The Overthrow of America
November 6 was a billionaire coup d'état. The blood is yet to come.
My family and I continue to have commitments to my mother, moved from rehabilitation to a temporary assisted care situation. She’s a few hours away, adding to the difficulty. The goal is to move her to Buffalo, where she can have consistent family support. My research and writing continue to be temporarily reduced, but not my commitment. Thank you for understanding.
Wikipedia defines a coup d'état as an illegal, overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat incumbent leadership. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a coup d'état as the sudden overthrow of a government by a usually small group of persons in or previously in positions of authority.
A self-coup by Wikipedia’s definition is a leader coming to power through legal means, and staying in power by illegal means. My fellow Americans have just exercised a third option, by actually voting for a coup d'état, with a dementia riddled racist, convicted felon and adjudicated rapist heading the ticket, backed up by a fake hillbilly populist, raised to the platform with millions in donations by billionaire conservative libertarian Peter Thiel.
The third group — those that didn’t hold their noses and vote for Gaza genocide assistant Kamala Harris — are equally responsible for creating this travesty that is not only likely to end our longtime fake democracy, but human life on the planet. Yeah, the Biden administration was immoral and inconsistent, but what we have now is a toxic cocktail of genocidal intent, grotesque public ignorance, and the arrogance of obscene wealth fully unleashed to destroy anything, and kill anyone in its path.
However, there is something much more powerful than the wealth of the three richest men in the world who shared the stage with Trump on victory night, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg. It’s called planet Earth, and as they take us down, she will take down those sociopathic clowns, too.
Enjoy your bunkers until the Soylent Green runs out, shitheads. Musk, I’m praying your oxygen scrubbers don’t fail on Mars while you're eating one of your science team members, you soulless schmuck.
Musk, the adolescent fake genius. Musk, who tributes Nazis in salutes, and turned Twitter into a far-right platform of seething hatred and disinformation. Musk, the marginally humanoid grouping of cells culminating in some grim version of antisocial personality disorder. Musk, whose current wealth of well over $300 billion, benefits from tens of billions of dollars in government contracts, subsidized by your tax dollars. Musk, who currently controls nearly 7,000 Starlink satellites, with dreams of 35,000 more monitoring your life. Musk, Putin’s chummy buddy, Xi Jinping dinner guest, and Shanghai Tesla Super Factory beneficiary. Musk, the product of racist South Africa apartheid, unelected, and head of so-called and likely illegal “Department of Government Efficiency,” (DOGE), in part the executor of Schedule F of Project 2025, charged with purging tens of thousands of expert government workers, and replacing them with Trump lackeys. Musk, whose DOGE has breached Treasury Department data including Social Security and Medicaid payment systems, simultaneously seeks to cut $2 trillion of annual “waste,” to create room for yet more wealthy handouts by cutting the programs we average Americans depend on.
Trump is also filling his cabinet and appointing billionaires to the highest posts. Here’s a little run-down. There’s not an average person, environmentalist, or scientist among them as the Earth gasps.
Half the budget Musk has his hands on, $6.7 trillion a year, goes to Social Security ($1.35 trillion), Medicare ($839 billion), and the military ($825 billion). Other budgets on the chopping block could include the Department of Education (82.4 billion), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (6.8 billion), and Planned Parenthood (a mere $50 million). Those shrinking numbers give a clue to how many programs we depend on need to be cut to achieve $2 trillion. Obviously, we’re not going to stop building bombs.
After all, we may need them to annex Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and launch a war in Mexico, according to President Donald DependsTM.
Trump has also illegally fired — without required 30-day legal notice at least a dozen inspectors general — possibly as many as eighteen at the departments of State, Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor and Defense, as well as the Small Business Administration, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Inspector generals are responsible for conducting audits and investigations into fraud and waste in federal and state agencies. This clears another path for the most mendacious president in US history to commit record fraud at the expense of the American people.
The busy Musk rat is also working to shut down USAid. In 2023, the US disbursed $72 billion of assistance worldwide in support of women’s health in conflict zones to access to clean water, HIV/Aids treatments, energy security and anti-corruption work. It provided 42 percent of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations in 2024. President John F. Kennedy created the organization at the height of the Cold War in 1961 to counter Soviet influence. Although not without controversy, the elimination of USAid thrills authoritarian world leaders and leaves a vacuum open for Russia and China to fill, which will likely further and justifiably diminish fading trust in the US.
All of this is the result of decades of abject educational failure, media brainwashing, and both parties promoting policies that have resulted in historically incomparable wealth disparity, opening the doors of intolerance, and strongman “solutions.”
There is a greater power at work here though, Mother Earth, and she is just beginning to burn and flood our sorry asses off the planet.
The blood yet to come
When I began this project in 2021, my mandate was to write about climate change. As I researched, that mandate grew to include planetary overshoot, the multifaceted threat of which climate change is just one component. These scientific realities guarantee the collapse of civilization through the displacement and deaths of billions from floods, fires, agricultural collapse and pandemics. The billionaires executing this coup either don’t see this reality or desire their results. Don’t believe me? I made a strong case for this possibility in 2022 in the article Circumstantial Evidence. Read it and consider its disturbing logic. Since then, I wrote The End of Oil, the product that has enabled our hubristic species to take down life on Earth as we know it. We’re damned if we burn it, and we’re damned if we stop. By the way, we will stop. It will run out or rather become economically unviable to extract. So much for building out that “green” renewable economy. Without diesel, it ain’t gonna happen.

The Sixth Extinction is under way at a speed never remotely seen in the history of our planet, and critical carbon sinks that make our lives possible are failing. From the melting of Arctic permafrost, to massive boreal and tropical forest clear-cutting and fire, and soil degradation from industrial farming practices, they’re all flipping to becoming carbon dioxide and methane emitters. Unchecked, they will release far more GHGs into the atmosphere than we have managed from burning coal and oil since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Furthermore, the oceans have absorbed 25 percent of the carbon dioxide we have spewed and 90 percent of the heat. Problem? This heat sink and CO2 absorber is nearly played out. The heat in our oceans creating evermore catastrophic coral reef bleaching events is mind-boggling. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has compared this heat absorption as equivalent to detonating five Hiroshima atomic bombs per second, every second, for the last 25 years. By the way, prior to Covid-19, the oceans were estimated to be responsible for $2.5 trillion of the world economy, three billion people’s primary source of protein, and 59 million people’s livelihoods. Failing oceans are yet another existential threat to humanity’s future.
What we can expect from the Trump administration: accelerated death world over.
Increased deaths of despair will rise as the economy falls into recession or even depression, from more grotesque tax cuts for the ultra wealthy and tariffs, causing average and poor Americans barely clinging economically to struggle further and fail. The economic catastrophe of the US will ripple worldwide.
Playing politics with FEMA will leave communities devastated by fires and floods in shambles. Fires and floods will accelerate across the planet. “Drill baby, drill,” means, “Burn baby, burn.”
The budding insurance crisis will encompass new communities and undermine the security of our homes and businesses as rates become unaffordable. A failing of insurance in and of itself could cause a depression. Homelessness will increase drastically, as will deaths of the homeless.
Mental health will continue to worsen, and gruesome mass shootings will continue to rise.
January 6 insurrectionist pardons are already emboldening far-right, racist militias. They will become Trump’s brownshirts. People speaking out like myself will become targets.
With accelerated climate change, crop failures will increase. Supply chains will be disrupted. There will be no disposable income. The only disposable commodity will be you. Civil unrest will rise and be cracked down on with impunity.
Resource wars will break out over the very basics, like water. Wet bulb temperature deaths will explode.
The weaknesses in our for-profit health system will continue to create unnecessary deaths.
Artificial intelligence, the newest contributor to overshoot and climate change itself, will turn the world into fun house mirrors. The truth will become harder and harder to disseminate.
The corporate media, already more corrupt and untrustworthy, will worsen.
We will all become considered as Palestinians, unless we are rich enough to justify our existence.
Never underestimate the synergy of stupidity and greed. Yes, the fault lies with the oil companies, banks, and oligarchs, but it also lies with us, our insatiable need for behemoth SUVs, mindless fast fashion clothing, and artery clogging cheeseburgers. We fund this apocalypse, and we are completely abandoned now.
Tell me, what are you going to do, today, now, every day for the rest of your life to change this outcome, to have a future, for your children and grandchildren to have a future? Do you have the courage to risk your life? Buy nothing. Strangle this death machine. Get in the streets. Risk arrest. It’s bodies on the line now, or oblivion.
Absolutely righteous. Haters will hate. Speak the truth. You have my humble support and best wishes for your dear mom. Being with family for her now is everything.
Succinct & accurate summary, verified personally, recently by new acquaintance with the work of Sid Smith & Michael Dowd.
What am I going to do? Loving the work of Joanna Macy & Carolyn Baker, who remind us that it’s civilization which is collapsing … not our capacity to love & be kind in response.
Substack doesn’t make it easy to $upport your work, after being a free subscriber … but I did it! Thanks for asking!!