Insecurity as a motivating factor

A bad Thanksgiving memory from Mar-a-Lago... The un-seriousness of the insecure... A corrupt "spoils system"... Texas internment camps.

I had been doing a pretty good job of staying away from the news these past two weeks as I worked on tasks for my book — more on that in a moment — until my mom brought up the video. What video? you ask. The one that’s burned in my brain, of course. The one that shows Elon Musk and Donald Trump “dancing” to the YMCA while sitting at a table at Mar-a-Lago as Trump’s son and wife look on, horrified.

Couple quick things to note in this video:

• Musk looks miserable. He has to be reminded that he’s supposed to be having a good time and that the cameras are rolling. (Trump can always tell when he’s on screen.) After being reminded how much fun he’s actually having he begins dancing in his seat.

• Barron and Melania look miserable. Although, to be fair, they always do. Neither of them have ever really displayed a facial expression that goes much beyond bored/annoyed.

• Trump is having a great time.

These are the obvious, physical observations of note in the video. Beyond that, there are some deeper conclusions that one can reach as well — and they’re pretty much the same things we’ve known all along.

More than anything — including the complete lack of self-awareness of using an iconic song in the gay community for their American authoritarianism get-together — Musk and Trump are deeply insecure people who have never felt comfortable in their own skin. That they feel the need to sit at a table in the middle of a giant room full of paying guests on Thanksgiving instead of, you know, quietly enjoying time with their own families tells you all you need to know about the profound insecurities of these two men.

Now, there’s lots of awkward, uncomfortable people out there in the world who don’t go around ruining other people’s lives like Musk and Trump do. But thanks to a particularly American set of circumstances and bad decisions, Musk and Trump have more power than ever. They’ll use that power like they always have — to subjugate others in order to feel better about themselves.

This is classic bully stuff. We’ve all known guys like these, usually in grade school. In many places throughout the world, these people tend to get filtered out due to a lack of any discernible skills other than insulting people. But in America, they thrive. Another reason folks like Musk and Trump are typically prevented from reaching the levels of power and success that they have is that they’re pretty easy to spot as deeply unserious people. Or at least, they were easy to spot as such, before American society and its common sense values became whatever it is now.

Like all tribes, deeply unserious people tend to congregate with one another. This also acts a salve on their wounds of insecurity. That’s why you’ve seen a slowly-unloading clown car of cabinet nominees flowing from Mar-a-Lago. The first and now most spectacularly-failed of these nominees was Matt Gaetz, certainly one of the top five most unserious members of Congress. Gaetz’s future is uncertain but will be profitable, thanks to the web of ties he has to powerful lobbying interests in Florida and Washington (more on that later as well).

Pete Hegseth is running a close second in the list of most ridiculous Trump cabinet nominees. If the fact that Hegseth is not remotely qualified to run an organization a scintilla the size of the Department of Defense weren’t enough, he’s also apparently a serial womanizer and alleged rapist with what sounds like a pretty solid drinking problem. While, as a recovering alcoholic myself, I have much sympathy for those who’ve gone toe-to-toe with the bottle, Hegseth’s combination of poor decision-making, lack of any apparent management skills, extreme-nationalist beliefs, general ineptitude and boorish behavior make him uniquely unqualified to oversee the most powerful military on earth.

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Then, there is Kash Patel. Patel is little more than another version of Hegseth, albeit slightly more accomplished as a former US attorney. He’s a “firebrand,” as some in the political press have been calling him. Another way to say this is that Patel is an extremist and sycophant of Trump, a nakedly power-hungry opportunist who will say and do anything to appease the President-elect and do his dirty work. That’s what Patel will do as head of the FBI, which Trump has nominated him for. (And there’s lots of complicating factors here, including that the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, was nominated by Trump for a standard 10-year term, thus theoretically assuring that the agency would remain relatively free of the political whims of future presidents. The latest gambit being proposed by Trumpworld is that Patel would be appointed deputy director, with Wray getting fired by Trump as soon as he took office.)

Like Gaetz, Patel is an empty vessel that exists to be filled with whatever grievances or plans for vengeance Trump is raging about at any given moment. In a book that I’m assuming Patel did not write by himself, the Trump loyalist published an enemy’s list that includes defense and intelligence community heavyweights like former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and others. As Tommy Vietor noted, the sole qualification for making Patel’s list appears to be either working for the Obama administration or being a Republican who was “mean to Trump.”

As with Gaetz, Musk, and Trump, Americans are about to learn just how dangerous and chaotic the combination of deep insecurity and substantial power are to things like freedom and democracy if Patel becomes FBI director. In case there was any remaining ambiguity, Patel has said as much.

“We will go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media,” Patel famously told Steve Bannon in reference to the 2020 election. You see, Patel believes the election was stolen from Trump (or at least publicly professes so to appease his boss), and wants to punish journalists for correctly saying that Trump was lying.

As I drove through the mountains of West Virginia over the weekend on my return trip home from the Thanksgiving holiday, I tuned in to the Sunday shows, where the above statement from Patel on retribution against the press was being put to a panel of commentators and political strategists on CNN. Only Ashley Allison got it correct when she noted that Patel’s nomination is part of an “authoritarian approach” to government.

I might have been a little more blunt if the question were put to me. The only response to threats against the press from people like Patel is to tell them to pound sand. Any ground ceded to authoritarians like Patel will be taken by them and never given back. It’s essential to keep this in mind — as well as the deep insecurities that drive men like him, Musk, Gaetz and Trump — as we move closer to the beginning of a long four years ahead.

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Here’s a few other threads I’m pulling at as I slowly get back in the saddle from my post-election break.

• The incoming Trump administration is shaping up to be a two-headed beast of corruption and authoritarianism. The two go nicely together — just ask Mussolini. The author of a study on companies who applied for exemptions from the previous Trump administration’s tariffs noted that the next four years will display further proliferation of a “spoils system” that benefits companies who contribute campaign donations or otherwise show their loyalty to Trump. One way to do that is for companies to side with Trump on things like culture war fights, as Ali Velshi noted of the many corporations who are abandoning DEI initiatives as the new administration looms.

• On that lobbying/corruption blitz, the case in Florida surrounding Gaetz’s alleged sexual encounter with an underage girl exposes lots of ties between Gaetz, his friend in the case, Christopher Dorworth, Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, and Gaetz’s replacement as attorney general nominee, Pam Bondi. I’ll have a write-up of that whole mess coming soon.

• Sycophants and opportunists in government are also lining up to suck up to Trump as Inauguration Day approaches. Texas land commissioner Dawn Buckingham announced last week that the state has set aside land for the Trump administration to use to construct camps that will house migrants bound for deportation. Whether this actually happens is besides the point — it’s all about how things look in conservative media — personified by the “Promises Kept” tagline from the Trump-Pence re-election campaign. So, a blonde lady in a cowboy hat saying she has land for Trump to send his deportation victims to before (possibly illegally) kicking them out of the country looks really good on whatever TV the President-elect is currently watching. I’m reaching out to sources in the borderlands to begin reporting on how they’re preparing for what will be the first and perhaps biggest crisis of the incoming Trump administration. I imagine I’ll be back in Juárez before you know it.

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Now, at the top of this post I mentioned book work. As some of you may recall I’ve been writing a memoir of my time in journalism and the public — and personal — madness it entailed. The book is called If I am Coming to Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happened, and details the period roughly covering the events of Ferguson in 2014 through the 2024 election. It will be published by the University of Georgia Press.I ’m working feverishly to put the book to bed before Trump takes office in January. That way I can focus all my attention on the independent, adversarial journalism that I feel will be incredibly important over the next four years.

As I get closer to publication, I’ll share some excerpts and other stories from Something Terrible here and elsewhere. And just a reminder that for those of you who would like to support my work by becoming a founding member of American Doom, you’ll get a free signed copy of the book for doing that.

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P.S. Project 2025, immigration, Trumpian corruption, national security… There’s lots to chew on, and for the moment I’m looking at all of it. Things are going to heat up pretty fast once January arrives, so make sure you’re ready to go by subscribing to American Doom so you can access all of our posts. Subscriptions start at $5 a month. You can also contribute to our Doom Coffee Fund to keep us fueled up for the months and years ahead.