The Death of An Empire comes Swift and Mercilessly.

Trump: Lightning Rod & Whipping Boy For A Blatant Coup.

Generally I have never bothered writing about nitty gritty straight political shit, however the events internally of the past two weeks in the USA, and the reaction I have observed to them despite the relatively obvious near and long term implications, is alarming enough that I’ll make an exception. This is not how I expected to break my 8 month writing hiatus - I had a nice long-form essay about the collapse of social structures back in the mental slow cooker after some test reads, what a fuckin’ debacle.

Anyways.

Listen to the terminally online left this week, and you would be lead to believe that Trump is a comic book supervillain, hell bent on destroying America in the name of his own ego. Listen to the right, the MAGA, and you'd believe that Trump is a comic book Machiavellian plot-master, playing 3D chess with the world to further his visionary goals of a "Golden Era". Horseshoe theory is really shining through during this turning of an epoch, with both sides of the spectrum unable to perceive Trump outside of that comic book framing for what he actually is: the whipping boy, the lightning rod. So blinded by rage or avarice that the entire political spectrum seems willfully ignorant of the shuffling groups behind the curtain with their hands up his ass who are making him dance.

I'll be blunt, folks, if you're subscribe to either of those viewpoints: you're fucking dumb. You're so fucking dumb that you probably should not be permitted to operate a vehicle, given the shocking lack of critical thinking you're putting on display with your commentary on the subject. You're falling hook line and sinker for exactly the narrative being sold to you for a purpose, pedal to the floor blasting past every flashing billboard begging you to slow down and fucking think about what is happening.

Look at the headlines: Trump does this, Trump does that. Trumps executive orders, Trumps tarriffs, etc etc etc. Meanwhile, Elon fucking Musk is looting the US Treasury Payments System. You get it yet? Have you ever stopped to think about why all of this madness is being dumped directly onto Trump, by the media and by an army of bots on Reddit, when there is no reality in which he could be orchestrating it?

Fuck, the herd-like rush to lay it all at the feet of one man and remain blind to the greater threat is almost as infuriating as what is actually happening.

Donald Trump is a 78 year old man with obvious signs of dementia. He has spent his entire life being broadly known to be an utter idiot, someone who managed to lose a vast hereditary fortune and repeatedly sink his own businesses through incompetence. Someone who we knew a decade ago was heavily compromised by Russia and beholden to whatever they wanted done. Yet, here we are, daily, blaming him for orchestrating a full scale coup and purge of the US Federal Government. Folks, do you honestly think Trump has any comprehension of the executive orders he is signing off on, beyond what an aide is mumbling in his ear regarding the contents? The man doesn't give a shit, he's a puppet for unelected rogue elements within the US who are making a do-or-die run at ending democracy permanently. He's a petty, vindictive, greedy corpse with a rotting brain, at the helm of the most powerful nation on earth and happy to sign whatever is put in front of him if someone tells him it'll hurt a group he dislikes.

What he has is a VP hand-groomed by one of the most virulently psychopathic tech-billionaires on earth. An individual conspicuously silent, these past two weeks.

Trump is no Theoden, but hopefully if you are reading this, you can get the point which I'm trying desperately to make.

Let us be clear: this is what is going down in America right now - it is a coup. It is a very blatant, very wholesale takeover and rapid controlled disassembly of the operating mechanisms of the US Government. We are watching the end of the era of American Hegemony in real time, here. Watching as oligarchs and religious ideologues, which multiple administrations have failed to prosecute, or even make a token gesture at reigning in (because they pour unlimited money into the mouths of whomever is in charge this cycle), make their one and only run at solidifying personal control over the remaining assets of the USA.

I do not know what the end goal is, but it is not one in which elections are held in America ever again and which you get to continue to pretend that "the Democrats" will magically fix things simply by virtue of not being the Trump party. Oh yeah, the party which directly allowed these events to manifest and is currently kicking back and chillin' while it goes down: eternal saviors to the most willfully ignorant motherfuckers in America. If you are one of the many who still seem to think that you "just need to ride out the next four years and vote blue even harder", then you really need to put down your fucking bong because you are definitely going to need a clear head for the amount of reality which is about to slap you in the face over that same time period. Day to day survival is about to get real wild, but we'll get to that later.

You are living through a hard crash transition from democracy to autocracy, you fools: it is here and you are watching it live and most of you are pretending it isn't happening.

I will repeat: the American Hegemony of economic soft power shot itself in the head, this week, it's over and it is never going to come back. All of us in the west have enjoyed a really comfortable near-century of unparalleled global dominance, and like all such empires the third generation here has squandered it out of greed, laziness and ignorance. The rot came from within, but everyone was too fat and high and generally comfortable with their lives to give a shit. The most heavily armed nation on the planet, and the only casualties are school children whilst the country is handed over to a class of Oligarchs who have openly and frankly discussed that their lifelong dream is to bring back feudalism except harder and with way more slavery and maybe explosive collars this time.

What happens next? Certainly, we can speculate on some almost-guaranteed near term outcomes of current policy trends this week: a hard crash of the US stock market, rapid devaluation of the US Dollar, potential default on US Treasuries payments. The continued disassembly of critical federal agencies, knocking out the support pillars of the government with a bulldozer. The judicial system? The judicial system is already mostly captured, folks, and if you think the law is going to save your ass I think you do not understand that when somebody wants to destroy a country as fast as possible from the highest levels, they don't care what the law says. You are experiencing a very calculated attempt to end your nation, who the fuck cares about "the laws" when they're playing that game?

Virtually everything which has been done in the past two weeks has been varying degrees of illegal, from "oh yeah, pretty illegal" right up to "this is so fucking illegal we can't even put it into words, because something this illegal happening was considered to be outside of the realm of imagination". Handing uncontrolled access to the US Treasury Payments System over to unknown, uncleared private subcontractors of a random, unelected, billionaire being the most poignant example in US history of that last category. Do you comprehend what will happen if Musk causes a treasury payments default? What that will do to the value of whatever cash you have on hand?

Like, shit, folks, do you understand the economic ramifications of ending the De Minimis threshold for imported goods? With a single order, this administration has recreated the Covid-era supply chain shocks, on purpose.

If I were to speculate, really speculate, the goal here is to destabilize and balkanize the USA as fast as possible. Carve it up under the control of various Oligarchs and theocratic powers the same way as Russia was carved up in the wake of the USSR. The federal apparatus reduced to little more than a gangster organization with a veneer of power remaining via a captured supreme court and a lot of nukes, but serving little purpose and with the true power devolved to the individuals who are currently executing this coup.

Like, no joke, unless someone really loves the idea of the LDS controlling their lives, I would get the fuck out of Utah ASAP.

But hey, I am no Cassandra, who knows where this is all going. All I know is what should be obvious to anyone with eyes, who isn't desperately clinging to a delusion because it comforts them: The world you knew ended two weeks ago. The world you grew up in, which you expected to last forever because it is all you have ever known, has terminated into chaos. The western bubble of geopolitical stability, preferential goods pricing, and stable currency rates - all backed by American Hegemony, is over, and it is never coming back. Buckle the fuck up, and stop spending money, because as that hegemony spasms in death we're all going to experience the kind of economic supershocks which turned your great-grandparents into chronic hoarders.

Turn off the news and read The Grapes of Wrath, we're all going to need hot tips therein soon. Throw in some Parable of the Sower, so you can think real hard about how at least one person had a solid enough grasp of America’s vibe to see all of this shit playing out - thirty years ago.

¹

1. Fuck am I ever pissed off, there’s nothing “Liminal” in a world where America commits economic suicide, defaults, and likely balkanizes as the federal apparatus is dismembered. My whole brand, out the window, so much for selling shitty dropshipped hats & hoodies, ayaaaaa.