Chaos Theory, Our American Cultural Revolution, One Man Rule

 

Chaos Theory, Our American Cultural Revolution, One Man Rule

A King, with his own Rasputin, Enforcer & Sub-Par Loyalist Advisors

PETER ON THE WRITERS’ HANGOUT PODCAST!

Can you guess the cast of characters? Outlier, mad-economist Peter Navarro is the Rasputinesque “tariff whisperer,” Elon Musk is the “deep state” killer and “I’ll Primary You Out of Office” MAGA $$ enforcer and the “screw the Constitution” litany of “we report only to the king” cabinet and sub-cabinet level appointees, led by a bizarre anti-science skeptic, an Attorney General who holds the Constitution itself in contempt and the clumsy Fox Opinion host with no discernible military skills, as the tip of the loyalist iceberg watching as the USA Titanic approaches. To think that the only significant resistance to this cadre of “America destroyers” are a disarray of courts fuming as their appellate-sustained orders have been ignored and a bastion of academic excellence that is vastly older than the United States itself: Harvard University.

I tried to articulate the growing list of what hates the most, and without any particular order, here goes: poor people, higher education, facts, science, anyone or any media that oppose anything he champions, taxes on the rich, federal courts, Democrats, “loser” members of the military, NATO, Ukraine, the European Union, China, California, NY courts, and once again poor people (the drainers of benefits that should be stopped to fund tax cuts for the rich). Whew! I am sure you can think of more, but that’s a good start. Trump defeat and humiliate China? Good luck with that Mr. Trump… as most of the rest of the world would now rather deal with China than you!

Even though there is zero chance that Trump’s tariff scheme, if it even sustains, would work as he envisions, that the cruelty evidenced in Trump’s unilateral determination who should be deported to a possible life sentence in a horrific Salvadoran prison will soon be forgotten, Trump has purposely positioned the United States as an isolated, go-it-alone nation with an unstable, non-genius in charge. He punishes those under his control viciously if they utter a sound against him.

Using flimsy reasoning based on centuries old wartime statutes, Trump has trashed the Constitution, abolished the rule of law, and become the sole decider of tax policies (relegated by the Constitution to Congress), the abrogation of long-standing treaties (from NATO and trade treaties to the Paris Climate Accords), all things “citizenship” and “immigration,” and the enforcer of mega-ambiguous (ill-defined) cultural concepts like “woke” instruction and books, “DEI” policies and “entitlements.” Trump as “Chairman Mao” with a cultural revolution?

Did this happen overnight? Even within the first 100 days of being elected, Trump has approval levels lower (at the same point in their administration) than any other president since polls have been conducted. Yet Trump is nothing more than an affirmation that this country is run by and for the “show me the money” mega-millionaires/billionaires (some of whom are in his cabinet). To the extent there are any challengers to that plutocratic vector, Trump is there to root them out. As King, Trump has named himself as the waiver granter, evidenced in exceptions to tariffs and regulatory statutes accorded disproportionately to his major campaign contributors. As he faced too much opposition to the outright repeal or significant benefit reduction of Social Security, Medicare, VA and Medicaid, the solution was simple: send Musk’s storm troopers to decimate the staffing, computer systems and supporting infrastructure that makes those social programs work. Musk the champion of waste and fraud reduction? Did I tell you the one about the Easter Bunny? Using chainsaws is not a particularly good approach to securing effective government.

The Supreme Court, until literally weeks ago, was most complicit in this attack on representative democracy. By elevating money above justice (e.g., the uncapping of SuperPAC campaign contributions in Citizens United v FEC), allowing politicians to exclude voters who might oppose them (e.g., Shelby vs Holder), enabling white supremacy (e.g., Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. University of North Carolina) and empowering presidential rule (e.g., US vs Trump, which established far-reaching presidential immunity). Truly a sad unraveling.

Sure, post-WWII Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation of the “military industrial state,” but today that massive lobbying effort (well-staffed with retired senior military officers) has a significant military vendor in virtually every congressional district… making cuts in the military budget close to impossible; the military budget is over 3% of our overall GDP, which is the functional equivalent of the rest of operational federal government combined. While the federal bureaucracy has, until Musk’s chainsaw, remained roughly the same for 30 years, the deficit and the military budget have grown.

Indeed, lobbying is huge business, particularly in a kleptocracy where individuals are awarded lucrative contracts – take a good close look at how much money Elon Musk’s companies generate from federal contracts… and how Tesla wouldn’t even exist today if not for massive government subsidies and loans early in that company’s history – and exemptions from regulations they do not like. With members of the House in perpetual pursuit of campaign contributions (they all have two-year terms) and the high stakes in Senate seats (where Wyoming with 600,000 residents has the same two Senators that does California with 39 million residents), that infamous K-Street cadre of exceptionally well-funded lobbyists has been calling political shots for virtually every moment since WWII.

Even before Donald Trump, the prestigious The Economist had relabeled the United States as a “flawed democracy” with an “unrepresentative” form of government. Trump’s implementation of his Project 2025 agenda since inauguration has resulted in disapproval levels that now exceed approval levels. Can Trump even afford to let the approaching misterms happen, where his MAGA majority in each house of Congress is at stake, unless he can: rig the election (through voter exclusion and redistricting) or, through some reliance on some inapplicable wartime emergency power, delay or eliminate that election? And exactly how will he exacerbate the current constitutional crisis by escalating his scoff-law defiance of federal court orders (even the US Supreme Court), to many the last hope of saving our American democracy. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and the seeming hope of keeping America as a democracy may just lie in more angry town halls and increasing the number of peaceful but very angry mass protests everywhere.