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I Do Not Like This Techbro Game of Thrones Episode
Elon Musk is de facto dictator of the United States right now
On October 21, 2018, a day when I was nervously expecting to announce exciting news about a book I’d written related to gender, I awoke to this headline.
It was stressful in a particular way that headlines before or since have not typically stressed me. This one was exceptionally memorable. I remember where I was, the position my body was in, what I was doing in the weeks before and after. I wrote at least one essay about what it meant to me.
I was relieved when Donald Trump left office in early 2021 without having accomplished this particular goal: to define “transgender” out of existence.
But of course, he knocked out that item easily with an executive order his first day back in office: January 20, 2025.
Many, many things are changing rapidly
Now I understand the dread that I, and many other trans people, felt then when we saw the headline in 2018. It was prescient.
Today, an executive decision to define trans people out of existence accompanies the power grab. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, is helping to swiftly define U.S. government out of existence while sucking up its trillions of dollars of collectively built wealth for himself.
This is dictatorship
“The United States of America is currently under a dictatorship,” Tom Scocca and Joe MacLeod wrote yesterday.
It is destructive
The billionaires don’t believe in “an America, or Americans, or democracy, or citizens,” says Timothy Snyder (“The Logic of Destruction,” February 2). They “are acting, quite deliberately, to destroy the nation.” They’ve long told us that useful government service providers are actually “conspirators within a ‘deep state’” and that “the billionaires are the heroes.” With this lie, they intended to prep us to allow them to seize power. It’s finally happening.
