Monday, February 03, 2025

Today's News: American Tune - "...We lived so well so long.... I wonder what's gone wrong"

 
Does anyone still remember Paul Simon's American Tune
...And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
Or driven to its knees
But it's alright, it's alright
We lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we're traveling on
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it, I wonder what has gone wrong

... And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call The Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
And sing an American tune
Oh, and it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest
Simon wrote it in 1973 during the Nixon presidency but it is a particularly apt accompaniment to the events in Washington this weekend, when the American government payment system has apparently been taken over by Elon Musk and his tech-bro putsch.
Nobody understands yet what has happened, but it looks bad - very bad.

If you’ve been wondering what Elon Musk and his lackeys are up to since taking control of the US government, look no further. Our latest story names six 19- to 24-year-olds working with his DOGE organization, which now has access to sensitive federal systems. wrd.cm/4jzpiSN

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— WIRED (@wired.com) February 2, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Sounds to unbelieveable to be true? Well, not...

icymi earlier - USAID security leaders removed after refusing Elon Musk's DOGE employees access to secure systems & sensitive data www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...

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— Lora Kolodny (@lorak.bsky.social) February 2, 2025 at 9:56 PM

Elon Musk is not a Federal employee or a political appointee. DOGE is not a real department. None of their activities are legal. This is a coup. The Republicans in Congress are willing participants in it. At what point do Democrats in DC get that and start acting like it? It’s not the price of eggs!

— Fred Wellman (@fpwellman.bsky.social) February 2, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Here is a fascinating article that describes the coup as though an international reporter is observing from afar, like its happening in a third-world country. 
This article hit the US media on Saturday like a bolt from the heavens - I am seeing it quoted all 
over:

Garrett Graff / Doomsday Scenario
Musk's Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government
Imagining how we'd cover overseas what's happening to the U.S. right now
...WASHINGTON, D.C. — What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.
With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.
The G-7 country’s newly installed president, a mid-level oligarch named Donald Trump, appeared amid Musk’s moves to be increasingly merely a figurehead head of state. Trump is a convicted felon with a long record of family corruption and returned in power in late January after a four-year interlude promising retribution and retaliation against foreign opponents and a domestic “Deep State.” He had been charged with attempting to overthrow the peaceful transition of power that had previously removed him from office in 2021, but loyalist elements in the judiciary successfully blocked his prosecution and incarceration, easing his return to power.
Over the last two weeks, loyalist presidential factions and Musk-backed teams have launched sweeping, illegal Stalin-esque purges of the national police forces and prosecutors, as well as offices known as inspectors-general, who are typically responsible for investigating government corruption. While official numbers of the unprecedented ousters were kept secret, rumors swirled in the capital that the scores of career officials affected by the initial purges could rise into the thousands as political commissars continued to assess the backgrounds of members of the police forces.
The mentally declining and aging head of state, who has long embraced conspiracist thinking, spent much of the week railing in bizarre public remarks against the country’s oppressed racial and ethnic minorities, whom he blamed without evidence for causing a deadly plane crash across the river from the presidential mansion. ...
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1 comment:

Cap said...

Now we know why the men whose formative experiences were the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression and WW2 set the highest tax bracket at 90 percent and enforced antitrust laws. The goal was to avoid individuals having so much wealth that they could threaten the entire capitalist system. The result was a great downward distribution of wealth and the rise of the middle class, which peaked in 1979.
The neo-liberal experiment of Reagan, Thatcher and Mulroney has brought us to the point where an unelected foreigner has so much wealth he is effectively seizing control of the US government. One of the best things Canada and the rest of the Western world could do in response is return to the tax and antitrust policies of the post-war years. And kick the man bleating "Axe the Tax" to the curb.