If you’re the ruling class, the most important thing you can do is convince the peasantry that you’re good for them. It has been the absolute goal of the American ruling class for decades and despite a tradition that fought a ruling class, middle and working-class voters bought in decades ago. Citizen’s United solidified it. Billions can be spent influencing a voting class steeped in Duck Dynasty and Kardashians. Massive ad spending during election season has outstripped meaning.

Now a fifth-grade vocabulary and unreasonable promises won. The disaffected need to believe more than ever. The decline in real wage increases in the seventies has been showing even greater signs of disparity. A populous with almost zero worldview was easily swayed by a highly profitable fear based Right Wing Media Complex has been easily manipulated since Republicans eliminate the FCC Fairness Doctrine in 1987. Now moderation is socialism. The poor have been told that if they accept policies that make them even poorer they will benefit.

The mouse has been sold a den where the outreached claws can easily reach in.

A promised 5% GDP growth has become 4% and then 3%. None are possible. They have been told that high paying jobs are being shipped overseas instead of acknowledging they are being automated away. Bringing back coal jobs is supposed to be possible while ignoring the market forces that Republicans claim to protect. The loss of 100’s of thousands of retail jobs has been ignored. Bank stocks anticipate a gift at the expense of banking customers, yet they are told this is in their best interest.

Let’s face it. Desperation breeds a willingness to accept the wildest of promises no matter how shitty the vocabulary and horrific the hair of the orange deliverer. People can be convinced to keep doubling down on what has never worked in the past. The magical message always wins.

In an obscure old sci-fi movie called Hardware featured a song from Public Image Limited called “The Order of Death”. While John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) is now an elderly Trump supporter, the lyrics “This is what you want, this is what you get” might have said it all.

So, this is what you get:

  1. The ACA repeal says it all. A CBO estimate of 22 million without health care and massive cuts to Medicaid leave our poorest to die of cancer and other illnesses. You’re poor? Fuck you. If you’re in the top 1 percent you can expect a tax decrease. How much? American’s making over $875,000 / year will see an additional 2% increase in yearly income on average.

  2. Banking stocks have seen increases averaging 30 – 40% since November 8th, 2016. Why? Expected rollbacks to pre-recession banking rules are why. Eliminating Dodd-Frank will allow the extreme betting that caused the financial crises in the first place. Dramatically eliminating the power of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would allow abuses against bank customers with impunity. What is the CFPB? Well, they caught Wells Fargo opening fraudulent accounts. Enough said? Regular people were sold that lending would pick up despite banks already only loaning out 65% of what they could.

  3. The one-page tax reform idea (yes it isn’t even a bill proposal, rather 19 bullet points) creates a boon for the wealthy. Even being sold as a huge savings for the middle class, the average middle-class family will only save about 1.5% while deficits explode and threaten the futures of our children. The top 1% stands to benefit by an average of 14.1%.

  4. And the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement? Only 29% percent of the population agreed with it. The country with the only major party that denies climate science, decided to screw future generations and erode our international standing. Who loses the most as climate change takes place? Well, it’s the same people that have been sold that it’s a myth. Rural America loses as farmland becomes less productive and northern climates in Canada have longer growing seasons with more predictable precipitation.

  5. Jobs were said to return as protectionism was brought into effect. Never mind that they are simply being automated away and no plan exists to compensate.

  6. Environmental regulations are consistently being rolled back in a claim that reducing regulations will fuel the economy and create jobs. One picture from the 60’s can show what America looked like before an EPA. What was the impact on average Americans? Apparently, your lungs don’t matter much.

Manhattan smog 1966

  1. The list goes on and on. A budget that reduces free school lunches for poor children that might only see that one square meal a day. Cuts to Meals on Wheels, whereas many of the elderly recipients only have social interaction with those that also bring them a healthy meal. Proposals to privatize PBS, eliminate The National Endowment for the Arts, cut scientific research, cut NASA funding, cut Planned Parenthood funding that benefits poor men and women with reproductive health care, massive cuts to the SNAP program, and even cuts to the very USDA programs that benefit the rural Americans that voted Trump. The Appalachian Regional Commission that directly benefits the miners Trump swore to help will be cut from $146 million a year in funding to $27 million.

The mouse in now shuddering inside the mouse hole. The proposals go on and on and are so severe that even some die-hard Trump and Republican voters are starting to see the disconnect. Maybe that is what is finally needed. After decades of subtle creep of the best interests of a ruling class, even under Democratic control, many of us needed to see the full cheese wheel promised only to see the mouse trap arrive in its place.

Bonus: Jason Chaffetz has just proposed a $2500 a month housing allowance for OUR representatives to live in Washington D.C. Let’s expect Trump, McConnell and Ryan to be saying, “Meow bitches!”, very soon.

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