Noel’s Notes: ‘Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution’

Trump’s America is on track to become the grotesque beast so many who can see the big picture have often feared and the billionaires who bought him the election have dreamed of owning.

A place where Howard Lutnick sits at Commerce and a boozy frat boy is our Secretary of Defense is not a friend to fair play or democracy.

At least not if you use our own previous standards of a country as a benchmark.

Ignorant and obese and teaming with the sweaty funk of perpetual adolescence. The face tattoo of nations. Peopled with folks who traded sophistication, learned politicians, emotional maturity and equanimity in for screaming eagle chyrons on Fox News and the stunted conspiracy of militias and cyber-kooks.

Clinging to silly caricatures of ‘tough guys’, they vote for protein powders being passed off with polemics by podcasters.

They are the party of Joe Rogan and Alex Jones and a thousand other digital parasites engorging themselves on the fertile stupidity of the MAGA movement.

A place where political violence is pardoned on behalf of a leader so deeply treasonous one struggles to fully put his threat to the fabric of our nation into words.

A place where white-shoe law firms now line up to help the president do his bidding and rewrite his own sordid history of insurrection and betrayal.

A land where greed becomes the only law and mentally deviant narcissists and tech bros rule with impunity. Hazing the bureaucracy and civil servants that remain after chasing ethics and decency out of D.C. on Elon’s orders, beginning most obscenely on day one.

Musk, like Trump, is a man who has no interest beyond his own greed and deviant desires and who has now aligned with some of the most dangerous men and women to EVER hold power in the history of this Republic.

I was cautious as to whether or not America could survive a second Trump term: I hold no hope that it can survive what Musk has in mind. Especially with folks like Russell Vought and a supplicant G.O.P. working on MAGA’s behalf.

They must be stopped by as much democratic and non-violent force as we can muster. Every tool available to the Democratic Party should be used in service of opposing Trump’s agenda. There is nothing left for democracy on the other side of this so we must act posthaste.

The folks that voted for Trump will cheer him no matter what he does this time around. They are so culturally wrapped up in the blanket of pestilence that he has swathed them in that there is no hope of their redemption politically.

They have been told for too long that they are the ‘good guys’; their entire identities are wrapped up in the pablum they are fed a steady diet of in MAGA world.

‘Patriot culture’ was the tonic sold them by the hucksters and scoundrels that will continue to profit long after the suffering of those they claimed to represent becomes acute. And if the swiftness with which Trump cut off federal funding this week is any indication, there won’t be much latency between the Musk/Trump administration’s actions and the abject misery inflicted on others.

The suffering is the payoff for those that delight in cruelty for political ends. They know that those who not only carry out the orders but become numb to the pain of others will ultimately make excellent soldiers and allow their brand of evil to flourish.

This is not a new dynamic; one that both Musk and Trump have emulated in ways that go beyond the Nazi salutes and fascist dogma.

Trump was an absolute and abhorrent racist when I worked on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ and used the N-word to describe contestants. He was also often slurry and incontinent, another ‘secret’ NBC/Universal and Mark Burnett kept from the viewing public.

An illiterate old man who snorted Adderall and leered at women and teenage girls on his game show and beauty pageants would have threatened the brand that so many had built up around the vast real estate empire he played at running successfully.

The Trump Organization was mainly a threadbare branding operation and money laundering outfit for the NYC area, and ultimately Russian Mob families, that it has been in business with most of Trump’s life.

Musk was raised in apartheid in South Africa; his allegiance with far-right parties across Europe are a glaring example of his intentions. His Tesla factories and Space X facilities abused workers and engaged in discriminatory hiring practices as well as being non-union places that produce dangerous and often faulty products.

Most of Musk’s Tesla production, beyond the environmental calamity Space X is offering Texas, is based in China - and you can bet a majority of Trump’s economic and trade policies will favor China over the U.S.A.

Despite the fiery rhetoric of ‘America First’, Trump/Musk are looking to establish an oligarchy with far-reaching global ties; given Trump’s decades long fealty to Putin this does not bode well for national security.

That is why a drunken meat puppet like Pete Hegseth was so crucial to their plan. He looks the part enough to keep the militarized MAGA-bros and abused vets from figuring out what is really going on. He is not a man of organizational aptitude or honor but his slicked back hair and Christofascist tattoos, along with his rank ‘whiteness’, make him the perfect cartoon character to carry the message to the rubes and ‘freedom fighters’ that beclown themselves daily at Trump’s altar of craven stupidity.

One of the things we certainly have going for us as progressives is that we are not just smarter than the opposition, we possess empathy. Now is the time to use your wits and your education and most assuredly your heart on behalf of the greater good.

I happen to know a lot of privileged people that have been sitting on the sidelines for too long. Tuning out and living lives of conspicuous consumption while the world around them burns. We’ll have none of that this time around if we hope to survive.

Yours may be the skills needed - so do not hesitate to press them into service.

Every act of resistance helps. Do not hesitate to add your voice. It matters.

When Trump and his cohorts are done picking the bones of those that supported them they will come for the rest of us. Be warned. Be prepared. Be a seeker of peace.

Bring truth and light to the face of injustice.

We must not allow them to define our character as nation.

We are ALL better than this moment.

Even those that cannot recognize it for what it is.

You are not alone: together we will rise above this steaming madness, this cauldron of calamity.

Be strong.