heterodox parties of the mid-20th century, instead every single anti-government crank now has a home in the GOP. 

What's more, we can see in this antigovernmental movement a rejection of common cause. We get vaccinated to protect ourselves, but we also do it to protect others. The selfish, self-centeredness of the political right that has always been a part of their DNA was then catalyzed by the Covid measures taken to keep people alive.

Selfishness is not considered a virtue in any culture and in some it's the gravest sin. It makes sense that it would find a home in the GOP.

The Coming Budget Mess

 Richardson summarizes the intra-party debate within Republican circles over their coming budget. Separately, Yglesias looks at how people tend to believe falsehoods more easily when they conform to pre-existing beliefs. Among the most pernicious a priori beliefs in American politics is that Republicans are better for the economy. Republicans are, in fact, better for big business and the increasing oligarchic control of those businesses.

Last night the GOP House began the process of writing their budget. It would destroy so much of America's already tattered safety net that finding a way to pass an actual budget - as opposed to a budget resolution - would seem to be an impossibility. My favorite quote was from a swing district Republican who received a "personal commitment" from Trump that Medicaid and Medicare would not be gutter. Because as we all know, Trump is a man of his word. 

As Richardson notes, some of the GOP enthusiasm for Musk's chainsaw attack on the federal government is because axing these services is deeply unpopular, so they feel they can avoid responsibility for what he's doing. However, as Yglesias notes, people tend to rely on their a priori beliefs, and people think that the GOP hates government. (That one's true.) Every evisceration of public services will come back to haunt Republicans, whether it's from Musk or their own budget, especially since their budget will destroy things like Medicaid to pay for Musk's tax cuts and government subsidies.

But hey, HR telling you to put your pronouns in your email signature is the REAL elitism.

Surrender

 Richardson lays out - in her usual concise and clear way - the ways in which Donald Trump is surrendering America's ideal to the Kremlin. As I've said here before, the firing of Black people and women, the corruption, the degradation of public service and public services: all of these are fixable with time. We've had a Gilded Age government before, and we changed it. The damage done to America's standing in the world is largely irreversible. The repercussions of "but muh eggs" will echo for decades through global affairs. The world is less safe, because American bypassed a strong woman for a Strong Man.

All of this gibes with Rauch's description of Trump as a patrimonialist. He hates Ukraine, because Zelensky won't bend the knee, because his first impeachment was over his shakedown of Ukraine in defiance of Congress. He loves Putin, because Putin is a fellow patrimonial leader. Game recognizes game.

What is fascinating is that almost every single measure that Trump is taking makes us weaker as a country. Abandoning or alienating alliances; embracing fraud as a governing practice; selling out our government to the Musk Melon. This is the great irony of Strongman politics: it makes a country weaker. 

I have high hopes that Democrats win the House in 2026. Hell, I have slim hopes they win a few special elections and win control before then. It would be the beginning of checking Trump's depredations in domestic policy. However, even if Democrats win control of both houses in 2026, there are far fewer ways to influence foreign policy from Capitol Hill.

I will never forgive the cruel, the callous and the indifferent who foisted the very worst American on us. Twice. 

A Million Times This

 I've been saying that Trumpistan is patrimonialism since 2017. Now the Cool Kids are catching on. 

Read it, it's spot on. Plus, you got some Max Weber love.

Here's a taste: 

In its governmental guise, patrimonialism is distinguished by running the state as if it were the leader’s personal property or family business. It can be found in many countries, but its main contemporary exponent—at least until January 20, 2025—has been Vladimir Putin. In the first portion of his rule, he ran the Russian state as a personal racket. State bureaucracies and private companies continued to operate, but the real governing principle was Stay on Vladimir Vladimirovich’s good side … or else.

And Rauch makes an important point:

Patrimonialism’s antithesis is not democracy; it is bureaucracy, or, more precisely, bureaucratic proceduralism. Classic authoritarianism—the sort of system seen in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—is often heavily bureaucratized. When authoritarians take power, they consolidate their rule by creating structures such as secret police, propaganda agencies, special military units, and politburos. They legitimate their power with legal codes and constitutions. Orwell understood the bureaucratic aspect of classic authoritarianism; in 1984, Oceania’s ministries of Truth (propaganda), Peace (war), and Love (state security) are the regime’s most characteristic (and terrifying) features.

Ballast

 There has been - predictably and understandably - a lot of screams of "DO SOMETHING" since Trump took office and began to take Musk's chainsaw to governance and trying to recreate Jim Crow racial norms. Some of this, naturally, is directed at Democrats whom people expect to oppose as an opposition party. Several Democrats - including high ranking ones - are uncomfortable being an opposition party; they want to be a governing party. 

As we are seeing from townhalls and phone calls, voters are also directing their ire at Republicans. Since Republicans control the White House, Senate, House and Supreme Court, that seems like a decent place to focus one's anger. 

At the moment, the only group to really successfully oppose Trump have been the Courts, and there is some question as to how tenable that is, if Trump directs the Executive Branch to ignore court rulings.

Ideally, we get to a place where public sentiment turns so strongly against Trump and Musk that GOP members of Congress remember that they swore an oath to the Constitution and not Trump. OK, stop laughing.

Still, the complaints about our institutions moving to slowly to counteract Trump misses the point. They are supposed to move slowly. The whole point of Project 2025 was that by 2026 the institutions would catch up and elections would be held. They had to "move fast and break things" because eventually those institutions swing around, like a massive container ship. 

Institutions are supposed to be sclerotic. It's their superpower. Musk's desire to turn the Federal government into a lean, tech company is fundamentally misguided as to what government actually is. Our institutions are designed to thwart tyranny and they do that by being immovable. That's really frustrating when you are trying to create a new health care program, but these are the moments when the sheer mass of the government works in your favor.

On The Other Hand...

 My continued take is "things are really bad, we have bad and stupid people running the government and things will remain stupid and bad for at least the next couple of years, but we are not actually undergoing a fascist revolution."

Then Trump goes and purges the military of its top leadership.

Richardson frames this as a Friday night news dump, and it is, but there was more news on Friday. Quite a few court orders and rulings came out against Musk and Trump's actions. These were probably not consciously paired, but they present an interesting contrast. The courts will, I believe, hold. The reason is that Musk and Trump's actions are just so nakedly illegal and unconstitutional that you simply can't squint your way to ruling for him. His actions cartoonishly assault the fabric of the Constitution.

The military has also been a place where Trump has said he wants more loyalty. Trump - who never served - wanted soldiers to follow illegal orders. Now Musk - who never served - and Hegseth - who barely served - want to create some sort of Praetorian Guard to enforce the Emperor's will.

I'm skeptical that this will work. However, it can do enormous damage to America as they try it. 

Yup

 I don't agree with Erik Loomis on much, but I agree with him here. Trump himself is not a fascist, though I do think quite a few of the people around him are. He pines for the Gilded Age. He fetishizes William McKinley for some absurd reason. McKinley was the capstone of the long string of anonymous Ohioans to pass through the Oval Office (OK, Harding, but still). 

And here why this is an important distinction: the Gilded Age ended. It ended with two decades of reform that began the process of turning America into a more just place. That process is not linear, these four years will suck.

But they will end, just like the Gilded Age did.

The Worm Is Turning

 GOP members are being confronted at Town Halls even in deeply Red districts.

The operative question is whether they will listen or just stop holding town halls.

One of the reason so many of us were despondent after the election was that 2016 was a fluke of the Electoral College, but 2024 he somehow won a plurality of the vote. For people who pay attention to the news, who can tell you what Project 2025 is, who understand the 34 felony convictions, Trump's election  was a betrayal of American ideals by the American voter. Our fellow citizens decided to hand power to That Guy. 

My feeling has always been that the combination of low information voter, general anti-incumbent mood globally, and the latent, unexamined misogyny of the American voter led to Trump's victory. What we are seeing in a lot of very Red districts is that Federal programs are actually pretty popular - in fact, especially in Red districts. This is why Republicans have always run on antigovernment grievance but never actually cut the size of the government in radical ways. If you're one of these Congresscritters from a rural district you've been fulminating about "foreign aid giveaways" for decades, but you haven't actually cut USAID, because USAID buys food from your constituents.

If you want a nice summary of Trump's falling approval ratings and Musk's toxic personality, check out Richardson.

Big Bad Gubmint is a handy boogeyman to stand in for racial prejudice. Farm subsidies are fine, but SNAP and school lunches are not, despite the fact that they are literally two sides of the same coin, and despite the fact that those benefits flow to poorer, redder districts and states.

As Josh Marshall noted, Elon Musk is both unpopular and unhinged. He's a ketamine-addled billionaire at a time when literally no one likes billionaires. He's slashing indiscriminately and recklessly through important programs.  However, he's not Trump. His mad antics have created an avenue for soft Trump supporters to move away from Trump and the GOP. "I'm angry at Musk but disappointed in Trump" is the first step towards "I am voting for Democrats in 2026 to rein this madness in."

Let The Good Times Toll

 Both Krugman and HCR establish a philosophical premise that this space has made before: We don't know how good we've got it - historically speaking. Nostalgia is a lazy intellectual practice; it lacks rigorous examination of actual evidence. My youth was spent in a time of ubiquitous cigarette smoke, leaded gasoline, acid rain, stagflation followed by the misery of Reaganomics. The world was undeniably less kind, a fact that has enraged MAGAts.

The other night I was re-watching Broadcast News and it was fascinating to see the same criticisms of new media being made in 1987 as were being made by Network in 1976 as are being made today. We imagine some past where things were better because we naturally forget the mundane and tedious problems that filled our waking day.

Krugman and Richardson note that we forget the hard lessons of the past. Krugman talks about the Minksy Cycle of "irrational exuberance" that leads to financial crises. Basically, we emerged from 2008 sobered by the vulnerability and recklessness of Wall Street and so we put in place reforms and Wall Street itself sobered up. As the memory of that moment fades, a new generation of reckless finance bros will push the envelope of what is prudent or even ethical. You then get a bubble and institutional FOMO. 

I was watching Dumb Money, the movie about the GameStop stock bubble, and what struck me was that the movie had a broad populist message about how hedge fund guys suck. That is true. They do suck, especially the vulture capitalists who come in a destroy companies for profit. At the same time, GameStop was a bad company, and some of those who speculated on it got burned for reasons that were incredibly preventable.

Richardson applies this lesson to the "postwar liberal order" and even vaccines that MAGA appears hellbent on destroying. We have benefitted for so long from being the guarantor of Pax Americana that we don't even have living memories of the belligerent chaos that preceded it. We take herd immunity for granted because we don't remember measles or, Dog forbid, polio.

Essentially comfortable times - but times we perceive as "bad" - means that we can elect a reality TV star and then re-elect him after his 34 felony convictions. We become an unserious people. We invest in GameStop "stonks". We throw tantrums over public health measures. We spit and sputter over putting pronouns in our email signatures. 

Reality, however, gets the last word. Jamelle Bouie said something along the lines of "Our public health decisions appear to be being made by sentient salmonella and measles viruses." Bird flu doesn't care if you hide the true data on its spread. Bird flu doesn't care about anything. It's a virus; it just wants to replicate.  Markets will not ignore the crazed worthlessness of crypto forever. 

In the end, hollowing out our governing institutions will come with a reckoning, and perhaps then a few generations will learn the lessons of hard times.

Broken

 Despite the farrago of dreadful headlines of Musk's micro-bros slashing and burning the administrative state in an orgy of incompetence and vindictiveness, I think that history suggests that we will see a backlash. If - as I suspect - Musk and Trump's corruption renders an economic reckoning inevitable, then Democrats will return to power and be able to undo some of the worst excesses of Project 2025. That is the cycle of history.

What Trump will break beyond the ability of a change in government to repair is America's standing in the world. HCR lays out the extraordinary ways that Trump is breaking the US-led postwar order. He is actively and enthusiastically siding with those, like Putin, who want to destroy America's place in the world. 

After World War II, America was incredibly powerful. It possessed nuclear weapons, it had a two-ocean navy and the world's premier air forces. It's economy was booming while other countries' lay in ruin. At that moment, America engineered a global order based on what are known as liberal values (not to be confused with domestic liberal values). The United Nations, NATO, the Marshall Plan...America invested in creating a safer world - or at least a safer Europe. Since 1945, interstate wars have fallen (albeit they were replaced by intrastate wars that were equally horrific). A rough peace between Great Powers has held, in large part because the US has proven to be - believe it or not - a largely benign hegemon. This, by the way, is why the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was so damaging to the global order. 

Trump tried to unravel 80 years of peace during his first term, but was largely checked by people like Kelly, Mattis and others. Those constraints are gone and now we have Trump's most idiotic and selfish instincts infusing our foreign policy.

And he won a plurality of the vote.

Europe cannot rely on America ever again. Yes, I think a Democrat gets elected in 2028, because I do think we will have elections. Europe, however, can never look at America the same way. They'd be fools to.

America has been the most powerful country on earth since 1945, at least in part because other countries found it acceptable to acquiesce to that pre-eminence. 

Trump has killed that presumption forever. 

Morons

 HCR notes some of the ongoing if disorganized pushback against DOGE and catalogs some of their many abuses. She has described her writing as an attempt to create a primary source for future historians, which often makes it a nice resource. 

Anyway, there's a lot of evidence out there of DOGE just randomly gutting agencies without the legal authority to do so. As in, what they are doing are crimes. We know, however, that Trump's DOJ won't prosecute these crimes, and the tricky part if how to enforce civil decisions against the will of an illegal, unaccountable executive. 

Josh Marshall pushed a theory that I thought was interesting. The Muskenjugend or "microbros" who are at the heart of Musk's assault on a functioning government and are hoovering up data illegally are all quite young. Marshall posits that the reason Musk is relying on a bunch of zygotes is that older, more experienced people are very reticent to engage in rank lawlessness. He suggests that more experienced people are probably engaging in the following calculus:

But back in the real world those are still laws. And if you’ve got a career and a family and a mortgage, maybe you say you believe those theories but that’s still not the same as being perfectly happy to just walk into these places and just do absolutely whatever Elon tells you to do. Because sure Trump has your back today. But tomorrow is a long time. And there are state courts and prosecutors too and bar associations and civil suits. Even if you assume a future administration that is laggard in pressing legal consequences like the last one, those things still create headaches. Lawyers cost money. These are bad acts you’d probably prefer someone else do, especially if they’re willing.

I think that's right. Or to put it another way: Fascists are always idiots. Not drool on yourself, don't know what 2+2 type of idiots, but idiots nonetheless. They simply don't know what they don't know. Democratic liberalism is a process of engaging with the messiness of the world. It's malleable; it's means  different things at different times; it's receptive to feedback. Fascism is adult toddlerhood: a perpetual tantrum masquerading as strength. 

In the end, I do think this is what saves us. They can't even file a proper court motion, and as career prosecutors and civil servants quit, to be replaced by Trump loyalists, those loyalists will be unable to adapt to changing conditions. I mean, it will suck, but it won't be permanent.

This Could Be The Fulcrum

 Der Muskenjugend have infiltrated the Social Security Administration. That could be the weak spot in their plans to radically downsize the government. The existing downsizing could take months or even years to be felt by the public at large -  though the number of air traffic incidents could claim their attention - but if seniors miss a Social Security check, that could be huge.

Yglesias's big blind spot when writing about Trump is that he assumes that policy is the reason why Democrats lost. It seems possible to me that the reason Democrats lost is that America isn't ready for a female president, and that includes quite a lot of female voters. However, his point that Trump moved away from the economic platform of Paul Ryan is probably sound. Part of that was not touching Senior Entitlements. Elon Musk, being in many ways an idiot, has no such compunctions. 

I'd hate to see the misery that would be caused by people missing crucial checks, but as I've said repeatedly, America has fucked around and they are going to have to find out.

"The Arrogance Is Staggering"

 HCR takes on JD Vance's bomb throwing speech in Munich, where the US basically walked away from 80 years of support for global liberal institutions. She provided the following quote:

Political scientist Stathis Kalyvas posted: “There is now total clarity, no matter how unimaginable things might seem. And they amount to this: The U.S. government has been taken over by a clique of extremists who have embarked on a process of regime change in the world’s oldest democracy…. The arrogance on display is staggering. They think their actions will increase U.S. power, but they are in fact wrecking their own country and, in the process everyone else.”

He continued: “The only hope lies in the sheer enormity of the threat: it might awake us out of our slumber before it is too late.”

This is the conundrum faced by our putative allies. Trump is constitutionally barred from re-election, and he's old and will die one day. The movement that has emerged around him has embraced a truly awful set of policies both domestically and internationally. I was texting with friends last night about whether this was Nazi Germany in 1933. I thought it wasn't. I think MAGA wants to drag us back to 1900. They want a tiny government that serves only the wealthy; they want Jim Crow and the suppression of minority rights; they want an America that bullies its neighbors.

A lot of that can be undone by subsequent governments - with the obvious caveat that the most extreme elements around Trump have no intention of letting democracy thwart their plans. Will we have elections of real consequence? I think so, but I cannot say for certain.

The damage done to America's international standing, however, might never be undone. Europe and our allies in Asia should rightly call into question the sanity of American electoral politics. Trump 1.0 was a fluke; Trump 2.0 was not. A plurality of Americans elected a felon, a gibbering moron, a man incapable of growing into the importance of the office. 

I don't think, despite his sweaty neediness, that JD Vance can harness that same cultish following that Trump has. I don't know if anyone can.

But if I'm Europe, I can't take that chance. Not with the Russian bear being aggressive as it has turned out to be. 

Heightening The Contradictions

 Invaluable chronicler of Trumpistan, Heather Cox Richardson, has a post about what might be called the FDR Consensus. The basic idea was a fundamental shift in the role of the government in people's lives. Prior to FDR, the prevailing philosophy of government was expressed by Grover Cleveland, when he said that while the people should support the government, the government should not support the people. This headed off calls for a robust safety net and government regulations to improve the lives of normal Americans.

The Reagan Revolution was a backlash against "Big Government" that had its roots in racial resentment over the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of the 1960s. Broad macroeconomic trends created by welfare spending, the Vietnam war and rising energy costs meant that the '70s saw inflation that was far, far worse than what we have recently experienced. This - combined with the foreign policy embarrassments in Vietnam, Iran and elsewhere - led to a palpable sense of American decline, one might even say American Carnage. It often feels like Donald Trump wee lizard brain is stuck in the dystopia of 1970s New York.

The point being that Reagan's election was caused by a lot of things, but mostly a reaction to the perceived failures of the New Deal/Great Society state. In fact, only a modest portion of the problem was caused by the expansive welfare state, the Reagan forces interpreted his victories as mandate to crush that New Deal state. However, once in Washington, the New Deal/Great Society state proved more popular than they had presumed. 

Destroying it via legislation has always been a non-starter.

Which brings us to President Elon Musk and King Donald. Trump has always understood that the fanaticism present in the Paul Ryan budgets was politically toxic. As raving liberal Dwight Eisenhower once said, the political party that destroys Social Security would cease to exist.

What Musk is doing via his coup is destroying that state via illegal executive actions, illegal firings and illegal impounding of funds. 

The eventual outcome of this will be a backlash to the backlash, as Red Staters realize that Big Government actually helps them quite a bit. In the meanwhile, people will die from preventable diseases, perhaps from breaches in national security. A recession seems inevitable if Trump and Musk continue down the road they are on. People die from recessions.

Maybe then Americans will realize that the presidency is not fit for a reality TV show and his billionaire puppet master.

Blowing Up NATO

 JD Vance, sycophant to the unholy union of Opus Dei and the Broligarchy, went to Europe and shit all over the concept of the NATO alliance. Especially rich is lecturing Europe on a retreat from liberal values, as his party destroys the fabric of liberal governance at home and abroad.

The destruction or even weakening of NATO was always one of the real perils of returning Trump to the White House. He has contempt for the very concept of partnership. The idea of mutually beneficial arrangements are simply foreign to his tiny little lizard brain.

NATO is a treaty obligation. That gives it the full force and power of the Constitution. However, I think we have seen how much the current GOP values the Constitution.

Making Cancer Great Again

 It is difficult to plumb the depth of the MAGAt mind, but can anyone explain why they are trying to wipe out cancer research?

I suppose this is the logical endpoint of Grover Norquist's lifelong quest to "shrink government down to the size where you can drown it in a bathtub." Still, the idea that we can return to a 19th century government is just manifestly dumb and self-defeating, it beggars belief.

Remove Eric Adams

 Josh Marshall is, as usual, spot on with his analysis of the Eric Adams Saga. Adams deserved his date in court to fight the copious evidence of his wrongdoing. Trump's quid pro quo deal to subvert justice in return for compliance makes that argument moot. He should be removed from office.

The problem is that the New York Democratic Party in general and Kathy Hochul in specific are the lowest replacement level Democratic Party in the country. That is to say, that if you were to void every single elected Democrat at the state and local level and replace them with a random assortment of Democratic officials from anywhere else, you would see a major improvement. Hell, Adams himself is a great example of the rot at the heart of the New York Dems. As for Hochul, the only reason she's governor is because Cuomo had to resign in disgrace. She has since done nothing to suggest she is equal to the moment - from botching a Dem gerrymander that would have Democrats in control of the House right now to her handling of the Adams situation.

There are a few exceptions - Gillibrand, Nadler and AOC spring to mind. Which is why I'd like to see AOC, in particular, run for governor and clean house in Albany. If she really is the rising star of the party, she needs to prove she's more than just one of its best messengers, but that she can also do hard governance.

New York needs it.

The Corruption Will Go Unpunished

 Donald Trump is open for business and accepting all sorts of emoluments. The decision by several media companies to settle frivolous lawsuits in Trump's favor is both supplication and bribe. That Musk is doing it is just perfect. Since the basic premise of all Republican policy since Reagan is "the gubmint is c'rupt" which is just their way of saying that spending money on people is wrong, especially if they are of dusky hue, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

When Republican politicians are corrupt, it's simply a self-fulfilling prophecy. That Trump has reached out to help corrupt Democrats like Eric Adams is just game recognizing game.

However, in the past, we have assumed that eventually the corrupt will pay for their crimes. It is why corruption has always been remarkably rare in America since the Watergate era. Trump will never pay for his crimes, and it is best if we all assimilate that stark fact so that we will not be surprised when he skates free.

He will die one day and all that filthy lucre will not matter one bit.

Empty Suits

 Matthew Yglesias suggests that Canada and Mexico and others call Trump's bluff on tariffs. It would cause short term economic pain but in a patriotic cause for those two governments to stand up to bullying from Washington. Trump's behavior with the first "round" of tariffs suggests that he is very sensitive to the stock market and the stock market hates the tariffs. 

Paul Krugman notes that Elon Musk's allegations of massive fraud in the government that the Elon Youth have uncovered is almost certainly 100% bullshit. If he had actual evidence of fraud, he would lay it out. He doesn't, so he merely asserts that it exists and counts on a compliant court media to amplify it while real news struggles to bothsides it. 

The connective point is that everything that Trump, Musk and their swarms of fascist helpers are trying to do is built on sand. There is a tendency - and I share it - to throw up one's hands when confronted with the gibbering incoherence and ignorance of broad swaths of the American electorate. Reality, however, ultimately does have the last word.

Musk's bizarre appearance in the Oval Office has to rankle Trump somewhat. If Musk crashes part of the government that people actually depend upon, the ensuing wreckage will land on Trump, too.

The speed of Project 2025 has always been because the agenda is unpopular and largely unworkable.  

A Bigger Threat Than Trump

 The people around him are a bigger threat to democracy than Trump himself. All the Project 2025 fascists are certainly angry little fuckers trying to create a monarchical form of government in America

But it's Elon Musk who is currently the gravest threat to American democratic governance. I think we all know that at this point. When Trump was president before, I noted that Trump - unlike every single other president before him - had zero experience in either public service or the military. Trump had never taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution before he did on January 20th, 2017. He didn't "get it". 

Musk gets it even less. He's the same autocratic tycoon-type as Trump, but he's steeped in the family legacy of apartheid and all that that entails.

The good news is that - for the moment - Musk does not have the same cult dynamic as Trump. Yes, there are Muskovites. They tend to be the tech bros wannabes. Not a large group. Musk is deeply unappealing as a person in ways that - for some reason - Trump is not.

The more Democrats can run against Musk the better. He will absolutely break some shit that cannot be broken, and when he does, Musk can be the anchor to drag down Trump and the Republican Party.

What If Trump Believes His Own Bullshit?

 Paul Campos links to William Saletan making the point that Trump's statements - which are often objectively false - are not actually about dominance or "kayfabe" or "driving the narrative. He actually seems to believe this shit. He seems to actually believe that he can balance the budget via tariffs or that Denmark will sell us Greenland.

It's crazy to consider, but I think there's a core insight here. I refer you again to Fran Leibowitz's quote: "You don't know someone as stupid as Donald Trump; you just don't." He's always been a moron who was inoculated against consequences by his inherited wealth and celebrity. Now he's aging and cognitively declining. I've wondered when he's going to get tired of being upstaged by Elon, but maybe he's too far gone to realize it?

Anyway, if he really does believe this bullshit, then that explains why we are on the road to a very dark place. 

UPDATE: A good example of Trump's deep beliefs is his passionate belief that corruption is not just tolerable, but the way things should be. 

Fraud Never Works

 There's a scene near the end of The Big Short where Mark Baum (Steve Carrell) give a speech where he says "fraud never works".

The reason fraud never works is that markets tend to be merciless with information and once accurate information comes out, those markets don't give a shit about the trappings that wealth and power use to create a sense of invincibility. 

With the Trump decision - likely illegal - to end the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it is now open season for fraud again. If this stands, and even if Courts rule its illegal Trump can kill it via staffing, then there will be a financial scandal before his term is over. Trump himself is an engine of lawlessness and the remoras that have latching on to him are simply scam artists from root to stem. 

I've already said that there will be a Crypto Crash sooner rather than later. The gutting of the CFPB will accelerate this, I guess. Given that the Trumpists are signaling that they are preparing to ignore court rulings that they don't like this should speed-run the crashing of the American economy.

Let's hope the fallout from the crash will be contained, but I'm not sure how.

I Can't Even

 I came across a CBS poll that had Trump's approval at 53%. Now, that's an outlier. However, respondents say that Trump is "doing what he said he was going to do" especially around deportations, which are popular.

This is the real reason why American democracy is dying. People are incredibly ignorant.

Trump has not, in fact, done massive deportations. He's had people film dramatic footage of deportations, but the numbers are actually pretty low. He's creating the image of deporting a lot of people, and Google is apparently helping him by pushing these stories to the top of the search engine. Trump has also not "won" any trade wars with our neighbors. He promised "big beautiful tariffs" but hasn't done jackshit.

What Trump HAS done was exactly what he promised he was not going to do: Project 2025. This incredibly unpopular agenda was explicitly disowned by Trump during the campaign, and reporters credulously reported his denials (and Democrats stopped talking about it for some reason). Everything Musk is doing, the attacks on things like medical research or firing federal workers are all part of that blueprint.

Yes, Trump was lying when he disavowed Project 2025. Trump always lies. He is congenitally incapable of telling the truth. Yet, the media - bound by archaic norms - refused to note that Trump was lying or managed to do so in a way that blunted the impact of his lies. 

Now we are under full scale siege, a siege that is going to be largely invisible to Americans that think Trump is "doing what he promised" until the government blows up and collapses.

Razors

 Josh Marshall once posited "Trump's Razor" which was a spin on Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor is the logical tool that posits that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Trump's Razor is that usually the stupidest explanation is the correct one. Did Trump engage in a 24 hour trade war with our biggest trading partners, because he didn't really understand the impact of those tariffs until the markets tanked? Seems pretty stupid! Probably correct!

Paul Krugman, perhaps, offers us Musk's Razor. He was writing, in general, about the ongoing autogolpe against the Constitution. (An autogolpe is a coup by an already elected leader.) In the process, he offers this suggestion:

You should look at everything they do through that lens. Yes, we can ask whether a policy move makes sense in terms of its announced goals. But you should also always ask, “How does doing this serve the autogolpe?”

There's a similar lens to look at Trump, which we could call Xi's Razor. "If Donald Trump were to be an agent designed to destroy American influence in the world, would he be doing anything different than he is?" However, that suggests that Trump is some sort of Manchurian Candidate, and I think the said truth is that he's just a mental slob who manages to push the right buttons in America's Id and win elections because of it.

Musk's Razor is a good one. It's converse is the Democratic communication strategy of asking "How does this lower the price of eggs?"  But that only works when talking about things like invading Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico or banning trans people from doing stuff. For the full-blown assault on the Constitutional Order, we need to keep applying Musk's Razor. 

The destruction of USAID is a personal project for Musk, as an unrepentant Afrikaner Nationalist. However, it also serves the autogolpe by creating the precedent for shuttering an entire agency without Congressional approval.  Seizing control of the Treasury is, of course, the biggest threat, but so was the ham-fisted attempt to get Federal employees to take a "buy out" that had no legal justification or financial backing.

When it comes to Trump and Trumpy shit like releasing millions of gallons of water that farmers will need this summer in order to...something...that's Trump's Razor. There's no secret plan there, he's just an idiot.

When it comes to actions that revolve around Musk or even some of the Project 2025 people, pay attention to how it serves the autogolpe.

The Fifth Risk

 Michael Lewis - of The Big Short fame - wrote a book about the early Trump administration of 2017 called The Fifth Risk. The basic idea is that Trump and the GOP want to hollow out the 20th and 21st century administrative state. As Josh Marshall notes, this desire to hollow out the state bureaucracy is the one common thread uniting the factions of MAGA, Christian Nationalism and Muskovite techbros. 

Basically, Trump 1.0 failed to achieve what it wanted because America has a government built on the premise of avoiding harm. This does have the effect of making it inefficient, but that inefficiency is part of the design. It prevents too much power accruing in any one spot and therefore distributes public goods more fairly. Think of the DMV. Everyone has to wait in line; it's very democratic.

If Musk and Trump are successful in hollowing out the administrative state, then we are screwed for the foreseeable future. There will be some Katrina level catastrophe or worse. There will be a 2008 crisis or worse. As long as we have elections, that should lead to Democrats winning control of the government. Even after that happens, you will have to de-Trumpify the government and replace his loyalists with qualified people. Qualified people might be hard to find, given how they are being treated by the Republican Party.

One of the great delusions of the techbro, libertarian right is that government is some sort of burden, when in fact it smooths out so much of lives travails. The ease of 21st century life is invisible, because we take it for granted that the power stays on, the drinking water is clean, the road are paved, the schools are open, air traffic is safe, the dollar is sound. Musk and Trump's plan imperils all of that.

This Time Will Be Different

 I have a theory that America fights a major war every 20 years or so, because it takes about that long for people to forget just horrible war is. If they do remember, they dismiss the warning from Cleo, the Muse of History, as being irrelevant, because they are smarter than their fathers and they won't makes the same mistake.

The same applies to economics and recessions and depressions. The financial crisis of 2008 was caused, in large part, by people thinking that "this time will be different" and the "old rules don't apply." 

Paul Krugman takes something similar to this train of thought with regards to AI and the current tech boom, in particular comparing it to the market bubble of 1999. Basically, the Digital Revolution of the '90s did have a noticeable effect on GDP growth and productivity, but it was transient, not permanent. People got over their skis and created a bubble, which burst in March of 2000.

If you are currently thinking that the Elon Musk/Peter Thiel Axis of Evil is acting humbly before the historical precedents, I think you might reconsider. 

Whether it's crypto, AI or both, we are likely headed for another boom and bust. Real people will get hurt, because the people who lead and own this country never paid attention in history class.

Does This Work?

 I'm laid up with the flu and have been playing a puzzle game on my phone. When you get "stuck" you can escape by watching an ad. I've watched a lot of ads. A few things strike me.

One, there are a lot of games that involve some young mother in dire circumstances and you have to solve a puzzle to save her. Does the psychology of that appeal to people?

Two, the ads for most of the games are atrocious. There are the "fake street interviews" and the impassioned endorsements by... someone? People I'm supposed to know? This makes me wonder about the whole "influencer economy" and the prevalence of that in people's lives. Now, maybe the endorsers are obscure and the ad is supposed to trick you into thinking they are "internet famous". Or maybe for some odd subset of humanity, they really ARE famous, and I just have no insight into that world, except through this weird online ad phenomenon.

Anyway, the flu sucks and Elon Musk has launched a coup.

This Could Be A Gift

 First and foremost, we have to stop Musk's coup. They could crash the entire Treasury.

However, we are starting to see - mainly from Chris Murphy and others like him - a consistent line of attack about "unelected South African billionaires" seizing control of your money. 

Musk is a freak and personally unpopular. Billionaires as a group are unpopular. Trump is a billionaire (for reals, after his crypto scam/bribery scheme).

Hang it around their necks: The GOP is the party of billionaires.

Well, Maybe It's The Same Old Song

 So, Trump pissed off two of our closest allies - both politically and geographically - and then drops the tariffs when the markets tank without really accomplishing anything, besides pissing off Canada and Mexico.

That is very much a Trump 1.0 type move and his modus operandi. In the end, those who expected something more like the first go-round have been vindicated for the moment in this particular instance. 

The Musk stuff though.  That's really, really bad.

Trump 1.0 Fooled Some People

 The first Trump Administration was chaotic, counterproductive and largely a series of rhetorical outrages, interspersed with some pretty bad policy. When Covid came, it exposed the bad policy side of things and he was trounced. Then, people memory-holed the chaos, dysfunction and anger and just remembered that times were prosperous and Trump is "funny".

So, as we embark on what the Wall Street Journal has accurately termed the "Dumbest Trade War In History" it's worth noting what people got wrong about Trump 2.0 was rooted in Trump 1.0. 

As Paul Krugman notes, Trump is doing what he said he would do. It remains my conviction that politicians - even aberrant ones like Trump - will at least try and do what they say they will do. What Trump discovered in his first term was that the government is a complicated thing and there are a ton of veto points. The presence of John Kelly, James Mattis and even Steve Mnuchin helped thwart his lunacy and splenetic desire to wreak havoc on Americans.

The central part of Project 2025 that was so chilling to those of us paying attention was that it was a blueprint to bulldoze those institutional constraints. This is why you have the purges of civil servants. (Matthew Yglesias is right that if at all possible, civil servants need to hang on for as long as they can.) This is why Elon Musk is largely able to execute what is looking more and more like a coup - not just in Very Online rhetoric, but actual practice.

The rich people who thought they could just write Trump checks and he would bestow favors on them are going to be surprised that he is who his opponents said he was. He was always who we said he was. It's just that now there is no one around him to constrain him, just a ketamine-addled billionaire freakshow who empowers his worst impulses.

Now, we all have to live with the consequences.

Dirtbag Americans

 Scott Lemieux picks up on the theme of idiocracy that Campos started. He also notes that, of course, Trump's base and the new voters that swung hard for him in 2024 are infrequent voters. This also means, almost by definition, that they are poorly informed voters. 

I live in a very Trumpy town in a Blue State. You can usually guess with some accuracy which groups at the other tables of the restaurant are Trumpists. Even more so, I was doing some shopping and noticed an unusually dense concentration of, well, dirtbags. They reek of cigarette smoke, they have crass or offensive bumper stickers on their cars and you can almost see them seething. 

Here's the thing, I don't think even the Dirtbags (or Deplorables, if you will) are interested in Elon Musk's plans. I don't think they are interested in voting for someone who isn't Trump - himself a gilded Dirtbag. 

They will likely blame Democrats for the coming price spikes coming with the Trump Tariffs, but fuck'em. 

Notes On Stupidity

 Please read Paul Campos on our Idiot King for an Idiot Country.

I know this is deeply disrespectful of Real Muricans, but I am out of fucks to give.

Broligarchs vs Nazis

 Embedded in this post is a Bluesky thread from Dana Houle about the fundamental difference between our current broligarchic coup and the actual Nazis of the 1930s. It actual dovetailed with something I did in my International Relations class at the end of last week. The topic in class was about how individuals are usually constrained by institutions. As we know, Project 2025 and Musk's DOGE are an attempt to overwhelm and degrade our institutions, because they limited Trump from becoming King last time and he really hates that.

In the class reading, they talked about how some sort of crisis - whether military or economic - can empower a leader to overwhelm institutions. This is important when you consider Trump's actions, calling the border situation an invasion (it isn't), slapping tariffs on Canada and Mexico because they are "flooding" our country with Fentanyl (they aren't). His whole American Carnage bullshit is intended to justify the destruction of democratic oversight.

In Houle's thread, he compares the relative strength of the Nazis, namely that they had Stormtroopers ready to control the streets and they actually increased the size of the administrative state to gain more control and embarked on a military buildup that helped pull Germany out of the Depression. Keynes was right. So, for the Average German, life probably got a little or a lot better from 1933-39. 

Trump's tariffs have the potential to explode like a bomb in the global economy, but especially the North American economy. The assumption all along has been what's referenced in the Krugman tweet/blurst that begins the linked post: the Very Savvy Business leaders who supported Trump thinking they would only get tax cuts and massive deregulation are going to be surprised with this stupid, vindictive motherfucker actually does what he said he was going to do: Blow up the post World War II global order.

As we were in November, we are currently having to hope, actually, that Trump's programs are worst case scenarios, where the extraordinary economic pain crushes people across the country. There's this scene from The Big Short where Ben Rickert says that for every percentage point that the unemployment rate goes up, 40,000 people die. The correlation is actually real and not a throwaway line. But that's where we are. 

For American democracy to survive the combined assault of Trump's Christian Nationalist base and Elon Musk's unelected oligarchy, we have to watch them crush the American economy. Precisely because Trump does not enjoy the structural advantages that Hitler did in the late Thirties, the pain that he seems intent on creating should destroy whatever momentum he has in his nightmarish plans for America.

Is Elon Launching A Coup?

 Several commentators, like Cheryl Rofer, Paul Campos and Scott Lemieux all seem to think it is. Primarily because it looks like Musk is purging the government and shuttering its functions absent ANY legal cover. Even the normally balanced Josh Marshall suggests that what Musk is doing falls outside even the cascading horrors of Project 2025 and normal Trumpist/GOP bullshit.

I do not understand why Democrats are not unifying around a message of constant, consistent opposition. Nobody cares if you reached common ground with Trump, and your primary voters will actively hate you for it. However, I can squint and see some need to rhetorically signal that you will work with Trump, until he does something that "with great regret" forces you to change your mind. 

That's bullshit, but whatever. We go to war with the Dems we have, not the Dems we wished we had.

Going to war with the unelected broligarch, the ketamine addled weirdo, the billionaire disrupter who likes to fire people even more than Trump does...that's a no brainer. 

What's more, the GOP is in Trump's thrall. He absolutely commands their utter and subservient fealty. 

Musk doesn't. Musk can never be president, he can only pull the strings, which is clearly what he's trying to do now. Attack him and you attack the whole construct of the GOP being the Billionaire's Party.

What Musk is doing is illegal by any reading of the law, and unlike Trump, he is not president and not covered by John Roberts' extraordinary extension of presidential immunity from legal consequences.

You won't put him in jail, but you have to make his presence in the government absolutely toxic. Attack Musk and you attack Trump sideways, where he can't defend with his usual bluster.

Unreliable

 The root of American power since World War II has been our more-or-less dependable nature. Sure, individual president's altered the focus of American foreign policy, but there were some agreed upon ideas that carried over from one administration to the next.

Trump's decision to blow up the North American Free Trade zone is bad on multiple layers. It should lead to massive supply line issues. It should lead to higher prices. But, as Krugman points out, it will destroy the idea of an America that even pretends to honor their agreements. A hegemonic power that agreed to bind itself with treaties was a historical rarity, and now that special situation is leveled by the worst person to ever defile the Oval Office.