"The illegal seizure of power isn’t just another story to be swept away in the deluge of other stories. It’s the foundational framing to understanding everything."
~ Carole Cadwalladr
#Musk #Trump #coup #TechBros #broligarchy #EconomicElites #billionaires #destruction #media #power #LawandOrder
/1
"The third characteristic of the Muskenjugend is that, like Musk himself, they’re arrogant. They believe that they can parachute into agencies and quickly identify what should be cut."
~ Paul Krugman
#Musk #Trump #coup #TechBros #broligarchy #EconomicElites #billionaires #destruction #media #power #LawandOrder
/2
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/our-government-is-experiencing-a
"So last week, when the Trump administration began laying off large numbers of probationary workers, the only real questions were how quickly it would become clear that essential government functions were being compromised and just how scary the damage would be.
And the answers were that the damage became obvious almost immediately, and some of it looks very scary indeed."
#Musk #Trump #coup #TechBros #broligarchy #EconomicElites #billionaires #destruction #media #power #LawandOrder
/3
"When we experience our next wave of devastating forest fires, when significant numbers of Americans begin dying from preventable diseases and faulty medical devices, remember: These disasters will be partly the fault of arrogant, ignorant men who decided to smash up a reasonably functional government."
#Musk #Trump #coup #TechBros #broligarchy #EconomicElites #billionaires #destruction #media #power #LawandOrder
/4
"Being above the law—or taking upon oneself to define what legitimate law is—has been the inner logic of the Christian Right for a very long time."
#Musk #Trump #coup #TechBros #broligarchy #EconomicElites #billionaires #destruction #media #power #LawandOrder #evangelicals #ChristianRight #ChristianNationalism
/5
~ Kristin du Mez
https://kristindumez.substack.com/p/demons-parasites-and-the-hubris-of
"The desire to be above the law has also been a popular trope inside within the tech bro world. What unites both groups is the hubris that they are the deserving ones, the ones who have access to truth and ought to have the power to do what needs to be done."
#Musk #Trump #coup #TechBros #broligarchy #EconomicElites #billionaires #destruction #media #power #LawandOrder #evangelicals #ChristianRight #ChristianNationalism
/6
"One particularly sadistic aspect of Elon Musk’s and Donald Trump’s rampage through our government is that they’re cutting programs that are popular. To some observers, that might seem like bad politics, in line with the juvenile, amateur-hour image of this administration. But the unpopularity of some of these cost-cutting moves does not represent a goofy misstep on this administration’s part. Rather, it’s exactly the point."
~ Liza Featherstone
https://newrepublic.com/article/191573/musk-trump-freeze-ira-education-environment
"For anti-government ideologues, it’s important that people not have good experiences with the government. Every clean energy investment in your community, every Social Security check, every child enrolled in Head Start, every improvement in air and water quality, is a threat to right-wing ideological dominance. They know it, and they want to stop Americans from having those positive associations."
@wdlindsy I think you're right that that's what they're going for, but - like one of Shitler's mouthpieces on the telly the other day - they're forgetting that THEY are the government. When everything fails, people won't blame some abstraction of government & thank those dismantling it; they'll direct their ire squarely at those supposedly in charge, most prominently the president.
They should know that; they used it against Biden - but remember, they're fucking idiots.
@paulschoe @wdlindsy The population has all the power - it's literally the only source of power there is (among other things that's the basis of the saying "the rich need us but we don't need them").
Which means that when those who command that power fuck up too much, the people take it back, usually in the form of an uprising, up to & including a violent revolt.
It doesn't have to come to that, though: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world