Oh yeah. One more thing that happened this week. This shit.
The executive order for “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias”.
The legal framework is there, based on previous protected classes, and anti-semitic bullshit pulled by nazis. But it’s being applied in such an ass backwards way it’s offensive. Just a drop in the bucket for this week, but worth noting for future bullshit references.
I was too ill to post effectively last week, and this week I’ve been too busy. So consider this weekly catch up for the past two weeks for what I think are the most important things that have happened, as well as the most important things not to forget. The Bannon idea of “flood the zone” with actions is definitely underway, with Trump issuing EO after EO, and Musk directing his minions to do all kinds of things, so it’s been tough to keep up.
In light of that, I think it’s important not to focus on every little thing that happens. Yes, they matter. Yes, many of them are reprehensible. However, trying to keep up with every rant or mad idea is frankly untenable in light of their sheer volume. So instead, let’s talk about the more salient points from one specific perspective: to whit, Trump is not a distraction, but he is not the only player in the room. He was supported by groups such as the Heritage Foundation, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Andreessen Horowitz, and others. All part of either Project 2025, or the so-called ‘dark enlightenment’ movement espoused by Curtis Yarvin, or both.
Trump may sit behind the Resolute Desk, but given his absolutely illiterate nature, utter inexperience with legal matters other than lawsuits, and utter disregard for anything longer than a TV snippet, it seems obvious that many of the people around him are drafting the EOs and policies he is pushing. To whit, he cares about money, his image, and revenge. Probably in that order, but not always.
Elon Musk’s DOGE and his cadre of youths have been running roughshod over a vast swath of federal departments and institutions since just after the inauguration. Their actions have amounted to the largest breach of digital security in the history of anything computational, and by a wide margin as well. This is because these systems are designed to be secure and isolated, yet he’s had his team start connecting external and unvetted machines to them. They have data tunnels to outside systems, and have been both hoovering up the personal data of millions of Americans, and mucking about in production code directly without testing the code.
Aside from the central leadership, their boots on the ground are basically children. This team is largely between the ages of 19-25 years of age, and none of them have more than a cursory understanding of security, software, or government. Many are fresh out of high school, or only finished 1-2 years of college before being hired by either SpaceX, Tesla, or an allied venture capital firm.
There’s been no vetting of them other than Musk’s “trust me, bro”. Prior to DOGE, some had been working with Russia, soliciting illegal cyberattacks, espousing the need for eugenics and the destruction of non-white races. After resigning for making these statements, the last one was re-hired following the enthusiastic endorsement of both Trump and JD Vance. That was yesterday, I guess.
Vance and several others have said statements made on social media in earlier times shouldn’t ruin somebody’s life or prevent them from having a good career. Putting aside the fact that they would like to do exactly that to anyone who opposes them, Marko Elez made his eugenics statements in September 2024. So I guess we all have to have memories of goldfish now.
So which departments have the Muskenjugend hit so far, and what have they done?
There are definitely other agencies affected, but these are the ones I remember and the specific states they’re in as far as I recall. I’ll try to keep up with more of this madness as it unfolds, but life happens even when your country is tearing itself apart.
Trump’s talked a lot about taking back the Panama Canal, invading Mexico, taking Greenland, owning Gaza and the West Bank, and even making Canada the 51st state. He’s said these things repeatedly, and that he’s not joking.
Do I believe him? Unequivocally yes.
Do I think he can do it? Not without kicking off World War 3. The Panama Canal is probably the safest of these, but any move against Greenland or Canada would absolutely incite war. Mexico would as well, but that would probably go to a global war slightly slower than the other two. It still would, but it wouldn’t be, to use nuclear terminology, a “prompt critical”.
Ultimately, he thinks of power as money and land ownership, because he’s a sleazy real estate developer. So seeing big colors on a big map appeals to his “I’m a big boy now!” attitude. And Gaza is it’s own morass that is just so monumentally stupid as to be nearly unbelievable, but he’s a monumentally stupid man. As one internet wit put it, “Yeah, when did anything bad ever happen after the USA tripped dick-first into the Middle East?”
Make no mistake, though: despite calling Canada the 51st state, none of these places would be states. They’d be territorial possessions, because why on earth would you annex anywhere that hates you and then give them an ounce of power?
Signing off for now. I’ll try to be better about keeping up with the day by day.
President Trump has today decided that the biggest enemy we have is trans kids.
I knew it was coming. I knew it. But I’m still fucking livid over it. These kids hurt NO ONE.
This is the othering that happens when you need to make an enemy out of somebody who’s done nothing and is largely defenseless against your aggression.
One of the most pernicious tactics the current far-right likes to employ is to convince us we did not see the things we have seen, or that what we have seen mean something other than what we have observed. This is rooted in the behavior of places like 4chan’s /pol/, alt-right reddit forums, and now Twitter/X after Elon Musk’s takeover. For years, they’ve loved to play a game where “they were just joking”. Or that we’re overreacting to their coded words and hand symbols, and what we saw was really innocuous and innocent.
Do not believe them.
I remember one user online that I had the misfortune of interacting with whose handle was Alex1488. When it was pointed out that the 14 words was a white supremacist thing, and that 88 was Nazi shorthand for “Heil Hitler”, he naturally claimed innocence with some bullshit about how he liked the number 14 and he was born in 1988. He was, of course, lying, and I blocked him immediately after. I merely wanted to illustrate for others how Nazis, white supremacists, and other fascist types infiltrate while claiming innocence. But their dog whistles are now fog horns, and we need to remember that we do not need to tolerate these people in any public space.
The evening of Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk went on stage and threw a Nazi salute not once but twice. Immediately the excuses came: it wasn’t a Nazi salute, it was a Roman one. It was him throwing his heart out to the crowd. You’re overreacting. How come you liberals always have to lie.
I leave it to you, dear reader, to tell the difference.
The answer, of course, is that there isn’t one.
Do not let anyone tell you that what you’re seeing is not what you have seen. This is the bullshit they will try to pull on you. They’ll post still images with Elon saluting and compare it to Taylor Swift, Kamala Harris, Obama, in similar positions and say “See, you can do anything with a still image.
This is their method of making you disbelieve your own eyes. The truth is in the motion, and in the context. Remember, Musk did this not once, but twice in the same 10 second period. Never mind he went on to make Nazi jokes last night about this event.
It doesn’t matter if Elon Musk is throwing out his heart or making a roman salute or making a nazi salute. Any sensible person can see who he is aligning himself with. He’s dumb, but he’s not THAT dumb. He’s trying to align himself with Trump’s followers who are white supremacists. You have eyes. You can see it.
If you doubt me, go into your office. Have a meeting. Make this salute to your boss or the board of directors or whoever. Film yourself. Defend the gesture. I fucking dare you. You can’t, because it’s absolutely indefensible. People have said that this is hypocrisy of the highest order on their side. That they have to talk about it. They don’t. Don’t talk about it.
But what if he meant something other than a Nazi salute?
It does not matter.
He is not a baby. He knows what he did. Maybe it was a joke, or maybe not, but he knows the message he sent. He made jokes about it on twitter the day after. Hypocrisy is not a value they care about. There are rules for them, and rules for their enemies. You are their enemy. They do not care they have double standards. In fact, they revel in it, because it makes sane people doubt what they have seen.
I had intended to start this blog on January 20th, the day of the inauguration. Unfortunately, the SSL certificate kept refusing to install properly, which blocked me from getting things set up until now. So I’ve decided to a first week recap instead, focusing on what has actually happened, rather than proposals. I am not interested (for now) in what people are exhorting the administration to do, but what they actually do.
This all comes on the heels of Los Angeles burning in all directions – some of the worst fires the state’s ever seen. The Palisades fire has destroyed a lot of Malibu and most of Pacific Palisades, as well as outskirts of Santa Monica. The Eaton fire basically erased Altadena from the map and is burning in the San Gabriels at the moment. The Castaic fire which was threatening Santa Clarita and Castaic Junction is getting contained, but not without getting perilously close to a lot of homes.
So, the past few weeks have been a bit of a lot.
A short list of executive actions in the first week of Trump’s second term. This is not all of them, but the primary ones of interest:
There are other directives, executive orders, and proclamations I haven’t listed, of course. Muzzling the NIH, CDC, and other federal health agencies unless they run every public statement past the Executive Branch, for instance. The halt of federal funding for all medical trials being run by higher institutions of learning – and federal funding for certain other sciences as well. Pulling all federal funding for the World Health Organization. Trying to use Schedule F to reclassify federal employees, though unions are fighting that in court. The “anti-DEI” initiatives across all federal agencies, even NASA.
Interestingly, while he fired a shit ton of women in advisory positions, he seemed to leave most of the men in their jobs. Surely this is a coincidence.
There’s almost too much to catalog in this one week, but that – as told by Stephen Miller – was literally part of their plan. To overwhelm resistance with a firehose of action.
More to come as days unfold.