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Cage Match
Kunstler.com ^ | 7 Jul, 2025 | James Howard Kunstler

Posted on 07/08/2025 5:17:07 AM PDT by MtnClimber

“. . . [W}e are closing in on more disclosures and fixing past wrongs to personnel. We’re making sure this is done correctly. But it’s absolutely getting done.” Dan Bongino, Deputy Director, FBI.

Elon, as he is currently imagining himself

Who knows what to believe these days? Well, what would you expect after years, even decades, of anti-reality operations by everyone from the CIA to The New York Times to Harvard U? Is it any wonder that reality-optionality is making the people both apathetic and insane?

We are told now by the FBI that there is no evidence that Jeffrey Epstein ran a blackmail operation against the politicos of Western Civ, or that a “client list” existed, or that JE was murdered in his jail cell. It well might be true that there is no evidence, strictly speaking.

Messrs. Patel and Bongino, coming into office rather late in the Epstein game, were apparently left with a big bag of nuthin. What else can they truthfully report? So, they had to put it out there, knowing a whole lot of people would be miffed. “We’ve got nuthin, sorry.” Were they chagrined to do that? Evidently so. Of course, this Epstein business has been going on for years and years and it is certainly possible that the most damning evidence has been destroyed by interested parties.

Personally, I find it implausible that absolutely nothing ever leaked, no video of, say, Tony Blair or Bill Clinton violating a child, if it ever happened. Everything else in our world leaks, eventually. And there were supposedly how many cameras around the Epstein properties, and how many thousands of hours of video recordings? There is more video of Bigfoot than of compromised Epstein bigshots. Just sayin’.

AG Pam Bondi, the FBIs boss, also has some ‘splainin’ to do. In February, she claimed to have the Epstein client list “sitting on my desk right now to review,” and hinted it would be released shortly. That material, when released, turned out to be the old dog-eared flight logs that have been circulating through every news outlet for years. Did she not know the difference between an alleged “client list” and the old flight logs? Let’s face it: seems kind of dumb. . . seems like the AG got played. . . and now the mob on “X” is having sport with her.

Among the miffed, apparently, is Elon Musk. At the height of his feud with Mr. Trump, on June 5, Elon put out a message on his “X” platform saying, "@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!". This intemperate utterance naturally prompts you to wonder: how (or what) might Elon know about any supposed Epstein evidence? At this point, the FBI might send somebody to inquire. Did Elon, who has more money than even Scrooge McDuck, somehow manage to buy up all those alleged blackmail tapes? Does he otherwise know where they might have disappeared to? Has he ever seen anything? Anyway, he didn’t produce any actual evidence.

Is Elon losing it, a little bit? His grip, that is. Mr. Trump thinks so. He declared over the weekend that Elon has “gone off the rails” . . . has become “a train wreck.” Well, what you can see in this very public, very regrettable cage-match between two giant public personalities is that Elon has lost his cool and the president has not.

For one thing, Elon is apparently incensed over the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) just signed into law because it ends the electric vehicle mandate left over from the “Joe Biden” regime, as well as the whopping $7,500 federal tax credit for new electric cars — loss of which which is apt to break Tesla’s business model. The bill also calls for sunsetting subsidies for battery production by 2028, meaning Tesla’s Powerwall business is likewise affected. Mr. Trump took pains to explain that he’d informed Elon from the get-go (and repeatedly) that all those subsidies were done for when he got elected.

Elon was visibly perturbed over the process that produced the OBBB, the proverbial political sausage-making (i.e., a nasty business you’d be appalled to watch). It appeared, he said, to un-do all of his DOGE spending cuts so laboriously made. Mainly, Elon deplored the failure to address the $36-trillion-plus national debt, widely recognized as a time-bomb on a short fuse liable to sink the whole USS United States. I will tell you a harsh truth: nobody will do anything about the national debt. The sheer math of our annual debt service is simply impossible. Our country is heading into some sort of bankruptcy proceeding, some kind of ferocious “work out” — as they say in the banking board-rooms.

Mr. Trump is betting that re-industrialization of the USA will produce enough of the right sort of growth — that is, production of real things of real value, as opposed to mere financial shenanigans — that the debt reckoning can be overcome somehow. Or mitigated. It’s a bold risk, and many pieces of the scheme are indeed falling into place: tariffs, bigly investment capital from foreigners, a general realignment of trade relations, tax reform, downsizing of government.

But a virulent opposition, the mad-dog remnants of the Democratic Party, seeks to wreck Mr. Trump’s program (and perhaps the USA altogether), and it is a miracle that the president has gotten this far with his plan. Personally, I’m doubtful that the energy resources will be there to underwrite this reindustrialization, but that is a topic for another day.

And now Elon, peeved as he is, proposes to bring another big obstacle onto the scene, his proposed new “American Party.” Looks like he is making a tactical blunder, and his distraught emotional demeanor suggests poor decision-making. Frankly, I’ve been concerned about Elon’s soundness-of-mind since he came on-board Mr. Trump’s band-wagon last summer. There was something peculiar about his spastic rompings on stage, his jerky movements, his garbly speeches. You wonder if all the talk about his world-beating “genius” has messed with his mind.

Also, frankly, I’ve long thought that attempting to colonize Mars was absurd, or at least premature. Shouldn’t we rather make an effort to demonstrate that we can live on this planet successfully before we venture off to a new one? After all, this Earth is perfectly suited to our needs and Mars is absolutely not. I doubt that even the most extreme transhuman program would avail to implant us up there.

To cut to the chase: the grandiosity of Elon’s plans, and the oddness of his public performances, suggests to me that he has gone a bit crazy in the pure sense of the word. This new party he proposes looks like a crazy play by a crazy person. He can throw zillions of dollars into it, and create a whole lot of political mischief, but what would that prove? How would that make him any better than such obvious villains as George Soros and Bill Gates?


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: bbb; elonmusk; epsteinbutthurt; epsteindistraction; epsteinobsessed; epsteinobsession; epsteinwhining; jameshowardkunstler; jhk; putsthecinkunstler

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1 posted on 07/08/2025 5:17:07 AM PDT by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

And now Elon wants to start a third party that would split conservative votes. How would that work out for the country? Elon might need to flee back to South Africa to escape the chaos he causes.


2 posted on 07/08/2025 5:17:22 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

BTTT


3 posted on 07/08/2025 5:45:17 AM PDT by nopardons
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To: MtnClimber

Is Elon morphing into Howard Hughes?


4 posted on 07/08/2025 6:04:36 AM PDT by waredbird (Rrect. )
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To: MtnClimber
My take-away from the heart of the article ...

... Mainly, Elon deplored the failure to address the $36-trillion-plus national debt, widely recognized as a time-bomb on a short fuse liable to sink the whole USS United States. I will tell you a harsh truth: nobody will do anything about the national debt. The sheer math of our annual debt service is simply impossible. Our country is heading into some sort of bankruptcy proceeding, some kind of ferocious “work out” — as they say in the banking board-rooms.

Mr. Trump is betting that re-industrialization of the USA will produce enough of the right sort of growth — that is, production of real things of real value, as opposed to mere financial shenanigans — that the debt reckoning can be overcome somehow. Or mitigated. It’s a bold risk, and many pieces of the scheme are indeed falling into place: tariffs, bigly investment capital from foreigners, a general realignment of trade relations, tax reform, downsizing of government.

But a virulent opposition, the mad-dog remnants of the Democratic Party, seeks to wreck Mr. Trump’s program (and perhaps the USA altogether), and it is a miracle that the president has gotten this far with his plan. Personally, I’m doubtful that the energy resources will be there to underwrite this reindustrialization, but that is a topic for another day.

5 posted on 07/08/2025 7:47:37 AM PDT by MacNaughton
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To: MtnClimber

TESLA EV’S NEVER HAD A $7500 tax break.

ONLY THE OTHER AMERICAN COMPANIES HAD THAT.

TESLA CARS GOT $5,000 only....

WHY? BECAUSE TESLA IS NOT UNION.

ONLY UNION CAR COMPANIES GOT $7500.


6 posted on 07/08/2025 8:40:00 AM PDT by ridesthemiles (not giving up on TRUMP---EVER)
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To: little jeremiah; Carriage Hill; GOPJ; Mama Shawna; notdownwidems; The FIGHTIN Illini

James Howard Kunstler ping


7 posted on 07/08/2025 8:51:52 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber
Who knows what to believe these days? Well, what would you expect after years, even decades, of anti-reality operations by everyone from the CIA to The New York Times to Harvard U? Is it any wonder that reality-optionality is making the people both apathetic and insane?

Off topic - but this would help explain how white liberal 'elites' came up with the stupid idea of calling Trump a KING and trying to rally the riff raff around the concept...

8 posted on 07/08/2025 9:08:48 AM PDT by GOPJ (Democrats judge themselves by thier 'intentions' NOT by their results. It's one reason they fail.)
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To: MtnClimber

This report would MAYBE tend to explain why there was an Epstein client list & then there wasn’t. Why would most of us know for sure that we were either being lied to or we were not being lied to? Somewhere there must be a group of people that are really skilled at keeping the general public & even the “experts” thoroughly confused. They know that after years have gone by, it becomes less & less important to the general public, especially since the “bad guy” is long gone.


9 posted on 07/08/2025 9:45:12 AM PDT by oldtech
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To: MtnClimber

Considering that Elon and Trump have been close friends for years, I think that this is some kind of theatrical show for some reason or purpose that is not yet clear.


10 posted on 07/08/2025 3:07:24 PM PDT by little jeremiah (SCARE: Social Chaos And Response Emergency)
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