Blimpie

“You don’t need to write about it every day,” Martha told me over dinner at a good local Greek place here in France.

“It’s what I’m thinking about,” I told her. “I write about what I’m thinking about.”

“I know. But you don’t need to write about it every day.”

“I agree.”

So here I am writing about it once again.

I wish I were not. I wish I could think about anything else. Even UFOs hold little interest for me at the moment. It’s hard to spend too much time worrying about malevolent ETs landing on the White House lawn when we’ve got a malevolent South African already inside the building.

And the Treasury. And the Department of Labor. And the Department of Education. And USAID. And NOAA. Chancellor Underpants and his children’s army are pillaging 250 years of constitutional rule for the lulz and, if I’m being honest, I don’t find nearly as funny as them.

A black curtain has descended over Washington DC, behind which the great and terrible Wizard of X is doing to our government what he did to Twitter, namely turning something that worked pretty well but had problems into something that functions worse, hemorrhages value, and attracts Nazis.

For what purpose? The black curtain obscures that, too. The stated mission of his fake government department is to strengthen government efficiency. Does anybody feel like government is more efficient today than it was three weeks ago? Is government operating better or worse today than it did pre-Inauguration?

Those on the right might argue that disruption is always messy but that the end result will be worth the short-term discomfort. They might have a point, but I guess I would ask: worth it for whom?

Because what we do know about the Trump agenda is that it will benefit billionaires, polluters, and domestic abusers. White men in particular are looking to have their knobs greased a little brighter over the next four years. If the elevation of cranks like Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy Jr. are any indication of the kind of leadership we can expect during the next administration, we can safely assume that qualified and sober people of color need not apply. DEI is out, DUI is in.

Blimpie

But what does Musk get out of all this? He’s already the richest man in the world, although he’s only halfway to his stated goal of becoming the world’s first trillionaire, a thought so exhausting I had to take a nap before completing the sentence. Is that what this is about? Is it about control? Do he and his (to quote a phrase I read) teenage mutant incel coders even know what they want? Or is it no different to them than reaching the next level in Diablo 4, the video game Elon is currently playing and currently cheating at. I’m not making that up. Think about that. The “smartest man in the world” cheats at video games.

Again, why?

Nothing about any of this makes much sense. Why is Trump ceding his presidency to an unelected nerd? A few days ago, I joked that if he didn’t collect a cool blimpie (term I made up for a billion-dollar bribe) then Trump is even dumber I thought. Because it looks very much to me that Trump promised Elon something in exchange for something. We know what Trump cares about: money. Elon’s got a lot of it.

My guess is they cut some sort of deal where Elon funds Trump’s campaign to the tune of $300M. What he gets in return is a hall pass to wander through any government agency he desires and set fire to whatever he wishes. Seems like a pretty small price to pay to be appointed America’s first Chancellor. Which is why I bet Trump demanded more. And if it was less than a blimpie, he got got.

Obviously, I have no idea what kind of deal those two chuckleheads concocted, but the only thing that makes it make sense to me is if Trump got more than we currently understand. Why else is he tolerating Musk claiming all of his headlines? Musk obviously knows Trump doesn’t like to be overshadowed, but he’s certainly not being discreet. Which makes me feel like he’s not worried about his job security. Why?

There’s no reason to think any of this is on the up-and-up. No reason to believe that Musk is some super-patriot who wants what’s best for country. No reason to believe the same about Trump. Everything we know about both men is that they’re looking out for themselves, which means each has something the other wants. We know what Trump has. We know what Elon has. I’m just doing the math.

And yes, I’m fanning the winds of conspiracy here. Mostly because nothing else makes sense. An unelected private citizen has been given carte blanche by the President of the United States to do whatever the fuck he wants to the instruments of government. Nobody knows exactly what he’s doing, or why. Nobody knows whether he is operating under the instructions of the president or is just kind of winging it. Nobody knows anything and today, when Congressional Democrats attempted to force him to testify before them, they were immediately rebuffed by their Republican counterparts. Shouldn’t the House of Representatives hear what he has to say? Apparently not.

We’re three weeks in and I’m already sick to death of the whole rotten thing. I know you are, too. And if you want to stop reading my stupid newsletter complaining about it all, I wouldn’t blame you a bit. If I could get out of my own head, I would. Maybe I could get Elon to come over here and see if he can do as good a job on my brain work as he’s doing with the government. A prefrontal lobotomy sounds pretty good right about now.