Bring Your Friends Close…

 

…and your enemies closer.

Referring back to my post, wondering why the billionaire, oligarch class appears to be on the side of exposing the corruption in the federal government:

But why?  That’s the question I keep asking myself.  Why this effort?  Why now?  Why is it happening?  Why, so relatively speaking, quietly?

But why are they doing it?  They have never done so in my life.  And I have lived a pretty long life.

My conclusion: without the United States as their foundation and defender, and offering a projection of power and control, their wealth and control are lost.  And, unless the United States changes its ways from ruling the world to watching out more for the interests of the country, the United States will be lost.

I have started seeing and reading much more along these lines – these people are not our friends, that kind of thing.  Yes, they may be sincere about reducing government waste and spending, but they are doing it only to have the vehicle (the US government) to exercise ever-greater control over us.

In fact, this answer was given back in early November:

Well, just as I figured:

For more than a month, Elon Musk has been eyeing a position leading a task force under a hypothetical Trump administration. Now, it appears his role has been downgraded to “writing software” to help slash the federal budget, according to Former President Donald Trump’s transition team co-chair.

“He’s going to be adjacent to [the government]. I think adjacent to it and writing software for the government and then giving the software to the government and helping the government,” Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick told CNN Wednesday evening. “It’s going to be amazing.”

This would be the worst possible outcome….

So, why am I starting here, repeating that which I have covered before?  I remember the positive vibe I felt, seeing the many out-of-the-norm nominees Trump named for various cabinet and department positions: Gabbard, Patel, Noem, RFK, jr. even Hegseth, etc.

Now, a few of these were, and remain, neocons.  But Gabbard did not talk or act that way at all.  And RFK, jr., even though he clearly had a strong leaning in this regard, was named to a cabinet post that seemed irrelevant to his neocon-ish sentiments.

Well, Gabbard has completely flipped (have you seen her defend the bombings in Yemen, and her nonsensical comments about Signal-gate?), and RFK, jr., it seems, posts primarily about how antisemitism is a health crisis.  Meanwhile, Patel and others are rounding up individuals for speech, carting them off to prison, with who knows what fate, and when.

Then there is this:

This is what’s happened to American values.  The United States is supporting an apartheid state that’s engaged in genocide.  Do you need to know any more?

-          John Mearsheimer, on Judge Napolitano’s podcast

Conclusion

MAGA is going to be torn apart, and torn apart from within.  These issues divide very neatly the MAGA base: the Christian Zionists are, no doubt, a strong supporter of MAGA and many of these neocon actions – probably the most significant bloc of MAGA support.

Yes, they are also the most important bloc for fighting against the culture-destroying actions of the left.  So, there is that.

But there are other supporters of MAGA, who look and say: we didn’t vote for bombing Yemen, we didn’t vote for a war with Iran, we didn’t vote for continued support for Ukraine (yes, Trump owns this war now), we didn’t vote for deporting students for speech, we didn’t vote for turning weaponized government against some other group.  We voted to end all of this.

These two factions cannot co-exist.  The “enemies” of the neocons have been brought closer; some of the strongest public advocates for the second position – call it the Ron Paul large subset of MAGA supporters – have been effectively neutered by being brought into the inner circle.

I hope I am wrong (is Trump playing 8-D chess…will we fall for that notion a second time?), but it seems this is now the trajectory.