Point Austin: Death March of the Barbarians

Photo by Gage Skidmore / CC BY-SA 2.0

From 2005-2020, now-retired Austin Chronicle News Editor Michael King wrote about city and state politics from a progressive perspective in his weekly column, “Point Austin.” We’re pleased to bring back his column whenever he’s inspired to tackle the state we’re in.


Is this the way an empire begins to die?

How else to explain the visible levels of corruption, mendacity, thuggishness, and spectacular incompetence currently on display in Washington, D.C.?

Elect a clown, expect a circus. That’s one of the mottos long circulating on the internet, in response to the first and now second incarnation of the Donald Trump regime. The “clown” in this case, apparently escaped from a Stephen King novel, is a grotesque caricature in farcical makeup, grinning with avarice and bloodlust.

Inaugurate a criminal, expect more crimes. The White House crime wave, bristling with executive orders in violation of the law and the Constitution, began immediately, and we find ourselves trapped in a particularly dispiriting version of Gotham, hoping desperately that some benevolent Bruce Wayne is just waiting to save us. More likely, Trump’s handpicked Supreme Court will approve his illegal actions under their imaginary umbrella of “presidential immunity.” We are on our own.

Speaking of clowns, the parade of right-wing bozos appearing before the Senate as Trump cabinet nominees has been quite an exercise in ignorance and venality, by nominees and senators alike. What a collection of lamebrains, boors, and bullies! A FOX-TV “Reality Show” come to life …

The barbarians are inside the gates. Pick your nominated poison:

Pete Hegseth, confirmed as secretary of defense, is a shining example of failing upward. He was chosen by Trump for his craven MAGA loyalty, his retrograde opinions about the military, and his stereotypically masculine look on TV. Trump and GOP senators dismissed Hegseth’s well-documented history of drunkenness, promiscuity, even alleged sexual assault, ignored his arrogant denigrations of female soldiers, and his membership in an extremist Christian Nationalist church. Few senators even got around to noting that beyond all this sordid history, he has no qualifications for running an organization as massive and complex as the Defense Department.

Former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security, is most notorious for shooting animals that annoy her, then bragging about it. But like Trump, she really hates immigrants, having sent National Guard troops to the southern border to help keep Mexicans out of South Dakota. Definitely MAGA material.

Tulsi Gabbard, nominated to be director of national intelligence, would in that role at least have the distinction of being a walking oxymoron. Having declared her sympathies for both Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in his war on his own people, and for Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, she’ll become an official avatar of the Jan. 6 traitors.

Even higher on this list of arrogant ignoramuses is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s built his reputation and his fortune on lies about vaccines, and about health care more generally. If he is indeed put in charge of Health and Human Services, he’ll be an imminent danger to schoolchildren, and he might well make the federal response to the next pandemic – possibly the quickly mutating bird flu – even more disastrous than the first Trump regime’s deadly response to the coronavirus. That was highlighted by Trump’s absurd recommendation of self-cleansing by bleach, among many other idiocies. Kennedy should fit right in.

Then there’s the entirely unelected, Nazi cosplayer Elon Son of Apartheid Musk, who purchased from Trump his imaginary (and unconstitutional) position as director of government efficiency, and has proceeded to commander the federal payment system (and apparently its previously confidential computer networks), in order to gleefully slash away at “waste and fraud” – that is, any federal program he either doesn’t like or doesn’t understand. (Those do not include, of course, the enormous federal contracts and subsidies to his own companies.)

These are only a selection of the malicious idiots surrounding Trump (who just initiated his promised suicidal trade war on U.S. allies). There is Pam Bondi, Trump lawyer as attorney general, waiting to aim the Department of Justice at targeted opponents; Trump-worshipper Kash Patel, eager to turn the FBI into a personal enforcement weapon against designated “enemies”; Russell Vought at the Office of Management and Budget, who’s made it clear that the U.S. future must be a Christian theocracy, by force if necessary.

There are certainly more malicious clowns, grifters, and fanatics among Trump’s primary nominees (and many, many secondary appointments), but the full list is quite exhausting. The new regime has by fiat abolished “DEI” – the dreaded diversity, equity, and inclusion, which considers all qualified people as potential job candidates. Instead, the Trumpists are aggressively returning to Affirmative Action for White People … especially white men. Hence this dreary collection of utterly unqualified, broadly incompetent, often vicious ideologues. Deep State, indeed – in narrowly electing Trump, the voters have elevated the most viscous ooze of the empire.

The Barbarian-in-Chief is Trump himself. A virtually illiterate, self-absorbed, reflexive liar who delights in brutality, is again in charge of not just the entire powers of the federal government (seizing those of Congress and the judiciary as he sees fit), but oh yes, the nuclear codes. Since he has previously demonstrated his utter ignorance of the actual effects of nuclear weaponry – recommending their use for weather control – we should probably not dwell on the potential consequences.

Under the rule of the Emperor of Ignorance, the certain future is quite bad enough.