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.

Sounds to unbelieveable to be true? Well, not...

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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