Why Are They Doing This?

On March 4th Donald Trump, who is a convicted felon and also the most powerful man in the world, gave a speech where he talked about how glad he is that he is that his tariffs will crash the economy. He told us that he is glad billionaire drug addict Elon Musk is running an agency that is hacking at the government with a metaphorical chainsaw and how it is efficient and good that everyone who works for the government will probably be losing their job.

Oh, and yes he definitely plans to invade Panama, and Greenland, and possibly Canada.

While this was going on, there were a bunch of people doing theater on both sides of the audience, but none of them are planning do anything impactful, so we can ignore them.

I did not watch this speech. I have heard several people over the last few days the last few weeks and again this morning ask why they are doing this. Everyone wants to know: how does this benefit the right, how this is protecting the people they claim to care about? Why are Donald Trump and Elon Musk doing this?

Because they can.

Why can they?

Because we let them.

Since I started this article two weeks ago there have been what feels like a hundred major developments and most of them are bad.

Over the weekend, for example, a court order came down to stop some deportations that are probably illegal, and the regime (we can call them a regime now, right?) went ahead and did them anyway.

We knew just what they wanted. They told us what they wanted during Trump's second presidential campaign, which started in 2016 right after the end of the first one. Hurting people and making them afraid and pushing women back to the kitchen and deporting everyone who disagrees or at least all the brown people was the goal, and now they're all doing that, because not enough of us voted for the other, less destructive but more pathetic choice. Unclear if he won because he was running against a woman both times, but it probably didn't help.

My theory on what happened is this:

Over the last couple of decades, everyone who was practicing Politics On Fox News (let's call them Republicans) told everyone that all this women's lib stuff and queer stuff and race stuff had just gone Too Far. it was Time To Get Serious so Our Kids Could Live In The World We Grew Up In. Now, I grew up in the '80s and in a small town in Ohio, and I would say that there were a lot of problems with the World We Grew Up In, but I'm a fat queer lady who was poor then and was bad at people even when I was little so maybe I have a different perspective. Anyway, the consensus on Fox News and other places that specifically platform Republicans is that the world is falling apart and someone ought to Do Something.

In the meantime, the people who were practicing Politics Not On Fox News (we can call them Liberals) thought the country was going In The Right Direction because more Black people and women and disabled people were CEOs and professors and senators and famous actors. While all this was going on, it was still legal for really rich political donors (we'll call them Billionaires) to spend a lot of money to buy elections and for corporations in Russia and China to buy up apartments in big cities and keep them empty so they could sell them later. Taxes stayed low, and although there was often talk about raising them juuuuuuust a titch in order to fund some things like "health care for the poor" and "not letting old people die in poverty," those things mostly didn't happen, because it might have made Billionaires slightly less rich.

While all that was going on, the people who weren't practicing politics at all (we can call them Everyone Else) were not able to become CEOs or professors or senators or famous anythings. Prices were rising, health care was amazing if you could afford it but so confusing and expensive that people were taking Uber rides to the hospital instead of ambulances, and poor kids were failing tests and not learning how to read because their schools were chaotic and overcrowded and teachers were undertrained, underpaid, and undersupported. Over it all, there were Billionaires making more money. No matter whether Liberals or Republicans were in power, Billionaires made money.

And Everyone Else started to notice, because no matter how many TikTok dances you do, it's hard to miss when you can't afford to rent a whole bedroom by yourself.

When people started to notice, Liberals and Republicans got very nervous. If people notice that the system is built to hurt them, they might ask it to change. If the system had to change, it might make rich people less rich, and then where would the Billionaires be?

In order to protect Billionaires, Republicans spent a lot of time pointing fingers at immigrants and minorities and trans people and women and the undeserving poor and the homeless and pretty much anyone else they could find.

Republicans pointed fingers and said, look, I know it's hard, I know it's tough. I know, but those people, those evil people, have dragged us backward and that's why you can't get the good things you deserve. Elect us and we'll punish the bad guys, who are not the billionaires you can actually see keeping things like houses and apartments and affordable vegetables and clean water and good schools from you. They are the people you were already kind of worried had gone Too Far, because the Billionaires spent a lot of money buying all the newspapers and TV stations and using them to tell Everyone Else that had gone Too Far.

Liberals spent a lot of time telling everyone that things were actually pretty great, and even if they weren't actually great yet they were getting better, and if you don't vote to keep them in office things will get worse. You don't want things to get worse, do you? Send money please.

We all see how that went. If not, you can watch Chuck Schumer talking about why he caved to Republicans last Friday here.

So last fall Everyone Else elected the Republicans.

The entire class decided that even if the boring democratic kids were probably pretty on point about whether electing the bullies would be worse, we were willing to side with the bullies in order to see what they would do, because things were pretty bad already, and honestly weren't we already suffering? Wouldn't it be nice if some other people were suffering too?

This is the point.

This cruelty is the point, and it is its own reward. Hamilton Nolton called it "the mean spirit of nihilistic vengeance" on Substack the day after the speech. This is what happens when your high school bully gangs up on you with the teacher and the rest of the class laughs, except for some people in the front row who frown a little, but they're not going to say anything. That's the teacher, for pete's sake. Speaking up would be rude.

And now, since this isn't actually high school and it turns out the rules only exist if everyone follows them, we are watching the meanest, pettiest, greediest people in the world hurt people to upset some people and edify others. The powerful are willing to burn everything down if they are allowed to buy the wreckage and put up condos.

If you're surprised, maybe you weren't one of the people who was hurting before. Maybe you're rich enough to be comfortable and you're a white man and you already own your house.

It doesn't matter. Were you tricked? Are you one of the bullies? That won't matter either, eventually.

We have elected a machine that wants to grind people up and ruin their lives so they can make money, and that is what it is doing. Are you a person? You, too, can be made into money.

I don't have an answer. This post has been sitting out there waiting for me to have some sort of clue, and I simply don't.

There are other people out there trying to talk about a better world after this - I got at least five newsletters on that theme this morning. If you do newsletters, I bet you did too. And I'm for it - it's hard to work toward a better world if you don't know what it looks like.

But we have to stop waiting. If we wait for that better world, if we don't do something, a whole bunch of people will be dead before we see it.

If we wait long enough, there might not be a better world at all.

But to end on a hopeful note, there is no bad action right now. Things are so bad that most things you can think of are better.

Sometimes the right action is any action at all.