Lost In The Tower Of Trump

These days, I’m so frantically standing still I barely have time to scan the headlines or fuel my conspiracy theories. Then again, I hardly need to.

Trump and co have so flooded the zone it really is hard to keep up, or know what the hell to believe anymore. Or who.

Isn’t it enough to be working, bribing the kids and keeping TV, phone and overdraft expenditure this side of financially ruinous? Without having to think about global warming or why those resealable ham packs are so goddamn hard to open when your nails are clipped. 

But maybe I should cut that Netflix subscription because you won’t encounter stranger things than what’s happening in the so-called real world right now.

Like it seems as if the US under Trump are cosying up with Russia and Vlad the Invader — so, forget your tales of KGB, Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis and poison umbrella killings.

This is the New Real.

Where you switch on the UFC channel live from the White House and Donald Trump and JD Vance are in the cage doing a tag team take down of the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. The elected  leader of a country heroically staving off the military might of Vladimir Putin. Or so we thought, anyway. 

Old money snob Europe is out of the room, and out of the picture altogether as Trump is also trying to hustle a side minerals deal with the man he called a ‘dictator’ and ‘mediocre comedian’. 

Voldemort meets Voldymyr …

Only the other week, Trump accused Zelensky and Ukraine of actually starting the war with the Moscovians who invaded their country, after annexing part of it a few years back. Crimea and no punishment. 

True? False? Sort of true our false? Just plain fake? 

And I’m still trying to get my head around Israel, the homeland for a displaced people nearly wiped out by Nazi Germany, now under a Netanyahoo of a prime minister done for accepting bribes and for fraud in the Jerusalem District Court  — according to Google, if you believe him — and laying waste to Gaza, the smaller of the two territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the state of Palestine, and killing and starving thousands upon thousands of people, including children. 

Not unlike the final solution that Hitler and co tried to impose on the same Jewish people.

Or am I just being anti-semitic?

And you’d nearly be forgetting Trump’s own hush money indictments, attempted election subversion, endless sexual misconduct allegations and the odd impeachment. Puff! Vanished. Fake, fake, fake and … fake.

He is the phenomenon of our time. Especially as a politician and potentate.  How he got here.  And where he’s got us.

Imperviously confident and grandiose, petulant and peevish, Donald Trump says what he wants and the truth is what he says it is. Until he tires of it and picks up another one. And the Republic Party and all those who pull the levers of his power and run his vast corporation are his apprentices now. Please him or you’re fired.

He appalls the many of us wailing outside his tent, but inside it, there are enough flatterers and followers brazen with convenient conviction, so he rules regardless of the opprobrium or horrified derision outside.

Argument and reason seem futile as the majority cowering in the centre are slowly stripped of resolve, passion and worse, hope.

Inside the tower of Trump, perceived talent and usefulness and the right kind of flattery get you everywhere, for a while, while the wrong kind of courage or decency get you dismissed as a loser. Fired. 

We’re all writing about him, but it’s usually either derogatory or one-note critical, and rarely illuminatingly informative so as to help us truly understand him, and his followers, the better to take him and them on, and eventually down.

It’s easy to write about him off as some kind of cartoon bully, or cruel Adult Anime buffoon, but where does that actually get us?

Monsters wear many faces … and maybe the worst of it all is what Trump and his kind have unleashed on the world, and accessed in us. 

But America, though  … what the hell! Home of the free. Refuge of your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and buy into the American Wild West dream of sturdy independence and prosperity. 

The good old Jimmy Stewart guy paying the real security and commercial bills while old dowager Europe clutches her pearls and tries to maintain respectability in the face of war, populist nationalism and flagging trade.

And it’s no, nay NATO no nay NATO no more …

America, where they talk like they invented democracy. Well, for the white man, maybe. Like the Greeks built theirs on slavery and gender and social inequality.

Right now in America, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, with not one public vote to his name, is now leading the US Department of Government Efficiency. The same South African immigrant guy who once registered as an independent voter when he lived in Canada, and after moving to America in the mid-90s and getting filthy rich, donated to both Republicans and Democrats, according to his vast and varied vested interests. 

A fervent Trump supporter for just over a whole year now, this one-time Barack Obama backer has been donating to Republicans exclusively since 2022. He was the largest political donor in America in 2024, allegedly. 

Thank you, Google. And thank you, Elon.

Just last year, Mr Musk began supporting international far-right political parties, activists, and causes. 

And Trump is the biggest Musk-ovian of them all.

Something smells off when just Musk is the guy tasked with cutting US government jobs, saving taxpayers’ money and reducing US national debt. Of course, you will always have your critics, who will drone on about potential conflicts of interest, given the billions in contracts Musk’s businesses hold with the US government, yada, yada. Trump and Musk scoff at all such nonsense, of course.

And then, you have Mr Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, going all-in MAGA, shelving Meta’s fact-checking program, and dropping DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives. He has been jetting to Mar-a-Lago for private meetings with Trump,after donating $1m to the president’s inauguration fund.

Nothing in it for Zuckerberg, or Musk, or the other mostly unelected Cabinet picks and fellow tech big-shots and Jeff Bezos of Amazon on the dais for Trumps’s coronation … sorry, inauguration. 

Sure isn’t oligarch Elon doing it out of the goodness of his impossibly wealthy immigrant heart, operating as an unpaid special government employee, according to the White House?

Reading back as I write, I can see how everything I have addressed and alluded to, and how I have presented it all, could be dismissed as the product of a fevered mind, worried about all that is happening, and feeling overwhelmed and overpowered. Out of my depth.

But maybe conspiracy theories are rooted in a reality that becomes blurry, first, and then distorted, when one is given good cause to distrust, and doubt the bona fides of those running the show. And worse, you feel you are in no position to do anything about it. Your government won’t save you, you feel, and look how blind faith has worked out when it came to organised religion, full employment, affordable healthcare and housing and a decent rail and bus service?

The idea that people and institutions, rather than looking after you and out for you, are actually acting against your better interests, is maybe born out of defensiveness, rooted in a feeling that one’s opinions don’t count, and the cornerstone institutions can not be trusted, or believed in.

And sure even parents are only there to police their precious children’s pleasures and puncture instead of puff up their brittle confidence. As well as clear the dishwater, pay for their education and Nikes and drive them to the airport.

It’s all about confidence, isn’t it? You believe things are okay, and mostly, they are. The birds still sing, there’s a new niche beer in Tesco, and so you’re happy enough. You follow the algorithms of your own content. Down the yellow brick road to fairy tale happiness. And then you click your heels and you’re back watching the news through your hands, and worrying about your children’s future.

Confidence. Banks need it, insurance companies need it, businesses need it: confidence and conviction. If you don’t have that what are you left with? Powerful people on the make and the devil take the hindmost.

That’s why I think we have to be worried that a tiny group of superwealthy individuals and institutions are, or already have, taken over the running of the world. And when you can buy the best lawyer, donate to the political machine best suited to achieving your targets and ambitions, and influence the election of judges and police chiefs, accountability is harder and harder to enforce.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are business people. Out to make money, minimise costs — including employer wages and conditions — pay the least amount of tax, and make the biggest possible profit. And why wouldn’t they?

As a byproduct, people are employed by them, and the trickle down effect is what keeps a farm, a business, and a people and place alive. But the rich piper calls the tune, and even governments and institutions must listen, and dance.

But how did this happen in America, though, that Donald Trump and the MAGA moguls appear to have convinced enough people that they are in on their own conspiracy. A conspiracy to take down all the bad guys, as decided by Trump et al, and clear the swamp of bad Democratic politicians and lazy government workers.

Less and less people — especially those with conspicuous disabilities and diverse social, ethnic and sexual orientations — will be employed and looked after, and the guys who elected Trump somehow think this is all going to unrust the Rust Belt and dust off that closed down steel mill or cut down on imported Barbie dolls from China.

Just because you are a conspiracy theorist doesn’t always mean that a few zillionaires aren’t actually working against you and blighting your democratic pipe dreams.

I’ve been thinking a lot about democracy. Defined as ‘a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives’. Or better still, ‘control of an organisation or group by the majority of its members’. Google, you’re on fire today!

Well, it’s looking pretty screwed from where I’m sitting. All kinds of deplorables jostling to fill the vacuum of belonging and care abdicated by ass-covering institutions and the ruling elite. Society seems to be fragmenting. Social media is a pit, our kids can’t afford a mortgage and they are not watching the news, but they can read the writing on the wall. 

They are turning their backs on the old truths and tropes, ignorant and unconvinced by their politicians and their scripted outrage and rhetoric.

And it’s difficult to blame them when it’s so hard for them to buy a gaff or leave home. 

It’s hard for them to believe in religions, banks or even the state itself, or trust in politicians trained to obfuscate and evade, their parties voted out, one single vote by one single allowable vote, only to run around the back of the election station to form a coalition with another washed up party, and back they go into office again. Together.

Spending their time slagging the rival parties — the ones not in office —  or arguing as our crowd in Ireland were recently about party speaking rights in parliament and other vital matters. All faithfully reported by the mainstream press our kids are no longer heeding, while homelessness rises and angry young men shout abuse at the police officers trying to patrol another anti-emigrant protest. 

Like Bob sang one upon a dream time, so long ago:

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin’

And the first one now

Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin’

Changin’, all right But what kind of change?

Maybe I’ll hold onto Netflix a while longer. Sure you need the bit of escapism, don’t you?

Thanks for reading … please share if you care. Post it on Facebook, X, or wherever. And thanks