The planners and schemers behind Donald J. Trump know exactly what they are doing. One suspects that perhaps the principal planner and schemer is Vladimir Putin with American oligarchs invested as well. Putin conquest over the US is built on any means to weaken us, counting on continuing Trump and Republican betrayal, not to speak of oligarchic acceptance.
Surreptitious contacts of Trump and Musk with Putin have been revealed over the last several years, most likely leading to such a conspiracy. Furthermore, Trump continues to side with Putin wishes regarding conquest in Ukraine & rejection of western allies. Trump’s march toward fascism is more than obvious, the evidence identifying the principal players are right before us.
Most Trump loyalists confirmed for Cabinet position are probably totally unaware or are too self-invested to care that they are part of a fascist plan. Transactionally, many fall in line for their own benefit, not alert to a fascist path.
Most likely, Elon Musk has a major role. He has been ruthless and relentless enough with a history of exploitation in accumulating billions in wealth. This was not done without conspiratorial actions with the right people, like-minded autocrats, for example.
Trump is not smart enough or cagey enough to make all the right moves toward fascism, something he is now doing. His first term and his history of business failures would label him only as a user and a con man with no ideological goals other than conning and grifting.
He has been more than willing to hook up with anyone who will help to fulfill such goals, to the point of betrayal of country and even friends and family. The Project 2025 hatched by fascist ideologues was a traitorous betrayal to which he gave no second thoughts.
They have planned and guided him in actions and schemes that promise a quick autocratic takeover if enough Americans acquiesce and thus continue feeble efforts to counter a planned fascist takeover. No more ham-handed violent coups by Trump. This will be accomplished relatively peacefully, using the authority and infrastructure the slow coup the business elite began with the Powell Manifesto in the 1970s.
The business elite had no direct plans to establish fascism, only grab power and control. The fascist idea came about naturally with the entry of a common con man and grifter, Donald Trump. Propaganda, for-profit media, and its toxicity naturally formulated thoughtless masses who were forced out of the American dream by business elite’s peaceful coup that oppressed them. This is how 77 million voters voted for a corrupt, felonious grifter who was and is pliant to the will of a growing core of fascist opportunists.
His family grifting could continue. All he had to do was follow the schemes and plans that the principle strong man, Vladimir Putin, had formulated. Putin’s rise was with the help of Russian oligarchs, a familiar plan Putin could apply through Trump, using American oligarchs who would willfully join for their own gain,
Musk’s money, his government contracts, the advantages granted by corrupt Republican forces, and his thirst for power – all the motivations he needed to begin a lawless teardown of government, fulfilling Trump’s natural proclivity to seek revenge and install MAGA loyalists in all key positions of government. Self-serving Republican leaders were assured to rubberstamp the effort of a vengeful Trump who had enough people power.
The 77 million brainwashed and oppressed voters and too-many turned-off, self-interested, nonvoters made it easy. Most likely, Elon Musk joined the conspiracy somewhat late, perhaps with the prompting of Vladimir Putin and fascist-minded billionaires. When the attacks began on civil servants and public services, most other oligarchs – Bezos, Zuckerberg, Cook, Altman, and Arnault — joined the effort which promised great booty, much lower taxes, deregulation, and free rein for all of them.
For American oligarchs, neither the fascist nature of Trump leadership nor the nature of his foreign and domestic handlers was a big concern.
Trump’s campaign promise of tariffs was not taken seriously, his being a boisterous serial liar. The scope of them is shocking. It was curious that Trump, usually having a compliant ear to stock market moves, still nonchalantly kept with the plan, even with a massive tanking of the stock market.
It appears that the collection of tariffs is meant to substitute for income tax, piling more burden on most of us and less on the rich. Profit-minded, always self-serving, oligarchs are joining this move. It obviously mirrors Putin’s rise to power in Russia.
Most likely, Trump is coached to vie for a long-term adjustment that replaces the progressive income tax with the regressive tariff, which like the sales tax, falls on the lower income groups. It is a final plank of redistribution of wealth and income which swaths riches on the already rich and further financially chokes working and middle-class citizens.
This economic adjustment, along with the carving out of the civil service structure is designed to be the quickest cleavage of a democracy’s economic and political structure, supporting autocracy. It is exactly what Vladimir Putin needs to soften up the Western world for submission to his will.
Putin’s final conquest can come with the help of an ignorant con man born to wealth and privilege, a total failure in business, but a success in conning the public and exploiting cultural changes wrought by the business empire over the last fifty years.
Rescue can still come in the hands of determined Americans who finally succumb to the common good rather that the insularity of self that has been a common thread in American development. Perhaps the bloodline of diversity that has always fed American energy through 250 years of history, though too often used as the other in scapegoating efforts, will succeed in a fellowship of union and cooperation and throw off the autocratic yoke built by greed and self-interest, including non-democratic snares: the electoral college, the filibuster, & gerrymandering – for a start.
That is what a democracy is all about.
