The Glass Onion
There's always a victim if that's all you see.
It’s a massacre, and by that I mean Kirk Cousins, who played quarterback for the Falcons this year, is going to be released. The turnover on any given NFL team is typically above 50 percent, sometimes 60. “NFL” means “Not For Long.” Cousins is a victim of a system where for every active roster starter, there’s hundreds of motivated individuals whose sole purpose is to take their job. Elon Musk would make a hell of an NFL team owner, don’t you think?
But don’t worry about poor Kirk, because his four year contract specifies a guaranteed $100 million payout. In the weird, fuzzy, quantum math of NFL teams and salary caps, releasing Cousins actually saves $65 million in the life of the contract, by paying a man $90 million not to play football next season.
What’s weirder than NFL salary math (there’s Hollywood accounting, but it’s akin to voodoo) is government math. So far, 60,000 federal employees have taken the “resign” fork in the road, but it’s going to get more complicated, because judges. The Musk Trump administration has also indicated it’s going to lay off all but 290 employees at USAID.
What will happen to the 10,000-odd employees who will no longer perform duties at USAID? First of all, judges. But precedent says the president has wide authority to dismiss employees, and there are tools at the executive branch’s disposal to handle RIFs. One of those is voluntary early retirement, and another is voluntary separation incentive payments (buyouts). You might think there’s zero logic behind the sequence of events the Musk Trump administration is pursuing to gut USAID (as a test case), but once established, this formula can be used over and over again, at, say, the Department of Education, or the EPA.
If the buyouts pass legal muster, and RIFs get past unions, through negotiations and continued payouts, watch the list of victims grow. Suddenly, laid off federal workers, who will collect months of salary and benefits, some will get one-time payouts, will be victims.
But ask any American who isn’t a government employee about to get RIF’d how sympathetic they are to the government workforce shrinking, and I think you’ll find Trump’s actions well within the Overton Window.
When a factory closes and devastates a city, in normal times, with a normal president, the local news sometimes showcases the out of work families as victims of evil, amoral corporations. When the government tries to close a post office, reams of paperwork, protests, and procedure keeps it open until the last timber rots.
When, in the Biden administration, every military adviser says that putting a temporary pier in Gaza to deliver aid is a stupid idea, and Biden does it anyway, it’s hailed as some great effort to help the Palestinian people. Three months later, when the project is abandoned, having helped maybe a few hundred families and enriching terrorists who stole the rest of the paltry amount brought in, the friendly media paints the terrorists as victims of Israel, and gives faint praise to the U.S. for “standing up” to the Jewish state.
President Trump signed an executive order to prevent biological males from participating in women’s sports. This is not only well within the Overton Window, it’s an immensely popular “80-20” issue, a political no-brainer. And the media will parade college trans athletes that the NCAA has now banned from participation in women’s sports as victims. Let me tell you, there’s a reason the NCAA didn’t take the “resistance, Trump bad!” position in their decision to ban trans athletes from women’s sports, and it’s not because they are “following Trump’s lead.” They simply, 8 out of 10, agree with him and the rest of the country.
Most Americans won’t care about the tariffs on Chinese goods until their Temu orders don’t show up. But you won’t find too many Americans who would agree that it’s okay to continue shipping tons of fentanyl into our country, exploiting the “de minimis” exemption. As for Canada and Mexico, we’re treating them very poorly, but they are hardly victims. Canadian lame-duck Prime Minister Justin Trudeau encouraged his countrymen to avoid vacationing in the United States. Fat chance of that happening.
Disney has magically not decided to end its special pricing at Walt Disney World for Canada residents through September 27, 2025. Disney, you know, the core of the Florida resistance to anti-wokeness, is positively catering to the canucks, and believe me, the winter is still much better in Orlando than in Winnipeg.
Canadians have reason to be aggravated, but that’s more or less a permanent thing regarding America for them. When they win another Stanley Cup, they can get serious about it.
As for Mexico, 77 percent of tourism (based on air travel) comes from (no surprise) the United States. A distant second place goes to Canada. The number of day tourists and business trippers going to Mexico is likely much, much larger. Mexico sending 10,000 troops to the border to help in a small way to reduce the drug trade is a very small price to pay to keep Trump happy. Maybe it’s bullying, but would Mexico volunteer to do what they’re doing if Trump had not threatened tariffs?
I agree that there’s better ways to do business with our friends. But fours years of the Biden administration produced…nothing. The media hasn’t focused on fentanyl victims in cities and towns where factories have shut down over the past four years, except to lament when the Supreme Court allows homeless camps to be dismantled by force, or when needle exchange programs are ended.
The media is looking through a glass onion (not the movie, the Beatles song) and all they see is victims, but only certain victims.
The media hasn’t focused on those victims, because they didn’t have the right villain to blame. Now they have a villain in office, so the conga line of victims is going to include everyone under the sun, even those who really aren’t victims of anything but their own bad, unpopular ideas.
If we want to contain Trump and stop Musk from taking hammer and tongs to the federal government and many good programs that are going to get destroyed, the media needs to stop reflexively making lists of victims. Many times, they are only helping the case for what Trump is doing.
Next, they’ll blame Kirk Cousins getting a pink slip from the Atlanta Falcons on Trump and Musk. If they could find a way to do it, it would be the next headline, right below how Taylor Swift is a victim if her beloved Chiefs lose.
Happy Friday and enjoy the Super Bowl (at last enjoy the ads).
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The real thing is to focus on actual victims of the upheaval, like people in clinical trials that are now on-hold/terminated.
There is a disjointed thought up above that I think shows a bit of a conflation with what the government does and what the media decides to cover. The paragraph about there being better ways to deal with our partners seems to be simultaneously attack on Biden that is not based on reality, and a somewhat "written in a bubble" attack on the media for not focusing on fentanyl - especially when I can anecdotally say I've seen plenty on fentanyl.
'cause really: Mexico sent troops to the border - like they often do - during the Biden administration because he asked them to do so. Canada had previously announced their spending on their border security - which includes some funds for fighting drug trafficking - in December. I'm old enough to remember Biden backing a border security bill last year that was killed by the GOP upon Trump's say-so.
Now, if you want to just focus on what the media covers then that's fine: we can talk all about how much they were bored by the Biden administration's quiet competence and favor Trump's loud chaos, and that they are failing us in providing useful information.
I for one think there's more important things to write about - like dissolution of the foreign election interference task force, or sending CIA employee names in an unencrypted email - but maybe it's just easier to generate media complaining about the media.
This article was a succinct articulation of the reality that is - Americans are fed up with living under the boot of genuine Fascistic suppression, censorship, forced compliance, culture crush and hate of the American soul. The critic who wrote of Biden’s “ quiet competence” must be an employee of USAID or the corporate media or just a victim of mental illness. Thanks for outlining the problem of the media’s partnership with government Steve.