A 500-year-old conquistador, hellbent on winning at any cost, has much to teach us about America today. If we have the stomach to see it.
Hernán Cortés led the expedition from Spain to the New World that resulted in the fall of the Aztec Empire and its leader, Montezuma II. Arriving on the shores of Veracruz, Mexico in 1519, Cortés saw that his men were exhausted and dispirited. There were calls to turn back, whispers of mutiny. Cortés, it is said, responded by burning and sinking his ships, thus stranding his crew, and giving them little choice but to fight and vanquish the Aztecs.
As Elon Musk demolishes the systems, institutions, and infrastructure that support and sustain America, I am reminded of the rapid fall of the Aztec empire, and the deliberate ruination that precipitated it. Like Cortés, Musk’s goals are destruction and assurance that there can be no going back.
People are overwhelmed and exhausted by the magnitude of consistent, determined, and effective resistance against the conquistadors who, having skuttled the ships, seek now to become overlords. Yet we have no choice but to act, to push back.
And another once-great empire falls.
Each day, the nascent “Mump” Regime—allegedly helmed by U.S. President Donald Trump, but clearly commandeered by Musk—razes more American foundations, moving us ever closer to the tipping point where far-right authoritarianism replaces an admittedly flawed, but principled, democracy.
If our president hasn’t the historical awareness, focus, or intellectual capacity to formulate and execute a complex plan, his surrogates and henchman do, and they are reveling in the dual promises of destruction and personal gain.
As Elon Musk, the Project 2025 architects, their accomplices, and enforcers gleefully erase 250 years of accomplishment—by turns, glorious and imperfect—they are creating a seemingly irreversible path to their own ends by reducing to rubble the institutions that might save us.
Department of Education? Burn it.
FEMA? Burn it.
USAID? Burn it.
NATO? Burn it.
Climate science? Burn it.
Medical research? Burn it.
Alliances, treaties, promises? Burn them.
The Republicans who control Congress daily demonstrate their own gullibility and culpability. And the Democratic minority wrings its hands, wavering among unorganized resistance, outrage, and a dawning awareness not only that it can happen here, but that it is happening here.
For the most part, the American people mirror Congress. Many outraged and resistant. Some condoning much of what they see, cherry-picking actions they consider laudable, while refusing to scrutinize the ones that cause their stomachs to clench. And others naively hoping thugs who have cheated their way through life will suddenly begin playing by the rules, i.e., the Constitution, the courts, existing laws, and the checks and balances of a three-branch government. Rules, the thugs sneer, are for suckers and losers. Meanwhile, they set fire to and sink ship after ship. There will be no going back, they assure themselves with a smug grin and a not-so-clandestine Nazi salute.
They may be right.
I’d like to believe that the best and brightest minds among democracy’s defenders and patriots are huddled together crafting solutions that will save America from the evil unleashed upon us by corrupt, would-be dictators, but with each day’s atrocities, lies, deliberate distractions, and concealments, my hope for my country fades.
America is burning. People are overwhelmed and exhausted by the magnitude of consistent, determined, and effective resistance against the conquistadors who, having skuttled the ships, seek now to become overlords. Yet we have no choice but to act, to push back. As British statesman Edmund Burke famously said, “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
This is what it looks like when a once-great country is dismantled.
Do not look away.
