At The American Prospect, Ryan Cooper writes that Musk and Trump Are Causing the Dumbest Imperial Collapse in History. Empires tend to collapse when they lose wars, or are attacked by barbarians, or suffer a series of debilitating crises, or maybe just stagnate over a period of years. What we’re seeing now, he says, may be the first time in history that an empire in “splendid condition” chose to deconstruct itself.
America suffered no military defeat. We were not outstripped economically by a bigger or better-organized competitor. Rather, we elected an insane tyrant who is blowing up the foundation of our international power for no reason, all while he lets a South African immigrant ultra-billionaire and his crew of teenybopper fascists tear the wiring out of the federal government—again, for no reason.
Never underestimate the destructive power of stupidity.
Certainly much stupidity is involved here, but there’s another factor. See David Kurtz at TPM, Trump Must First Destroy The Gov’t In Order To Corrupt It.
Trump II’s opening month blitzkrieg has wreaked all manner of damage and destruction – some of that undoubtedly for the pure sake of doing it – but the real power dynamic is in converting the vast array of government goods and services into a political currency that Trump can exchange for favors, leverage, control, and obedience.
What were democratically agreed upon government programs now become baubles to be awarded friends and denied foes. Congress is reduced to a supplicant trying to secure exceptions, carveouts, and special treatment for themselves and their constituents. Even if Trump succeeds ultimately in wrecking only a portion of the federal government, he will have accrued vast new power not just by stripping it from Congress but apportioning the spoils back to individual members at the time, place, and manner of his choosing, on his terms, however corrupt they may be.
There are multiple reports out today saying that Republicans in Congress, while publicly praising Musk/Trump for whatever it/they are doing, are privately calling the White House and begging Trump to not freeze or cut funds that Congress has already appropriated for their states. Because they can do the math. A great many jobs and revenue streams flowing into their states are being shut off. Their constituents will feel the pain, sooner or later. Maybe they’re sorry they let him take over the power of the purse. But not yet sorry enough.
And then there’s the Putin factor. Many eyebrows were raised last night when Trump posted some rant that blamed Volodymyr Zelenskyy for starting the war with Russia.
On Tuesday night, the U.S. president claimed that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a poor negotiator, saying it’s his fault that his country — which Russia has been attacking for a decade now, including a full-scale invasion in 2022 — is being left out of negotiations over a potential peace deal.
“Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it — three years. You should have never been there. You should have never started it. You should have made a deal,” Trump said. The U.S. president also reiterated his interest in forcing Ukraine to hold elections as part of a deal to end the war.
I don’t know where “there” is, other than Ukraine. Trump also leaned heavily on Zelenskyy to hand over rights to half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals — estimated value #11.5 trillion — to the U.S., in exchange for … well, nothing specific. Such a deal. Remarkably, Zelenskyy said no. Trump seems to think that Ukraine owes us for the military assets sent to them by the Biden Administration. Trump still thinks of strategic alliances as something like protection rackets.
I don’t know why blaming the war on Ukraine surprised anybody. Trump has said things along that line before. It’s such a colossally stupid thing to say that I don’t think Trump is gaslighting here. I think, on some level, he believes it. And why would he believe it? Do you think Vladimir Putin put some ideas in Trump’s head about why Russia had no choice but to invade Ukraine? Hmm.
But then there’s Trump’s Wishful Thinking tendency; he says things he wants to be true whether they are true or not. As in Covid will just go away. Trump’s reasons to dislike Zelenskyy go back to his first term, and his first impeachment. So Trump is calling Zelenskyy all kinds of names and raving that he needs to be voted out of power. And Zelenskyy has had a few things to say about Trump. This is from today:
In a post on his Truth Social account, Mr. Trump responded with a scathing attack on Mr. Zelensky.
“Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and “TRUMP,” will never be able to settle,” Mr. Trump wrote.
As he did in making his assertions a day earlier, he misrepresented verifiable facts. The United States, for instance, has allocated $119 billion for aid to Ukraine, according to a research organization in Germany, the Kiel Institute, not $350 billion.
Mr. Trump also suggested that future security of Ukraine would not be an American problem. “This War is far more important to Europe than it is to us,” he wrote. “We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation.”
Somebody might explain to Trump that oceans aren’t the buffer against aggression they used to be — and they were never perfect — but I doubt he’d listen. Europeans are, um, not happy about any of this.
Anyway, as I’m sure you know, negotiators from the U.S. and Russia are now meeting in Saudi Arabia to work out a “peace deal” that I bet will pretty much rip off Ukraine, which isn’t represented. I understand there’s an emergency summit of European powers going on in Paris to come up with a counterplan.
But back to the domestic front. People are already talking about a “Musk brain drain” of our best scientists and other bright folks losing their jobs. Other governments and private industries abroad might be sending recruiters over here already. Musk is disassembling agencies and programs that took years to reach standards of excellence and will take years to put back together, if they ever are. We’re losing everything that really made America great. MAGA is bent on turning America into a third-world shithole, but of course they can’t see that.
I have been thinking of the great American historian Richard Hofstader. Back in the mid-1950s he wrote an essay for The American Scholar called “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt.” He was writing about the hard-right McCarthyites of his day, but there are a lot of parallels to MAGA.
There is, however, a dynamic of dissent in America today. Representing no more than a modest fraction of the electorate, it is not so powerful as the liberal dissent of the New Deal era, but it is powerful enough to set the tone of our political life and to establish throughout the country a kind of punitive reaction. The new dissent is certainly not radical — there are hardly any radicals of any sort left — nor is it precisely conservative. Unlike most of the liberal dissent of the past, the new dissent not only has no respect for non-conformism, but is based upon a relentless demand for conformity. It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative — I borrow the term from the study of The Authoritarian Personality published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates — because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word, and they are far from pleased with the dominant practical conservatism of the moment as it is represented by the Eisenhower Administration. Their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways — a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence.
From clinical interviews and thematic apperception tests, Adorno and his co-workers found that their pseudo-conservative subjects, although given to a form of political expression that combines a curious mixture of largely conservative with occasional radical notions, succeed in concealing from themselves impulsive tendencies that, if released in action, would be very far from conservative. The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows “conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness” in his conscious thinking and “violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. . . . The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”
Possibly nothing summed this up better than the J6 rioters who assaulted Congress yelling “1776!” while they waved Confederate flags and tried to tear apart the constitutional processes that the real Revolution of 1776 was fought to establish. These are people who are terribly alienated from modern society and culture and want to destroy it and “restore” something that never really was. And in their minds Trump is some kind of colossus who can give them what they want, even though he’s really a corrupt and feeble-minded puppet of a foreign power. Possibly the only reason the destruction of America that’s going on now didn’t happen sooner was that it was waiting for a Trump to lead it.
In his world he is a hero doing heroic things. Zelinsky nailed it, he is living in a bubble. In his world he is a king who cannot error who claims he is operating on divine guidance. It is often said there is an active Deity doing work in strange and unusual ways. Still. his strange and unusual behavior could be due to other factors. I and many others don't even buy into an active and interacting Deity. That idea makes for some really messy metaphysics with a God that has to constantly tinker with an imperfect creation. Most belief systems go with a watchmaker type God with a reliable product that runs on its own. Such a theology is more parsimonious.
Humans do act in strange and unusual ways when their brains or minds go awry. We do sometimes describe them as living in a bubble or hard to reach. That seems more plausible explanation of our present plight. A mind run amok.
I watched both on television this week. I must say that Zelinsky appeared much more normal, honest, and human, understandable, and well aware of he and his country's perils. I also agree with his advice to and descriptive of our leader, although the 'in a bubble' hedged on the polite and diplomatic side. I prefer brain run amok.
Eighty years and we still fight WWII. About twice that for the civil war we never quite got resolved. I won't even start on the constant problems we have getting along with our native indigenous people. Blessed are the peacemakers, of which we are awfully short of it seems. Mess makers we seem to have in abundance. The messes grow larger and larger on a daily basis of late. You don't have to be a scholar, philosopher, theologian, or an expert to see that. Attn. Cleanup needed just north of the Gulf of Mexico. Don't tell me they all got fired today.
Lisa Murkowski siad that the Trump firings are doing more harm than good. I understand unemployment will go up, while inflation is going up, and the fed will pass on the next rate cut. Those are all signals that will cause Wall Street to pull back – the question is how much. Trump may try to take over the Fed and lower interest rates, a formula for hyperinflation.
As Maha mentioned, more than one Senator is calling on the White House not to hurt their state and their people. I expect Trump will ignore them. Trump is endorsing the House budget, which calls for slashing Medicaid. (How much, I'm not sure.) I understand that 25% of Medicaid pays for nursing home care (which Medicare does NOT.) So, a lot of the damage will fall on middle-class people, often in red states, who get more aid proportionately than in blue states.
I will be the first to admit that if Trumpian "reforms" work well, Democrats are in trouble in 2026. I think the opposite will be true – we are more likely than not headed for a depression. Suppose Trump is losing major cases when they hit the USSC.(Which will imply to Trump that the USSC may not save Trump from criminal charges.) In that case, he will declare he's running for a third term OR he'll suspend elections BEFORE the primaries, eliminating the chance of an electoral defeat. Problem: it's so far outside the Constitution, it's grounds for criminal charges. But by 2027, Trump will be doing stuff that's in violation of court orders, which likely means they won't be protected by the USSC expanded immunity.
The question is how bad the economy will be by 2027. If Trump suspends elections (or tries) and if the red states are also suffering in a bad economy with no safety net, GOP Congresscritters will be getting an earful. There's such a thing as reverse coattails – associating yourself with people and policies the public hates.
Nixon was popular until he wasn't. Watergate brewed for a long time but when enough truth came out, the public was outraged and the GOP was at risk of an electoral blowout (which happened.) Suddenly, the GOP got religion and moved to impeach which caused Nixon to resign.
Nobody knows how bad things will get with all the chaos Trump/Musk are producing. It seems unlikely now, but Nixon won by a landslide and less than two years later, he was toast. I agree, it looks like the sky is falling but the worse things get, the more likely there will be a backlash.
You're 100% correct on Medicaid. It's a rough road, too. Mom or dad needs nursing care, you might have to sell the house (and thus, your own inheritance) and spend it on care until they're poor enough to qualify. Remember, Medicaid is a program for the poor, which makes it a poor program. Don't get me wrong: it's *good* that government is an insurer of last resort, but, face it: multi-millionaires never need Medicaid.
So, they can pay for a parent's skilled nursing care, and leave a big pot of money to put the next generation on *second* instead of *third* base. And not even that would bother me, if everyone who really worked hard and applied themselves could put themselves on second base, or at least on first, with a big lead for the next hit/sacrifice.
"Trump Must First Destroy The Gov’t In Order To Corrupt It."
He can certainly profit off a corrupt government but I think he main intention is to bring it to it's knees, eventually. The really horrible thing about what Stump is doing domestically is that he is setting up future administrations for failure. They are firing mostly "probationary" employees with no review regard to performance. I imagine only because they have less legal protections? The departments will be able to hobble along for a while (at least through Stumps term) but with no new people coming up and learning those positions the federal government is doomed for failure in a decade or so. When I graduated from college my first job was at US Steel in Gary, IN. It was the same situation the mills never hired anyone technical for most of the seventies and early eighties so by the time I got there in the mid eighties we really had no new people to learn the jobs required to keep the place running (maintenance, engineering, etc) and even after a hiring blitz the mill continued to decline because many of the old timers had since retired. It's a big complicated place that you can't learn about in college. I don't see how the same thing doesn't happen to the federal government. Stump is setting the country up for failure. And if somehow the departments are able to function beyond Stumps term, Eloon has all the keys to all the computer systems required to operate, he and his team of high school hackers will be able to bring the government to it's knees at any time with just a few key strokes. Maybe this was one of his assignments from Vlad?
On the global stage Stump seems to be following a similar playbook. Another assignment from Vlad. He is trashing NATO and thumbing his nose at most of our most trusted allies. Me thinks he has an agreement with Vlad that he can have all of the land taken during the Ukraine war now as long as he holds out on any new aggression until Stump's term is up. Stump can have his parade and say he ended the war. In four or five years with NATO in shambles Vlad will be able to invade the rest of Ukraine and many of the former Soviet Bloc countries. Vlad stated many years ago that his intention was restore the Soviet Union territory to Russia. Stump and little Marco seem to have jumped onboard with that plan as well. How the fuck every single democrat voted for little Marco as secretary of state is beyond me. We're fucked!
This is brilliant:
"These are people who are terribly alienated from modern society and culture and want to destroy it and “restore” something that never really was. And in their minds Trump is some kind of colossus who can give them what they want, even though he’s really a corrupt and feeble-minded puppet of a foreign power."
I would add to this that the core of the Orange Kinglet's schtick is that he plays a good despot on Tee Vee and that the magats have a very limited distinction between reality and fantasy; limited abstract thought. The Confederacy is trained into them by the Texas textbook editors and home schooling MLM grifts. I suspect the thought is f we pretend, and wish upon a star, enough, we can manifest a greater America. In reality, we are all pushed around and powerless over corporations but the magats can only lash out at boogey men and commies under the bed, not face the fact that the New Deal project was to balance the animal spirits with a sliver of the pie for the chickens. It is too difficult to admit that the perps are somewhere, perhaps, near Bentonville, Arkansas and is super easy to blame trans antifa BLM hippies. It feeeeeeels god to be at the top of the reality show called Amerika and the apprentice of such a handsome man who makes the gonads feel secretly wonderful.
I still ask, then, what is the solution? We all know the problem.
Two very different thoughts. The current trajectory guarantees a mass exodus from the DOJ while at the same time there's a mountain of litigation against Trump/Musk. The fact they they are dancing around the entire Federal government with illegal terminations guarantees a record amount of litigation. And DOJ will have few first-string lawyers left and probably not a lot of second-string lawyers. Appeals courts won't allow the DOJ to introduce NEW facts if the DOJ blew it in the first trial.
Second, I've been willing to compare the current trends with Nazi Germany. For quite some time, through most of Germany, citizens were shielded from the slaughter and demolition. Germany enjoyed the spoils of war as they looted the countries the conquered. Citizens in the US are feeling the adverse effects in the first month of a domestic war on Democracy. It will get worse and blood will be spilled in front of citizens, something most people have no stomach for. Trump may get unpopular faster than you suspect.
The truth for an empiricist like me is in the data. No company keeps data better than Walmart and it reported a weak forward-looking sales forecast today. This makes sense because of the current debt level of the average consumer. With things a mess, which they are, the common citizen pulls back on spending. Well, the markets noticed. This combined with political uncertainty and governmental insanity make for a climate of fear. The market is generally considered a balance of fear and greed. Fear is bearish of course and prompts a downward market in general.
Trust is lacking in this government and for good reason. The chaos is hard to ignore for almost everyone. I recall when Nixon took office, and he started with yanking on many levers of governmental control at once. The result was a serious disruption in our economy. Those with a better grasp of history than I have, need to be listened to. I think this is comparatively more disruptive and could result in even a bigger effect than Nixon made. Some quick research from competent historians is in order.
I would say you're overthinking it, and that Putin probably told Trump, "look, we can seize some territory, *you* can seize some territory. Why don't you stop letting Greenland and Canada sponge off you all this time? Why don't you take back the Panama Canal?"
Trump is *easily* stupid enough to think we can Make Colonialism Great Again, and, Putin is *just* the guy to make him think it. Seriously: if he lectured Tucker Carlson, you think Trump won't listen?
(I say "you're overthinking it" like a friend laughing along with your news reading at the local Starbucks – not that I believe *you* are really overthinking it, nor that I think you're wrong, but raising the possibility that I've seen more human stupidity – as an IT specialist – than you, and therefore understand the forces of stupid better. No disrespect intended! Just, wow, do I know *stupid*.)