A Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly of America

Trump, Musk, and the broligarchy are dismantling our democracy and selling our country for parts to the highest bidder. Democrats are feckless. It will be up to the rest of us to save us.

American taxpayers yet again paid for expensive fireworks thanks to Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket blowing up for the second time in a row. Our wasted money illuminating the sky in the form of colorful debris, which sparked numerous airport delays in Florida.

Perhaps it’s time to bring back DEI.

Unfortunately, we now know the Trump Administration is in “Control + F” delete mode for anything related to women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community. The AP reported last night that 26,000 “DEI” images have been flagged for removal across every military branch, including references to the Enola Gay, which is not a gay superhero, but was the name of the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan.

Last month, our new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, declared the era of DEI was over and the Trump Administration would only select “the best and brightest.” This, of course, includes Hegseth, a former Fox host and our least qualified Sec. of Defense who paid a victim $50,000 to sign an NDA to ensure she wouldn’t speak out about his alleged sexual assault. The “best and brightest” also includes former Real World star Sean Duffy, our current Secretary of Transportation, who oversees numerous preventable airline collisions as Musk continues gutting the FAA.

Let’s not forget RFK Jr., who leads our Health and Human Services, and is another alleged “predator” with no medical experience. That doesn’t stop him from spouting dangerous anti-vaxx conspiracies. As rockets are exploding across the sky and planes are barely avoiding collisions, America is experiencing a spike in measles. We now have two reported measles deaths, including one child in Texas and an adult in New Mexico. Again, these were preventable deaths, but vaccination rates are declining ever since the GOP began spreading anti-Covid conspiracies and weaponizing science to “own the libs.” Even butterflies are giving up on this country. Their species are now disappearing at a “catastrophic rate.”

But, fret not, friends, because the richest man on Earth, Elon Musk, is here to save the best and whitest of you and take you to Mars along with his 14 children on one of his space rockets that hopefully won’t explode. Musk continues to unleash his chainsaw and dismantle federal jobs, which now includes a proposal to eliminate 80,000 employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs. It’s under the guise of saving money and exposing waste, but receiving $38 billion in government subsidies is perfectly fine for Musk. It’s almost as if he has - wait for it - a conflict of interest. But, let’s not pay attention to small details, folks. Important cuts must be made. For example, Homeland Security just announced it is ending collective bargaining agreements with thousands of TSA employees, and our new Secretary of Education Linda McMahon proudly announced her “final mission” to dismantle the Department of Education. Oh, we still haven’t touched on the Trump Administration’s dismantling of USAID, which will cause massive preventable death across the world, their drastic cuts to science and medical research, including work being done on children’s cancer prevention, and their attempt to privatize weather forecasting and data after dismantling the NOAA.

Like I said, maybe it’s time to bring back DEI and hire qualified people, especially people of color. However, this is America, a self-destructive country addicted to white supremacy that chose to elect a violent, criminal rapist who incited an insurrection because they couldn’t bear a female President who is Black and Indian. It was never about the “price of eggs,” which are sky high, or the economy, which is at the risk of tanking and going into recession in part thanks to Trump’s reckless, dumb, stupid, no good “trade wars” with our allies. MAGA, and the Republican Party, have always desired to undo the civil rights progress made in the second half of the century. If it wasn’t apparent, Musk and Trump continue promoting a white supremacist lie about privileged, white Afrikaners being victimized in South Africa and have offered them refuge in America while supporting kicking out undocumented immigrants from “shithole countries” and their citizen children.

Before our eyes, Trump and Republicans are dismantling our democracy in service of white supremacy, Putin, and billionaires like Musk. They are breaking it down and selling all the parts to the highest bidder. It’s all quid pro quo, baby. MAGA goes along with it because they’re part of a radicalized cult fed a 24-7 drip of misinformation. The establishment and corporate America go along with it due to fear, self-preservation, and a desire to make as much money as possible. Republicans, like Marco Rubio, go along with it because they’ve made a Faustian bargain and sold out their integrity and country for the sake of relevance and power. However, even that isn’t working out according to a bombshell report from the NYT earlier today highlighting a clash between Rubio and President Musk who admonished Rubio for not doing enough to slash jobs.

(Look at what they made you give, Republicans. Was it worth it?)

And, finally, we have Democrats, who are doing their best to be the walking definition of impotence. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, instead of fighting fascism and figuratively punching a bully in the mouth, they are complicit handmaidens through their performative civility. Some would much rather censure their fellow Democrat, Rep. Al Green, for standing up to Trump than stand up to Republicans who are humiliating them and attacking their constituents.

I wish I could end this essay on hopeful news, but we’re in it now, friends. This is a long, painful, uphill slog towards freedom. It isn’t easy to rebuild institutions and restore what was already a flawed democracy that is actively being torn apart, dismantled, and sold to the highest bidder. The good news is that people are slowly, very slowly, waking up and realizing they can no longer stay neutral as this carnage arrives at their doorstep. Trump, Musk and MAGA are attacking their jobs, schools, freedoms, children’s health, quality of air, and local economy.

We’re all in it now. As Musk, Trump, and Republicans disassemble our country and erase our narratives, the rest of us have to become builders. We have to pick up the pen and write a story in which all of us, or at the very least our children, have a chance to emerge as co-protagonists of this flawed, broken, but not defeated nation.

Danielle and I broke it down in today’s episode of DEMOCRACY-ISH. Give us a watch.