The Witness Chronicles, 1/13/25

Building a police state?

Photo by Tomas Val on Unsplash

Is DOGE Going To Be the Trump Stasi?

A quasi real ‘agency’ with unregulated powers looks like a secret domestic spy agency

Last week the Washington Post reported that staffers of Elon Musk’s and Vivek Ranaswamy’s secretive agency, the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency or DOGE, are spreading out across the country to inspect various government agencies.

It is important to state that they have no authority to do anything, much less interfere with people doing their jobs. The fact that they are organized and out there, funded by two wealthy men, should be extremely alarming to every American citizen.

For those not familiar with the name, the Stasi were the hated secret police agency in Communist East Germany whose role was to spy on the public and recruit informers to spy on their friends and relatives.

When you have a well funded group, secretive and unregulated, guided by two right wing billionaires, seemingly empowered by the incoming presidential administration, you should be completely freaked out. Actually, we should be terrified. This essentially gives Trump his own mysterious organization outside of the law and the Constitution.

I may be paranoid but there is more and more evidence that the Trump team will not be leading the country into the future but simply restructuring everything to further enrich themselves and begin dismantling our Democracy.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is meddling in the business of other countries, criticizing the British and supporting a fascist party in Germany. Despite his unfathomable wealth, he seems to share Trump’s constant need for attention at any cost and somehow we now have two sociopathic narcissists at the top of the Republican Party, a situation that seems destined to blow up in someone’s face.

If Trump is the mad king, Musk appears poised to be the court jester with his own junior jester assistant, Ramaswamy, handing him the props. And now MAGA king Steve Bannon has declared war on Musk, calling him a racist, which says so much about the state of the Republican Party under Trump. Racists calling out racists?

It is amazing how fast things went beyond bonkers again. The right sees a disaster in California as an opportunity to pursue their obsession with DEI, which is now being blamed with starting the fires in LA. A bit of a stretch, that one.

The question, as always, is when will someone stand up and expose this farce for what it is? And is that even possible? Today I read about people in a rust belt town who were upset that Trump never brought them manufacturing jobs as promised, but turned around and elected him again, verifying that adage about madness consisting of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.

That seems to be the endless loop we find ourselves in and maybe we deserve it, though enough of us voted against Trump to tell me there is still a shred of sanity and decency in this country. Cold comfort.

The walk backs on campaign pledges are coming every day. First he admitted getting prices down would be hard. Then immigrants with H1-B visas are exceptions because they are better workers than lazy Americans. Now Trump has set a 100 day target for ending the war in Ukraine- no more ‘on my first day’ crap. JD Vance now says violent January Sixth criminals should not be pardoned, in apparent contradiction to his boss, but maybe that changed too.

It’s hard to take any of this seriously except for the fact that it is all very serious. It would be great if we could just laugh at these guys but we can’t because they take themselves too seriously and will soon have unchecked power.

If you want to know what this presidency is about, follow the money trail leading to the Trump inauguration. The price tag for attendance at events with Trump ranges from $500,000-1,000,000 and that money is apparently not subject to oversight. It’s just pure graft, a money grab.

At least back in 2016, the Trump campaign pretended they would follow the rules about not using the office to enrich yourself. No such farce now, they are just blatantly twisting arms for bribes. And in a train of shameful corporate behavior, companies are ponying up, no questions asked.

As I scan this stuff my real mind is on Southern California and the growing death and destruction there. The situation is far from over, in fact it is likely to accelerate today and tonight as the Santa Ana winds increase. That is the real news right now but you wouldn’t know it in Trump World. And that is the most telling story right now. Callous disregard for our fellow humans is now the norm it seems.

Right now my attention and focus is on the climate disaster unfolding in LA. I have a friend who is flying there today and has to get to her home in Santa Barbara. She was going to take Amtrak but trains are not running as they would be going through the fire zones.

I just spoke to a friend in NYC who told me three of her friends have lost their homes. And this is far from over. There is something seriously wrong with people who see a tragedy like this as an opportunity to throw political mud, but that’s what we have. The Grand Old Party should be ashamed of themselves. But there is little chance of that.

It’s sickening and indecent to say the least.

We are in a time of turbulence and there is no end in sight. My suspicion is that climate events are going to derail the Trump administration as they cannot acknowledge the reality of any of it. It sounds awful but to be honest, a destructive hurricane bearing down on Mar A Lago might not be the worst thing that could happen.

And that could happen.

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