Everything is insane

But we're in it together

2025 is 2025'ing way too hard. I think we can all agree. The year began explosively (literally) with a Tesla Cybertruck exploding in front of a Trump hotel on New Year's Day. Planes have been falling out of the sky and plunging into the Earth (I can think of three such incidents). The US treasury has been infiltrated by DOGE hired college students with one going by the name of “Big Balls” (I refer to him unaffectionately as “Yung Broccoli” due to his ridiculous hairstyle). Many federal employees have been unceremoniously purged on dubious legal grounds. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, former landlord to a tapeworm and anti-vaccine baby onesie supporter, has been confirmed and sworn in as our Health and Human Services Secretary. And it’s only Valentine’s Day! ♥️

I must confess I am tired already and I do believe that is the point. Whether as an intentional strategy or due to fascist gusto, they are “flooding the zone.” The sheer amount of news the Trump/Musk administration is producing per day is almost impossible to keep up with and requires a bit of digging and reading to understand how all these agencies and processes are supposed to work in the first place. You weren’t supposed to have to worry about it! Transparency in government is important, but you do not need to be an expert in all facets of it. That is, in fact, why these divisions of experts exist and why we should keep it that way.

The problem with the MAGA movement, or one of them anyway, is the need to be an expert in absolutely everything. They are apparently experts on fighting fires, planes, air traffic control, climate and weather, education, USAID (an organization they never cared about until last week), and now congressionally approved appropriations. They are in the replies section on X, formerly known as Twitter, shaking their fists about various individuals and agencies committing “fraud” without any specificity or when specificity is provided, simply stating things that are not true. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt spread the lie that we were spending 50 million on condoms for Gaza, a thing that outright never happened. Elon Musk, when confronted about repeating this lie and getting it wrong, responded, “some of the things that I say will be incorrect” and “nobody’s going to bat a thousand.” These are people who can’t even hit the ball.

While Musk has been doing the glorious work of dismantling the government and hiring children to work for DOGE, Vice President JD Vance has been busy practicing the time-honored MAGA tradition of failing to defend your wife. Just a week ago, a young DOGE employee who was hired to root around in the Treasury payment system resigned due to his past comments surfacing, which included things like “normalize Indian hate” and “just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.” That didn’t bother JD, who has spent most of his time posting on X recently, sparring with Congressman Ro Khanna for questioning if JD was going to defend his Indian kids, as well as publicly wondering how Chihuahas and German Shepherds have sex.

I bring this up to point out that all of this is very unusual for a Presidency. We are truly living in an oligarchy now. A billionaire is running the government. He is in our Treasury payment systems, he has admin access to email systems within the Department of Education, he was responsible for the “Fork in the Road” email that many federal employees received demanding they become either become loyalists or resign, and he met with Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi alone yesterday as if he were the President himself. I am glossing over a lot, but none of this is normal. Much of it is illegal. However our system responds, the fact remains that Elon Musk is an unelected oligarch with outsized influence and very obvious business interests, as well as a clear interest in stopping active investigations into those businesses, of which he has many.

Like me, your head may be spinning and you may be breathing a lot of deep sighs as you wonder what to do about all this. Everything is insane right now. When you start to feel a little crazy, remember you’re not experiencing the disorientation alone. We are in this together and we will find ways to get through it. We will embody the spirit of the Florida man that kayaks down the street when it’s flooded. Take each day as it comes and remember to take care of yourselves.

Happy Valentine’s Day 💌

Luxe