I managed to get COVID this year after almost five years of avoiding it through a lot of care, isolation, and masking (though less of that as time has gone on). My spouse brought it home from a mandatory work trip and I’ve been flat on my back for a while now. As a chronically ill person, though, I have found one advantage to being flat on my back: it’s remarkably clarifying.
What I figured out this week while I was flat on my back is that you can figure out what’s going on by reading the headlines. The new administration is flooding the zone with crap, so there’s a lot of news, but you don’t need to analyze it that deeply. There’s no twelve-dimensional chess. Occam’s razor will serve you just fine.
Trump really just wanted to avoid going to jail, and now that he’s dodged that for at least four years, he wants to make money and lash out at his perceived enemies. You don’t need to look for more than that. Also, if he’s not making sense, it’s probably because he doesn’t know what he’s doing or suffering from the effects of age and/or illness.
Vance really is a hand-picked tool of Peter Thiel, with all the policy interests that entails. Yes, that’s pretty scary, considering Trump is really that old and not in great shape.
The Project 2025 people really meant what they said about what they were going to do to American society. And unless they do something to piss off Trump, he’s going to let them do it because he doesn’t care about governing (see: making money, avoiding jail, and lashing out at perceived enemies).
Musk really did a Nazi salute. It doesn’t matter whether it’s because he’s a Nazi or, as I suspect, he’s a 4Chan-style troll who thinks it’s funny. The man is the heir of an apartheid South African emerald mine shareholder who bought a bunch of tech companies. He’s the stereotype of a James Bond villain. Assume he’s operating in bad faith and move on.
The biggest problem for the Project 2025 guys and Musk is going to be when they want different things and Trump has to decide. Trump doesn’t really give a shit so his rulings will have no rhyme or reason other than what fulfills his own agenda and beyond that, whim and flattery.
And your MAGA neighbors, especially if you live in a suburb, exurb, or rural area? If they’re that kind of Jesus-y, the kind that says preaching mercy to the downtrodden and frightened should get you deported, they have no idea what’s coming. They think that in the hierarchical society that Project 2025 leans toward, they will be big fishes in small ponds, who get to decide the exceptions to the harsh rules. They’re overestimating their importance. Your local poobahs are not wielding the Shirley exception in the Project 2025 regime.
(They’ve also drastically underestimated the number of things in their own lives the federal government funds, things that executive orders and DOGE will bring to a standstill, but that’s a whole nother discussion.)
This particular line of thought is brought to you by the confirmation of Pete Hegseth, a drunk and a rapist and so on whom Trump hired because Trump liked how he looked on TV. And by the shady way that Senators Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell were let off the hook for voting against him this one time because Republicans knew the Vice President would break the tie. Senator Ernst was whipped into line, and I’m waiting for the moment when Collins and Murkowski either lose their free pass or get primaried for too many wrong votes.
That’s how it is now. It really is that simple.