A Post Mortem Post

The Day the Music Died

A friend and regular reader of this Substack emailed me over the weekend and urged me to provide some insight or consolation during this difficult time.

Insight I can give, consolation I cannot.

The coup that began on January 6, 2021 became complete on January 31, 2025, when Elon Musk (an unelected naturalized citizen who loves the Nazis) took over the US Treasury and its disbursement system. Congress, of course, will do nothing. The FBI and DOJ have already been co-opted by Trump, so they will do nothing. And any attempt to get the courts to intervene, will eventually be stymied by the Supreme Court, which is in Trump’s pocket.

So if Elon Musk reads this post and decides that I should not be getting social security payments, he will simply prevent me from receiving them. How? By not paying them. It is no longer the US Treasury. It is the EM Treasury.

This collapse of American Democracy happened very slowly and then all at once.

And the financial chaos that is coming seems to be part of the plan. With Trump’s crew, we have a new Axis of Evil. But instead of Germany, Italy and Japan trying to divide up the world, this time it will be Russia, China and the US. Putin will be allowed to take Ukraine (and more); Xi will grab Taiwan, Trump will take Greenland and Canada - and Musk gets all the money. The idiots and bigots who voted for Trump had no idea how thoroughly this had been planned, even though Trump was not being coy about it. US voters willingly and knowingly elected a traitor - who has made no attempt to hide his treason.

So what do we do now?

My favorite writer, Eric Voegelin, was asked this question back in the turbulent days of the early 70’s …

Joseph McCarroll: Do you mean that in a corrupt situation people should turn to cultivating the interior life?

Eric Voegelin: If they can.

Joseph McCarroll: Do you suggest that that is bad?

Eric Voegelin: No. It’s not bad at all. It’s the only thing you can do in such a situation.

Joseph McCarroll: Does that make it good?

Eric Voegelin: What else do you –?

Joseph McCarroll: But can’t you stay and change it?

Eric Voegelin: No, you can’t change anything, say, under a Nazi regime. You can’t persuade the Politburo to behave differently.

But, of course, millions died to stop Hitler and the Soviet Union eventually collapsed with a few nudges here and there, so not everybody sat back and got busy “cultivating their interior lives”.

But Voegelin was talking about ordinary people who are not in a position to help reform a corrupt society. And he was speaking from experience. He and his wife had to flee to America to escape the Nazis, and they just missed being arrested when they made a run for it. Only because Voegelin wasn’t killed in a concentration camp was he able to relocate to Baton Rouge, Louisiana and “cultivate his interior life”.

What’s interesting to me is that we have, here in 2025, in witnessing the end of the rule of law in the most powerful country on earth and in experiencing the deliberate and gleeful dismantling of its Constitution - what we have is stupidity on the one side (the voters) and malicious, cunning evil on the other (Trump, the neo-Nazis and the Technocrats).

St. Paul says we are “infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.” Or by Fox News. (But St. Paul watched CNN, so he didn’t know about Fox News.)

This is not so mysterious, really. Trump is a cult leader, and (as I’ve written before) every cult leader wants to get in your pants. He’s aiming to grab both your private parts and your wallet. (“Grab ‘em by the wallet!”) The “cunning and craftiness” and the “deceitful scheming” are understandable. It’s the acquiescence, the cheering, the support, the Nazi salutes, that aren’t. Trump likes to assault women, “grab ‘em by the p****”, whether they’re willing or not. But Mussolini had very many willing lovers. And about fifty percent of America last November 5 shouted, “Hey, Donald! Grab me!”

You know, the same can be said of the Catholic Church. Minors were not sexually abused by accident. The abuse was enabled and, in certain dioceses, the environment that allowed for abuse was deliberately cultivated. The same split applied: the laity (like the voters) were stupid and the bishops (like the billionaires) were “cunning and crafty” in their “deceitful scheming”.

But are the voters really dupes? Well, the hard core of MAGA hates the rule of law. They like the fact that Trump flouts it. They want the Federal Government to be dismantled. They want to burn it all down and they want folks with guns to defeat or deport their perceived enemies. They want power. They want to express their rage. They want to see others suffer. And, as their spokesmen will tell you, they hate democracy. Why? Because they’re economically disadvantaged and mad at the system that has taken advantage of them? No, all of the Trump supporters I know are comfortably middle class, some of them “living the dream”, with suburban houses, boats, new cars and more. They are not in the least inconvenienced by society - and they weren’t even inconvenienced by wearing a cheap cloth mask to protect their neighbors not that long ago.

So how much of this is stupidity and how much mere malice or selfishness?

I know a family that suffered unimaginable depravity, with a father raping all of his children of both sexes, regularly, for years (until he was arrested and convicted) - and all along with extended family members, including at least one grandparent, knowing of the abuse and turning a blind eye to it. When does something like this become more than mere naivete or stupidity? When does it become participation with evil?

Are we really “infants, tossed back and forth by the waves” or are we eager to believe the “cunning craftiness” of the deceitful schemers, and in that sense, are we accessories to the crime? Who was worse, Hitler or the Germans who cheered him on?

If it’s ignorance, in some ways it’s a willful ignorance. I’ve written before about the willingness of people to believe the blatant lies of Charlie Johnston, the obvious falsehood of the Proctor and Gamble Satanic Panic, the failed prophecies of many cults, with followers continuing to drink the Kool-Aide despite the cult leader being exposed as a false prophet and a fraud, over and over again.

And whether the voters / victims are stupid or cunning, it’s all deeply and orgasmically irrational. If the Enlightenment was the Age of Reason, this era, the En-darkening, is the Age of Unreason.

We have done this to ourselves. It’s Social Suicide.

And this is not the first time something like this has happened. Voegelin elaborates …

If the majority of voters are Communists and National Socialists, they can form the majority bloc that makes the functioning of the constitution impossible, as we have seen in the Weimar Republic. …

I grew up in the twenties in Vienna; there we had good training in law and in economics (with people who are now the great economists in America). Quite concretely we all knew that the productivity of society is better if there is a free-trade area. What does everyone do at the peace conference? Cut up the free-trade area of the Austro- Hungarian Empire and make small states with high protective tariff walls. If one knows that is wrong, why does one do it?

… Just think of certain things connected with the end of the Second World War. The same stupidities as after the First were done again. If you look in Winston Churchill’s memoirs, for instance, you see his desperate attempt to make clear to President Roosevelt that one shouldn’t, for heaven's sake, surrender to the Russians every capital in Europe. But it was done. Bucharest, Budapest, Belgrade, Berlin, Vienna—everything is surrendered to the Russians. Roosevelt didn’t understand. Historical common sense is on the side of Churchill. You don’t need an ideology for this.

I was caught in 1938 in Austria when the Nazis came because I considered it impossible that the French, the English, the Italian governments could ever permit Hitler to occupy Austria. We knew from history and from the general strategic problems in central Europe that if a German government has Austria also, it is in a position to win a world war in Europe. That would be a shift in the power position that no government of England or France could tolerate. Well, they did tolerate it.

And they’ll tolerate it now - at least here in the good old USA.

So, then, again, what can we do?

Well, there’s at least one thing.

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.

… as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote.

And as for “cultivating the interior life” - well, that’s more than just meditating or withdrawing. Voegelin is talking about the soul, the soul that refuses to “take part in the lie” by reaching for the truth.

Q.: But how do you protect yourself against the person who speaks well [i.e, the demagogue]?

VOEGELIN: Oh, by reading the classics, of course. That’s the purpose of education—you must have the masters at your fingertips.

And maybe I can help you with that (and maybe not!).

I teach, I read, I write, I go on stage and make people laugh. And I know that the people I read who “get it” are very helpful to me. If you feel that way about me and my writing, I’ll try to do more - and if Musk cuts off my social security checks, well, then, I’ll show him - I’ll just monetize this Substack! ( … of course, Musk will, by then, control the entire worldwide financial system, so I probably won’t get the money you pledge, but still, I’ll be sticking it to the man! … who soon may become the Only Man that Matters.)