Chainsaw Massacre

Would a brain surgeon wield a chainsaw? Trump’s Musk would. Who gave Musk the chainsaw? Javier Milei, new president of Argentina. He’s the hairy-headed one behind Elon Musk. He’s the one, since seizing power in Argentina, who has already doubled their extreme poverty. He is also rewriting his nation’s history. So is Trump doing that here, calling it “RESTORING TRUTH AND SANITY TO AMERICAN HISTORY.” No DEI empathy in our history. It’s been incised.

No inclusive empathy in our diverse past, nor to departments who enacted our recent collective will. We are flustered in a flurry of firings, eliminating decent workers of merit, run out by unauthorized, unmonitored outsiders of no known merit.

“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty,” Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism.

Argentina’s President Javier Milei is Trump’s “favorite president.” True to the fascist form and playbook, he was an outspoken, bombastic TV personality. Musk helped him win in Argentina. The two proudly paraded their power in front of CPAC, the Conservative PAC funding the coup that is gleefully taking a chainsaw to our government and society. Like depicted in the scary movie “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” the results are real, not imaginary.

Who will survive and what will be left of us, indeed. Despite a supposed oath to defend the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, half of Congress (meaning Republicans) is enabling this coup. Trump’s favorite president supplies the chainsaw prop, laughing at the joke.

Argentina is the oft-troubled nation in Southeast America. Juan Peron won democratically in 1946, lost in the 1955 military coup there, and was re-elected in 1973 only to lose again in 1977 when they started killing students again. Estimates vary on how many students, activists, and reporters were “disappeared” in the late 70s and early 80s, from a low of 700 (“a low” ?!) to perhaps 22,000, or maybe the usual guess of 30,000. Calling them “terrorists” justified the systematic murder. Many were just thrown out of airplanes. Some 500 babies of raped and murdered mothers were sent to proper Catholic families.

Inflation is down in Argentina, but poverty is up, up by double. Some six million are poor, 7 of every 10 in the country. Milei has shashed and eliminated most programs to help them. The military is ready to repress them if they object. Declaring martial law when poor people rebel is the standard technique fascist governments use to keep power.

It could happen here. Stress, scarcity, and strife could be the plan. More police and jails could be a sort of perverse jobs plan. Shackled and bowed, Venezulian prisoners could be harbingers of what’s planned for lots of us. Empathetic inclusivity isn’t Trump’s way. Taking over, mocking laws, evading laws, insulting those who object, attacking journalists and judges – these are the Trump/Musk way.

Just as Elon Musk spent $270 million to sway our last presidential election, he’s already put $20 million in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court contest. He’s trite but powerful. Some think that is to stack the court so that Tesla dealerships will be permitted there.

I think it’s deeper than dealerships. Musk likes the libertarian anti-government approach that Milei uses. Milei proudly calls himself an “anarcho capitalist,” a lawless bull in the china shop, smashing everything precious if it enriches he and his. Putin did the same thing to Russia. (Is Putin even a socialist?) Trump, Musk, the Heritage Foundation, and the Republican Party are doing that to our beloved America. Their winning tactic is to pretend to be patriots.

I won’t burden readers with the overwhelming analysis of the multi-headed, highly-organized coup we’re enduring. There are lots of intelligent and impassioned but futile views out there on that.

Suffice it to say, Americans lost their responsibility and opportunity to be a self-run democratic republic as it degraded into endemic cynicism, passivity, and avoidance. We’ve gone from citizens to consumers, from dedicated workers to dumped dupes. We griped about meager matters while highly paid, elaborately organized whiz kids plotted to fire up the chainsaws. Thousands will suffer so that billionaires can avoid taxes. They’ll ruin our government and install a government of, by, and for the already filthy rich. Already convoluted and compromised, American political mechanisms are now much worse. We’ve been had.

Ignore the money and advice Trump got from Russia. The Pee Tapes are a mere embarrassment to him, an amusement to distract from far more sinister connections to their banks, crime syndicates, and petro-state plans. Whatever the FBI might have known about that and the armed right-wing terrorists involved in January 6th (convicted, pardoned, and released) will likely be lost. If indeed Trump is a Russian asset, as many suspect, he’s doing his job bigly.

Musk described his work with DOGE. He explained it’s like entering a room of only targets, targets on the walls, ceiling, and floor. “You can shoot in any direction and not miss,” he boasted.

We’re all in that room. What fun and unimportant targets to be wasted! What soft brain tissue to be operated upon by a jumping, gloating surgeon with a chainsaw!