When did life in America become a zero-sum game? When did winning become everything? How is it that, apparently, we have arrived at a place where cold calculation, blind selfishness, and skewed religious “faith” now rule the day?

Ruthlessness is in, lawlessness is in, the President is President in title only. In actuality, he prefers to be King, but he’s only ever been a spineless, clueless pawn, convinced he’s in charge when in reality, others are pulling the strings.

There is no clear mandate, but that doesn’t matter. Trump made it back to office, and Project 2025 has legs. It remains to be seen if his myriad detractors are gonna wake up.   

One question, among the several thousand we should be asking, is What is the endgame for Trump and Musk and the Heritage Foundation?

Should we hold out for something positive to come of this blitzkrieg of firings and furloughs and funding stops and horrible nominees, or is it exactly as it seems—a brazen assault on checks and balances, a really bad morality tale? Nothing more than Trump and the rest having a field day wreaking revenge and lining their pockets, with no accounting for consequences and ripple effects? That’s what it’s looking like, so far.

Trump is showing up at the Super Bowl tomorrow. Why would he do that? Is he so needy that he has to be seen by millions around the world, maybe show up Tay-tay? What’s the calculus behind this move? Is it Caligula at the Colosseum, or just little Donnie needing an ego boost?

May he get booed out of the place.

Pro forma. Good order. Rules. Procedures. To which Trump and Musk and the rest respond with a derisive laugh before jumping in their steamrollers.

One setting that has sort of survived this scorched earth mentality is the confirmation hearings for the cast of characters who are either already running departments or soon will be. Of course, these drip with partisanship and a certain inevitability, the Dems often talking to the hand while railing against the craven incompetence and danger posed by Vought and Patel and RFK, Jr., etc., and the Republicans finding the picks “refreshing” and “what the country needs right now.”

It most often ends up looking and feeling like a foregone conclusion, a formality, the panels of Senators and House members merely playing their parts, all leading to votes along party lines. So, a more ornate and elaborate steamrolling.

Imagine how unsavory Matt Gaetz must have been to have not survived the process!

I hesitate to check newsfeeds anymore, because it’s hard to watch an assault day after day.

Trump and his minions- or is it the Heritage Foundation and its minions—are on a mission to neutralize and render unrecognizable the entire U.S government. And it’s been stunning to watch how little resistance they’ve encountered so far, though that is starting to change.

They don’t have the patience or the moral gumption to go through what up to now have been the proper channels. They figure a “mandate” is enough, even though there is nothing close to a clear mandate in their tool belt. And a mandate doesn’t matter, anyway. That’s just a convenient buzzword for “Hey, we’re in power now and we’re gonna clean house, bitches!”

The thing that should stick in everyone’s craw is that there is little good faith searching for wasteful spending. It was to be slash and burn from the get-go, targeting anything that smacked of “wokeness,” but of course claiming other victims along the way—all in the name of fiscal belt-tightening and… efficiency?

Mmm…nothing like the ambience of Nazi to fill the senses and set us all at ease.  

With each passing day, Donald Trump appears more like a marionette. A vengeful, angry, soulless, manipulated yet somehow manipulating puppet, looking older by the day.

He’s an enigma, I guess, but not in a good way. He is the point man for all the pernicious actions being taken and words being spoken. He’s in so deep now that he may go into full-on beast mode before too much longer. He’s taken all his psychological and emotional baggage and used it as fuel for his ongoing, ill-advised quest.

I’m not convinced that “cornered rat” will ever apply to him, though. He seems to have the Midas touch when it comes to avoiding consequences, and this may follow him even into death, at which time the pain and stupidity which have become his calling cards will thankfully fade away. Then he will become a footnote swept into the dust pan of history, where he rightfully belongs (of course, not before he signs one last Executive Order stating that flags should fly at half staff for a full year, especially during any subsequent Inauguration ceremony, if we still have those).

I wonder what kind of stuff will be in his library. Whatever may find its way into those pseudo-hallowed halls, it is likely to be written from the perspective of a “winner.”

Obviously, this is no way to run a government…

Republicans’ kowtowing and pathetic obeisance to King Donald; fabricated and disingenuous support for rampant incompetence among cabinet picks and other nominees. A hateful, isolationist, racist playbook whose author most likely will be approved for head of OMB. A misguided, skewed, and selective embrace of Scripture. Highly suspicious motives. And the seeming mission of wanting to burn it all down.

Can these people really be this dispassionate and insensitive, and maybe evil? Besides Elon Musk and Donald Trump and a few others, who often behave as if they are sub-human vessels of rage and cunning, what is the excuse for the rest: riding a wave of power and influence, latching onto coattails while they can, afraid to speak their minds and just along for the ride? How can they all see things so differently? How can they live with themselves?

Trying to answer these questions will get us nowhere. Righteous indignation and anger is often nothing more than impotence with an attitude. Resistance apparently is now a tool we must employ. It has come to that.

How does this end?

The key to sorting through the mayhem is to not allow our focus to stray from what’s happening in Washington.

Forget about making Canada the fifty-first state, or changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico or annexing Greenland or razing Gaza and turning it into a resort. All that madness is in service of distraction.

The real news is Elon Musk’s overreach and easy access to information about us all. The real news is who’s being fired and furloughed, who’s being confirmed to fill important posts in the Cabinet and various organizations.

The real news is the insidiousness of it all, and the rate at which Project 2025 appears to be taking shape, along with the mind-numbing and thus far lackluster resistance. Since when can executive orders—pieces of paper—along with an unelected, self-interested and clueless loose cannon wield so much power?

The ugliness and destruction are moving at light speed.