In mid-December, a week before Christmas, the world’s richest man, now masquerading as the country’s unofficial co-president-unelect, took to X—which he happens to own—to denounce Congress’s bipartisan spending deal. In tandem, his future co-president, and current felon, Donald Trump announced that any GOP congressmember who supported the bill would be primaried, and that Speaker Johnson would be alright … but only if he scrapped the legislation.
Astoundingly, Trump embraced a long-standing Democratic demand, one that is anathema to the conservative wing of his own party—to scrap the debt ceiling entirely and do away with the spectacle of brinkmanship that grips DC every time the government approaches that limit. In and of itself, that’s not a bad idea; but introducing it a mere hours before the government is slated to run out of money is, to say the least, poor political manners.
The deal which Musk and co-president Trump blew up in a salvo of brutal political artillery fire had been painstakingly negotiated in Congress over many months to keep government functioning through the holiday season and into the new year. Now one can certainly nitpick with some of the contents of that bill—like most things that emerge out of a fractured and fractious Congress, it wasn’t all pretty. But it would at least have avoided a government shutdown and all the pain and hardship which accompanies that—for workers who don’t get paid, for citizens who can’t access government services, and so on.
None of that mattered. Musk assumed the stentorian voice of a Roman Tribune of the People as he addressed his tens of millions of X-readers. This modern day Cato called the bill “criminal;” derided Congressional pay increases contained within it (this from a man whose multibillion dollar package, worth at latest estimate over $100 billion, from his own companies is so egregious that it repeatedly ends up being challenged in court); opposed spending on biocontainment facilities intended to prepare America for whatever the next pandemic might be; and denounced what he claimed to be billions of dollars in federal spending for a sports stadium in DC—in reality, the bill didn’t contain that provision.
Within hours of Musk—who has in the past been rumored to sometimes post on social media during Ketamine highs—launching his manic politics-by-tweet assault on the compromise legislation, it was dead in the water. Gone was the guarantee of $100 billion in disaster relief funds. Gone, too, were the ten billion dollars in assistance to struggling farmers.
House Speaker Johnson, who has something of the spine of a jellyfish, presided over its formal demise—and the GOP leadership in the House scrambled to come up with a Plan B that would somehow keep the government functioning and would pass muster with the various sub-groups within their own caucus, as well as with enough Democrats to secure passage, since bills of this nature need more than 50 percent support in the House. By Thursday the 19th, with only a little more than a day left before the government ran out of money, that effort, too, was dead in the water. One could almost see floating by as flotsam Johnson’s brief, unspectacular, and largely accidental career as House Speaker.
This is what happens when control over the political process is handed over to people who somehow combine the worst traits of the bully with the worst traits of the know-it-all with the worst traits of the ruthless opportunist. This is, in short, the chaos that is in store for America during a resurrected Trump presidency.
Which brings me to 2025 and my new year’s resolutions. It doesn’t take a political savant to see the impending dysfunction, cruelty, and utter disregard for democratic norms heading our way. Come January 20, the country will be handed over to a goon squad of thugs, would-be strong men, and monstrous Musk-ette egos. The cabinet will essentially be a billionaire’s club of plutocrats and corporate raiders that for some unfathomable reason half of the country sees as bona fide populists.
For better or for worse, I shall be writing about this shit-show for as long as the show goes on. The advice I give myself—and everyone else obsessed with this madness—is to pace oneself. My new year’s resolutions include reading at least one book a month that has absolutely nothing to do with politics; exploring ideas in fields outside my areas of specialty, which I have not previously had time to engage with; traveling to new places; meeting new people. In short, I will not let Musk, Trump and the other members of this brat-pack MAGA circus live rent-free, 24/7 inside my head. They aren’t worth it.
Nor will I let my sense of “normalcy” be warped and twisted and contaminated by this brave new world of Muskian and Trumpian social media orders from on-high. I won’t let myself forget that there are better, kinder, more functional ways of doing politics than the crass methods being fine-tuned by the incoming power elite amidst the dying embers of Biden’s already-forgotten presidency. And I won’t acquiesce in the Orwellian re-writing of history that this sabotage squad is pushing regarding January 6, 2021, and the MAGA movement’s efforts to overthrow America’s constitutional order.
Happy new year, readers. And always remember to dance to your own tune.
