“America First” KKK March in 1925
Trump Autocracy 101: Hammering Home Toxic MAGA Labels
Radical Left, Stolen, Rigged, Woke, Rogue, Ripped Off, Unfair, Insane, Etc.
PETER ON THE WRITERS’ HANGOUT PODCAST!
We were already fracturing as a viable single nation, the third most populous, even before the pandemic, but the government reaction to COVID may have been the final straw that truly set us apart. The vaccine program was magnificently successful; the lockdowns were not. But the fissures that evolved have become vast crevasses that may never be bridged. What became the new normal began as Citizens United v FEC (2010 Supreme Court ruling that effectively took the cap off rich SuperPAC campaigns funds), showed extreme “fringe” candidates, mostly on the right, where the money was.
By embracing these extreme views, candidates who could never have raised primary campaign money in the past found massive contributor support simply by embracing these extreme positions. It was the path from Republican to MAGA; Trump’s 2016 campaign legitimized lying, name-calling and embraced the once-ignored extremists. His 2024 victory cemented these tactics, elevated demonization as appropriate politics and targeted the federal government itself as the horrible “deep state.” So here we are. Bordering on if not already in a constitutional crisis.
The mega-rich have always found ways to turn what they perceived were “toxic labels” to defeat the pleas and plight of minorities, instead to prioritize the values of the wealthy. “Incent the job creators” and “a rising tide floats all boats” – a fiscal disaster every time tax cuts for the rich were passed – joined “creeping socialism,” the “radical left,” “outside, paid agitators,” “we are bankrupting America,” and “woke education is destroying our values” as MAGA/GOP mainstays, each false but very catchy. And if repeated enough, they have taken on the mantle of “truth.”
For example, the only reason Social Security is facing extinction is that the funding model on which it was based in 1935 – where there were dozens of workers carrying a single retiree – unraveled when there were only 3 or fewer workers per retiree. But if you hate that “deep state,” the only MAGA solution is to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to the bone or eliminate it under the guise of killing waste and corruption. The only viable solution is to increase funding.
As the Democrats flail in an amorphous soup of DEI, support unions, raise the minimum wage, stop subsidizing the billionaires and stop economic policies that cannot work, the overall vectors of massively cutting government spending and deportation of undocumented immigrants are MAGA goals with major popular support… even as Elon Musk wields DOGE his chainsaw decimation of everything from Veterans hospitals. calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme as hundreds of thousands of federal workers and several government agencies face termination. Musk is wildly unpopular as he implements policies with otherwise broad popular support, as grassroots sentiments, especially at the few GOP town halls that we’ve seem, strongly indicate.
While the nation’s economy tanks, Trump’s proposed solutions (including his salesmanship to get them accepted) are destabilizing us, turning our traditional trading partners and allies against us, and cannot work. The notion that we need to erect steep tariff walls because foreigners have been ripping us off is a figment of his imagination. “Bring manufacturing back to America” is his cry, even though nations with a large manufacturing base are economically worse off than nations that accept service sector predominance (from software, design services, financial platforms and expertise, entertainment, advisory services).
Excluding government and farm labor, manufacturing generally constitutes 10% or less of winning economies, and service sector values make up most of the rest. Even where there is manufacturing in developed countries, today most of the true value creation is robotic. We have that service sector advantage because our best universities, under attack by the Trump administration, have become the most reliable job creators in our nation… and constitute somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the world’s top institutions of higher learning.
But Trump is a master salesman who believes “only I can fix it” using a very rich man evincing, in my opinion, a form of Aspergers Syndrome which imbues some into narrow focused brilliance (Musk’s engineering and physics expertise) but dramatically lacking in any other major skills, like organizing and motivating workers plus normal empathy, reflected very strongly in Musk’s own alienation from most of his children old enough to have an opinion.
The latest incarnation of Trump-world’s misused words go beyond his fight with the judiciary, which may destroy democracy, into a distorted notion of “fairness.” Writing for the March 23rd Los Angeles Times, Kevin Rector explains how extremely toxic economic policies, already failing dramatically, are sold under the misuse of the genuine notion of “fairness”: “In a sit-down interview with Fox News [in February], President Trump and his billionaire ‘efficiency’ advisor Elon Musk framed new tariffs on foreign trading partners as a simple matter of fairness.
“‘I said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do: reciprocal. Whatever you charge, I’m charging,’ ’ Trump said of a conversation he’d had with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. ‘I’m doing that with every country.’… ‘It seems fair,’ Musk said… Trump laughed. ‘It does,’ he said… ‘It’s like, fair is fair,’ said Musk, the world’s richest person… The moment was one of many in recent months in which Trump and his allies have framed his policy agenda around the concept of fairness — which experts say is a potent political message at a time when many Americans feel thwarted by inflation, high housing costs and other systemic barriers to getting ahead.
“‘Trump has a good sense for what will resonate with folks, and I think we all have a deep sense of morality — and so we all recognize the importance of fairness,’ said Kurt Gray, a psychology professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the book Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground… ‘At the end of the day,’ Gray said, ‘we’re always worried about not getting what we deserve.’
“In addition to his ‘Fair and Reciprocal Plan’ for tariffs, Trump has cited fairness in his decisions to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, ban transgender athletes from competing in sports, scale back American aid to embattled Ukraine and pardon his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021… Trump has invoked fairness in meetings with a host of world leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. He has suggested that his crusade to end ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ programs is all about fairness, couched foreign aid and assistance to undocumented immigrants as unfair to struggling American taxpayers, and attacked the Justice Department, the media and federal judges who have ruled against his administration as harboring unfair biases against him.
“Trump and Musk — through his ‘Department of Government Efficiency,’ which is not a U.S. agency — have orchestrated a sweeping attack on the federal workforce largely by framing it as a liberal ‘deep state’ that either works in unfair ways against the best interests of conservative Americans, or doesn’t work at all thanks to lopsided work-from-home allowances.
“‘It’s unfair to the millions of people in the United States who are, in fact, working hard from job sites and not from their home,’ Trump said… In a Justice Department speech this month, Trump repeatedly complained about the courts treating him and his allies unfairly, and reiterated baseless claims that recent elections have been unfair to him, too… ‘We want fairness in the courts. The courts are a big factor. The elections, which were totally rigged, are a big factor,’ Trump said. ‘We have to have honest elections. We have to have borders and we have to have courts and law that’s fair, or we’re not going to have a country.’”
In truth, American consumers have benefitted massively from cheap foreign imports, and the United States has been a blessed with a very successful revenue source from tourists. Post Trump’s inaugurations, costs are going up fast, foreign tourism is plunging losing billions of a once-steady revenue base and the “United” States has lost massive global power and influence as we trade our traditional allies for Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I also fear that we may never have open and free elections ever again.
I’m Peter Dekom, and American democracy is based on majority rule but not at the expense of certain basic and inalienable individual rights, yet without truth as the basis for voter choices, democracy doesn’t stand a chance.
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