2025: The Rebellion

Musk Must Go and More

From a Google Image Search - Library of Congress

I have been warning about a coup since the Tea Party brought rudeness into Congress and Talk Radio shock jocks started slinging around Nazi sobriquets against Obama and other Democrats.

https://theweek.com/articles/568774/why-republicans-are-obsessed-comparing-obama-hitler

I posted articles called Know Your Dictators in 2018. Some of them are available in Loving America to Death 2018 (by N. L. Brisson on Amazon).

I went through the steps that Orban and Erdogan followed to form their "illiberal democracies" so readers could see what stage the Republican Party in America had reached.

I ranted about the derangement of Donald Trump and the dangers of putting him, along with many others, in charge of America.

I wrote about the strange alliance between Republicans, Evangelicals, and Trump and the promises made to Evangelicals to turn America into a theocracy (or a slightly twisted version of a theocracy). Read Anne Nelson's book, Shadow Network.

But I never imagined DOGE. I never connected any dots between Trump and Musk. My bad. And it is bad. Trump is all bluster and no focus. He lashes out and then repents when he gets a lot of pushbacks. He is inexorable and does not quit, but he does moderate. He has no skills that help him govern a nation as big as the US. But Elon runs giant companies with thousands of employees. He hates unions and he fires people at will with no benefits at all. He announces that they are at a "fork in the road," dumped out of the silverware drawer with nothing. He may even fire them in such a way that they cannot get unemployment, because he believes unemployment checks keep people from seeking new jobs (or he is just mean-spirited).

From a Google Image Search

He is appointed by Trump to make cuts in the US budget, although he has no security clearance and does not care that Congress holds the purse strings. He answers only to Trump. He now has access to all or most of the systems in our government through which our tax dollars are spent. He has already shuttered the USAID and has no compunctions about starving children in Africa. He has raided the Treasury Department and given our data to a six pack of young men that Steven Colbert referred to as "teenage ninja incels," and "pubescent net rangers." Let's see if I get my social security check this month. How is any of this constitutional? Many Americans say that they are so happy to see someone finally slashing government spending that they don't care how it is being done. They believe the ends justify the means. Do they not understand what it is like to live in an authoritarian state?

I wrote the following article which was published in my local newspaper on February 6, and I will resist as much as I can, but I wish the warning of many writers had been heeded far earlier than this. It may be too late to stop this coup and run Elon Musk out of our government (which is no longer our government).

This is Trump's government. Every Republican in Congress, every new appointee from Project 2025 and the Trump-iverse confirmed to head our agencies and departments, means that more and more of a government that should be focused on the American people is laser focused on getting Trump's retribution tanks emptied. Now we also have Mr. Theocracy himself, Russell Vought, one of the key authors of Project 2025, the newly confirmed Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget turning the firehoses of self-righteous religious anger on our republic and drowning it in old-testament goo. Goodbye Department of Education, you are apparently infested with the dreaded DEI.

I started with Elon Musk because he is totally outside all our government structures and answers only to Trump.

Elon Musk can’t be trusted

Published February 6, 2025, in my local newspaper

To the Editor:

Elon Musk’s actions suggest that he has the mind of a robber baron and the belief system of an anarchist. He may lack empathy.

Musk doesn’t test his products sufficiently before putting them out to the public (Tesla’s self-driving cars, SpaceX spacecraft). His brilliance is marred by products that don’t deliver consistent value.

SpaceX has received $20 billion in federal contracts since 2008. In January 2010, the Department of Energy issued Tesla Motors a $465 million loan. Now he has the keys to access all data in the U.S. Treasury. He has shuttered USAID. This is a serious conflict of interest.

Our Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse.

Many argue that our debts and deficits are too big and that we need to practice governmental austerity. Republicans have long said that we need to cut the U.S. government until it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub. Is this an argument for anarchy or autocracy?

AI is not ready to take on something as complex as the federal budget. Once again, Musk is jumping the gun, testing a product in a real-life situation that could affect millions of Americans.

There is a saying that businessmen subscribe to: “Failures are just steps towards success.” Sometimes, failures are just failures. Sometimes, products, including new technology, should be tested privately instead of publicly on fragile humans.

Elon Musk should not be in our government.

Write lots of letters to the editors of any newspapers you wish to speak to. Some of your letters may be published and every bit of resistance helps.

In July of 2020 I published my book 2028: The Rebellion (N. L. Brisson on Amazon). I had set a deadline for myself to publish before the 2020 election but, of course, this late publication date left little hope of wide distribution before November 2020. The warnings in my book are still appropriate, I'm sorry to say. If you have read this intro already, then skip this part, but I am hoping some of you will be curious enough to read it. It is not an academic book, since Trump loves the poorly educated, and it uses real names which many readers don't like. But it is legal to do this as the book is science fiction, a prediction rather than a journalistic premise. My intention was to make the rebellion as bloodless as possible.

Prologue

Donald Trump won in 2020 and again in 2024. At 77 many did not believe he could be reelected but the voting machinations of the Evangelical Council held, and Trump was elected again in 2028 at the age of 81. The Council formed in 1972 but was only named as an official Council to the President in 2021. You could still vote against Trump in an election, votes were still tabulated, but the votes totals reported in the media were ‘fake’ news and the electoral college math was fudged.

Most of the work done by the Evangelical Council in terms of figuring out election math and creating an extremely effective ground game was done before the 2016 election, but the numbers kept working for Trump and the Republicans.

After 2016 it became impossible for a Democrat to win. Democrats could not use the tactics developed by Republicans. They found broadcasting propaganda distasteful. People’s taste for right wing Talk Radio and Fox news made mainstream media sound staid and ‘fake’ even before President Trump ‘upped’ the drama.

Democrats believed that the founders were wise to try to keep religion out of government and did not back a theocracy, even if in name only. Given the diversity of religions practiced by those who tended to vote for Democrats there was no religious council on the left to stamp candidates with the ‘imprimatur’ of God. Democrats tended to want to speak the truth to Americans while Republicans had no qualms about saying one thing and doing another, making promises they had no intention of trying to keep.

Doug Waller headed up the Evangelical Council, whose members were pulled from at least eight influential Evangelical organizations with names like Family Research Center and American Policy Institute. The mission of these groups was to "lift up" white Christians as the true Americans and fight for turning old resentments into policy, like schools that are empowered to teach Creationism, states that allowed no abortions, and an immigration policy which ruled that only people who roots were in Europe could be admitted to the United States as potential citizens. Senators Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Kevin McCarthy were also members of the oversight body known as the Evangelical Council and they were avid Trump backers, not because they loved the man but because he had an uncanny knack for sheer political razzle-dazzle and survival of the greediest.

By 2028 Democrats were barely represented in Washington. Huge losses in 2022, 2024, and 2026 had driven the Democratic Party underground. Joe Biden, that old moderate, won the popular vote in 2020 but the strangle-hold the Republicans had on the Electoral College also held, and Trump was inaugurated, although proceedings more closely resembled a coronation, right down to the ermine tips along the lapels of a black plush jacket. Melania looked regal and annoyed in sable. It was a very cold day. They rode in a horse-drawn coach, no walking to solidify their solidarity with the common folk. Trump announced that he planned to build a more formidable White House, a virtual Trump palace to commemorate his second term mandate. It promised to be a modern Versailles. As Washington held bad memories for Trump the US Capital was being moved to Florida. Congress would remain in Washington, DC as would the rest of the government.

Trump appointed a Privy Council to closet with him in West Palm Beach, along with the eight key members of the Evangelical Council. The conversion of the people’s democracy/republic into Trump’s monarchy was just about complete. No reason to be slow about it, four years of absolute power lay ahead.

There were demonstrations, there was remorse, chest beating, and even tearing of hair but everyone understood what it meant to lose that key election in 2020. America had closed all its door. You could leave if any other nation would have you, but you could not return unless your trip had official approval with a promise of readmittance. Liberals were pursued and beaten; some heads did indeed end up on pikes. There was a nascent revolution in the works, the beginnings of the Underground Resistance which would eventually strengthen and pull in more and more blue staters.

Trump always gets revenge on those who oppose his will. New York State, Washington State, Oregon, and California were turned into prison states for anyone who spoke out against the Trump regime or expressed any but the most orthodox Republican right-wing doctrine. Dissent was suppressed easily since the military and the police decided to back President Trump. They found it hard to buck tradition. Rebels were rebels, even if they seemed more sensible than the actual ruling set.

New England ended up being part of the New York State Prison partially by sentiment, but also by geography. You could be killed outright in a prison state if you voiced anger at Trump or his ‘court,’ for publishing (or perhaps even writing) a dissenting poem, song, essay, play, novel, or dissertation. Those who wanted to express displeasure at Trump’s illiberal monarchy were forced to become masters of deception and encryption. There was no way to add input to the internet in prison states. It was strictly a “read only” situation.

At first ‘prison states’ were able to hold their own. Most of the major ports in America were still open. These states still had their resident billionaires and there was still plenty of employment. But Trump followed his tastes and allied America with authoritarian states. He made pacts for trade and fossil fuel distribution with Russia, China, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. These pacts included blockades on trade with ‘prison states.’ Because the internet was not open in prison states, Trump kept a slice of California and Washington State where tech centers were located. The internet in the prison states became frozen in time. The Space Force languished also.

Prison States began to be ‘food deserts’ since the normal flow of food stuffs passed by these states. Only Red States were on the truck routes now. Most food processing had already moved to Red States. Prison States had to accept that their economies were severely impaired without any shipping. These states received no federal dollars although prisoners were still expected to pay taxes. Jobs became scarce, services like health care, unemployment insurance, social security, disability payments became skimpy and then nonexistent. It was amazing what changes happened in those 8 years. Lifestyles moved backwards. People had to have gardens. These states already had meat and milk but now it all had to be processed locally. Small family farms were about survival, not income. The art of canning reappeared. Farmer’s Markets were held daily, in any weather. Towns became small enclaves of farm families once again. Cities that did not find ways to be somewhat communal did not survive as viable cities. They became centers of crime and depredation, drugs and death. People may survive shared poverty and strife, but poverty provides slim pickings for plunderers. Plunder, however, never stops, even in needy times, especially in needy times. Chicago and Detroit were both classified as blue state islands in states that otherwise were considered Purple States. Cities were dire places, but a few flickers of a spirit shone under the grim daily realities.

At first Trump’s enforcers were everywhere and no thoughts could be given voice except the most mundane day to day observations about gardens and the farm market and housework and the family. As the roads got worse and cars fell into disrepair and then grew useless from shortages of fuel and parts to replace those that broke, people invested in electric four wheelers produced in one of the cities in the New York State prison. In California State prison, highways broke down from lack of use and lack of upkeep. Many neighborhoods were walkable. Homeless people took over vacant homes and became assets to their small communities once again or lived as recluses.

Washington State prison eventually got access to imported goods smuggled through Vancouver. Life slowed considerable, but some cars were still in use. Oregon got some goods through underground trade with Washington and Northern California, but there was little that could be spared. Oregon became a web of small neighborhoods and was walkable except if you needed to get from the cities to the farms. There were inventive stabs at shuttles. When one service failed, another would usually pop up – necessity being the mother of invention. Oregon was serious about developing and using alternate energies, but they had to look nothing like energy sources because Trump banned alternative energies. Life became mostly about day-to-day survival and about feeding people. Prison States could only use fossil fuels available within the boundaries of each state, but they still refused to use horizontal drilling and fracking techniques. Central heating and cooling were available only in public places. Wood stoves made a reappearance and fireplaces, until a design for secret solar energy production and storage bubbled up from the underground. Whenever people are political prisoners there is always an underground.

People went back to church. The Evangelicals required it. Only invalids and severely disabled prisoners could stay in on Sunday morning. People in New York got out the snowshoes, the skis, the horses and buggies (which few could afford), electric snowmobiles and went to church. Schools were religious schools, small community affairs. Science was a forbidden subject except practical sciences such as animal husbandry and farm science, plumbing and electrical. This was prison schooling. Only religious colleges stayed open, but few could afford to go. Eventually theses colleges had to relocate to the Confederated States of America. Home schooling could happen but if the one in charge was caught straying from accepted topics, there were still actual jails in each prison state.

Although everyone missed freedom as they would air no one could speak of it. Households were allowed ‘read-only’ internet, but Trump still could use people’s internet for surveillance and there were very few places to hide from it. Eventually the location of a few ‘free’ spots, hot-wired by geeks, was passed around in various communities but such spots could not be overused, or it would attract attention. In certain household corners people found ways to write about life in prison states and could leave the pages or napkin or slate, then others could take their place and answer back. Writers still wrote, but they had to find places to hide their written thoughts. Sometimes they were caught and sent from prison to jail. Sometimes the Underground smuggled written works and song lyrics out through Canada (or Mexico in the Southern California Prison State), separated from the Northern California Prison State by Silicon Valley which belonged to the Confederated States of America. Like Solzhenitsyn in the Russian Gulag getting published could be dangerous but there are always heroes who think truth is more important than any individual punishment or even death. It was well known that jail meant hard labor on keeping any infrastructure important to the CSA functioning.

Of course, not everyone in a prison state was a ‘lefty’ or political deviant. Many people in prison states had backed Trump since the very beginning. The CSA would buy out their property and help them move to a Red State, or they could spy on their neighbors and get paid to stay put. Except for Trumpers who settled in resort areas of the prison states they could not let their lifestyle appear to be too far above their neighbors or they would be too easy to identify as ‘watchers.’ Watchers kept dwindling as they moved away south. The Canadian border with New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine is long. At first people could still get across the border. But Canada didn’t want immigrants either. They tended to accept immigrants with healthy bank accounts. Trump soon moved troops to the borders – the one with Canada and the one with Mexico. Few prisoners defied armed guards. New York had the soldiers of Camp Drum in Watertown, trained for war, loyal to Trump who paid their salaries. The short border between Washington State Prison and Canada stayed porous for longer, but soon enough troops arrived to close it. There had been some sabotage of pipelines but that was very short-lived because it threatened nearby fresh water supplies. New York had plentiful supplies of fresh water, although Trump was having a new pipeline built to redirect the water to dryer Red States. Because Trump could not redirect weather (yet) there was still plentiful clean water to be had.

Trump hated New York State and California with all the passion a vengeful soul can muster. He wanted video feed of conditions in the ‘prison states’ that he could show at rallies. People ate that up. Trump confiscated guns from these states, but some had been well-hidden. Hunters turned to bows and knives, but most meat was farm-raised and butchered there. Trump also hated New Jersey but Newark Airport was a ready-made airline hub and with Kennedy and LaGuardia closed, Newark had to be expanded, dispossessing many residents of New Jersey by eminent domain, and shipping them off to the New York Prison State camp to take their chances on resettlement.

When all normal economic activity eventually shut down in the prison states people panicked. Each prisoner saw the others as competing for scarce supplies of food, clothing and shelter, but as cottage industries and farms developed life became almost peaceful and kind for a while. Of course, that could not be allowed. Trump randomly sent soldiers to break up farms, destroy crops, pollute water. It became necessary to form an Underground Resistance in earnest, one that concerned itself with more than trade, one that could fight back. A low-grade war started. It would escalate. In California ‘patriot raids’ resulted in fires that were deliberately set when the dry season hit. Without fire fighters except locals or the chemicals and equipment to slow the fires some very productive farms were destroyed, and many Californians lost their homes. Swaths of California were not habitable and what had grown in those areas, that contributed to the diversity of the food supply was lost. Still there were vast farms now well-tended for survival’s sake. Mexico may have tried to keep out of Trump’s way but the border between California and Mexico got squishy and there was plenty of cooperation kept as quiet as possible between the California State Prison and Mexico. A steady stream of people, resisters against ‘Lord’ Trump, as he liked to be called, could, at times, be spirited into Mexico and then off further South or to Asia or Europe.

Red States were ravaged by increasingly violent tornadoes, and unusually high tides flooded many coastal cities, but food was very plentiful in Red States. Fast food outlets thrived, and fine dining was encouraged. Trade was brisk with countries around the globe, but immigration was illegal and could be punished by death.

People of color, Muslims, people with accented English, were not tolerated in Red States. They were forced to find new lives in one of the prison states. These newcomers were met with hostility at first when food was scarce but as they settled in, they pitched in and became assets in the daily struggle to adapt to life without accustomed comforts. The prisoners had too many ‘wardens’ and too many secrets to fight each other, although, of course, fights did happen. Guards were rougher with minority prisoners and some prisoners fought back. People died.

Prisoners were free to try to escape to Red States until Trump started setting guards along the New York Prison border with Philadelphia and New Jersey. The Great Lakes formed a natural border in Western NY and with Purple States on the other side a vigilante patriot was just waiting to pick off any New York prisoners who tried. The border with California was too long to shut down completely. In places geographical features like mountains and deserts served the purpose, although occasionally a determined prisoner could make an escape. Once in a Red State area you had to consistently hide any liberal thoughts or language. There were ‘purity’ tests strangers had to pass. Prisoners had to escape with clothing that fit in, which got more difficult as time went on and styles changed. And they had to have money, which people in prison states did not have access to. If you were on Underground business your needs would be provided.

Trump demonized “liberals” as socialists and communists, aired graphic ads about the horrible things that happened in these types of governments. The constant barrage of propaganda was essential as more and more benefits were discontinued. Healthcare plans were a thing of the past even in Red States unless you could pay, and a good plan was expensive. All schools were private and religious. Red States got block grants supposedly to pay for schools for those who could not afford it, but these funds were widely coveted and coopted by local and state officials. There was no social security, families had to take on elder caregiving, child rearing, nursing, ill family members. Extended families became the rule rather than the exception. If you had no family, you had better have money.

Red States in the Confederated States of America had privately-run prisons, some being both skimpy and harsh. Homelessness was not tolerated. Poor people filled the prisons and were mixed right in with dangerous criminals. Since it was impossible to improve your financial state from prison, you were likely to reside there for life. You could only hope to change your circumstances by volunteering to be transported to a prison state, which would most likely not be happy to see you.

Business was encouraged in Red States and fast-food franchises were still popular, especially right-leaning businesses like Chick-fil-A and Popeye’s. Financial favor rained down on religious-linked businesses like Hobby Lobby. Who knew businesses were partisan, a lesson we all learned. Guns were totally unregulated and everyone was packing, sometimes even children.

From a Google Image Search - Wonderopolis