Speech in the Glade, 50th Day of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): 

A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization.

A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a sick civilization.

A civilization that plays fast and loose with its principles is a dying civilization.

So wrote Martinique poet and politician Aimé Césaire in his Discourse on Colonialism in 1955. Césaire went on to point out that so-called European, or "western," civilization, shaped as it is by two centuries of bourgeois rule, is incapable of solving the two major problems to which its existence has given rise: the problem of the proletariat and the colonial problem. Western civilization, he concluded, is indefensible.

After Trump and his Musk DOGGIE fired the workers in charge of nuclear weapon safety last week and then realized what those workers were doing was actually kind of important but they didn't know how to call them back, recent reporting tells us the same thing happened with Agriculture workers who were researching the avian flu. It almost seems like indiscriminately firing government employees with no idea of what they actually do isn't that great an idea. 

I don't mean to mindlessly recycle the contents of previous posts, but the true, astonishing breadth of the idiocy of the Trump administration is really only appreciated when all of its actions are viewed together. The mainstream press focuses only on the most recent outrage and when viewed alone, the reaction is often, "Okay, that's dumb, but not really that big a deal." For example, in just the past 24 hours, Trump suggested that Ukraine had somehow started the war with the invading Russian army and called Zelensky a “dictator” who, he claimed, took money from the U.S. to go to war with Russia. Zelensky pointed out that Trump is living in a misinformation bubble.

Okay, that's bad, but previously, Trump claimed the U.S. will take over the Gaza strip and "own it," displacing all of the native Palestinians, to create some sort of Middle East Malibu. He proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Denali and then threw a hissy fit when the AP didn't adopt his new names. He hinted at military takeovers of Greenland and Panama, and suggested Canada become the 51st state. He blamed the L.A. wildfire crisis on some imaginary "giant faucet" in northern California and then ordered 2.2 billion gallons of water dumped from the state's reservoir onto Central Valley farmland that didn't need it and where it won't benefit firefighters at all (but will cause problems this summer when droughts begin). He replaced a four-star general at DOD with an inexperienced, alcoholic, black-out drunk Fox & Friends weekend host, imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China and then lifted the tariffs on our North American neighbors after they repeated pledges they had already made, and pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of the convicted January 6 rioters, including the most violent. He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate-change treaty and the World Health Organization, and tried to end the constitutional birthright citizenship of those born on American soil. 

Idiotic. Indefensible. Decadent, sick, and dying.

There's light at the end of the tunnel, though. Frustrated about the delays of getting two new Air Force One jets (Daddy wants new toys), Trump has empowered Musk to explore "drastic options" to get Boeing to deliver them faster. Given Boeing's recent disastrous record with flawed engineering, a rush job by an understaffed company may result in Boeing jets that could bring an end to this nightmare administration.