Treason, Overanalyzed

I’m old enough to remember the early albums of Simon and Garfunkel, and one of their funny masterpieces, “A Simple Desultory Phillipic, or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission,” from their album, “Bookends,” in April 1968.

It struck a comic tone while still getting the point across that the folks riding point on popular politics and culture had gotten into our heads way too much.

I been Norman Mailer'd, Maxwell Taylor'd.
I been John O'Hara'd, McNamara'd.
I been Rolling Stoned and Beatled till I'm blind.
I been Ayn Rand'd, nearly branded
Communist, 'cause I'm left-handed.
That's the hand I use, well, never mind!

I’m left-handed, too, but let’s face it, the reference to Ayn Rand is prophetic in today’s world where it’s everyone for himself – no vaccines, no allies, no restraints on war and hate.

Simon and Gar were all about making fun of folks that dominated the Vietnam War effort. Like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor. They were two of the technocrat architects of the war featured prominently in “The Best and the Brightest” by David Halberstam, who – four years later, I must say – documented their lies and incompetence.

You can’t take outrage so seriously, or you’ll go nuts. On the other hand, serious people are throwing out much that is good about America out the window or down the drain. It’s the baby in the bathwater, the indiscriminate destruction of America’s institutions, culture, generosity, loyalty and open-hearted spirit.

Of course, this isn’t the first time it’s happened. We had Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Roy Cohn, Jefferson Davis and Benedict Arnold, not to mention Ohio’s own Rutherford B. Hayes, whom we have to thank for the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Jim Crow era in the late 1870s.

It’s time to face up to the fact that we elected a traitor, a Manchurian candidate who is busily destroying our country, weakening it to herald the end of democracy and the age of the strongman.

For President Hayes, it was letting the South rise again. For Trump, it's the measles in Texas and a new dictator in Europe.

I’m not interested in understanding the sources of Trump’s grievances or why they resonate with so many people. I’m not interested in microscopically examining the seeds of this un-American trashing of everything we hold dear. I’m not interested in the messaging or the words we need to fight back. Figuring that out – that was yesterday. Today, I’m looking for anyone who will take on Trump and Musk. Now.

Fortunately, the commentariat wing of the mainstream media have come up with labels for all this:

It’s a silent coup. (Yeah, then why is it so noisy?)
It’s narcissism.
It’s patrimonialism.
It’s a dictatorship – or at least a co-dictatorship with Elon Musk.
It’s a constitutional crisis.
It’s government by grievance and retribution.

None of this is adequate to the depth of betrayal by Trump and Musk, nor does it adequately condemn the Congressional ersatz leaders letting it happen.

Meanwhile, the media is normalizing Trump as he gives away the store in Ukraine, betrays our once-close European allies and licks the boot of Vladimir Putin.

The media has watered down Trump’s betrayal, the biggest since Judas, throwing our national security to the wolves, with their euphemisms:

It’s transactional. Since when have we traded security guarantees for a country’s minerals?
He’s just shaking things up to start both sides moving. Yeah.

And then there are the crazies that the Republicans in Congress just rubber-stamped, entrusting our secrets, our defense, our health, our safety, and our legal system:

RFK Jr., an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist.
Kash Patel, one look at those eyes, and you can tell he's crazy.
Pam Bondi, Trump's Attorney General.
Tulsi Gabbard, who dallies traitorously with foreign troublemakers.
Pete Hegseth, a Fox News refugee, womanizer, and drinker.
Russell Vought, a religious nationalist and co-author of Project 2025.
Ed Martin, a "Stop the Steal" rally architect, now U.S. Attorney for D.C.

It’s obvious what’s going on here. Extremists have used the psyche of a crazy man and his whims as the index to how they would hit the ground running on destroying America and replacing it with an oligarchy/autocracy/whatever the heck you want to call it. They’ve seized our data and our institutions, and now they know intimately how to stop the flow of American money to anyone but themselves.

And there are no more "adults in the room" with government experience or technical expertise to stop them. Or backbone.

I'm getting tired of the folks willing to let Trump and Musk destroy things in the name of less government. This isn't an experiment, it's a bonfire.

Moreover, I’m getting tired of the journalistic descriptions, analysis and excuses. It’s not only boring and dull, it’s also overcomplicating things while ignoring glaring signs of disaster. We’re watching a guy who wants to bring this country to its knees by remaking it to his own biases and lies.

Okay, if the Democratic technocrats want to go out and run some more focus groups to tell us why people moved to Trump, let them. They voted for Trump? But now he closed down their agency. But now his tariffs will hurt their farms. But eggs are getting even more expensive. Boo hoo. Did you think he cared?

This is wasting my time and yours while Trump keeps lying, keeps betraying us and runs over anyone he doesn’t like.

I’m done reading any more strategic analysis of where all this anger, grievance, fear-mongering, hate and racism came from. It’s as if it’s someone else’s fault that America has elected a Philistine to head a heartless administration, appointing the world’s richest man to destroy its government and exploit it to serve his personal greed.

I’m not interested in understanding the sources of Trump’s grievances or why they resonate with so many people.

I’m not interested in microscopically examining the seeds of this un-American trashing of everything we hold dear.

I’m not interested in the messaging or the words we need to fight back.

Figuring that out – that was yesterday.

Today, I’m looking for anyone who will take on Trump and Musk. Now.

Otherwise, we’ll be Donald Trumped and Elon Musked.