What a book, a song and a movie says about American politics

Unless we change direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed.

–Chinese proverb

As I continue to watch from afar, America imploding from within, I cannot help but reflect with mild amusement the following:

The Art of the Repeal

America’s off-the-rails president, Donald Trump, cut a pathetic figure in the Oval Office yesterday as he contemplated caving on imposing those insane tariffs he demanded from China. Even as he tried desperately to assure anyone who bothers to listen to his delusional rants, specifically that China wants to make a deal, anyone not already kissing his ass knew they were yet more lies.

China has snubbed his egotistical stupidity in the best way possible: responding with tariffs of their own and the most creative insulting internet memes and taunts imaginable. Meanwhile, Trump continued to lob grenades at the Great Rubber Wall of China.

The self-described stable genius is not only incompetent at starting economic wars, he sucks at bullying too. He’s reversed or put practically every tariff he demanded from countries worldwide on hold. He’s also caved on trying to bully Harvard University, but has only managed to unite hundreds of Higher Education institutions against him.

Caving in is fast becoming his signature character trait. Perhaps he ought to consider changing his trademark orange tan to yellow. While he’s at it, he might as well start work on that new book: The Art of the Repeal.

Leak On Me

US Defence Secretary Peter Hegseth, who managed to survive (for now) a scandal involving leaking sensitive military information on the chat app Signal, is again under the kosh for apparently being outed for a further such breach by employees in his department.

The new scandal, hilariously labelled as Signalgate 2, may signal the end of Signal being used by Trump’s merry band of delinquent cabinet members. But one never knows. These morons seem incapable of learning from self-inflicted mistakes.

Seen here railing against those who “leaked on him,” Hegseth may well be the poster child for the criminal incompetence that Trump has assembled in his administration to ostensibly Make America Great Again.

While genuine public servants worldwide must fall on their swords for egregious mismanagement of their portfolios, Hegseth is expected to fall into a bathtub of expensive bubbly to drown his embarrassment, if he’s capable of feeling any.

The Texas Chainsaw Self-massacre

Billionaire Elon Musk forked out more than $200 million for a seat at Trump’s psychotic table of liars and praise-singers. He was duly rewarded with heading up Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). However, Trump’s personal propagandist, Karoline Leavitt, went to great pains to obscure in what capacity he was appointed… or not.

Musk went about his apparent unofficial job with the vigour one expects from a ketamine-addled hooligan, demolishing entire federal departments and programmes, while laying off scores of employees, all with indiscriminate efficiency. While Trump regularly surrounds himself with human props in the Oval Office, Musk chose a chainsaw to accessorise his Efficiency-Tsar cosplay.

Unfortunately for Musk, Americans did not appreciate his decimation of their beloved institutions, attack on social security and job losses. So they turned on him in style, responding with vicious destruction of their own by torching his electric cars, vandalising his dealerships, while facilitating the fall in his stock price. Shockingly, he’s now more hated than Trump in America, but his reputation internationally is in the toilet, too.

Unsurprisingly, the notoriously thin-skinned Musk has had enough. With Tesla’s first quarter profit tanking 71%, he’s contemplating ending his brief yet destructive DOGE fishing expedition. These unfortunate last few months will be remembered as one of the biggest self-owns in American history.