The Spectacle of Power: Musk and Trump in a Changing America (A.I. enhanced?)

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Yeah, okay, you ready? Okay. Hey, this is Dave from Boxville. You're listening to Frederick's Pines. There is time limit, time limit, time limit, time limit, time limit, time limit. We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible. Hey, look what happened. Is this crazy? Is this crazy? Is this what happened? Is crazy? Is this crazy? Is this crazy? Is this crazy? obstacles that nobody thought possible and incredible position.

I remember Steve Bannon talking about the approach that the Republicans should take about because he talked about it wasn't the Republicans versus the Democrats. It was the Republicans versus the media. And by media, he really meant professional journalists, people that rely on facts and evidence before making claims. There's an old Eastern saying that a single fool can ask more questions than a thousand wise men can answer.

And I think what we're experiencing here in the United States is a variation on that truism. Only in this case is a single liar can tell more lies than a thousand fact checkers can check or correct. Now we have hundreds of liars in positions of power. Bannon knows that and Trump knows it instinctively. The best way to defeat the media was to flood the zone with bodily waste.

And that's what they've done since president musk and his dumb friend have taken power and now we as a people are continually having to react to one what appears to be insane thing after another most recent that i have heard. After President Musk and the gangs were given access to all our government payment history and records. We're also dealing with President Trump, or pretend President Trump, saying that we're going to take over Gaza and use our military, take over the Gaza Strip.

Now, a few months back, I have not been able to locate it again, but a few months back, I saw a proposal that came from, who's that guy that got all the money from the Saudis? Jared Kushner, Kushner. And it was like one of those development proposals where they used the fancy artwork for proposed development. And it was like an aerial view of the Gaza Strip. And it showed where all the condos and the beach resorts were going to be.

And then recently I heard Mr. Makeup Man describe Gaza as a demolition site. And it is a site of demolition. That's for certain. It's been demolished. I didn't think that was, well, prior to seeing Kushner's plans, I did not think that that was an American goal, a goal for our country, the United States. I don't even want to call us America anymore. It used to be okay when we had reasonable relations with Canada and Mexico, our neighbors in North America.

But now Trump is like somebody new moved into the neighborhood in the house next door, and he's just going around starting fights. Threatening to burn your lawn and beat up your neighbors, take your tools, steal your land, fetch your property. It's insane. And I saw Chuck Schumer, to be quite frank, did not bring me the least amount of comfort. We will win. We will win. He's not quite as dumb as President Musk, but he's not very compelling, and it doesn't bring me any comfort to know that

he is the Democratic leader in the Senate. I'm a registered Republican. Speaking of which, I don't think I even mentioned that, or maybe I did. Yeah, I guess I did, but I'll mention it again. investigative reporter greg palace has some pretty compelling evidence that indicates that were it not for an extreme amount of voter suppression kamala harris would currently be the president of the united states rather than elon musk i can't say i was thrilled by harris either but.

Do believe that we could have counted on her to abide by at least the majority of laws and the norms established throughout the history of our country. I did hear a quote from Ezra Klein, who said that American democracy is really a bunch of norms in a trench coat. In other words, we didn't write it all down. We expected people to act decently. That's not happening, at least not currently. Instead, we're dealing with something else.

Something very different. Very different. Very different. Very different. Very different. Very different. Seems like every 12 hours there's another outrage. And just being outraged doesn't do anything. Something good anyway. But not acknowledging it does even less. Listen, we are getting showered with garbage. Craziness. I think our democracy may be dead. I'm not 100% sure. It's definitely not looking too good right now.

Democrats are picking their fights, and apparently they haven't found the right one yet. Meanwhile, Donald Trump pardoned all the January Sixers. He couldn't be bothered to determine which ones were the violent cop beaters and which ones were the ones swept up in the moment. I only flipped down the floor! I only flipped down the floor! I only flipped down the floor! I only flipped down! Coincidentally, he took away Anthony Fauci's, John Bolton's, and other people he didn't like.

Security protections. Interesting coincidence that he'd be releasing violent people into the general population again, while at the same time taking away the protections from people that he felt weren't suitably loyal or deferential to him. And a woman named Alex Wagner, a journalist for MSNBC, interviewed a guy exactly about this. So I'm going to play this segment from the interview, which I got from the Bulwark. It's interesting. The guy's a pastor. I don't know what church.

Church of Insurrection. You've been out here holding vigil. Who do you have in size? I got Jonathan Pollack and Olivia Pollack. We came up. We were all, as a family, came up on January 6th with our church. And I got friends, Michael Perkins, and he's going to be released out of Coleman in Florida. And then I got another buddy on an ankle monitor. All my friends are locked up right now. What happened with your son and daughter? Yes.

What exactly? What are they in for? They're in for about everything. We looked up the exact charges and just about everything isn't a bad description. Jonathan faced 17 counts and multiple alleged felonies, including assaulting officers with a dangerous weapon. In Jonathan's case, that meant charging at police with a flagpole. Do you think now that he's pardoned everybody, he can count on this group of people again? Oh, absolutely. I would die for the man.

I suspect he would also kill for the man. I know the United States has never been a perfect country. There's been plenty of errors and malfeasance done in our name. But at least it was... Given a veneer of propriety and legitimate oversight, has now been replaced by wanton corruption and self-dealing. It does appear, at least, as of last night when I saw Elon Musk standing by the resolute desk while the president was sat down and kind of cowered, President Trump.

Oh, God, I have to call him that. No, he got the vote, as far as I can tell. Yeah, well, except for the edited Tucker Carlson interview where Musk's son says, they'll never know. Check it out. Tucker Carlson interview with Elon Musk and his little blabbermouth boy giving the game away. Anyways, Musk was standing next to Trump, steepling his fingers.

His son was picking his nose the president was cowering musk was going on about stuff as far as i understand he has no idea about he's trying to understand bookkeeping, sequel i think it's called sql and he has read-only access and he doesn't understand the program is behind it, and he thinks that people have six Social Security numbers or six people have the same Social Security number. I don't know. It seemed like a lot of confused nonsense.

The sun was the best, but I thought they're just using that, too. That's just another distraction. All part of the destroying of truth and ruling by spectacle. Boy, was that a spectacle. Look at me. I'm even talking about the spectacle. It was so absurd and yet so telling of our time in history. And I understand there is still a chance we can hang on to our democracy, but it's not looking too promising.

No, it really looked bad when Musk was standing over Trump and making up crazy stories about 150-year-olds still collecting Social Security and people getting six checks as his son wiped a booger on the Resolute desk. And all Trump could do was sit there and wince. Thus, we were provided with both the destruction of truth as well as the spectacle of humiliation. Putin must be very, very proud. Very, very proud, Drops a box Drops a box Drops a box Drops a box Drops a box. Music.

Well, what if they, what if anything? What if the bomb drops on your head right now? What if they broke it? I don't know, they broke it with Biden, because Biden didn't respect him. They didn't respect Obama.

They respect me. Music. And he had to go through that. And he did go through it. We didn't end up in a war. And he went through it. He was accused of all that stuff. Music. He had nothing to do with it. It came out of Hunter Biden's bathroom. It came out of Hunter Biden's bedroom. It was disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting. Disgusting. February 11, 2025, the American people witnessed a coup. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a coup is a sudden appropriation

of leadership or power. A takeover. An unelected billionaire stood as our barely elected president cowered behind his desk, and the billionaire's son wiped his booger, the aforementioned desk. Trump is not the leader of this country anymore. He's a buffoonish distraction as we watch truth get destroyed, a powerful country be ruled by spectacle. And the opposition party has basically nothing to say about it. Trying to figure out what leverage we actually have.

What leverage do we have? They control the House, the Senate, and the presidency. It's their government. Music.

So it's Valentine's Day, 2025, and I am still able to be stunned, I guess, and horrified and shocked and dismayed and disheartened as President Musk just keeps getting weirder and weirder and doing crazier things. He still changed his name to Harry Balls on act. He'd given access to all the data to a bunch of unfettered young men, all men, and I think almost all white, too, and all definitely young. And they hooked up their computers to all the federal government's data and just downloaded it.

It appears quite likely that the reason why they want this data is because they need more information to feed into their AI program. They've gotten all the data that's available on the internet. Well, and there's also the fact that Musk is given all the data of his competitors and their government contracts. What did I hear? He's getting like $8 million a day from the federal government currently? It seems like there's some sort of conflict of interest there.

Probably should be investigated. But by whom? The FBI?

And then we're supposed to be reassured by idiots like Joe Rogan, self-described idiots like Joe Rogan, who are assuring us that. Elon Musk has enough money. He's doing this for us. But if there's one thing I've learned about wealthy people, I haven't hung around with tons of them, but enough to know that they didn't get wealthy by being generous and thinking of others, at least not the majority of them.

Most of them started out wealthy and were just continually cruel and selfish and self-dealing. Musk and Trump have that in common. Trump started out with a real estate empire handed to him by his father, and Musk grew up an heir to an emerald fortune. They have that in common and an obsession with getting more. Getting more. Getting more. That's the only way you'd get that much. It's the only way you'd want that much. There's a void. And they think material stuff will fill it.

Of course, it doesn't. But that doesn't stop them from trying. Look at Zuckerberg. Look at Bezos. They all could be enjoying their lives. We have two guys, President Musk and his pal Donald. And they're both absolutely empty human beings. They have voracious appetites, but they can never be satisfied. And it reminded me of an apocryphal story I heard many years ago. And supposedly it was between a conversation at a New York dinner party, cocktail party.

Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were there. And they were talking with some insurance executive. And he was talking about how much money he has and his yacht and how many houses and stuff. And Vonnegut said to Heller, how is it that somebody with so little talent and so little imagination can have so much more wealth than we do, so much more money? And Heller said, well, we've got something that he'll never have. Enough. Enough. Enough. Enough.

Enough. It really is how it seems. There's a gaping hole, and I mean gaping, no matter how much wealth Elon Musk accumulates. He's not going to be sad. He's not going to be sad. He's not going to be sad. He's not going to be sad. I'm feeling very discouraged.

Keep reminding myself that there's millions of people that live in dictatorships, and they get by, and I'm sure people still fall in love and eat good meals and. I don't know about how they retire. I guess not everybody eats good meals. Maybe the ones with the connections to the dictator eat. Well, I don't know how the rest do. I remember a long time reading that article about living in Estonia and how they knew that Russia was a threat.

And they described it as, one of the people described it as living in Florida. You know that there's a possibility that hurricanes will wipe away everything that you have, but you still carry on. I suppose it's possible that we'll just be living that way for a while. And reading comments online, it's pretty shocking how many people are applauding all that's happening. The hatred of the federal government seems to be pretty deep with some people. I mean, these are malicious people, though.

They like to call mentally handicapped people cards and gay people tags and black people. These people are really immature. They're children, essentially. Just like the hairy balls and naming a government agency Doge. And the cruelty. And how they're firing all these employees. These folks are like those twisted kids that get their kicks, you know, giggle while they tear the wings off of insects or legs off of them and then see how they try to run. They are right.

But he's making literally what they said in his government contracts. I just heard today. $8 million a day. And the average Medicaid recipient is getting $65 a day, but they're going to go after them. And if you pay close attention, it does appear that the first agencies that he wants to dismantle in the government are all the ones that have oversight over him.

This is a sad, sad time to be a liberal-minded American. We won't die. And there are some signs of hope. And we all had a whole bunch of members of the Department of Justice. I believe six of them, I heard, have resigned rather than drop a case against former New York police chief mayor Orrick Adams, including very conservative members of the Department of Justice. This is very reminiscent of when Nixon is trying to stop investigations into himself.

I'm trying to remember the names of the guys. I think it might have been Archibald Cox, special prosecutor. The guy, I think, named Richardson. Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, yes. And Deputy Attorney General, William Ruckelshaus, also resigned. Until he got to a guy named Robert Bork, who then fired him and almost resigned. And later got nominated to be a Supreme Court judge. But back in old America, the old United States, he was not chosen to be a member of the Supreme Court.

Now, he'd probably be the Chief Justice. Anyways, just wanted to note that while I was thinking about it. So many things are happening. We're now at the end of February. Yeah. Funks' birthday, the 28th, and I just have things pop into my head. Things like plane crashes and near misses are quite likely not the result of DEI hirings, but much more likely the result of FAA firings.

I mean, just logically, that these MAGA people will somehow twist it around to be either the fault of women, dark-skinned people, people with disabilities, or Joe Biden. Uh, did I share that? Even if there's no evidence to support any of it, that's not what counts. But remember, how many times have I quoted Masha Gessen saying it's about destroying truth and ruling by spectacle? Well, we're in the spectacle time every day.

Some new spectacle to distract us from the destruction of our country and our economy. Me and I'm reminded of when I read many many years ago hard times collection of stories by, studs circle and how most people talked about how tough the depression was on them and then there was this one guy as I saw I remember anyways it's just one guy who said I don't know why people talk about the depression like it was so bad that's what I made the majority of my acquisitions.

Land was cheap. Housing was cheap. And I established my empire. And I can't help but think that a couple billionaires might think it's not such a bad idea either. Crash the economy and then buy up everything else. Was running for election, Trump promised that he was going to lower prices on groceries, in particular eggs, day one. Did I say that? Did I say that? Make America affordable again. Did I say that? Day one. End the war between Ukraine and Russia.

Did I say that? I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I said He said he was going to do these things. People need to ask him about this rather than let them distract us with all this other nonsense, putting tariffs on things and then taking them back off. I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I said that. Just doing crazy stuff so he could be the lead story of every news cycle. Anyways, get out there. Support the ACLU and other legal organizations.

Protest. Just look people in the eye. Let them know that you're a normal human being. You just don't agree with this nonsense. And you're not going to participate. And you think neither should they. But don't attack them or call them dumb. Because we're going to need them on our side in the near future. If we're going to save this experiment that we've been conducting for the last 240 years. Talk to you later. 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L 30L.