I know for someone who purports to have meaningful and worthwhile insights into the world as it is, as it could be, and how to bridge the gap from one to the other, that’s a very uninspiring title. But the last “real” post I made was well before the new year, and like a lot of people, I just….didn’t see this coming.
I don’t mean that I didn’t know it would be bad, or that these goals would be pursued and these particular actions taken. I don’t think we’ve seen much that’s surprising in terms of actions. No, the thing I truly didn’t prepare for was Elon Musk. If you had told me last December that there would be a video of Elon answering questions in the oval office while his son X AE A-Xii told Trump to shut the fuck up on camera, I would have said “that’s so oddly specific, are you okay? That’s an insane thing to say.” But like….that happened. That’s the world we’re living in. Elon Musk has, through sheer force of will, begun shaping the executive branch in ways that are frankly hard to really believe. And Trump seems to be…letting him? For reasons that are totally unclear, Trump is standing back and letting Musk just sort of do whatever.
Trump has always stood out as such a narcissist, so unwilling to not be the coolest and biggest boy on the playground that he would hire and fire advisors willy nilly in his last term. But now this random child of apartheid has totally taken the spotlight, and it seems like Trump is letting him.
I’ve had to do a lot to recalibrate both my expectations and my anxieties for the next few years, as I’m sure you and so many others have. I didn’t plan for this, I don’t know if anyone planned for this. Maybe someone is pointing at the TV like that DiCaprio meme because they called it from minute one, but I don’t know them.
I don’t really have a point I’m trying to make with this post, but I wanted to acknowledge that this is…different than I expected when I woke up after election day. But we play the cards we’re dealt, so we’ll have to figure it out.
~Clay
Leave a Reply