Musk and Trump Treating Americans Like NPCs
The country is all about them, and the rest of us are just a reactionary, programmable horde.
Since January 20th, noon to be precise, there have been half a dozen accidents or very-near accidents involving airplanes. Prior to the sadly symbolic collision between the passenger plane and a Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington, there hadn’t been a significant aviation accident involving a U.S. plane in 20 years.
Six. Some will say it’s an “odd coincidence,” while others simply state the obvious: Cutting scores of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, the same people tasked with making sure these accidents don’t happen, could destabilize the nation’s aviation industry. The skies of the United States are the most congested in the world, and reportedly, there are close-calls weekly, but thanks to the professionalism of the men and women — and dare I mention that some of them are minorities, gays, and lesbians — the close-calls don’t splash across the front pages of our newspapers.
The nation is falling apart because the center is crumbling. This collapsing center, however, is not by accident. Donald Trump, led by Elon Musk, a coterie of billionaires seen at his inauguration, and a legion of Christian white supremacists want the center to give out. We, the remaining 335,000,000 are as irrelevant as the non-player characters (NPC) that populate online games played by Musk and his bros at DOGE. We are the non-thinking, irrelevant bodies moving through countless video games, and game players care nothing about us because we have no stake or added value.
As someone who doesn’t enjoy online gaming, boredom set in so fast the few times I did play that I suddenly found myself blowing up the NPCs. A perverse joy overcame was watching them fly into the air, landing lifeless on tables in cafes that used to be part of the game. My brother chastised me for wasting my ammunition on the NPCs — “You don’t get anything taking them out, you know?” I did but, still, it was fun because I had no desire to put in the hours he was willing to.
We are the NPCs in Trump and Musk’s world. Donald Trump still marvels over the word “groceries.” He is so oblivious to our existence, what makes us tick, and what the vast majority of us struggle to purchase each week that when he learned that “new word” — for him — he was giddy in a way as I would have been had one of the NPCs calmly looked at me before opening fire and asked: “Why are you shooting me? Even though I am an NPC, I have a life here, too.”
In Musk’s world, however, our irrelevance is preached every day. DOGE is doing amazing things even though this work is increasing the amount of complexity, dear NPCs, in your eternally unimportant lives. How else can the chaos created by DOGE, and supported by all Republicans, be explained? It has to be a deep-seated hatred for humans that don’t fit perfectly into the cookie cutters to which Republicans strive for all Americans: poor, ignorant, violent, white, Christian, straight, and in awe of Trump.
Last night, the Republican-held House of Representatives passed a budget resolution that cuts $880 billion from Medicaid or CHIP. 1 in 4 Americans will lose some form of health coverage if the Senate passes the budget Trump and Musk want. This same budget has a $4 trillion tax cut for the nation’s wealthiest 2 percent. What we need to get a grip on — and I wish those Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 had given this some thought before casting their votes — is that if we lose health care, don’t eat, find ourselves on the street, or in a plane over the Potomac being hit by a helicopter, so-effing-what!
We aren’t relevant in Donald Trump’s world.
Remember when Trump was cosplaying a McDonald’s worker? He marveled at how fun it was to salt the French fries. At that moment, McDonald’s became like a video game for Trump. The suckers standing around watching him were forced to become the real-life NPCs in his sick world.
Donald Trump has never experienced what 90 percent of us have at one point or another: Do I eat today or pay a bill? Musk is the wealthiest sort of human on Earth. The moment we accept our irrelevance and NPC role is the moment when we can rise and push them out of our game.
Rise Up, NPCs!
Rise up with a political t-shirt!