Epic problems are worsened when smug unfitness and boundless, negligent, self-entitlement cause permanent scars much harder and take longer to repair
Do you follow the booming parlor game of “who’s the dumbest, most inept MAGA Trump suck up?” Whether by citizens, professional or amateur, online commentators, the focus transcends disagreement with destructive decisions or busted, inane policies. No, the object is to overcome shock and analyze which MAGA buffoon, mirroring the rash, feckless top clown, is bought and owned impresarios of bad faith, propaganda, and non-stop lying. The unholy brew of crass incompetence with reckless, self-serving “gut instincts” make this horrid “game” easier than scoring reprobates paired with Epstein’s degeneracy.
Talk about the “wrong stuff” for the wrong jobs. Whether Musk, Hegseth, Noem, RFK, Jr., Patel, Kushner, Witcoff, Bondi, Blanche, Ludnick, McMahon (Education), Wright (Energy), Oz (Medicare/Medicaid) or Carr (FCC), the game is to spotlight the worst from a smorgasbord of viruses. Such a twisted menace of misfittery exposes the quest to subvert federalism as a functional provider – and with shocking, quicktime success.
However biased or benighted, before 2016 a rare few of US appointments across government, media, and advisers/analysts boasted zero relevant job experience, skill-sets, and oversight. However the left disliked Republican appointments, and not a few from Obama and Biden, how many major picks were plucked from obscurity – wholly beholden to a loyalty-obsessed, cult president? None shared Trump’s perverted idea that “governance” comes down to two things: 1) screwing your perceived, made-up enemies and 2) throwing maximum weight around to parade your mania for domination. Beyond poisoning election integrity and nixing moral character as a political qualification, Trump administration fiascos broadcast the stunning shift from defensible appointments to grossly mismatched, inept amateurs hired because lackeys majored in Obedience 101. This is governance not by skilled, professional managers, but a spate of wildly presumptuous amateurs instantly out of their depths, starring dolts like Gaetz, Noem, JFK, Jr. and Hegseth.
From the get-go explodes the most indefensible slaughter of federalism ever: Musk’s jackbooted, amateurish DOGE bombardment. With unbridled arrogance, rife with conflicts of interest, Must slashed and burned agencies that contradict his (and Trump’s) perverse notions of “public service.” Without political, historic or Washington savvy, Musk doubled down by hiring his most willfully blind, loyalist computer nerds. DOGE never was about “efficiency” (and cost billions to fix) but a crass, indiscriminate bombing raid driven by piratical “business logic” without understanding or compassion. Musk personifies, even more than the dumber, more illiterate Trump, how an unfeeling, inept, wannabe master of the universe remakes the world.
Everything Trump touches dies
Setting the stage, DOGE sent two other messages: MAGA Trump corruption automatically pays off obscene campaign donations with clout, banishing the mandatory competence and knowledge that might suss out waste and fraud. Second, Trump II is a fraud, never about delivering campaign promises but staging theatrical shenanigans to obscure looming failures, befuddling the masses with bread and circuses. DOGE comes down to an amateur pretend president paying off his biggest (amateur) donor with the first take-no-prisoner battle against workable, legal, authorized government. Forever bragging about his mastery of everything (smarter than generals, scientists, economists and Federal Reserve chief), Trump found another inept, overreaching “reformer” to war against democracy, diversity, fairness and human sympathy. Musk’s smug, info-stealing DOGE techno dog soldiers were the trial run for upcoming ICE abuses.
During this calamity, so astonishing that wimpy GOP politicians barely knew what hit Washington, came the equally bereft Trump cabinet. In retrospect, we almost had the contemptible Matt Gaetz as attorney general, arguably less predatory than the ex-AG Bondi, more agile when serving her boss’ punitive, enemy head hunting. In predation, Bondi tops Gaetz the rank amateur. Compare amateur JFK, Jr, a certified crank notorious not only for rigid, willful aversion to real science but no government management skills or medical credentials. With his famous name and grift for outlandish PR (thus capturing Trump), this rank amateur won over MAGA ignorance by parading his faith-alone, disease-spreading defiance of absolutely safe vaccines.
We needn’t detail all the jaw-dropping gang of amateurs, lacking knowledge-, task- or management skills to run huge agencies, only exemplary examples, the worst of the worst, revealing MAGA Trump’s quest to subvert good governance:
Pete Hegseth – reactionary propagandist, flame-throwing FOX loudmouth, and Muslim-insulting “lethal warrior” – the only cabinet member ever to need the tie-breaking VP to gain his Dept of Defense post. Alas, Hegseth’s AWOL Pentagon credentials, claims of sexual harassment, heavy drinking, multiple lawsuits and financial mismanagement only alienated three Rethug senators. Don’t forget Pete’s weird 2015 Flag Day ax-throwing incident, permanently injuring a West Point drummer – paid off privately (just like Trump).
Christi Noem – another reactionary and lead publicity queen, tainted by an infamous dog-killing incident. But at least this hustler twice won public office. Of course, this agency amateur had no credentials for overseeing the massive Homeland Security conglomerate, no training/expertise in global affairs, security management or military armaments. NONE in law enforcement. Noem was top-notch in one area, though: obeying malicious Trump orders, even perfecting the same lying/never apology schtick when openly slandering two murdered MN civilians as “domestic terrorists.” Fired not for that scandal but embarrassing the chief.
Tulsi Gabbard – one more “political” lackey without expertise to serve as director of National Intelligence. She does bring military and political gains, setting her above low-life MAGA opportunists. But what won over Trump were 1) visibility as a Democratic presidential candidate, especially her dramatic conversion from “woke” liberal/progressive to MAGA fan; 2) her chameleon-like flexibility,” echoing so many Russian sound bites to be called out as a “Russian asset;” and 3) enough opportunism to willingly join MAGA’s anti-federalist mania. After first purging non-Trump loyalists, she re-aligned US intell to MAGA mindsets.
By August 2025, Gabbard had fired over 50% of her DNI office staff, saving $700 million. Per Wikipedia she arbitrarily revoked security clearances for 37 career officials for allegedly “politicizing and manipulating intelligence, leaking classified intelligence without authorization, and/or committing intentional egregious violations of tradecraft standards.” The real sin: staff participation in Russian election interference reports. As if Trump and enablers never politicize intell, misuse classified documents, or violate tradecraft standards!?
Howard Ludnick (Commerce) and Steve Bessent (Treasury), career Wall Street operators without government or Washington service. Experts at fundraising with Wall Street contacts, these ex-liberals now fiercely defend Trump’s hated tariff illegality and magic thinking that crude, mass sales taxes “can alone fix” everything. Former lifelong Democratic supporters, they lurched only recently as opportunistic, fundraising Trump enthusiasts, today endorsing DOGE, the Big, Ugly tax bill and everything Trumpian. In short, like Musk, a pair of well-heeled, billionaire hustlers who’d never tell their failing boss the dreadful news he’s ruining the domestic (now global) economies. History IMO will tag both as hypocritical hacks who parlayed their uber-capitalist wealth to become national figures, but never shedding notoriety as willing, obedient D.C. amateurs.
Smug amateurs beyond the cabinet from hell
By buying, then degrading Twitter into an extremist rightwing platform, Musk the control-freak thus gained direct, massive media sway over hundreds of millions, impacting public opinion and policy, even national values. Writing off enormous X losses as “necessary business expenses,” Musk shifted from mere electric car maker (now space and robot entrepreneur) into media mogul, the typical authoritarian takeover of what others had created. The X losses parallel the “insurance” costs of obscene, $300 million dollar 2024 Trump donations. That Musk brought little expertise in media or good public policy made no difference: here was a predatory capitalist willing to spend whatever it takes to keep his massive government subsidies intact (right, a real libertarian!) while keeping any costly, thus unprofitable regulatory and environmental checks at bay.
Ditto with other super-rich tycoons, namely Larry Ellison of Oracle and his son running Paramount, who now control CBS and soon Warner Brothers – as in CNN and national media outlets plus a major film studio. The Musk-Trump-Ellison logic is indisputable: to control politics and policy, first control the mass media that determines what information does (and doesn’t) get wide coverage. CBS has turned decidedly rightwing, firing liberals at will, what one expects from a rightwing libertarian yearning for global dominance.
Controlling information, surveillance and data flow equally explain why billionaire extremist but then political amateur Peter Thiel used chump change to lift out of relative obscurity one JD Vance, subsidizing his Ohio Senate win, then ascension to VP. That’s a political home run for a predatory capitalist. In sync, Thiel funds companies like Palantir whose software empowers government to know about voters and citizens, helping facilitate regressive, lawless ICE head-hunters. Joining in the billionaire PR control squad are Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta/Facebook), signaling the ultimate tech-bros commitment to use technology, especially AI, to make money and control information access and flows. Bezos, despite backing off for years, has shifted from a media amateur since 2024 to eviscerate the discredited Washington Post, and Meta faces open court fights over its unethical manipulations.
One-time amateurs turn media/political kingmakers
Because increasingly the “world is a business,” simply being rich by running a profitable company isn’t enough in the Age of Trump. If fat cats can mastermind the media and the public forum, imagine what propaganda they can manufacture to decide what the misguided masses think, eat and drink, and how they vote. That is the next stage of crony capitalism, taking over industries beyond their original expertise or focus to dictate what the future looks like, what kind of industrial growth happens and what skills best serve these agendas. That they are not well-educated and do not appreciate either history or functional precedents, across politics and media independence, matters not a jot. They know that to contour democracy to serve their corporate empires, they must control the means of information production. They do not respect the majesty of free speech nor the centrality of press independence. Like Trump, they demand dominance and obedience, not debate and certainly not dissent or defiance.
There are other prominent “amateurs” – many online thanks to PR marketing savvy, not critical knowledge or wisdom about public policy. But what these amateur control freaks understand, whatever their initial achievements, is that tomorrow’s reality answers to what Network the movie brilliantly summarizes as “the primal forces of nature” wherein the “world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business.”
And as Musk, Trump and the Ellisons demonstrate, the world is rapidly becoming a unified single organism where everything per Network is business: “one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.” Like Trump appointees, these billionaires are certain they can leverage their wealth and PR savvy to channel more dollars into their coffers.
To win big in this brave new world, you don’t need traditional skill-sets nor the wisdom of experience: chutzpah and risk-taking, even gambling, are paramount, then the facile ability to learn on the job how to hold on to power and control. In short, the future, like the past, looms as a continuous battle between humanism, democracy, and sharing the wealth vs. a well-heeled, well organized, even integrated crusade by a tiny elite to make themselves even more elite – more powerful and richer. For them, what justifies excessive wealth except harvesting more wealth?
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