The tragic Trump farce, pitted by irony: first, manipulate inflated MAGA grievances, then ruthlessly make real grievances universal for all but the richest. Don’t some Christians link suffering and salvation?
Despite the basest pandering to his base, Trump policies are just as horrific for MAGA family life as for befuddled centrists or outraged Never Trumpers. No group, besides the 1%, is better off one year after the ultimate rip-off election ever. In fact, assets held by the top 1% of U.S. families total $52 trillion – adding a whopping $4 trillion, an 8% surge, since 2024 (the Trump billionaire dividend). When else, except for Gilded Age inequality, have the fattest cats got so much richer while the crushed poor get poorer? A cult record!
OMG, could it be the richest prosper because the poor get poorer? Welcome to phony MAGA “populism” – exactly why the young and struggling flock to democratic socialism and the breakthrough NY mayor. Income inequality, bad enough since Reaganomics specified trickle UP economics, gets worse every time MAGA Trumpers win. This zero-sum, pay-to-play war on America epitomizes hypocrisy, dishing out tax giveaways (the key to asset bonanzas), legal favoritism, payola pardons and kickbacks to pet industries (like crypto). Crony capitalism is so corrupt and rigged, even dumb-like Trump knaves become tycoons.
So, how many loudmouth MAGA marks are 8% richer a year later, with 8% more buying power, feeling on top of the world? How many suckered young minority male voters, now gnashing teeth over GOP betrayals on inflation and job growth, don’t endure high anxiety, aside from ICE? The great boomerang: higher costs for everything (even Trump trash) and no (union) leverage for raises. How many of our neediest, once getting SNAP benefits and ACA/Medicaid support, now fall from impoverished to desperate, worried about next meals? Charles Dickens’ nightmare England, here we come. Now everyone, not just MAGA suckers, has less buying power, now that great, Trump-driven, real-world grievances disregard race, creed, color or class.
Know anyone who’s better off now?
Nope, despite white power bigotry, where is the discrimination from bad policy and cruelty, whether shredded government networks, costly urban Dem military invasions, even erratic, outrageously expensive ICE raids? Right or left, east or west, small-town/rural or city dwellers, blue collar or middle-class, who knows anyone (but the affluent) not paying through the teeth for getting conned by the insufferable Trump Clown Show?
Despite horrifically cynical promises worth less than Melania’s ten cent meme coins, what has Trump’s lollapalooza done for its ordinary foot soldiers? Except for Scrooge-like tax cuts, the MAGA base equally faces inflation on food, housing, and recreation, with no white job growth better than any other gang. Except for massive AI investments and Biden infrastructure funding, where’s any of the new, forever-promised industry surges? Farmers plagued with machinery debt have been screwed by tariffs and overseas sales slumps; construction, service industries and ag producers suffer constant, ICE-driven labor shortages; small and medium businesses are bereft, powerless to address volatile supply/pricing chaos and fallout from Trump’s (monumentally stupid) trade disruptions. As abused ex-allies rush towards China, India, Africa and South America, how long will slavish Rethugs endure anti-conservative, career-ending economic blows?
That’s the guaranteed outcome when bad faith Trumpism leveraged anger, resentment and rancor not to spread wealth but the opposite: to exact billions from marginal, under-insured, under-employed, hungry, badly-housed Americans. Project 2025 reigns with all its predictable, destructive power. No wonder Trump approvals fall off the cliff, or that a Rethug civil war begins, or that a fixated, tin-ear WH sounds more desperate as electoral Dems outperform. So, how bad must it get? How many hundreds of millions will DT have to piss off before the damn breaks and MAGA Trumpism drowns in its own bathtub?
What’s indisputable: that a predatory, criminal, unfeeling administration is doing wreckage as the well-informed (right and left) anticipated: a pernicious, inept, lawless immigration rampage – “breaking the law to enforce it” – weaponizing the DOJ to harass critics, crudely racist demonization of minorities, and barrages against sworn MAGA enemies: the press, secular culture, non-Trumpian favored art, privileged universities, and law firms perceived as Trump foes. Despite a staggering void of political savvy (vs. far more competent authoritarians), and plagued with a whimsical, incoherent brand, Trump nevertheless has pulled off something astonishing: the sleaziest hack re-elected by promising undeliverable goodies, twice hoodwinking enough suckers to seize enough power, deflect Congress and the SC, to ruin the lives of 90% or more of the country. What a legacy!
And the ongoing payoff: limitless downsides, both in economic, social and spiritual terms, without one humane, people-advancing, legislative achievement. Cutting SNAP and Medicaid, shredding medical and science research, ending foreign aid that saves millions of total innocents, and deporting honorable residents working their hardest – all are primitive regressions to barbarity. Truly, what regions here or abroad are better off after only a year of Trump mayhem? The Equal Opportunity Oppressor (EOO) continues apace without immediate cessation – just failure and steady, out-of-touch, suicidal self-destruction that will take decades to repair what is reparable.
Here’s to a genuine, democratic, holiday vision
In this spirit, I summarize veteran writer/historian Michelle Duster’s essay, MAGA Will Continue to Seethe on the Sidelines While We Build a Diverse Future, detailing a woeful, deranged, anti-American cult:
Over the last 10 years, those who believe in empathy, equality, social progress and joy have had to endure the chronic whining, rage, fury, insults and complaints from the miserably mad MAGA cult. And despite Trump’s appeasement of this cult with an unrelenting flurry of exhaustive measures to dismantle and defund institutions, departments and programs that provided opportunities and protection for Black people and other racial minorities, they’re still miserable. The scorched earth approach that has harmed millions of hard-working people will still not make America White. The grievances and whining of the MAGA cult led them to elect a Confederate-sympathizing president for a second time.
Her cogent, humane analysis testifies to unsavory, knee-jerk, scattergun MAGA Trump outrage, childishly fuming over trivialities (like Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl) where bigots are “content watching a game where over half of the players are Black (compared to 14% of the population), fume about hearing ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing‘ (the Black national anthem) or a Hispanic man perform the half-time show.” The all-too-obvious “message is that Black and Hispanic people can use their bodies to entertain them in a violent sport, but there is no desire to hear or appreciate the voices or concerns of those same people.”
Oddly, her conclusion is positive and uplifting: such gullible Trumpers “will exhaust themselves with their hate. Instead of embracing the beauty and diversity of the United States and working with their fellow citizens as one people to make the country great for everyone, they choose to stew in hatred.” She foresees this unholy brew of racism, hatred and obsession dooming the cult, squandering its “time, energy and money on trying to keep everyone else down or out.” At its best America commits itself to exactly the opposite.
In contrast, the resilient oppressed find ways to enjoy life and celebrate victories while the MAGA cult festers “in their bile of hatred,” pouring out “foul, hate-filled text messages.” Those with true American values dedicate themselves to building “a diverse, multi-cultural, multi-religious world where people of all genders and abilities love their neighbors as themselves; believe in and work towards a government of, by and for all people; and create systems where everyone enjoys a fair chance to compete and succeed.” Now that’s a holiday message this Christmas skeptic can sing on high – to the better angels of our nature.
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