All That’s Solid Melts into Air (Part 1)
A couple of days ago, Trump ordered the firing all of the trustees of all of the armed forces academies. It was reported that Trump had declared (in so many words and with his cartoonishly imperious black-magic-marker-inscribed MAGA-signature) that all of the military academies’ trustees were “woke” and have overseen the poisoning and corruption of the military academies; and which, he asserted, has led to the emasculation of America’s military leadership.
I didn’t know why, exactly, but this particular action really struck me — caught me off guard — in a way that many others in the last few weeks — seemingly far more consequential — had not.
I woke up the next morning and my mind was occupied with trying to recall a phrase that I had encountered back in my own “academy” days (not military) that had to do with how things that you thought were pretty much permanent and immutable actually weren’t.
And then it popped into my head:
“All that’s solid melts into air.”1
And I realized that what I was sensing and identifying for the first time was the feeling that things — important things — all around me that I thought were carved in stone — simply weren’t. Only about three weeks after the inauguration of what, in effect, is now a Trump/Musk co-presidency, so much of what we have long taken as foundational in how we constitute ourselves as a nation seems suddenly like mere mirages — “castles made of sand” — easily washed away by some rough political waves.
And it’s been quite a stunning, sobering, and disquieting realization.
I’ve been focused on Trump’s shitstorm of lies and pretensions, bigotry and depravity, and his endless puerile performative shitposting and pollywogging. What I was unaware of is how much really serious shit has been built-up behind Trump’s carnival of dissembling and distractions.
Project 2025 turns out to have been extremely well put together by people who have made it their business to carefully study how flimsy is the architecture of our experiment in building a democratic Republic — and especially how precarious is the very foundation of our experiment: The Constitution of the United States.
And then along comes Elon Musk.
Musk came to realize, perhaps only a few months ago, that a second Donald Trump presidency could afford him the chance to attach himself and his megalomaniacal ambitions to those of Trump.
And afford him the chance it did.
It cost Musk a mere pittance of his obscene wealth, $250 million up-front, to become America’s CEO: Chief Executive Execution Officer. With this cash infusion into Trump’s campaign, he purchased a free hand to create a new shell corporation (out of thin air?), DOGE, and to execute on Project 2025. He appears to have been given carte blanche to identify and root-out any and all traces of the supposed ‘woke’ liberal administrative state and its evil twin, the so-called ‘deep’ state.
The first big target was USAID, which was targeted for complete destruction. And they launched a series of spec-ops-like insertions and occupations of the US Treasury, the General Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Justice, and on and on.
It has been dumbfounding to witness what seemed like rock-solid and formidable institutions being so quickly overwhelmed, disarmed, controlled — and destroyed or occupied — by what some might describe as saboteurs. This is a little like watching the assault on the Capitol on January 6th — except this current assault is far more serious and consequential in both conception and execution.
Think of the difference between what our lives and our governing norms and institutions looked like a month ago and how they are looking today.
But, unlikely as it seems, it was when Trump went after the boards of the military academies and just summarily fired all of their trustees, that I personally was struck by how this second iteration of Trump’s insurrectionary presidency was going to be qualitatively different from the first.
Trump spent four years tormented and humiliated by having been denied reelection, compounded many times over by then being subjected at times to the same laws as just ordinary people — just ordinary suckers.
Trump believed himself to have been ‘muscled out’ of a second term as president, He suffered mightily, even pitifully, as a Don stripped of what he considers his own: his territory, his property, his stooges and patsies.
I can offer no sympathy.
But I do feel bad for the rest us.
That, of course, is because Trump managed a dramatic comeback.
Trump is far from alone in being irreconcilably aggrieved by the denial of his delusions of a nativist birthright to dominion over women, blacks and other ‘lesser people.’ So, this time around, he found himself fully backed by an ‘A team’ of American ‘Confederates’ still fighting to Make Plantations Great Again.
If, Trump I, in his first-term, debuted as a ‘paper-tiger tyrant,’ Trump II has entered his second terms as something more like a formerly caged but now freed rapacious-tiger tyrant. Trump II is a much more bitter, malevolent Don, with scores and scores of scores to settle.
And that, I think, is at the crux of what struck me when Trump summarily fired the trustees of the military academies He was demonstrating that nothing is off limits — and this includes the high priests and grandees of what one of his more ‘normie’ Republican predecessors called, ‘the military-industrial-complex.’
He is showing us and the world that he will have his revenge; or die trying. Everything in his way can and will be devoured; and everyone who displeases him will be effectively ‘disappeared.’
Boom! You’re fired! because you’re Woke and corrupt and a pedophile.
Just like that.
So now our America, the ‘Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,’ is in the midst of a takeover led by a depraved, deluded, and revenge-seeking real estate mogul together with the world’s richest man and his teams of teenage mutant high-tech Muskreants.
In the grip of Trump’s malevolence and madness, our laws and courts are being defied, our Congress cowed, and our Constitution defenestrated.
Dare we call it a coup? Dare we not?
This is staggering. It’s overwhelming. It’s perhaps the first time in a long time, or ever, that many of us have really not been able to answer the question: “What comes next?” “What does the future even look like?”
When all that we thought was solid is being demolished, what do we have to hold-on to — to work with?
It starts with the realization that, actually, all is not lost. Not even close.
We have one another. Hundreds and thousands of other people right near by;
We have scale: Millions more of us across this land;
We have the best people: many of the world’s most powerful, dedicated, and honorable people are on our side, throughout every walk of life, and in every branch of government, public service, and public health and safety;
We have available to us many of the world’s most powerful resources, including information, communications, the courts, professional and trade organizations and our networks;
We have vast experience in organizing and getting things done through our lifetimes’ of engagement in the world’s most vibrant public, private and civic sectors;
We have ready-to-hand many of the world’s most advanced technologies, not the least of which is the cell phone;
We have time: despite the seeming swiftness of their assaults so far, much of it is ‘sound and fury signifying . . .” What exactly? We don’t know. But our side’s initial resistance is already bogging them down.
“We’ve only just begun to fight.” This is huge
And, very importantly, we do not have their biggest liabilities — their Achilles heels: Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
So, know this: What is solid can melt into air; but what goes up must come down. And sometimes it can be brought down hard — like in a bolt of lightening.
We have to regroup — get a grip on ourselves and one another, and support those already victimized. Run to join those already at the barricades, and to prepare and protect those likely soon to be in the crosshairs. We must gather our strength and map how we will leverage and deploy our power.
And know this too: ”When we fight, we win!”
And when we win, the Comeback will be far greater than the Setback.
*****
[More to come on fighting and winning in Part 2 of this post.]
Shakespeare concludes his drama, The Tempest, with words to this effect describing the fleeting nature of life and of all existence. Marx and Engles used almost exactly these words in The Communist Manifesto to describe the revolutionary effects the development of capitalism has on the conditions and traditions of human work and the organization of society.
Hey Jon, been thinking about the military too. At first, i thought the duty bound military would resist unconstitutional/unlawful/obscene orders from him. But then thought, and you confirmed, he will purge all of the military complex of those loyal to the constitution rather than to "him". In that quiet way the groundwork is laid for "his' dictatorship/ putin playbook/staying in office in perpetuity. It really is too much to think about. Where is the seed of opposition? Where to i sign up? Should the rest of us go and get guns as the nra has been telling us forever?
Thank you Jon.
I am prepared, as my part, to mount a serious campaign for Congress, in a District that has been Republican for many years. I am sort of a relic from the old days, a labor Democrat, who talks the talk of the loggers and other mountain folk in our neck of the woods. I have a case to make, based on the carbon economics of forests recovery, which is a long way of saying JOBS!!!
An obstacle in my decision is a natural Fear of the Eye of Sauron.
My family's business involves interaction with the Federal Government. As soon as I stick my head above the parapet, one way or another, the Eye aims this-aways. Our beloved enterprise, which has delivered more psychic than pecuniary rewards over the years, is a natural target for the Musky Orcs of Maralago.
MOM! Help!