The Witness Chronicles August 2, 2023: “The Leaves of this Tree Shield the Nation”
A little angry rant, the dumbness of DeSantis Republicans, and why Trump is not the most dangerous man in America
Trump was indicted today for inciting the insurrection of January Sixth 2020 and conspiracy to change the legal election results. We’re in danger of becoming numb to his constant legal issues but they are chipping away at his credibility with his base. Or so one hopes. It is very difficult to deprogram cult members.
I also look at what Elon Musk is actually doing while distracting us with his Twitter/X crap. It’s pretty scary when you look at it holistically.
The circus that is American politics provides endless fodder for observers like me. Every morning the news refills the hopper. Thank god it’s lovely outside and the crickets could care less. Be nice.
“You’re Too Honest” The Quote That Says It All
Republicans, it’s over. Stop backing this man.
I’m not going to be polite about it this morning. As an American citizen and voter, I am fed up. When Vice President Pence was told by President Trump to decertify the legitimate election, and he declined, Trump told him, “you’re too honest”.
There is no ‘too honest’.
There are no degrees of honesty.
Call me naive. I am not. But he asked a man to betray his country, no questions, just do it.
What kind of a man, much less the leader of the free world, can say, ‘you’re too honest’ to a man standing up for what he swore to do?
Republican Party and Trump voters, wake up. This man is evil, weak, and a liar. What can you possibly admire about a scumbag like this? How many major indictments does it take to cut through the wall of bullshit erected by the Republican Party in a desperate attempt to stay in power?
The entire enterprise is beyond pitiful.
It’s over and it has to stop. Now. Wake up. You’ve been conned. It’s hard to admit but it’s time to man up and eat crow (pardon the sexist implication).
This is a disgraceful thing for our country and every one of us as human beings.
Watching Ron DeSantis Bury Himself
He doesn’t seem to have a clue
It’s the political sideshow of the week. This guy is either blindingly arrogant, stupid, or both. He is not only tone deaf, he was born tone deaf, but the fact that for a while he was the great white non-Trump hope of the Republican Party, and this is their fundamental mistake in this election cycle.
What they want to pretend is that you can run a government without any compromise, no reaching across the aisles, and god forbid, no bipartisanship.
Mr DeSantis is the exemplar of this polarization. In Florida he manufactured a rubber stamp government that would bow to his every desire, no matter how extreme or unpopular. A petty banana republic of hatred and censorship led by a martinet used to people kissing his ass.
And that has been his downfall. He appears to believe that his Florida dictatorship is normal and would translate to the rest of the nation, making him a great man. The problem is he is obviously not a great man, and never will be. Obvious to most of us but not to him, and that still seems to be the case.
He goes around the country telling people how to think while things are falling apart in his home state. And he does so with no humor, no self-awareness, and a whiny arrogance.
And not surprisingly, few Americans can bring themselves to support him, much less like him.
There is an object lesson in this that the Republican Party is not learning from. People want to like something about their candidates. Trump knows the power of charm. His kind either works or it doesn’t, but it exists. It doesn’t with men like DeSantis and women like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Or Kevin McCarthy, once considered amiable but who is desperately trying to be a meanie.
Meanie might be the operative word here. These aren’t the Blue Meanies of Yellow Submarine fame. These are the Red Meanies of the right and Mr DeSantis is the dumbest and meanest.
The definition of madness, often attributed to Einstein, says that it is defined by doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results. This defines the Republican Party and they don’t seem to know it. Can a political party be mentally ill?
That’s the question of the day.
The Most Dangerous Man in America is Not Donald Trump
It’s another maniacal billionaire
A private businessperson is actively interfering in the Ukraine war outside of official foreign policy. He has no regard for the law and common sense is ridiculed. His actions are arbitrary and unpredictable. But his power does not come from rhetoric, bombastic all-caps diatribes, and a crazed cult of followers.
It comes from money and businesses built up to give him the ability to hold the American people hostage. And, no, it is not a Russian, it is a US citizen.
Elon Musk is using his Starlink internet satellite network, critical to Ukrainian battle communications, to stifle their communications, slowing their progress. He did not do this with any political mandate whatsoever. He just waved his wand.
The same man effectively controls our access to space through SpaceX, giving him the potential high ground over the entire planet, while his competitors struggle to send wealthy tourists to space for thrills. And the quasi-government competitor, Boeing, can’t even get a ship off the ground.
On the ground he has a massive lead in electric vehicles, charging stations, solar and battery storage, all important pieces of the future of energy production and distribution in this country and around the world.
He made a huge ($44 billion) move to control much of the global elite communications and media infrastructure through his acquisition of Twitter, now inexplicably something called X, which he says heralds the development of an all encompassing software platform that will run the world's economy.
Interesting that the Russian military uses a similar symbol, Z, as their rallying brand.
We really don’t need Elon Musk controlling the world’s global information platform, but that seem to be part of his evil master plan.
Fortunately we are not seeing much evidence of any ability to manage that failing enterprise. But everything else is advancing fast and on top of it all we now know he believes regulations and laws do not apply to him.
When he rebranded Twitter to X, his people apparently never bothered to secure a trademark or even check to see if one existed (there are many). He put a huge immensely bright X sign on top of his building in San Francisco, that was so bright neighbors could not sleep.
He had no permit and was forced to take it down immediately.
There is a comic book quality to all of this, the bad guy who aspires to take over the world and run it as his own, not subject to any law or oversight. Not an uncommon goal, but he is not using politics to achieve his evil empire, he is using business and technology.
Shades of Spectre. And the evil Emperor on Star Wars. And a host of other fantasy strongmen.
If Donald Trump had any brains beyond an uncanny ability to manipulate weak-minded people through lies and promises, he might have taken this route. But his efforts have been laughably terrible, a la Truth Social.
The reality is that Trump was never anything but a huckster, a con man, a grifter selling patent medicines to rubes. It turns out he is not too good at getting away with that either. He’s no Elon Musk, or even Vladimir Putin, another failure whose tools were fear and violence.
Neither Putin or Trump realized the economic opportunities inherent in climate change, our overarching catastrophe that requires massive changes in virtually everything we do on every level. When you have massive changes in the name of survival, men like Musk see opportunity, opportunity for unheard of wealth and power.
Fortunately, like his megalomaniacal rivals, Musk has a fatal flaw, one they share: arrogance, the belief that he is above the law, and has a better understanding of how to run everything. He is different, sometimes laughably different, but also dangerously different.
Though Musk was born in South Africa, he has the characteristics of classical American power brokers like the Railroad Barons of the nineteenth century and the newspaper media giants who controlled information in much of the last century. Think Carnegie, JP Morgan, Wm. Hearst. But even they didn’t have the wealth and tools he has access to.
His path to power is not only monopoly, but building businesses that became entities outside of the reach of government, but allowed to exist because the country needs them desperately.
There is nothing Trump had that we need on an existential basis, his power is non-existent, just fading charisma and a house of mirrors. We’re watching its downfall and it is pitiful in its shallowness and greed.
Greed is the keyword. Elon Musk is not driven by greed and this is incomprehensible to many Americans in power whose mantra is greed and power. Those who crave these things are vulnerable. Witness the grip the oil industry has on our politicians- they own them in exchange for chump change.
All of them, it appears.
Musk has his weaknesses and they are not minor. He is not the all encompassing genius he believes himself to be, but he is a lot closer to it than his would be dictator rivals. No longer the wealthiest man on earth, he nevertheless has built an immense war chest and has shown indifference to taking huge losses to further his cause, vis a vis X, nee Twitter.
But that was a stumble into something not his strongest ability. And it shows where there is weakness and ego, vulnerabilities. But watch him, what he is doing may have bigger implications than his detractors understand.
My personal opinion is that the above Musk piece is one of the more important things I’ve written about recently, in part because I’m not seeing this perspective out there. But maybe it is being obscured by the hailstorm of Trump news, not to mention climate stuff. It’s early but I hope it gets read.
I had a very meditative weekend at a friend’s place in the Hudson Valley and it was a needed change in perspective. It’s hard to overstate the value of simply doing nothing. Other than cooking healthy food, hiking, and gazing at the lovely greenery. The soul sucks this stuff up.
Get stirred up and then let it go, both are cathartic.
Did you write today?
Martin Edic
1820 words
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