Well, after the horrifically illegal weekend Elon had, all of this Silicon Valley capitulation makes sense. These super-rich assholes all talk to each other, and I have no doubt that Musk laid out his plans for his bought-and-paid-for presidency to each of them personally, as clearly as Project 2025 was written out for anyone who could be bothered with a cursory education on the stakes in this election.
Faced with an invitation to oligarchy or the threat of being targeted for showing some backbone, they have opted to line their pockets further, standing aside or assisting as vulnerable groups are scapegoated and the mechanisms of our government are turned away from anything hopeful and toward vengeance and cruelty. They are wittering away about AI while propping up a man who promised to be a dictator. (Skynet seems closer than ever.)
Having gutted FBI leadership, stolen tranches of our data, and grabbed the purse strings of our nation in the most flagrantly unconstitutional manner imaginable, it's clear that Musk and the orange oaf have paralyzed our federal operations in preparation for a coup, which is happening before our eyes. They did it to yank the chain and assert power over anyone who might resist, and didn't care that the ability to access food aid or medication would be disrupted for millions.
Public health data that we paid for with our tax dollars is being erased. Women's health was immediately on the chopping block, along with any mention of transness or research that assumed that humans come in varieties beyond straight, white, and male. Already, doctors have lost resources that help them provide basic care to patients, and the CDC is being gutted as we stare down another potential pandemic. Some of us are not going to survive this.
And, because both diplomacy and humanitarian efforts are beyond the perception of these kleptocratic weirdos, USAID has apparently been destroyed for refusing to let an unelected private citizen and his band of fascist toadies access sensitive security information. This will hurt globally, and offers a vacuum for adversarial states to enter where the US has abandoned its influence.
As a reminder, it was not half of the country that voted for this: it was less than a quarter. No one voted for Elon. About as many people voted for Kamala Harris as did for the bloviating monstrosities before us. Trump's voters are a lost cause, and literally nothing he can do is bad enough to dissuade them--it's a cult.
But an even bigger group than either of those could have voted, and simply did not. All of those folks held the door for the destruction and robbery happening now. They handed Trump the presidency and two compliant houses of Congress by simply not bothering to show up. The Undeclared, "Kamala is a cop," "I'm not excited about either candidate," "both sides" non-voters are just as complicit in this mess as Bezos, Zuck, and apartheid boy, though the former are certainly not going to enjoy power nor profits as a result of this collapse.
The extremely rich do not care about livable wages, decent jobs, or the improvement of basic living conditions for people in this country, or anyone outside of their gated compounds. They do care about money and flattery, however, which are perhaps the most common currencies among billionaires. As a reminder, we all have more in common with a homeless person than a billionaire--you are never one paycheck away from that level of wealth, but the majority of people in this country live one layoff, one health scare, one natural disaster away from penury.
Perhaps one of the greatest swindles Donald Trump has managed to pull, as a poor person's idea of a rich person, is the MAGA mindset that his followers are no longer temporarily embarrassed millionaires, but billionaires in the making. They stand slavering away as his tax cuts and executive orders, which will never benefit them, offer welfare to the the super wealthy, hollowing out our common funds for infrastructure and basic needs, and giving the choicest bits of our nation's assets to cronies that flatter him. That is the point of this chaos.
We still collectively have the power to do something about this. The people who don't want this still outnumber those that do. But the work ahead will certainly be more difficult and dangerous than the simple pragmatism of a ballot cast.
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