They are unworthy of us

Dear Trump voter.

The people who run our country right now are completely unworthy of us.

So much bad juju hit the fan yesterday that shows how corrupt, compromised and callous they are that it would be very difficult to deny it anymore. Unless you live in Fox News Land. Seriously, you’ve got to shut that shit off because it looks like Donald Trump might be indicted shortly for obstruction of justice. I’ve heard that he’s going to blow a gasket if he’s not completely exonerated by Christmas. Consider the gasket blown.

There’s almost too much to cover that happened yesterday. And most ordinary citizens can do nothing about it. All the senators and representatives who might be able to do something are either outnumbered or in the wrong state. Our fate is entirely in the hands of the Republicans.

Donald and the Republicans lied to you. They lied on a massive scale. Just before they were to vote on that “Tax Reform” package last night the Joint Congressional Taskforce charged with running the numbers came back to say that the bill would add a trillion dollars to the deficit. Steve Mnuchin, the Secretary of the Treasury told every one for weeks now that he had 100 people running the numbers to find out just how good the bill would be to the country. It turns out he was lying. A treasury insider in the group that was supposed to be doing the work said no such effort was going on. That triggered the Inspector General of the Treasury to start an investigation. So there’s a lot of lying about these numbers. And they HAVE to lie because they are so bad and will affect so many middle and working class people in profoundly negative ways.

But that wasn’t everything that happened yesterday. No, not even close. It turns out that last summer, Trump told members of the Senate Intelligence committee to drop the Russia investigation. And here’s where it is necessary to apply a litmus test. Ask yourself, could Obama harangue the Senate committee investigating about Benghazi and get away with it?

Then there is Rex Tillerson getting ready to resign as Secretary of State. Check this out (why YES! It is CNN. But foreign news sources are reporting the same thing. So either they’re all wrong or Donald is wrong. We must entertain the notion that Donald is wrong):

My theory is that Donald likes to stir the pot to make his base afraid because studies show that his supporters are more likely to be fearful people. (It’s all about your amygdala. Conservatives have differently sized and proportioned amygdalas. There’s likely nothing you can do about it except be aware of it, like being tone deaf. It can’t be changed. Trump supporters are always going to be susceptible.) So keeping Trump voters focused on their mortality means they will take their eyes off of everything else and that drives them towards politicians that present themselves as bigger than life and the ones more likely to provide security. They’re using that psychology to achieve other goals but they project security. It’s just a pose but the small evil group that runs things and to which no one we know belongs have made manipulating the psychology of the Trump base into an art form. So if you suddenly find yourself terrified of nuclear war with North Korea and attacks by Muslims, it’s very likely that the manipulators are pushing your buttons. The rest of us have rational fears, like falling into a river because the rotting bridge wasn’t maintained due to budget cuts.

Betsy de Vos is resigning as Secretary of Education. We are already replacing the guy who resigned at HHS. The rats are abandoning the ship. There’s something going down. And to add more weirdness to this pileup, the FBI is creating a new unit to investigate and stop foreign governments from messing with our election systems. Election systems sounds oddly like they are referring to voting machines and state election operations. But we don’t know exactly what they’re referring to because the FBI isn’t talking. I’d keep an eye on this because I think it’s the sleeper in the whole pile of bad news. Something significant is going on behind the scenes. Something big.

That was just yesterday.

Meanwhile, a Depression era historian says that what is going on now with massive transfers of wealth from the masses to the already wealthy, combined with the obsessive worship of business, is what lead to the Great Depression. Trickle down economics have been tried for more than a hundred years with disastrous consequences. By now, the wealthy and corporations that are demanding these transfers of wealth know that it doesn’t work abc that disaster looms but they’re doing it anyway. It’s the short term gratification of thrill seekers who are living for Today and putting the lives of everyone else at risk. Enjoy the market while you can. There will be a reckoning when the great multitude of citizens are crushed by the rise in state and local taxes they will have to pay to patch the streets and educate their kids and they won’t be paying for other consumer goods because no one forced any kind of accountability for job creation and rising wages in the tax reform bill that eventually passes. That means less money to spend, fewer goods being bought, a deflationary spiral, recession or depression. It is going to get ugly. We know this because it has happened before. This is not rocket surgery.

Don’t let history repeat itself.

Of course, if you think you have enough wealth and whatever happens is going to happen to other people, who were not as virtuous and thrifty as you, and not you so you don’t need to worry, well, we have a different problem altogether.