What To Expect When You're Expecting: Fascism in America Edition
It's been eleven days, and it's happening so much faster than I anticipated.
Tonight, the following has taken place in the last five hours:
The top eight leadership positions at the FBI were all fired, after Director Chris Wray resigned before Trump could fire him.
The heads of the Las Vegas, Miami, and Washington DC FBI field offices were fired.
Nearly two dozen prosecutors who handled the charges against the January 6th insurrectionists were fired.
The Trump people running the Justice Department have demanded a list of everyone who worked on the January 6th investigations, which amounts to roughly a fifth of the FBI’s total workforce.
Numerous federal websites, from the FAA to CDC, have been taken offline. The Census website is down, and with it all of our historical population data. Informational websites about HIV prevention and care, domestic violence statistics, malaria, famine warning data, women’s health, and so much more have vanished.
Elon Musk has taken over the Office of Personnel Management, and locked workers out of their systems. OPM is the human resources department of the federal government. Ten years ago, they were hacked by the Chinese, resulting in millions of workers having their sensitive data stolen. Elon Musk is not a federal employee, no matter how many “DOGE” stories run about him. He does not have any legal right to do what he is doing. This is an unelected, non-government person controlling the personal data of everyone who works for the government, and those in private sectors requiring security clearance.
Speaking of, this same non-federal employee, non-federal official forced out the treasurer of the United States government and has spent the last ten days trying to get control of the system that disburses national funds. The world’s richest person is trying to hijack control of the world’s wealthiest nation’s money. This system would give him the power to stop payments on a whim. Social Security checks to residents of blue states. Medicaid funding. Foreign aid. Tax refunds. Again, he is doing this illegally—one career Treasury official told Marisa Kabas this was a “ten-alarm fire” and that Musk’s penchant for acting on whims could “destroy the economy within days.”
Musk has also been trying to get control of the General Services Administration (GSA) cybersecurity arm. This would give him the ability to silently enter any unclassified computer of the government and look at emails, watch people through their embedded webcams, copy data, etc. It’s not only illegal for him to do this, it’s fucking creepy.
I cannot be more clear about what I am saying here…
THIS IS A HOSTILE TAKEOVER OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT BY AN UNELECTED FOREIGNER.
I do not care if Elon was naturalized two decades ago, because he came here illegally, and he only got naturalized without penalty because he’s white. In his heart, in his actions, he is an unrepentant Afrikaner. He was not elected, and his stupid “Department of Government Efficiency,” named just so he could work in his favorite meme, is not an official government agency. It has no funding from Congress. It is not a Cabinet department. He is not an employee of the United States government, and he has no business doing anything that he has done since January 20th. The acquiescence of Congress in this, like so many other things, is a dereliction of their constitutional oath.
The Senate does not have to continue to hold hearings on Trump appointees. They can put a halt to those until Musk is removed from government offices and order restored. They can slow-walk any legislation brought forward. They do not have to sit back and shrug and “privately complain” about how bad this all is. Donald Trump is trying to destroy the Constitution he took a vow to defend. The dismantling of the FBI was literally a plot point in last year’s film "Civil War.” Using military force on civilians, which new Secretary of Defense and raging alcoholic Pete Hegseth has advocated for, may well come soon, and was also a major cause of the war.
We are looking at the quickest subjugation of a governmental system since Adolf Hitler destroyed the Weimar Republic in 53 days after becoming Chancellor in March 1933. Republicans, by and large, are in Trump’s pocket, unwilling or too afraid to criticize him or move against him, even though it is their power as representatives and senators he is usurping illegally with his unconstitutional impoundment of funds and disbanding of federal agencies. Democrats, meanwhile, well, they’ve been completely missing in action. Too busy trying to come up with a “social media strategy” that is designed for a decade ago, too unwilling to let go of “norms” while the very nation’s existence is at stake, too feckless to try what Republicans have regularly done for two decades and gum up the workings of Congress to protest this inside coup.
I defended Democrats more times than I can count and tried to understand positions they took at times last year, but it became very evident both in the final month of the campaign and in the interregnum before Donald Trump took back power that their professional staff, their campaign consultants, their congressional leadership, is too old, too out of touch, too slow, too cautious, too wedded to a system that has been shattered. Tim Walz had Democrats galvanized and knew how to put the GOP down. Instead of capitalizing on that, we trotted out Liz Cheney and had a stupid “Country over Party” bus tour that wasn’t great then and looks like the biggest own goal since the Colombian soccer player in the 1994 World Cup that was murdered for his mistake.
Yesterday, per reporting by multiple outlets, Walz joined a conference call with congressional leadership and put forward a plan to get on offense and have Democrats blanketing the airwaves attacking this coup. Chuck Schumer dismissed his ideas in favor of a “disciplined message.” Listen, Chuckles: When the foundation of America is under attack, when a president is attempting to turn the executive branch into the ONLY branch of government, while recklessly firing anyone who dared prosecute him for his actual fucking crimes (like stealing classified documents) and inciting a fucking insurrection, nobody should be concerned about “message discipline.” Firefighters don’t attack wildfires with “water discipline.” They attack the fire at the points where it is most dangerous to the public. When a military force is under heavy fire, they don’t debate over strategy. They counterattack the danger!
It is vital that the younger, less senior Democrats tell their sclerotic leadership to shove it and get themselves on any media outlet they can and denounce this. Forget party discipline, forget message discipline. This is an emergency. Barack Obama should use his very large platform and reach to denounce this. AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, the younger, savvier Democrats who know exactly what is happening and how to attack it through social media and elsewhere, should be front and center. Dare these geriatrics to take them off committees or try to punish them and see how well that goes over with the voters.
As for the rest of us, people need to start thinking about a general strike. The billionaires only retain power so long as we comply every time. They have all thrown in behind Donald Trump and fascism, and we must resist that. Our power is in numbers, and I don’t think a lot of Trump voters (no matter how much I will never forgive them for electing him again) want Elon Musk taking away their health care and Social Security and putting their grandparents out on the streets. Benjamin Franklin said at the Continental Congress that they must all hang together, lest they all hang separately if they failed in establishing this nation. If we do not band together now and make it clear that we expect Congress to do its job and stop this putsch, we will surely end up suffering on our own in the ruins of this nation.