Mumbai           Yes, I keep saying that it can’t go on like this much longer without huge reaction and pushback, but whenever it comes, which I swear it will, it won’t be soon enough.  I can’t be the only one who wonders just how low they can go, but we must be close to seeing the nadir of obsequious behavior in the first big US cabinet meeting.  This cabinet seems not to have any hardwood at all, just particle board ready to collapse in the first hard rain.  Maybe I should say “reign” not rain, as in imperial behavior rather than something having to do with the much-dreaded climate.

If all reports are to be believed, and how could we doubt them, the cabinet met in order to be schooled and lectured by the co-president Elon Musk.  In a rarity, he seems to have apologized for stopping Ebola research in a whoops, gang, my bad, but otherwise it was toe the line or don’t let the door hit you on the way out.  On the stopwatch, he talked more than anyone other than Trump.  This wasn’t really a cabinet meeting in any sense of top department heads discussing the state of the nation and how they were handling it.  No way.  This was a meeting in the teachers’ longue where all the substitutes get read the riot act for allowing too many bathroom passes.

There are a couple of things that are amazing in these reports.

One, it pains me to say it, is Trump’s new-found discipline.  As one of the worlds’ great narcissists, he has managed in these opening minutes to submerge his egotism and self-regard to create an attack dog enforcer for his wishes and whims.  He was sending a message that he still holds the lease, but seems willing to take the chance of seeming second fiddle, while Elon puts just enough sugar in his coffee.  Musk is no fool.  I’m not sure anyone has ever been photographed in a meeting of the cabinet in a ball cap, but there was Musk going MAGA all the way.  There seems no distance between them, which is discouraging for the rest of the country.  I swear it can’t last, but for now, it’s horrific.

The other thing that surprises is the humiliating subservience around the table.  Sure, they all made a deal with the devil to get the job, and lost their souls doing it, but many of these folks saw themselves as big-timers and world shakers, at least in the mirror.  Former Senator Marc Rubio was a candidate for president himself not so long ago.  Now he seems more secretary to Musk, than Secretary of State.  Robert Kennedy, Jr. held himself in such esteem that he was willing to preach crazy and ignore the death count, but now is silent as a lamb.  Some of these folks are billionaires, recently seeing themselves as titans of industry, now they are tiny tots.

Hard to count on any of them doing anything close to the right thing until the deluge comes.  They can’t miss the message that Trump believes he has Musk on a leash, true or not, but he has them all on a very short rope and given the quality of his recruitment of yes-people, he’s making it clear, he will pull it hard on a minute’s notice.

For now, heaven help the child and give us some grace as well.