That Musky Odor

It’s a conundrum to be sure. I don’t want America to fail no matter who is at the helm. I want America to be prosperous and strong regardless of what party leads. The problem is, I don’t agree with what Trump and a majority of Republicans believe to be the measurements of strength.

I am adamantly opposed to the supply-side economic paradigm that has made a tiny percentage wealthy beyond comprehension while wages for workers remain flat.

I don’t believe in isolationism in an age of light speed communication.

I don’t believe in antiquated perceptions of gender or limiting minority rights.

And I find any gradation of white, Christian-nationalism an egregious affront to the 1st Amendment, and to intelligence and decency.

So, I can’t support the Trump/MAGA/Modern-Republican agenda.

I also know, because I’ve been watching their movement build for over a dozen years, that the contradictions inherent to their platform are a schizophrenic parade of populism that cannot govern. Putting aside the jaw dropping delusion that billionaires are the solution to creating a government for working Americans, there are firm ideological discrepancies that have already begun to unfold.

A large part of the Republican platform is the deportation of undocumented immigrants. As that directive “trickles down” to the rank and file voter it has manifested as an anti-immigrant point of view. This is evidenced by the rise in white supremacist voices and violence against immigrants. It has folded into the “put American workers first” trope that resonated heavily with the working class Republican.

But now Elon Musk, mega-billionaire consiglieri to the President-elect, said that US tech companies need to double the amount of immigrant engineers working in America today. On his X platform he wrote:

“If you want your TEAM to win the championship, you need to recruit top talent wherever they may be. That enables the whole TEAM to win. I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning.”

That isn’t sitting well with a large percentage of the Republican base who see that as contrary to “putting real Americans first.”

Musk isn’t wrong, however. He is dead on and so is Vivek Ramaswamy who has publicly agreed. Both men do know a thing or two about the value of immigrants. We can table the contradiction that Musk is here because he illegally stayed past the expiration of his visa (in MAGAland moving goalposts is as fundamental as government cheese) but to a substantial number of working class Americans who put Trump in office this is close to betrayal.

“Don’t forget about us” wrote a Pennsylvania Trump supporter. “We need jobs. And don’t take social security and the help we need!”

The political ideology that believes people on welfare are essentially lazy and that welfare is a handout bleeding the pockets of hard working Americans, was supported by those people needing welfare. And the incongruities have just gotten started.

Musk doubled down: “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.”

Loyal Trump backers like far-right activist and self proclaimed white nationalist, Laura Loomer, as well as conservative pundit Ann Coulter, and Matt Gaetz criticized the two tech entrepreneurs over their stance.

“We welcomed the tech bros when they came running our way to avoid the 3rd grade teacher picking their kid’s gender – and the obvious Biden/Harris economic decline,” Gaetz wrote in a social media post. “We did not ask them to engineer an immigration policy.”

Musk and Ramaswamy’s comments also drew condemnation from double-standard bearer, Nikki Haley:

“There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreigners.”

That ugly statement has to be addressed. Haley believes that America and the culture that created what those ‘border crossers want’ wasn’t itself created by “foreigners.” Her analysis is rooted in bigotry itself and rests on an uneducated understanding of our history.

What the Loomer/Gaetz/Haley/Coulter doctrine will for sure create are more Loomers, Gaetzes, Haleys and Coulters. Loomer’s own words illustrate this better than any comment I can make:

“Our country was built by white Europeans, actually. Not third world invaders from India. We didn’t create it so that it could be exploited by pro open border techies.”

I don’t have the patience at this moment to unravel her fantasy and the implications of her view. What I will say is this-

There will soon be a divorce between Trump and Musk for the simple reason that the optics make Musk appear to be in charge, but the more insidious disconnect is between Trump and the disenfranchised Americans who voted for him who will soon feel disenfranchised again.

Each splinter group, from struggling workers to abject racist organizations, will realize that they attached their agenda onto Trump who doesn’t draw his rhetoric from the well of ideas but rather from the cistern of idolatry. Trump has no consistent ethical code of his own and he fills that void with their devotion. Which results in promises without policies.

I happen to agree with Musk on this issue, but the bottom line is that this administration is doomed by its contradictions. Billionaires don’t understand welfare, they understand wealth. Nationalists don’t understand immigration, they understand separation. Government, on the other hand, will only function in the service of its constituents when it uses consistent logic to mediate our conflicts. And when the party that has designed itself to dismantle government is the government, there are going to be some epic conflicts of interest.

That will leave a musky odor in the Halls of Justice.