War on Two Fronts

Trump takes on Labor and Capital

There is no next time.

That is a universal condition; time moves in one direction, as far as we consciously experience it. Break a stick of chalk and create moments of “before” and “after,” with history on both sides—all that was and all that will be.

Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens. Ahistoricity is the promise of every regime.

Within its own narrative marijuana prohibition emergers, sui generis, as the response to a “drug problem” that in reality it must first invent and then perpetuate. Marginalizing people, and then punishing them for being there. Or, in Ani DiFranco’s words: “Criminalize the symptoms while you spread the disease.”

So is Trump’s war on the People.

Baudrillard told us that we make war when we prepare ourselves for war.

There are no externalities—economic, ideological, or institutional—that bring us into war. We have the war we collectively believe we will have. The war is an intentional social condition. We agree to disagree in that way.

Trump is making war on the People—authoritarian actions taken by executive bureaus (DHS/ICE), legal arguments made by “his” Judicial Department that will divest the accused of Due Process (rendering them condemned), the dismantling of departments (Education) and programs (too many to mention) that offered support on a mass scale, and the looming imposition of the Insurgency Act are actions taken on the political side.

The national sales tax of 10% on virtually all imports (El Salvador is excluded, for some reason) and selectively rates higher than that on Chinese, Canadian, and Mexican products (finished or not), have immediate impacts. We will see inflation has grown by a significant, sudden jump in the second quarter, which will be compounded over time. Staggering the U.S. economy will produce further social stressors among the population.

The 90-day “hiatus” from the initial levies—the sword of Damocles over global capital’s collective neck—notwithstanding, tariffs will never come back in the percentages announced. That was another fuckup due to laziness and reliance on artificial intelligence, but they will be brought back in some form. They are too valuable a lever for extorting bribes.

Tariffs are the second front in Trump’s Two-Front War, the one he has been much more cautious about, because global capital has sway. While the bourgeoisie loves the deregulation and lower taxes (even with the multimillion dollar annual bribes now expected, they will pay less overall), they do not like to see growth of the most valuable part of their investment portfolio—material production—hampered.

Unlike the People, global Capital can influence Trump directly, and they did in very short order. Despite tariffs ultimately being paid by consumers, and not Capital, they recognize every dollar captured by the state is a dollar they do not get. Taxation alone puts a drag on exchange by inflating prices; arbitrary, blanket tariffs add to the drag.

Trump is tanking the U.S. economy because he is of the impression that an economic crisis leads to stronger authoritarian impulses among the population. Indeed, as we look at those nation-states that transitioned from bourgeois production into a Fascistic governmental system, they all were suffering economic hardship. All of it seemed to originate from outside forces, however.

Perhaps it was Joe Biden’s thought that when the working class has reason to believe their quality of life will improve, they are less likely to want to overthrow their government. He seemed to focus more on making the economy grow and visibly supporting organized labor than on bringing Trump to justice. But Biden was dealing with an economy that was bifurcated long ago, and the old indicators—job growth and rising stock markets, especially—no longer produced a thriving middle class. What happens when a one-trick pony loses its trick?

Global capital will be able to respond more swiftly and directly to Trump’s market manipulations than American workers. The lie of “American made” is exposed by international co-dependency in ownership, manufacture and trade. Collapsing the American economy is attacking 25% of global purchasing power. Without purchasers, profit can not be realized. Without profit, Capital collapses.

Trump’s willingness to take on global Capital sets his actions apart from centuries of the U.S. government principally disciplining the population, while supporting Capital. We’ve had Native ethnic cleansings, women and slaves as men’s legal property, conscription, Jim Crow, immigrant ghettos, labor suppression, “separate but equal,” internment camps, voter suppression, and most recently a declining quality of life among working people for the past 45 years. The People having the shit kicked out of them is not new.

When Capital has suffered, the American impulse has always been to rescue it. Even the social programs that came from the New Deal were designed to support Capital, through providing Labor improved quality of life and wages that rose with productivity. Later, Obama bailed out banks and other financiers during the Great Recession, while Trump’s COVID recovery propped up Capital with dollars and supported consumers with pennies.

Trump’s attack on state institutions are unusual as they also includes eliminating supports for entire industries like healthcare and agriculture. Corporate subsidies are a direct product of corporate capitalist political parties, which are also being threatened because dictators need neither political parties nor courts. Trump’s attacks on global capital are for his own leverage, empowerment, and enrichment (His Prime Directive: What’s in it for me?), and are otherwise incomprehensibly counteractive to maintaining social class and political hegemonies.

Fighting a two-front war is more than twice as draining.

#BankruptElon