{edited March 22, 2025 – There is no team of editors here at RO to proof, spell check, or ensure clarity of thoughts. It’s a choice I have to make to go back the next day to review and edit a post with fresh eyes or move on.}
US Titanic
Here at home, the Trump administration is rearranging the deck chairs while Musk (DOGE – eGOD) behaves like the ruthless, insensitive corporate raider he is, throwing my country into even more chaos.
Those involved spared little thought to the people they are throwing aside like rag dolls because the administration is swept up in a tempest of unchecked power madness. And that is nothing to brag on about nor to cheer.
How would they feel if their billions were taken with little notice. Yes, federal jobs pay well above the average wage, in any career, across the country but whose fault is that? (i.e. Look at the ludicrous money paid to Fauci and all the kickbacks from big pharma.)
Federal employees usually work and live in areas that are very expensive due to the wealth in the area and because of the crazy money they make, and what they do exactly, apparently no one in government seems to know.
Federal employees have for years enjoyed a lavished lifestyle and elevated quality of life above that of the average person in America. To terminate them, in the way they did, knowing for certain that they would not be able to obtain employment at the same rate of pay with the same excellent benefits (afforded to them courtesy of US taxpayers who make less money than they do) is unconscionable. Many if not all will have to relocate to some state/city where the cost of living is much cheaper. They will have to find a real job where attendance and job performance matters, perhaps for the first time in their work-life. But no one makes those kinds of changes overnight.
Downsizing a behemoth bureaucracy such as the federal government needs to be implemented with common sense and sensitivity, both qualities this administration has shown to lack despite all the bluster coming from Trump. Besides, four years is not near enough time to get rid of the bloat.
How would Musk or Trump like it if the government gave them a six month termination letter, seized their assets, cut off their federal contracts, investigated their shady deals, plugged tax loopholes, and removed public incentives that made them rich and famous defining who they are today as members of high society. Poof no more security, no more mansions, no more 24/7 media attention, no more people fawning over them…because money is what makes elites like that palatable to the average person who remains enthralled and abused by the money and power despite having glimpses of fatal character flaws and fragility behind the elite/politician’s social veneer.
I’ve also noticed people have the tendency to attach deep personal attributes like integrity, self-awareness, compassion (myself included) to elites, especially those elites who star in their own “Truman Show” because that level of media exposure makes it seem that they are part of the viewer’s family per se (for the record, not me) and that is a grave mistake.
Elites are exclusively trained in preeminent private schools and universities in this country, an education specific for the sons and daughters of privilege with a few golden tickets opportunities available for non-elites to fulfill diversity obligations.
The only time political elites show any interest to anyone outside the sphere of privilege is when they want your vote, time and money. That you can take to the bank.
Take away the money, the influence, the suits, the body reconfiguration, the propaganda specialists what is left for the people to be stupefied with?
America that was, once upon a time.
The idea of America came into being as a direct result of an all out revolution by settlers against a corrupt oppressive government that sought to suppress and rule them using authoritarian practices. Unfortunately, the Constitutional foundation the colonist later laid (after they successfully overthrew the government they despised) was built upon the deaths and on the stolen lands of the indigenous peoples they displaced and massacred en masse, thus enshrining the trajectory of the United States of America.
This story is not about a bloated bureaucracy and highly overpaid federal employees losing their jobs. It’s about an America government that now openly operates as a corporation and guess what folks, workers have no say in how the executives run the company. Instead, we as US taxpayers are paying the federal government to enrich corporate elites et al and to fund coups, instigate war and maintain chaos around the world.
You can thank the Supreme Court justices for granting corporations personhood, along with the clowns in Congress who enable this constitutional transgression to manifest.
Corporations are not people, but the courts made it so and now our government is a corporation controlled by lobbyists, dark money, and untraceable political donations, PACs and non-profits and our elected leaders work for those interests, not for the interests of the American people.
There is no democracy in corporation.
The Promise of Making America Great, Again
If Trump et al truly endeavored to save our country the first logical steps would be to stop supporting Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and force them to leave Palestinian land, end the US proxy war against Russia, call a halt to all wars-4-profit, and for goodness sake stop rekindling old wars. But Trump won’t stop wars, he won’t stop the Israelis from slaughtering unarmed Palestinian civilians.
Trump the Peacemaker is, at his core being, no different than puppet, Netanyahu and Zelensky. As a matter of fact, I would say that if Trump’s God was paying attention, he would not like Trump at all.
We watch inconvenient truths brought to light by the very words and actions of Trump himself as he goes about pissing everyone off with tariffs, his ongoing threats of occupying and annexing other countries, ‘one way or another’ and upping the ante by engaging with numerous conflicts around the world all the while presenting himself as Trump the Peacemaker when in fact he speaks half truths/lies and acts in bad faith all of which exposes him and his team as a fake mediators.
Congress on the other hand remains consistent no matter who occupies the White House and we have to give them their due for that.
Over the decades, members of Congress have shown an extraordinary single-mindedness to do what it does best; produce clown shows for public consumption and applaud like seals or rattle like Mojave Rattlesnakes – mostly in response to Trump’s latest shenanigans.
The hard fact is tariffs harms Americans and global everyday peoples around the world. Elites do not feel the pain of tariffs. Nothing will ever be rolled back for consumers and costs will continue to rise even when the tariffs magically disappear. This is a newer version of yet another US domestic and foreign con that helps float a badly mismanaged American economy preventing it from going bankrupt (in the short term) and these miscreants do this by bankrupting the people. (i.e. 2007-09 housing crash, the dot com crash)
Meanwhile, retirees are dazed & confused because their ‘messiah’ is screwing them royally in real time.
There is a direct correlation between elites increasing their mega billions/trillions and the poverty in this country. The working class and middle class thrash about in the quagmire of the American Dream in debt to their eye balls and each economic crash cycle they have to reboot and begin anew. Meanwhile, the billionaires/trillionaires profit from every on and off cycle; the house always wins. Elites profit when the market is up, elites profit when ever the market is down because elites manipulate our government, the federal reserve, wall street and our economy.
To be fair, most people who are newly elected to congress succumb to the dark influences of Democrat and Republican leadership and career lifers. The face of Washington is represented by the two-party three-ring circus whose main attraction is a Congressional clown show that is symptomatic of the breadth of corruption found at the utmost realms of the US government including those powers and influencers concealed within the murky shadows of media, tech, corporations and trillionaires.
President Trump Lies like a Rug
Trump has to be the absolute center of attention, even more still while conducting business on the world stage (including his infamous off the cuff media sessions that usually veer off the intended path to strange places). But Trumps attitude has always been the more negative the attention the better.
I find that Trump’s administration reflects his extremist vanity and insecurity; his cabinet is mostly made up of younger, inexperienced men and women many who owe their complete allegiance to Trump after profiting for many years from their association with him.
Trump has total control over a cabinet that traded in their integrity and core beliefs for a taste of power under the long shadow of a billionaire narcissist president. The history we are currently living proves, once again, the adage – power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What did the last four elections teach us?
| CYCLE | WON | LOST | TURNOUT |
| 2024 | Trump | Kamala/Puppet | 64% |
| 2020 | puppet | Trump | 66% |
| 2016 | Trump | Hillary Clinton | 60% |
| 2012 | Obama | Mitt Romney | 59% |
FYI: California is the most populated state in the US with approximately forty-million people in residence. In the 2024 election, Cali had a 62% voter turnout rate (out of twenty-six million eligible voters).
The next two lowest voter turnout states were Oklahoma at 53% (with three-million eligible voters) and Arkansas at 53% (with two-million eligible voters).
The most obvious take-away from the table above is that the 2024 election was affected by two things, a demented, clueless puppet and the shear number of documented acts of blatant overt corruption by puppet and his crime family that could no longer be ignored by Washington. Puppet, along with his crime family/friends will never be prosecuted nor will justice ever be served. That is the essence of ‘democracy‘ in America.
The other candidates in the table were more refined on the campaign trail and discrete while in office. When that didn’t work as planned, they utilized the most sophisticated propagandist brands and/or hired a squadron of pricy lawyers/advisors to ‘right’ the situation. The one exception is the outsider who made it to the WH. Unfortunately he acted as if he was starring in a self-produced White House Apprentice show and failed miserably in his first stint in office having surrounding himself with the same swamp creatures he promised to get rid of.
The second go-around saw the outsider put himself out as the champion of the people promising them lots of nothing burgers proclaiming he is going to make America great again, followed by bellows of gladiatorial rhetoric that his followers absolutely loved, loved enough to queue up in line 15 to 24 hours in advance no matter the weather conditions, then wait another 4 to 5 hours in a steaming hot venue for the man to make an appearance. It all seemed excessively obsessive and creepy if you ask me. I wonder what these Trump groupies got out of it? Perhaps an invite to one of the many presidential balls on election night? Nah, don’t think so. What they are getting though is a kick in the ass everyday by the man they elected into office. Power to the people.
Here we are, teetering on the brink of a number of potential disasters once again. First Biden now Trump, the train wreck is never ending. Maybe that is a good thing, it keeps the carnage away. Sooner or later though, someone has to pay the piper.
I wonder if our country will be caught up in a four-year deadly Coyote and Road Runner episode, forced to watch America descend even lower into the bowels of hell.
Americans should not construed Trump daily antics as hilarious and write it off as just another beep-beep moment for the New York/Florida real estate billionaire. Trump is no longer a private citizen. He is the US president of a super power not the head of a real estate family enterprise and production show.
The second take-away is the coronation of Obama as the Democrat candidate and his subsequent ascension to the Oval Office in order to promote a political narrative that simply implied the US is no longer racist. Guess what, it turned out to be a terrible idea that was thought to be a terrible idea to begin with. And the racist thing, that didn’t disappear simply because Obama was crowned King. As a matter of fact, it made things worse all around. Sixteen years later everyone is racist, whites, blacks, pinks and purples. Washington reaps what it sows and the America people suffer the consequences.
Unbeknown to me during his time in office, Obama was thought to have shown strokes of genius with his administration’s domestic and foreign policies, and these ‘accomplishment’ earned him some serious accolades and awards: Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, two Grammy Awards for Best Spoken Word Album, and several honors such as the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award. Obama was also named TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2008 and 2012.
Although Obama’s accomplishments remain debatable, are fuzzy at best and mainly tepid across the board, he was considered the world’s coolest prez to rock the world stage. So they say.
The silver lining for the Obama presidency? It was a win for cleansing the sins of slavery so that America’s past now better aligns with its illustrious rewritten history. Everyone can breathe easier because it is memorialized in the archives.
Ahh, this next take-away is very sad indeed; that of Hillary Rodham Clinton. After everything that woman 😉 did for her love of the Democrat party, Democrat party leaders along with the good ole boys network and deep state still couldn’t bring themselves to install her as the first women president, instead almost two decades later opting for Kamala Harris to fill-in during the final moments of the 2024 presidential election knowing full well she was unpalatable to most everyone in America. Apparently the good ole boys are still not too keen on anointing a female for president, but they still have to keep putting that carrot out there for those who will do and say anything to be a Washington political insider.
There are lots of other take-aways that data crunchers and campaign specialist get excited about but I am going to jump to the most important take-away: The two party-oligarchy et al killed democracy in America, forever.
When In Rome…
I would like to thank Trump for his inspiration because it led to the reimagined map below (he also inspired this post).
personal note: Believe it or not, random photoshop projects assist me with visualization and as a side benefit, the hyper-focus helps me to relax. (Not that I spend any time actually learning the in and outs of photoshop, just enough to get each specific project done. Yes, very amateurish of me.)