The Improbable Victory Of Musk's Children's Crusade

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari) 

America, the world, can't take 206 more weeks of this shit.

    For instance, look at Elon Musk's children's crusade. Vittoria Elliot of Wired reported that Musk has taken over vital government offices and has employed children, teenagers, college students and dropouts, and given them administration access to source code. We're hearing that he's even moved in couches and sleep pods so these stupid kids can live in these offices and work 'round the clock. They're all between the ages of 19-24. In other words, some of these punks weren't old enough to vote back when Biden was running for president. (Here's an interview that came out today with Elliot conducted by The Texas Standard).

     We know for a fact that the revelation of the names and likenesses of these six high tech vandals has already been addressed by Ed Martin, Trump's stooge at the DC office of the DoJ. He's already threatened those who reveal their names with investigations and even prosecutions and told Musk directly on Twitter that he can count on the full resources of his office to that end.

     If bringing in people with no pubic hair or security clearances into the most sensitive areas of the government isn't bad enough, those who resist, including the former Acting Treasury Secretary, are threatened with arrest by the US Marshal's Service and are summarily suspended. It's impossible to see at this point how Musk is empowered to do this, much less his coterie of fist fuckers. Not only that, these children tasked with dismantling the government are waylaying career employees and demanding they explain their source code and even to justify their jobs.

     Explain to me how this is any different from the takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge engineered under terrorist Ammon Bundy?

     Said one federal employee, “One of Musk’s top lieutenants and wife and young child have shacked up on the sixth floor of our agency and are living there." Some hallways, they added, have been choked off thanks to "a special access list." It's like the Stanford Experiment only with hackers.

     Of course, this is all fine and dandy with Trump, Elon Musk's vice president, who recently said he was weeding out people who "were no good" despite not personally knowing any of them or what they did for a living. I can only speak for myself but I think the sentiment is shared by many other Americans that Trump Season 2 is not as bad as we thought it would be- It's much worse.

     And the reason it's immeasurably worse is because, prior to the election, we didn't know Elon Musk was going to essentially take over the entire government and bring in a bunch of pimply faced hackers to do his dirty work for him and give them an indefinite sleepover. We thought Trump would give him busy work with a fake DOGE agency, he'd make some stupid suggestions then go back to Texas to blow up rockets on the launch pad. Like the old saying goes, if you're not scared. you're not paying attention. No matter how cynical you are, you are not cynical enough. What we've seen over the last two weeks is a poorly-conceived sequel to Idiocracy.

"Some Men Just Want to Watch the World Burn."

I suppose that for the foreseeable future we'll often remember Alfred the butler's famous words to Bruce Wayne. Another of the most outrageous allowances granted to Musk has been to axe USAID, an organization that disburses $60 billion in aid to hungry people in 60 different nations. Granted, anyone who knows the first thing about USAID knows it's always been a front for the CIA to spread simoleons and the gospel of Democracy to poor nations around the globe so they don't, you know, get bought out by the Russians and Chinese before we have the chance to bribe them.

     But the good that USAID does around the world, however cynical their motivations, is undeniable and millions would die were it not for our largesse. Sixty billion dollars can do an awful lot of good around the world if it's targeted and used properly. But cutting off aid to those countries and making them more susceptible to the siren songs of Russia and China is part of the calculation.

     Trump's already sent out a mass email to over two million federal workers to either take a buyout and quit now or get fired and get nothing by February 6th. The carrot they're dangling on a stick is that Elon Musk will pay their severance package that will equate to eight months of pay and benefits. But our federal workers aren't stupid. Only a few thousand have quit and the rest don't trust Trump or Musk to pay them that severance even if they do quit. Many are staying at their jobs out of spite.

     Seeing this, Trump and Musk have issued a memo to the GAO to break all leases they currently have to rent office space. This is right after Trump ordered them back to work at the office. So, when they can't get in the buildings any more, they get fired for not showing up, which is exactly the kind of tactic you can expect of a glorified slumlord who once wouldn't rent to Black people.

     They've also reached out to the entire workforce of the CIA and asked them all to quit. Yes, Trump asked the entire 78 year-old CIA to quit. It's impossible to divine what his end game is in trying to get everyone at the nation's second-largest intelligence agency to quit except to make things easier for Moscow. It's no coincidence that virtually everything Trump does is guaranteed to benefit the Russians somehow.

      Everyone who's been paying attention since 1947 knows the CIA has done some seriously evil things, like toppling democracies, carrying out assassinations, etc. Look up Operation Phoenix, if you don't believe me. But one can only imagine the vast world of good the CIA has done for our country, such as stopping terrorist attacks, saving us from attempted coups, etc. It's impossible to imagine a world without the CIA but it's one that can be easily imagined by the likes of Trump and Putin.

DEI Is the New Juden

Make no mistake about it, people. DEI is the new Juden.

    Juden, of course, is the German word for Jew. And we knew a large part of Hitler consolidating power in just 52 days after getting elected Chancellor was to blame everything on the Jews. The faltering economy? Jewish bankers. Losing WWI? Blame the Jews. The Jews became Hitler's boogeyman and justification for everything that he did for 12 years.

     Trump is doing much the same thing in the name of DEI, which isn't even a name or a word but an acronym for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. It is not a religion, not a nationality. Instead, it's a mindset, one mandating that correct past injustices toward marginalized and underserved communities and segments of the population are corrected. That includes women that make up over half the population.

     In short, DEI is a threat to white male dominance. In the immediate wake of the DC plane crash exactly a week ago, Trump couldn't wait to go on social media and blame DEI for it. (Like Rahm Emanuel once famously said, "Never let a crisis go to waste.") And an undisguised, unfiltered, obsessive and naked hatred for DEI is being used as the justification for virtually everything the Trump junta is doing to our government. Think of the right wing loathing for Affirmative Action and load it with anabolic steroids.

     NASA recently removed from its website any reference to female and indigenous contributions to the space program. This is really ironic, since NASA is currently run by a woman. And I'm sure many of you have seen the above picture of words such as Integrity, Fairness, Stability and Leadership being literally covered over with gray paint at the FBI Academy at Quantico. Because such qualities are antithetical to an administration completely predicated on venality, corruption, nastiness, hatred and bigotry.

   In short, any aspect, any mission, any remit that the government once had that isn't expressly supportive of white male hegemony is automatically smeared with a wide DEI tar brush and disappeared with the speed and industry of Josef Stalin.

    Yes, what Elon Musk and his children's crusade is doing is horrible enough. It's as if Musk is breaking into some of the toniest houses in America and unlocking the liquor cabinet for his high tech street gang like a Pied Piper with a fat wallet. And, yet, it still somewhat pales in comparison to what Trump is doing himself in his pouting, petty petulance, the biggest and most destructive child of all.