The mission of The St. Croix Review is to end the destruction of America by reestablishing the family as the center of American life, restoring economic prosperity to an independent middle class, and reviving a culture of tradition.

Elon Musk Is a Liberator

Editorial — Barry MacDonald

Who could have predicted two years ago that Elon Musk would buy Twitter? Musk is a hero who restored free speech to a decisive and global forum. Musk bought Twitter and freed America and the world.

To have the preeminent tech-genius of the century on our side is a game changer.

Who could have foreseen that Elon Musk, an immigrant from South Africa, would value liberty so much that he would defy the political orthodoxy of the progressive movement?

Marxist revolutionaries have strangled Western political and cultural commentary during the last four years. When Musk bought, renamed, and repurposed Twitter (now X), he turned the tide against woke malignancy.

Musk invited the authors and researchers Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger to investigate the previous executive operation of Twitter. Taibbi and Shellenberger exposed — in the “Twitter Files” — the fact that President Biden’s federal agencies and a network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) exerted great pressure on Twitter to censor the expression of any opinion, and to stifle any discussion, even factually correct information, that countered and undermined the agenda of the Democratic Party.

For the entire length of the Biden Administration, totalitarianism blossomed in America and in Western Europe. NGOs and malevolent bureaucrats in Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the FBI, the CIA, and the State Department exerted a malign leverage to silence critics.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, valid questions were smothered about the lockdowns of businesses, about the origin of the virus, about the closures of public schools, about the efficacy of mRNA vaccines compared with alternative medicines, about the harm done to American liberty by vaccine mandates, about the effectiveness of masks to prevent infection, and about the “safe” distance we were required to stand apart from each other. Politicians divided businesses into categories of essential and nonessential. Politicians impoverished those that couldn’t afford the bribe money in the form of campaign donations. Giant pharmaceutical companies profited enormously from vaccine mandates. Large and connected corporations prospered while the middle class suffered. Public-school students stayed home and didn’t learn at the behest of national teachers’ unions.

The prominent, stubborn, and courageous dissenters from progressive orthodoxy who challenged progressive narratives were either shadow-banned or censored on social media. Because they lacked mainstream forums to broadcast their facts and opinions, dissenters and critics were silenced, slandered, demonized, isolated, demoralized, and “canceled” — many lost their jobs.

What do Elon Musk, and Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger (authors of the “Twitter Files”) have in common? They all consistently voted for Democrats before the 2024 elections. Each has abandoned the anti-American, accusatory, hate filled, intolerant, totalitarian impulse of the Democratic Party and the progressive movement. Tech wizards Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Mark Zuckerberg (better late than never) have also abandoned and spoken against the malice of the Left.

People who cherish liberty must trust in the eventual victory of justice and decency. Help arrives from unexpected sources.

Who could have predicted two years ago that the liberators of America would come from the ranks of disillusioned, elite entrepreneurs and intellectuals of leftist persuasion?

Elon Musk and a cadre of young, tech-savvy computer engineers, in the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), are a lance that pierces the secretive and insular blob of federal bureaucracy. These 20-year-old geniuses whom Musk recruited use a spear of algorithms and AI to trace streams of federal revenue that previously were hidden from public scrutiny.

Musk revealed that $59 million was spent by FEMA within one week to house illegal aliens at high-end hotels in New York City — in defiance of the Trump Administration. At the same time, impoverished American citizens continue to suffer the aftereffects of hurricane Helene in North Carolina. The misspent $59 million is a data point that adds to a mountain of evidence that progressives put the welfare of illegal aliens above devastated American citizens.

One egregious example of woke ideology run amuck is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This agency for decades has functioned as a slush fund for all sorts of wasteful and mendacious activity. The following is a partial list of what DOGE has exposed so far:

• $7.9 million to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid “binary-gendered language.”
• $20 million for a new Sesame Street show in Iraq.
• $4.5+ million to “combat disinformation” in Kazakhstan.
• $1.5 million for “art for inclusion of people with disabilities.”
• $2 million for sex changes and “LGBTQ activism” in Guatemala.
• $6 million to “transform digital spaces to reflect feminist democratic principles.”
• $2.1 million to help the BBC “value the diversity of Libyan society.”
• $10 million worth of USAID-funded meals, which went to an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group.
• $6 million for tourism in Egypt.
• $2.5 million to promote “inclusion” in Vietnam.
• $40 million was directed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• $20 million for a group related to a key player in the Russiagate impeachment hoax.
• $1.1 million to an Armenian “LGBTQ group.”
• $1.2 million to help the African Methodist Episcopal Church Service and Development Agency in Washington, D.C., build “a state-of-the-art 440-seat auditorium.”
• $1.3 million to Arab and Jewish photographers.
• $1.5 million to promote “LGBTQ advocacy” in Jamaica.
• $1.5 million to “rebuild” the Cuban media ecosystem.
• $2 million to promote “LGBTQ equality through entrepreneurship” in Latin America.
• $500K to solve sectarian violence in Israel (just ten days before the Hamas October 7 attack).
• $2.3 million for “artisanal and small-scale gold mining” in the Amazon.
• $3.9 million for “LGBTQ causes” in the western Balkans.
• $5.5 million for LGBTQ activism in Uganda.
• $6 million for advancing LGBTQ issues in “priority countries around the world.”
• $6.3 million for men who have sex with men in South Africa.
• $8.3 million for “USAID Education: Equity and Inclusion.”
• USAID’s “climate strategy” outlined a $150 billion “whole-of-agency” approach to build an “equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”

• $25 million for Deloitte (a “multinational professional services network”) to promote “green transportation” in the country of Georgia.

The money spent by the USAID is filtered through a network of hundreds of shady non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — inside America and globally. The NGOs have vague names. One such NGO is the “Civil Society Engagement Program” in the nation of Georgia. The names are purposely cryptic so that the purpose of the group remains obscure to critics. It appears that the mission of USAID, and of the NGOs it employs, is to convert both American institutions and foreign governance to progressive “woke” ideology. USAID is very much an American, imperial, left-wing enterprise.

USAID is an epitome of how the federal bureaucracy works. For decades, USAID has successfully repelled Congressional oversight. Recently, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa has spoken of how the staff of USAID has simply refused to provide her with information about the ageney’s operation. The bureaucrats, and the Democrats who support them, have considered themselves above and beyond Congressional accountability.

Recent essays in the media report that USAID and NGO activity, with clandestine CIA participation, have meddled, destabilized, and even toppled several foreign governments — in Ukraine, Georgia, and Romania. Also, there are questions raised about USAID involvement in the funding and organization of anti-Semitic protests on university campuses last year, in the two impeachments of President Trump, and in the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots of the summer, 2020. USAID has hundreds of media companies on the payroll internationally and domestically. Captured media reliably push a global, woke agenda. The revolutionary activity of USAID overseas, which raises mobs of protestors on the streets, mirrors the massive protests that have disturbed American cities and campuses recently. Who funded and organized the anti-Israeli violence in America last year, and during the summer riots of 2020 after the George Floyd incident?

The velocity of change in the first three weeks of the Trump administration is overwhelming. So much has been revealed so quickly that comprehension is difficult. We are in the process of discerning truth from fiction.

What we have now are suspicions about the depth and character of the left-wing perfidy of USAID. It will take a long time to discover the factual details of the damage and dubious legality that USAID committed. We may never uncover all the evil deeds.

Every day, new facts emerge from the work of Musk and DOGE. Blizzards of arcane and outrageous stories are brought to light daily to boggle, astound, and outrage Americans. The Democrats have turned the federal bureaucracy into an enormous engine of propaganda, oppression, and grift. DOGE has yet to target the Department of Education and the Department of Defense. Who knows what mountains of negligence, corruption, and waste will be found? Time and patience will be necessary for the American people to absorb the magnitude of corruption involved.

The public esteem of the mainstream media is at a nadir. According to Gallup, 36 percent of U.S. adults “have no trust at all in the media,” and 33 percent have “not very much” confidence. A recent CBS poll measured President Trump’s approval: Sixty-nine percent of Americans see him as “tough,” 63 percent see him as “energetic,” 60 percent as “focused,” and 58 percent as “effective.”

The media shield of Democratic deceit has dissolved. For the first time in generations, the corruption of the Democrat Party stands exposed to a vast swath of the electorate. Good-hearted Americans should be grateful!

The American people are alert and attentive. They recognize that they have been swindled for four years. From the first days of his administration, Joe Biden was unfit to be president. The Democratic Party and corporate media lied and boldly insisted that he was capable.

President Trump defeated the Democratic Party, the progressive movement, and the corporate media. Elon Musk lent Trump a mighty hand. Brighter days are ahead!

Consider the arc of civil rights in America. Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, the area where blacks were forced to sit during the Jim Crow era. The composure and self-sacrifice of Parks has been overlaid with the entitled arrogance of Maxine Waters. Waters, a long-time bitter partisan, led a mob of furious Congresspeople to the doors of the Department of Education. These lawmakers represent the pro-censorship and oppression of the Democratic Party. They wanted to interrupt a DOGE audit of the Department of Education. A brave and determined security guard impeded the mob. The mob was stopped.

Note: An excellent introduction to the Alice-in-Wonderland rabbit hole of USAID, State Department, CIA, and Department of Defense operations are two of Joe Rogan’s podcasts with Mike Benz. To listen to Benz is to be initiated into a cloak-and-dagger reality that surpasses spy fiction.   *