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"This is not governing. Trump and the Republicans are not a governing party.
What’s the back story to all this? It’s the oligarchy that put Trump into the presidency. …
Today the great divide is not between left and right. It’s between democracy and oligarchy."
~ Robert Reich
#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy
/1
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-american-oligarchy-is-out-of
@wdlindsy@toad.social"So far, Trump has picked 13 billionaires for his administration. It’s the wealthiest in history, including the richest person in the world. They and Trump are part of the American oligarchy, even though Trump campaigned on being the 'voice' of the working class. …
In 2022, Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy Twitter and turn it into his own personal political megaphone."
"Then, in 2024, he spent $277 million to get Trump elected, also using Twitter (now X) to amplify pro-Trump, anti-Harris messages.
These were good investments for Musk. Since Election Day, Musk’s fortune has increased by $170 billion. That’s because investors in Tesla and SpaceX have pushed their value into the stratosphere."
"Trump has put Musk (and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy) in charge of gutting government services in the name of 'efficiency.' Musk’s investors assume that Musk will eliminate the health, safety, labor, and environmental regulations that have limited the profits of Musk-owned corporations, and that Trump will put more government money into SpaceX and xAI (Musk’s artificial intelligence company)."
"The oligarchs want lower taxes, which is what Trump, Musk, and other oligarchs are planning — an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cut, with an estimated price tag of at least $5 trillion.
They want no antitrust enforcement to puncture the power of their giant corporations. Instead, their corporations will grow larger, able to charge consumers even more."
"To the extent that Musk has more power than Trump, it is because he can fund primary challengers against Republicans who do not surrender to Musk’s demands. Trump cannot make that threat credibly.
And the only reason that Musk has that power is because of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Citizen’s United."
~ Robert B. Hubbell
#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy
#SupremeCourt #CitizensUnited
/6
"Who exactly is calling the shots? It doesn’t sound like it’s the president-elect. It does sound like it is the richest man in the world, who paid an enormous amount of money to ride in Donald Trump’s sidecar. …
Several months ago, The Washington Post reported that Musk, who is originally from South Africa, was actually in the U.S. illegally for a time after dropping out of Stanford to start a business."
~ Dan Rather
#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy
/7
https://steady.substack.com/p/is-trump-really-calling-the-shots
"He later became a citizen. Who would have thought that someone who has railed against undocumented immigrants was perhaps one himself, and now could be speaker of the House … the world’s richest person, and answerable to absolutely no one?"
"Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has thrown her weight behind Senator Rand Paul’s ridiculous proposal that Elon Musk be elected the speaker of the House of Representatives. …
There’s scarcely a better illustration of Greene’s phony brand of populism than her support for installing the world’s richest man to, as she put it, reign in the people’s elected body."
~ Robert McCoy
#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy
/9
https://newrepublic.com/post/189568/mtg-marjorie-taylor-greene-elon-musk-house-speaker
"After doubling down and calling the funding bill 'unacceptable' and 'a Democrat trap,' Trump called the richest man in the world, the one who paid $250 million to get him elected, and this is what he says he said to him: 'I told him that if he agrees with me, that he could put out a statement,' Trump said.
This seems like an unnecessary point to make, but I’m going to say it anyway:"
~ Lucian K. Truscott
#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy
/10
https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/elon-musk-and-donald-trump-have-just
"This is two men, two billionaires, one real and one self-professed, one of them an immigrant from South Africa, telling the United States Congress what to do about how it funds the government."
"This has never before happened in this country. We have never, since our founding nearly 250 years ago, had a situation whereby two men who do not hold elective office are telling those who have been elected what to do, and threatening to oust them from their elected positions in the Congress in two years if they do not follow orders."
"If this is the way Donald Trump and Elon Musk plan on running the government of the United States starting on January 20, then we won’t have a democracy. What we will have is some hybrid of a dictatorship and plutocracy, whereby the elected representatives of the people forfeit their powers and duties to the whims of two people: one who gives the orders, and the other who pays the money that will ensure his orders are carried out."
"The entire ordeal serves as a preview of what Americans should expect from their government for at least the next two years: A pathetic and ineffective legislature will limp along, waiting every moment for its next command from the president and his rich friends."
~ Joe Perticone
#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy
/14
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/they-like-the-chaos-they-want-the
"The real story here is that Trump has lost control of the process at what should be his moment of maximum power. As far as I can tell Musk himself didn’t even express an opinion on the vote for the clean up. He’s off to something else. Or he was only there for blowing things up. Putting them back together is someone else’s problem."
~ Josh Marshall
#Trump #ElonMusk #EconomicElites #oligarchy
/15
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/musk-shows-trump-that-hes-the-new-chaos-in-town
"The sheer immorality of any one person possessing so much wealth is obvious to most people with basic amounts of empathy. But when it comes to Musk and the other 14 people worth more than $100bn, the morality of it is almost a secondary concern. Their individual wealth is a society-distorting threat to democracy in the same way that economics has always recognised monopolies to be dangerous to a functional market."
~ Alexander Hurst
But the rich wouldn't be rich if they weren't smarter, better, harder-working than the common lot, right?
Especially rich men, who know how to get things done and don't give a flying f—k about the rules.
That's why I voted for Trump, as a working-class man. He knows how to break things, break rules, get things done. He'll help people like me even if he gives big tax cuts to the super-rich.
Amirite?
/s <!>
That is what a lot of people say, but what they really mean is that, "TFG will break not things, but the people I don't like. Whoever those people are: Blacks, immigrants, LGBTQ+, uppity women, etc., etc. Might be just one group, it might be many, but whoever I hate, he hates them too. He (and his rich white posse) gives me permission to not give a flying f**k about those people and wear my bigotry on my sleeve. I have no illusions that the economy will change, the price of eggs will go down or any of that. But I will at least FEEL better when the people I hate get punched in the face."
These Trump supporters you describe are also hoping to be sanctioned, explicitly or implicitly, to punch the people they hate in the face. Meanwhile, they're also complaining that their liberal relatives who refuse to attend family gatherings this holiday season are the ones who are are letting politics get in the way of things.
@MylesRyden Precisely. Thank you.
@wdlindsy I believe that some of our attitudes about the rich are a sub-conscious defense mechanism against the rage and helplessness engendered by extreme inequity. If it were true that the rich are intrinsically superior people then their place in the world would be justified. This is why monarchies have so much pomp and ornamentation attached to them. You have to help people maintain the illusion that you've done something to deserve being on top other than being born to the right parents.
@gpilz Yes, this makes sense to me, and these attitudes are deeply embedded in many of our cultures from way back, and for that reason, are hard to shift.
@gpilz This may well be the case, but I myself don't think we have to justify or explain why people are inherently — many of us whose moral base is sound — repulsed by the extremely wealthy, what they value, how they behave.
@wdlindsy Your enterprise can survive only insofar as it doesn't come to his attention and he decides either to destroy it or to buy it (often both).
@wdlindsy I mean, capitalism is inherently anti-empathy, isn’t it? If not by design, it structurally serves to abstract decisions from consequences to the point that empathy isn’t really possible
@BilldeWorde88 Anti-empathy seems to me a good way to characterize what capitalism is fundamentally about.
@wdlindsy Eat the Rich...Tax billionaires into oblivion(90%). No place or value in a fair equatable economic and political system.
@wdlindsy
le marché est actuellement un troc :
Ma liberté contre des biens consuméristes illusoires
@aneonyme Oui, bien sûr.
@wdlindsy
Thank you for your post.
The question is: Who is really giving the orders?
Peace
@jxwojtowicz Yes, that's surely the question. I'd say in general the answer is: the super-rich are giving the orders.
@wdlindsy
Thank you for your reply.
I agree.
Peace
@wdlindsy
At least we can enjoy the knowledge that Mike Johnson was lying awake all night, pissing his pants.
This is the way democracy ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
@Melissabeartrix Laugher is definitely therapeutic in the face of such idiocy!
@wdlindsy On the BBC World Service last night, the latest DC quip was mentioned: President Musk and Vice-President Trump.
That *will* get under the extremely thin skin of the Felon of the Year.
@wdlindsy Today's Grauniad has a piece on Musk being a one-man rogue state.
@wood5y Thank you very much for the link. I look forward to reading.
@wdlindsy My pleasure.
Have a grand day. :)
@wdlindsy
Thank you for your post.
Citizens United must be overturned.
Peace
@wdlindsy And people continue to be distracted by circuses. Netflix, YouTube, Instagram, sports TV, etc.
@AnOldGuy Absolutely.
@wdlindsy
Just wondering William, can a Sth African legally hold office in the new US administration?
@Godfrey642 @wdlindsy if not, I guess they would make it so. I fear it's going to be much of a rule-of-the-law state for a while... I certainly hope I'm wrong :-|
@Godfrey642 A question that needs to be considered, it seems.
@wdlindsy
Its all a massive game for Musk.
Hes amassed ridiculous quantities of money so the only thing he can strive for is the power of interference. The thought that Trump will be POTUS, Vance will be VPOTUS and Musk could be made SOTH is terrifying. The 3 most powerful positions.
He's even trying to exert outside interference in my homeland (UK) as well. And today he said only AfD can save Germany.
What an utterly aimless moronic sad little man Musk is.
@Godfrey642 Yes, that's how it seems to me, too — though I also think he has unmasked himself as an out-and-out fascist and Putin's agent.
@Godfrey642 Thank you. I'll watch with great interest.