Misrule, vanity, favoritism, and self-serving pigheadedness have hollowed out federalism, without measurable payoffs in living conditions or financial stability, causing in part irreparable scarring.
Except for the favored few with enough clout to offset bullying and blackmail, recouping more in tax cuts than campaign payola, how many of us are better off now than two years ago? Who has superior health care, lower prices, affordable housing, more job opportunities and better pensions, let alone cleaner air, water and soil—or plausible responses to climate change? In short, like the prematurely razed White House ballroom, America is an unholy mess, run by buffoonish drum-beaters unqualified to rule and forever inventing more disasters at home and abroad. Nods to MAGA for one trait: wrongheaded, blundering consistency.
Forget “exceptional” except as ridicule. Yet, stirrings abound that still make America a measurable work in progress: improving the lives of its citizens. History compares a century of relative progress against Trumpism and death-dealing. Other than suspect corporate AI stimulus, what now informs America’s vision as a life engine for large numbers, let alone pretensions as a special place? Only the repair and healing after paralysis. That this column is easy to write speaks volumes about the peculiar MAGA amalgam of disgraceful assaults and monumental failures driven by blind faith, intolerance, cruelty, stupidity and corruption at the top.
We also must confront that the democratic 2024 election, as a huge majority concedes, was a boner of monumental proportions, a crime against reality, abandoning marginal confidence in character, career and competence. This magnitude of calamity either breaks a country—or remakes it, by reinventing America’s prospects. I haven’t thrown in the towel yet, but the future is not only unpredictable but comes without guarantees. Except for brave activists facing huge challenges, with messy battles, who doesn’t empathize with youngsters becoming adults, seeking elusive jobs, a safe place to live, or home ownership without outside help?
What’s still amazing, but telling for reformers, is how long it took before both a critical mass of the electorate and officials began to understand that MAGA Trump meant what it said—and then executed Project 2025, with foreseeable outcomes. What the last decade represents is another battleground between topdown, propertied control vs. the rights, opportunities and prosperity of the majority. Our history is pockmarked with parallels, whether the age of oligarchic robber barons, built-in minority oppression, racist national slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow, cyclical depressions plus endless industrial pollution/exploitation to deliver a high living standard for a minority of the population.
Like flood waters, seeping everywhere
What MAGA Trump also proves is that a coalition between the richest predators and those feeling aggrieved (often unjustified) captured a fundamentalist minority (on race, guns and religion)—funded by partisans skilled at seizing wealth at the expense of worker-driven productivity and hard-won Yankee values. At least earlier robber barons knew enough about wealth production (and the irreplaceability of labor) to cultivate the gospel of philanthropic sharing. Dumb, greedy and blind MAGA Trumpers typify the new breed of the voracious takers whose idea of freedom comes down to breaking laws, norms and moral standards to prove what they can get away with, gaining the braggadocio of superiority. Past presumptuous elitists were confronted by the Civil War, decades of nasty labor battles (and victories by unions), then the humane Progressive Era culminating in the New Deal and Great Deal (which spread the wealth and rights but without needed systemic reforms). These majority-supporting movements curbed the super-rich for a while without defanging the slipperiness of amoral tycoons adept at exploiting pliant crony capitalism, just like flood waters seep into every nook and cranny.
Today’s MAGA robber barons, insensitive to human suffering (indeed, praising it as motivation), let alone history, culture and the compassion informing major religions, equate wealth to knowing everything about everything. MAGA fat cats make earlier corporate robbers look generous. By and large, modern greedmeisters have more money, less awareness, less enlightenment and less generosity, only their doomed obsession to control the world. And now the question is whether, or when, this brand of elitist presumption has or will soon peak, with powerful forces beginning to array against oppressive over-reach.
Except when high drama identifies the moments (impeachments, deaths, resignations, major losses or visible defeats) it’s no easy task to know when a failed, control vision, whatever the downsides, has crested. Based on political polling, the post-Trump era started to unravel only months after his second inauguration. That descent was magnified by clownish, lackey cabinet picks, the most baneful collection of losers, ignoramuses, and grifters imaginable. Had Trump the bankrupt sought less qualified or aware advisers (Stephen Miller, Melania, Hegseth or Patel; earlier, Jeffrey Epstein or Roy Cohn), he could have thrown darts in the dark.
An unevolved gang backing their Stupid-in-chief
Rest assured, trusting the last half year, Trump’s finale remains on track, a demise that IMO will set untouchable records as the most hated, certainly most destructive U.S. president ever. We are daily closer to the end than the beginning. Being free of the mock king will shred his popularity even further, competing for the top spot as the world’s Most Hated Billionaire. No easy task with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein or Martin Shkreli (of Pharma Bro fame) available, let alone a slew of Nixon-Cheney-style villains offstage. What irony considering Trump’s endless quest for love, even worship as the Big Man-in-chief. Instead his legacy will immortalize him as merchant of venom (used originally for his kin, Don Rickles), along with matchless records as Liar-in-chief, Conman-in-chief, Destroyer-in-chief and the Corruption-king-in-chief. Never has one with such limited brainpower (wrong about anything complex, from economics, governance, diplomacy, tariffs, and war-making) won elected power (twice), only then to quickly implode. So much for past experience boosting one’s performance! Au contraire, a fixated, negative learning curve produces a tragic, double whammy: irrepressibly bad decisions (and gut instincts) plus staggering close-mindedness for reversibility of mistakes.
As evidence of MAGA doubling-down on disaster, look at this run of unprecedented headlines for a sitting president. Take only the last five days to cement negative messaging as consistent as it is devastating:
“Republicans finally see the writing on the wall,”
“MAGA reeling from Trump’s historic collapse among white men,”
“DC insider: Trump’s panic spiral is getting worse—and even Fox News can’t hide it,”
“MS NOW Host Stunned By New Trump Poll: ‘That’s Below Freezing!’,”
“Flailing Trump pleas for ‘moms’ to save his career—they won’t”
“Top economist issues warning: The economy is about to get ‘really ugly’,”
“White House Ballroom Is Turning Into a Symbol of Trump’s Failures,”
“Trump’s Only Got 1 Thing On His Mind These Days—And It Ain’t You,”
“Unchained’ Republicans brace to derail Trump until Dems take over,”
“America’s closest allies see ‘no point’ in negotiating with Trump,”
“Trump’s revenge tour will come back to bite him in the you-know-what,”
“Billionaires are feeling the backlash of their pact with ‘mad king’ Trump: Nobel economist,”
“Ex-Obama Chief Of Staff Blasts ‘Scared’ Republicans Only Now ‘Revolting’ Against Trump,”
“Republicans are freaking out—but Trump doesn’t care,”
“The sleeping giant just woke up as angry nonvoters are about to rock midterms
Gosh, if only half of these are three-quarters true, we are talking monumentally bad times for bad people making bad, unfixable moves. Hardly the “winning” marks of “the greatest president” since Lincoln, not halfway done. Behold MAGA as the unchallenged greatest loser of all losing movements. And what’s upcoming that suggests anything changes? Expect more tin-ear thunderclaps of obliviousness, like “Trump Ridiculed For Trying To Make His ‘Slush Fund’ Demand Seem Selfless,” translated by one snarky wit as “I could have been even more corrupt and given myself even more money is … quite the defense!”?
Either America the once beautiful (now shabby) is done for—or we all have front row seats to the greatest public train wreck since Richard Nixon. To those disheartened, even rife with cynicism, I say: take the big picture. Even real geniuses would have struggled pulling off a fascist, racist, elitist coup to turn American democracy upside down and reverse law, voting, progress, freedom of choice, affordability, retirement/medical assurances, science, cultural continuity, the diversity of an immigrant nation—and the Constitution itself. Blasted at us since 2024 is the whopping chasm between MAGA control delusions and excruciating, real-world failures, issue after issue, disruption after disruption. Who imagined America could be made so much less great so quickly? Well, a few pundits.
To cover up Epstein miscues, failed wars and foreign debacles, indefensible cabinet and agency heads, MAGA Trump offers copious slanders, the ballroom and Kennedy Center fiascos, plus the unspeakable gall of a Trumper-run $1.8 billion slush fund to pay off lawless J6 MAGA crazies. Though no bottom to MAGA Trump corruption ploys, what are chances that such cockamamie horrors pass legal muster, get funded by a suddenly defiant Congress and ever see the light of day? About as likely as the orphan ballroom construction will finish before 2028. Ditto, the triumphal arch or other Trump vanity frivolities.
Doom looms for a movement that could have been far more damaging—had its leaders brought even minimal political sensitivity or competence, now stuck in their own self-dug grand canyon. A triple-whammy of blows (MAGA failures plus global oppositional armies) now assault what was never more than a vaporous spectacle for the nerviest, most self-serving con job since whenever. Its shiny, duplicitous house of cards promised heaven on earth and delivered hell on earth instead for all. No one votes to live in hell, especially of one’s own making, yet I see light at the end of the tunnel. Admittedly we’re still tunnel-bound and we have much work to do to remake America functional again—but the pendulum is finally shifting from extremism and towards normalcy.
COMMENTS