Washington has been in a tizzy since Elon Musk has been let loose and is cutting a swath through the bureaucracy. The Left, locked in their own dark, commiserating closet, assumed that Trump would make good on his promise to reduce the size and influence of government; but never in a million years did they think it would happen like this - a putsch, a pogrom, Kristallnacht, SS storm troopers breaking into government agencies in the dead of night, rounding up bureaucrats like old Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. They knew that Trump was capable of such genocide, but they never actually thought it would happen.
Bob Muzelle sat disconsolately on the steps by the fountain in Lafayette Park overlooking the White House - a serene, settled place from the outside; a place of considered governance, an icon of America - but now transformed into the headquarters of the Gestapo, the Wehrmacht, and the Nazi high command.
Of course the White House had seen troubles in the past - Watergate, the plumbers, and 'I am not a crook' Richard Nixon - but nothing like this. Nixon was a pussy compared to Donald Trump, a dangerous, reckless, soulless man out to destroy America and remake it into his own twisted, perverted image.
'What's a mother to do? thought Bob. The cloying, annoying advertising jingle of the 1960s kept popping into his head at the most inopportune times, but was telling him something - despair was part and parcel of the human condition, preparatory to action. The pert, trim housewife sternly looking over her lovely family with pique - she had spent hours cooking - was the image which blocked Bob's view of the avenue, the lawn, and the North Portico of 1700. He shook his head. 'We must organize!'.
He thought back to his days on the Pettis Bridge with Martin and Ralph, the Freedom Rider bus trips to Selma, and the March on Washington - heady days of promise and optimism - but now only saw Armageddon. He and his colleagues had pulled out every stop to defeat Donald Trump, marshalled every resource, challenged with skirmish and open field assault; and nothing had worked. Not only that, he was now full of fiery vengeance, Siva The Destroyer, God before Sodom and Gomorrah.
Of course anyone who had followed Donald Trump's career, especially the mean real estate streets of New York knew quite well what he was up to. Intimidation, threat, and bullying were the stock and trade of the market. No one gave an inch despite the billion dollar law suits, the legal and financial onslaughts, and the terrorizing barrage of affidavits and depositions; and even then gave it up millimeter by millimeter.
Trump had been brought to trial by New York prosecutors who accused him of cooking the books, of inflating real estate value in an attempt to snooker potential buyers.
Of course he added tens of thousands of dollars of value to his various Trump Towers, hotels, and commercial properties. In the bareknuckle arena of New York real estate this was all par for the course. Buyers and sellers would inflate, deflate, overrepresent, and underrepresent, challenging, threatening, and suing to beat the band. No one, especially Donald Trump ever flinched. In the unlikely event that any issue ever came to court his army of defense attorneys would either have the case dismissed or adjudicated with minimum damage to their client. Legal fees and fines were part of the cost of doing business in New York.
So when Elon Musk on Trump's order marched into the offices of USAID, turned over desks, emptied file cabinets, tossed computers onto the street, and escorted hundreds of shellshocked bureaucrats out the door, the President knew that the legality if not constitutionality of his actions would be challenged in court and that he might even lose; but in the barroom battle of politics, he would win.
By the time legal challenges ever reached the courts, USAID would be an empty shell and its workers blown to the four winds. His primary goal - reducing the size and influence of government - will have been attained, and the consequences of so doing, if any, were worth the minor risk.
The whiners continued to howl. 'How could he? How dare he?' but there was no way on earth that they would be able to stop the panzer Anschluss.
A group of Democrats assembled outside the doors of the Department of Education, next on the Trump-Musk agenda for shuttering. One Congressional representative, as meanspirited and ugly as they come, yelled at the guard at the gate who was as implacable and immovable as a Queen's Beefeater Guard at Westminster. Her face a twisted, demonic caricature of some Satanic ghoul, she shouted and fumed to no avail. She was the poster girl for the opposition. All Sturm und Drang with no influence whatsoever.
Bob, an old civil rights demonstrator had joined the Congresswoman and had been in the small crowd of protesters. He felt the adrenaline rising as he did in days of old when he stood before Bull Connor and his ax-handle wielding thugs, but this was a desultory, ragged bunch of petty complainers who knew in their heart of hearts, standing there in the rain, they would make not one whit of difference to Donald Trump.
What the Left saw as an anti-democratic attempt to uproot, toss, and dismiss the government of the United States, its laws, and its authority was nothing of the kind. It was a classic 'So, sue me!' confrontation meant to overwhelm, cow, and force capitulation. This time, Trump knew, the engagement would be a piece of cake. He had been up against the toughest of the tough in New York in a no-holds-barred bloody brawl and he welcomed every bit of it.
The political left, already discouraged, humiliated, and badly beaten in November, was barely able to stage a Punch and Judy show let alone take on the meanest man in Dodge.
Bob, soaked through and disconsolate, made his way back to Scientists for Social Justice, the non-profit agency he founded and managed but soon to be as discarded and forgotten as quickly as USAID and the Department of Education in the sweep of Trump's structural reform. On the street after so many good years, Bob mused; but this was not the way he had planned it. No retirement parties, no speeches, and no applause; not even a recognition of the halcyon years, the years of righteous struggle, the good fight.
Already everything in the office was in hock, for donations had become a trickle after the Trump victory. Supporters knew that the new man at 1700 meant business, and along with DEI and windmills, the days of lonely hearts club commiseration were over. Not only was a Hitler in the White House, but Bob was out of work.
'Don't worry, dear', said his wife of many years, herself a social justice warrior but a far more stable, realistic one than her husband, 'you've had a good run'; which of course were the very words he did not want to hear. They were reserved for an old classmate who sailed through his 'development' career as smoothly and concern free as a ketch on a sunny lake. He worked in the shitholes of Africa but dined like a king, bedded caramel-colored women, and retired content and guilt-free.
Bob had been wedded to his work. He believed in what he did despite the niggling doubts of relevance and worse, hanging out with dull, ugly women. That was another thing. Not only was Donald Trump trampling democracy, he was doing it with harem of beautiful blonde, blue-eyed trophy women.
'Goddam him!', shouted Bob out the window to no one in particular. 'Goddamn him!'
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