King Trump America – Money Might Be Right

Liberals have frothy group seizures every time Trump trots out yet another tyrannical order.  They’re sure he’s turning the country into a Trump branded white club America where dissenters will be forced to twerk heterosexually until they give up on democracy. Long live the king of the United State of Trump!

Are Liberals overreacting?

It’s not about King Trump, it’s about loss of American power

Trump is a product of fear.  The people who voted for him aren’t bad people, they’re scared or angry people, and they have excellent reasons to be both scared and angry.  Many are afraid that American power, especially their part of it, is disappearing, and it seems to be disappearing faster with each passing year.  To understand Trump, it helps to understand the fear of waning American power that produced him, so here you go:

Since the development of exceptionally effective WMMDOPWs (Weapons of More Mass Destruction than Other People’s Weapons) and the printing press, white Western power has increasingly dominated the world.  A few hundred years ago, Western powers were bobbing around the world in wood tubs full of guns, missionaries and viruses to improve the lives of brown people by making them whiter or dead or slaves.

The Westerners often had to take breaks to kill each other so they could take each other’s stuff and reduce crowding in the imperialistic pillaging game.  Unfortunately, history shows this kill-thy-neighbor-and-take-his-stuff game isn’t unique to Western powers over the last few centuries.  History is full of humans of all creeds and colors doing this to each other one way or another.

Then, about 150 years ago, Europe decided taking stuff was ok, but taking people wasn’t, and they gave the stink eye to the slaving United States.  About half the United States said, “Shove it you tea-sipping sodomites!  You got it backwards – it’s ok to take people, but not stuff!  Well, except we can take Native American stuff, and maybe some Mexican stuff, but that’s it, for now, maybe.”

But then the other half of the United States said, “Screw you, neighbor, and you too, kinky Eurotrash!  You’re both wrong!  It’s not ok to take people OR stuff!  Except the stuff we already took.  We’re keeping that, cuz Jesus n’ destiny n’ eagles.”  Then the two halves of the United States killed each other a bunch, and the non-slaving side won.

Fifty years later, the Europeans started a brawl that turned into World War I, which was a great opportunity to try out some new ways to kill each other, including dumping nasty chemicals on soldiers to see what happened.  The United States helped their friends win, and they took good notes on the nasty chemicals while they were over there.  The winning side divvied up the brown people lands that the losing side had taken way back in the day.

The losing side was super pissed and the winning side was kind of a mean winner, so the losing side started World War II and tried to kill all the Jews.  The United States helped the nicer side win, and the U.S. also created and actually used – twice – the biggest WMMDOPW ever, which understandably freaked out the rest of the world and wasn’t so nice because of all the innocent children it fried, so the world agreed to do pretty much whatever the U.S. wanted.  Plus, outside of the U.S, much of the world was so blown up that they really needed a killing break anyway.

The United States got super used to being the boss, and they were generally pretty nice about it, at least officially.  But then other countries got the same WMMDOPW that the U.S. used to win WWII, so they started saying, “Neener neener, now you aren’t the only one with a big wiener!” – especially a huge country full of vodka with initials that also started with “U.S.”  The two U.S. countries and their friends waved their atomic weenies at each other for about 30 years, but then they stopped because the vodka U.S. said, “Waving our wieners is stupid, especially because the Western weenies are bigger and we need some time to get rich like you guys, so let’s stop for now, but you can’t have our stuff or touch our wieners. Seriously.”  It was a time when American power dominated the world and Americans felt it.

Then Al Gore invented the internet, terrorists used it, and China started making apple pie

Then computers and the internet took off, which made it super easy for people to understand, often for the first time, everything you just read up above, and all that silliness made it harder for governments to convince people to get back to killing each other on a big scale because most people realized they’d just get screwed whether their governments won or lost.  Plus, everyone knows WMMDOPWs would make another world war the end of the world, so duh, pretend to get along.

The internet also made it easier for small groups of haters to be super pissed about the stuff you read above, especially the part where the U.S. and Europeans, the Westerners, took their stuff and really only pretended to give it back.  They kinda noticed the West actually kept control of their stuff through money and threats that came with apple pie and Jesus n’ destiny n’ eagles. The haters used the internet to figure out how to kill Western people, so the Westerners started a seemingly endless war against haters that they can never finish, unlike most earlier wars.

Anyway, at the same time angry haters were trying to keep sand out of their keyboards while Facebooking ideas to kill Western devils, China had been yelling, “Hello World!!  Hey, we only let our zillions of people read a little bit of Al Gore’s internet because we don’t want them to like apple pie or Jesus or eagles. But, we will borrow the pie recipe, make millions of them cheap, and sell them to America for way lower prices than Americans charge for pies they make in America.”  Thing is, the government of China really liked apple pie with all the rich fixings, but they wanted to keep the pie to themselves and their buddies, so they got super good at controlling their people.

In other words, China built a hot economy, eventually the second biggest in the world, through making and selling stuff cheaper than other countries could, and the government eventually allowed a bunch of non-government people to get rich too.  You know what those people did?  They started buying stuff, a lot of stuff, in the U.S. which made stuff in the U.S. even more expensive for the people who live there.  Oh, and by the way, the Chinese approach to developing industrial power and distributing wealth hasn’t been too different from the way Western countries initially developed their industrial power and distributed wealth starting over 100 years ago.  Governments and tycoons initially get rich at the expense of the people, then the people gradually take more of the wealth they create.

Thing is, a bunch of people who lived in the U.S. lost their jobs making the stuff that is now made in China or Mexico or other cheaper places.  Those people were pretty pissed about losing their jobs, especially when, job or no job, it was getting harder to pay rapidly increasing prices for basics like food and housing.  They, and other people who hadn’t figured out how to replace their making-stuff jobs with technology or banking jobs – or how to start a company to serve the people with technology or banking jobs – all those people on the “hey, wait…what?” side of what the rich called progress, well, they got real tired of being left behind or just straight up getting screwed, especially around 2009 when U.S. bankers stole their money big time, twice, with government support (bank crash, then taxpayer bailout).

You know what the most common job in the U.S. still is?  Truck driver.  And technology companies are not only building self-driving trucks, they are also hoping the government will let them skip some trucking altogether by allowing them to deliver stuff with flying drones.

Oh, and it certainly didn’t help when the U.S. government started an aggressive money-printing program that helped banks and large corporations jack up profits and executive bonuses while reducing the buying power of the few dollars still left in many American wallets. U.S. Census Bureau data shows the income gap between the lowest 20% of incomes and the highest 5% of incomes has nearly doubled in the last 50 years – the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

The people who lost jobs, lost retirements, or lost loved ones to war while technocrats, bankers, and politicians got rich and didn’t seem to care, those people felt powerless and felt robbed, and that felt unAmerican.  They saw big money and big government winking at each other and ganging up on them and they were sick of getting bullied.  They were afraid it would continue and get worse.  They wanted their American power back and they wanted revenge on the people who took it, so they looked for someone who could bully the bullies, someone who could bring back the good old days.

Enter the Trump

King Trump didn’t bob up in a wooden tub full of guns and missionaries and viruses, but like the early Western royal bullies, he’s not shy about taking American power for himself and his family first, and then for the people who help him…as long as they keep doing what he wants.  There are many who think he is too much like the former Western imperialist monarchs who improved the lives of brown people by making them whiter or dead. Like those rulers, he tends to attack anyone who blocks him from taking more power, and he will spend the energy and possibly even the lives (war) of the people he controls to keep and grow his power. Like any dictator, he sees two types of people – the obedient and the enemies – and his opinion is fact, even when it contradicts empirical scientific evidence.

The minority of America that voted to use Trump to fight fear with fear will discover that a bully is only your friend when he needs you.  Bully Trump needed their votes to take the White House and now he doesn’t need them so much.  He’s working feverishly to get his obedient servants into positions of power to further reduce his need for the millions of good people who voted for him.  Once he gets solid control of both the legislative & judicial branches of government, the two branches that are supposed to keep an eye on the POTUS, all he needs is enough of the military on his side, and he can do whatever he wants.

The easiest way to secure total power is to start a war, declare martial law in the name of national security, and make his military the police outside your home.  If history is any guide, those “police” would be authorized to take your stuff and people – you, your relatives, your children – to fight Trump’s war.

The “good ol’ days” that Trump’s voters want back, the days of their American power, were only good for Americans when they could treat each other and the rest of the world with respect.  As technology continues to make the world both smaller and interdependent at an ever faster pace, hiding inside closed borders and closed minds will only make America fall behind countries that adapt, retrain their people, and support each other.  Global war is death for all, including America, so attempting to force the world to our bidding with violence is suicide.

In short, the good old days were only good for Americans when they resolved to work together to live the words that are the foundation of our freedom, that all men are created equal with the right to life and liberty, that the American people choose government that is good for all of America.  To directly quote our Declaration of Independence from one of those abusive kings long ago, “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”

The mighty might be right, but never only because they have power.  No matter if you are liberal or conservative or part of another group or no group, we Americans have our best chance of health, wealth, and happiness, our best chance to preserve the freedom to make every American’s America as great as it can be, by rejecting fear and working together to continually redefine our American way within a global community.