Let's Have a War
Conflict-averse only when it's *her* ass on the line
Donald Trump lives for conflict.
She1 has long-billed herself as a “counter-puncher,” though we have witnessed scads more capitulation than instigation from potential adversaries. The cadre of information baron billionaires, and near-all of corporate media—who will not call what has happened since January 6 a “coup”—have eagerly jumped aboard, literally to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, directly to the President.
Disney (ABC) and Meta-berg shelled out $40 mil. Trump put the $20Billion heavy hand on Paramount (CBS) for 60 Minutes’ editing of a Kamala Harris interview just before Election Day. The parties had agreed to mediation for the “dispute” on March 1. On March 5, Paramount filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit—apparently there was no “middle” that did not involve matters beyond money. Paramount did not file a counter suit, however, for wasting their time and legal costs. They merely asked that the Court apply common fucking sense to the question of whether broadcasting political opinion from a presidential candidate is foundation for a libel suit.
Apparently this hit candidate Trump in the fee-fees:
Trump is an instigator, obviously, one who employs Nietzschean slave morality deftly—always accusing others of her own violations, forever playing the victim or the martyr. She rose to an Era of Grievance in America because her entire existence has been a grievance—others are the problem.
It fits tongue-in-groove with a working class raised in Neoliberalism, seeking to find the reason why they work so hard yet keep falling further behind. To Capital anything but economic social class itself will do for an explanation. It’s the women, it’s the Blacks, it’s the foreigners, it’s the government—
ANYTHING AT ALL but the folks who took over $21 Trillion in surplus-value…
…while running up over $36 Trillion in government-secured debt to be paid off by future labor.
Those who lack a theory of social power are bound to be the subjects of others’. The same may be said of those who lack a theory of the state. We know Trump attracts poorly-educated people, but even his more pedigreed voters have given barely any thought to how the state operates as a social institution.
MAGAs with more than a high school diploma know that regulations are “bad for business” because they have been told this by those who own businesses, even if they themselves do not. They trust wealthy people because wealth is a moral measure—the more one has of it, the purer one must be. Elon Musk is looking out for humanity’s best interests, don’t the electric cars and putting people on Mars show us this? And he’s volunteering.
If instead we look at wealth as a measure of social power, the individual’s actions can be seen to increase or decrease common good. Some take the accumulation of wealth as immoral itself—for over a millennium this was Catholic dogma. Wealth accumulation was reserved for royalty and the church itself. Thus we can see that what is moral differs by social classes or castes, as well as by era. I think it better to keep a critical eye than to assign moral status via monetary measure.
Trump seeks public confrontation, but only when she thinks she can win—she keeps her losses private (tax returns, divorce settlements, NDA’s, meetings with Putin) whenever possible. Her desire to start a global trade war with what is (for now) the strongest national economy in the world keeps running into American global capitalists, who privately insist it is a non-starter.
Despite all the mayhem and chain sawing, Capital still relies on the state, and a nation that doesn’t want to be on the global playground hurts. Deregulation allows for greater socialization of costs in the form of pollution, unsafe products, collusion, or fraud, and Labor pays the tab in money or lifespans—so that’s good. But cutting social support programs means workers will need higher pay, to cover the costs the state once covered for the company. Cutting subsidies makes production less profitable, or perhaps unprofitable. Ending foreign aid results in surplus agricultural products and lower prices on crop futures.
With history as the guide, the most likely outcome of what Trump is doing in terms of the relations of production is that we maintain a form of global capitalism, despite a recasting of the United States from democratically-leaning to fascist authoritarianism, and from Empire to isolationist. Global Capital will not surrender its mode of production easily, and to whatever degree the dismantling of state apparatuses has negative effects on them, they will object.
The only objections we know Donald Trump is capable of caring about come from people wealthier than she is.
If there was a cornerstone policy for Neoliberalism it was the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Trump replaced it her first term. NAFTA forbid member nations from imposing tariffs on each other, you see. Donny couldn’t play the tough girl if she didn’t have the magical tariff that would force Mexico to pay for the wall that would keep all those Latino peasants from taking $21 Trillion from 99% of Americans.
Now that NAFTA is out of the way, tariff proposals abound! We had a threat of 25% levies on Canadian and Mexican imports before the end of her first month in office, and just this past week, we got them. For less than 48 hours. Actually, it’s not clear that any were collected. If they were, I feel for the poor guy who bought the $100,000 Ford truck from Mexico on Wednesday, who saw the price drop back down to $80,000 on Thursday. Just kidding. No one bought a truck with a 25% tariff attached at all.
She’s circling, fists balled and shadow boxing, punching air. Those tariffs will hurt people with more money than Trump, so they are keeping her out of the ring. Every time she steps on the apron, they pull her back down.
As everyone but the cult leader and her mouth-breathing followers understands, tariffs are paid for by purchasers, when all is said and done. Raising prices slows the flow of capital and thus causes a drag on profitability—recession is the word economists use. Should the credit system also suffer (due to bankruptcies, real estate market collapse, under-payments, and/or a weak dollar), it is possible the drag becomes so great the nation enters an economic depression.
Recession means a shrinking capitalist economy, depression means capitalism halts.
Those with more money than Trump do not want the former, and they would literally poison him to prevent the latter. Building a popular movement and alternative cultures of solidarity remain central to the Project for Human Liberation, but after watching Putin flip a bitch overnight and the now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t play on North American tariffs, I have an idea who will be determining direction and distance for Donald Trump.
#BankruptElon
Unless and until she rescinds the Executive Order declaring sex to be determined “at conception,” the President’s MAGA-proper pronouns are she/her.