The Most Active Threads Since Friday

Based on the most active threads over the weekend, it is impossible not to conclude that the leading figure of the administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump is not actually Trump, but rather Shadow President Elon Musk. This is true to the extent that I am considering new titles for these figures. It might be better to refer to Musk as "Regent" and Trump as "Figurehead". Trump holds press conferences and plays golf, but doesn't actually do anything of importance. A case in point was his demand last week that all hostages held in Gaza be released by noon Saturday or "all hell would break loose". Saturday did see the release of 3 hostages, but far from all (and that was a planned release unrelated to Trump's threat). While Gaza has been hell for some time, the situation did not escalate. Arguably, due to increased aid deliveries, things actually got slightly better. These days, it seems that Trump can be safely ignored. Musk is a different story. Unelected and, apparently, unaccountable to anyone, Musk has lawlessly seized control of the U.S. government. He is now running things as if the government were simply another of his companies, following playbooks previously used at Twitter (now X) and Tesla. As in the case of those companies, Musk has ordered broad, indiscriminate personnel cuts. These cuts have caught the high-performing and experienced as well as those new to their jobs and those whose achievements might be below expectations. As happened at both Twitter and Tesla, Musk has been forced to rehire employees that he let go after he found out that they were more essential than expected. In this case, he removed employees responsible for the safety of U.S. nuclear weapons and the government is now desperately trying to locate those folks in order to get them back on the job. In this atmosphere, it is no surprise that the most active thread over the weekend was titled, "Where are the laid off feds supposed to work?" and posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum. With possibly 200,000 or more federal employees either having lost their jobs already or simply waiting for deferred resignations to take effect, the job market is about to be flooded with former feds. While these individuals have a variety of skills and experience — everything from clearing trails in national parks to running foreign assistance programs in Africa — the one thing they have in common is that it is unlikely there are a lot of job openings for them. The original poster wants to know where these individuals are expected to find work. There are not a lot of good responses in this thread. A number of posters seem intent on humiliating those losing their jobs, and their responses are basically insults cloaked as suggestions. Some posters attempt to be helpful, but their ideas are not always realistic. For instance, the suggestion of teaching was repeatedly offered. Certainly, we need teachers, but this ignores the reality that teaching itself is a skilled profession. It is not clear how many of those losing federal jobs have the skills necessary to teach. The real fear, of course, is a domino effect in which these job losses provoke additional losses as the former feds cut spending. Some of those offering suggestions in this thread may find themselves in need of their own advice.

The weekend's next most active thread was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Musk is coming after entitlements now", the original poster embedded a tweet by Shadow President Elon Musk saying that he is convinced that the amount of fraud in federal entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid "exceeds the combined sum of every private scam you’ve ever heard by FAR." The original poster suggests that Musk's involvement with entitlements will cause the programs to be disrupted and negatively impact many who voted for cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump. Two groups of posters express hopes that Musk will completely destroy entitlement programs: 1) MAGA posters who think anyone receiving such assistance is "sponging off of others", and; 2) liberal posters who expect that MAGAs will be hurt the most and are eager to see them reach the "find out" state of "FAFO". I suspect that the members of both these groups are young and in good health. Others are more concerned about the viability of these programs. Some posters argue that Musk will only go after waste and fraud and the programs will be better off due to his involvement. These posters should have their pictures in the dictionary to illustrate the definition of "naive". As other posters are quick to point out, Musk's track record so far has not been one of using a scalpel to carefully excise waste and fraud. Rather, his meat cleaver approach has been to indiscriminately sever large chunks of the government with no concern for the fallout. Moreover, these are complex programs that will likely not be understood by Musk and his band of neophyte recent high school graduates. A case in point was demonstrated when, during a press conference with Trump, Musk said that his team had found several Social Security recipients who were 150 years old. In fact, the Social Security computer system runs on an older version of COBOL, with which Musk's team clearly has no experience. COBOL, at least the version used for Social Security, uses 1875 as its baseline date, and dates are calculated as the number of days since 1875. Therefore, if a birthdate is not entered or the date entered is corrupt, the system defaults to 1875, or 150 years ago. Moreover, the Social Security system has security methods to prevent recipients who are too old from receiving checks, so the alleged "150-year-olds" would not be receiving money anyway. Musk and his team have repeatedly made errors of this sort that would be hilarious if they did not have serious implications for people’s lives. The tech sector's motto of "Move fast and break things" is not well-suited for the government. Moreover, Social Security has long been the third rail of politics. If Musk manages to mess that up, people will notice.

Next was a thread titled, "Elon Musk fathers Republican influencer baby" and posted in the "Entertainment and Pop Culture" forum. This thread also involves Shadow President Elon Musk, though from a completely different angle. On Valentine's Day, Ashley St. Clair, a conservative "influencer" and the author of a children's book, posted a message saying that five months ago she gave birth to a child fathered by Musk. She said that she was disclosing this information because tabloid journalists had been harassing her and she expected them to disclose the information. The baby is Musk's 13th child. St. Clair has previously used the Twitter/X moniker "sexlaptop" under which she posted explicit material, often lewd pictures of herself. She then became an Ambassador for Turning Point USA, the conservative organization that advocates for conservative politics on high school and college campuses. She was dropped from that position after being photographed at a dinner featuring neo-Nazis and white supremacists. St. Clair, who has a child from a previous relationship, seems to be at odds with Musk at the moment. Soon after her tweet disclosing her child with Musk, conservative gadfly Milo Yiannopoulos tweeted an allegation that St. Clair had been plotting for half a decade to ensnare Musk. Yiannopoulos' evidence was thin, simply a tweet from St. Clair saying that Musk goes through women quickly and has several children. Nevertheless, Musk quote-tweeted Yiannopoulos' tweet, adding the word, "Whoa". This provoked another tweet from St. Clair saying that she has been trying to communicate with Musk for several days and that he has not responded. She asked when he would reply to her rather than responding to smears from Yiannopoulos. Many posters speculated that, rather than going public about the child due to fear of exposure, St. Clair acted because she wants Musk's attention in order to reach an agreement regarding the raising of their child. St. Clair is currently living in an expensive Manhattan apartment for which Musk is believed to be paying. Many posters believe that St. Clair is hoping for a significant financial commitment from Musk now. Other posters suggested that St. Clair's motivation was Musk's parading of his son X at the White House and Musk's meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. At the Modi meeting, Musk was accompanied by Shivon Zilis, the mother of three of Musk's children. Posters guessed that St. Clair may have been upset at being spurned by Musk, especially on Valentine's Day, while he was seen publicly with Zilis. Much of the thread is devoted to Musk's method of fathering children. He is known to rely heavily on IVF and surrogates.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum and titled "Dark, soulless, cruel energy taking over the USA". The original poster says that we are in the United States' darkest era and that an "autistic, narcissist has taken over the government without repercussions". To make things worse, half the population either doesn't realize it or doesn't care. The original poster sees the U.S. as in decline by almost every measure. Some posters take issue with some parts of the original poster's analysis and some dispute the entire thing, suggesting that she simply can't cope with a Republican victory. But, by far, most of the responses are in reaction to the original poster's description of Shadow President Elon Musk as "autistic". Many posters object on the grounds that autistic people don't normally behave in the manner that Musk is and that, in contrast, most of them are kind. While many topics are addressed in this thread, discussion of autism dominates the early pages and continues through the current last page of the thread. Musk has apparently self-diagnosed as autistic. This leads many posters to question whether he actually has the condition. Some consider autism to be irrelevant. As one poster puts it, "Musk is a greedy, racist, narcissistic sociopath. This is unrelated to his autism." Others attribute Musk's behavior to his admitted drug use. On the other hand, some posters see autism as a positive characteristic, especially in a tech-centered world. They believe that autism provides the focus necessary to be successful. Beyond the topic of autism, many posters agree with the original poster's bleak outlook on current politics. MAGAs are seen as particularly cruel and eager to inflict harm on others. There is considerable attention to Musk and his own contribution to the infliction of pain. Many posters see Musk as accumulating power for his own benefit and worry whether democracy can survive this reality. Others argue that this view is local to Washington, DC and, outside of this area, most Americans don't see things in this manner. In response to that, however, several posters provide anecdotal evidence that the same fears are reaching other parts of the country. While there is considerable attention to Musk and his authoritarian approach, there is not much agreement in this thread regarding the purpose of Musk's power grab. For Musk fans and MAGAs in general, they see it as necessary to fix a system for which they have a host of criticisms. For Musk critics, it is just evidence of his natural authoritarianism. There is no question that Musk has seized an unprecedented amount of power, completely lawlessly. Some suggest that this was a well-planned takeover hatched in the minds of Musk, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, and others. Perhaps so. Another fear, however, is that Musk simply acted as he has in the past, impetuously and without much thought. Now, however, having broken numerous laws and alienated unknown numbers of others, Musk may find that he simply can't stop. Having gone this far, Musk may see no alternative but continuing. If this is the case, America is well and truly at risk.