Double Suckers Conned By Belligerent Stunts, Not Life Benefits

Aside from crudely manipulating his own working class base, Trump is suffering a fatal blow for any celebrity TV hustler: getting more boring day by day. His lying stupidities and stupid whoppers are so predictable they’ve lost shock value. Like that other disgraced fellow-charlatan, Joe McCarthy, Trump is overstaying his dubious Electoral College welcome. 

Further, this phony populist still wants to cut Food Stamps, then slash $7 billion from the Children’s Health Insurance Program. And yet Trump, gushing Pence and cabinet shills are not ultimately the gravest threats to America's future. Nor are reactionary GOP leaders (though with longer duration). Not even self-defeating Democrats, resisting the strong progressive vision that can best disrupt rightwing dinosaurs.The most enduring, scariest threat to America remains the suckered Republican base, first blind to getting campaign-snookered, now so defensive or shamed they refuse to admit the comic/tragic Trump hustle. Hell, 75% of brainwashed Republicans actually buy the worst lie of all, that Mueller’s (already justified) investigation is a witch hunt!!  Bravo to crass PR handlers; A jaw-dropping "duh!?" to gullible marks. 

For midterm Democrats, not delivering the goods, plus being utterly obnoxious, makes the Great American Gasbag (GAG) an easy target. What Trumpian razzle-dazzle in the first two years has or will help the average joe? Decimating the government safety net — or the tax giveaway for the rich, or mangling Obamacare so it costs more. How about upping consumer prices by starting an ego-driven trade war, or needlessly betraying America’s word by dumping the Iranian nuke deal? What outsourced workers gain a dollar from such media games, let alone playing footsie with North Korea?  

Does Trump the working class obstacle imagine he’ll never be found out, despite his daily wars against reality? Will the most aggrieved, jobless or underemployed old white guys never get the message, that a privileged, predatory billionaire is playing them like a cheap fiddle? Does mass hypnotism by the least credible con man not prove simply scapegoating non-whites only keeps their wage chains intact? Mexicans didn’t take the jobs that went abroad — and banning innocent Muslims won't improve American income one bit. Did immigrants make coal obsolete? Ditto, worsening Mideast peace prospects with incoherent policies — or giving China full sway over Asia.

No Help for the Needy

Note the telling title from this Wash Post article:“Most people don’t think poor families have benefited at all from President Trump’s policies, new poll says.” Monmouth, an independent pollster, concludes, “The outlook for Americans’ financial situation has not changed all that much since Trump took office.” Further, “low-income families have not benefited at all from Trump's policies.”  

Do the under-informed still not get the “I’m better than everyone” Donald is solely in it for himself — translated bizarrely into maniacal quests to obliterate whatever Obama did -- good or bad? Starving government is always bad government for outsourced have-nots desperate for retraining. Are factories or industries returning to the hinterlands?  How about coal? Are hungry, uninsured children good for America? As Paul Krugman reports, 

Nationally, significantly more whites than blacks receive food stamps, and participation in SNAP is higher in rural than in urban counties. Food stamps are especially important in depressed regions like Appalachia that have lost jobs in coal and other traditional sectors.

Neither scapegoating the innocent, nor malicious putdowns help pay bills or feed truly victimized, hungry kids. Trump’s derangement keeps his base fixated with endless circus stunts.

Tribal Lynch Mobs

Though playing on racism and evangelical fundamentalism, Trumpery’s most devious leverage comes from fomenting political, tribal lynch mobs (“Lock her up”) — while scorning his base’s real interests. Non-stop Big Lies rev up envy, hate and paranoia, deflecting powerlessness by keeping rally smirkers in a fog. This underhanded Trump ploy is captured by a savvy blogger, whose irate “redneck” relations are obsessed with 

sticking a thumb in the eye of educated, urbane liberals for the crime of being better and smarter than they are. That isn't changing. They don't want any particular policy. They don't care what happens to the country. They want to make someone better and smarter and more successful than themselves cry. 

Hapless victims, forever feeling disrespected, don’t just sneer at those “below” (the poor, immigrants, minorities) but also affluent city slickers “above” with better jobs, more money, and vacations at Trump resorts. Forget all-powerful billionaires but diss urbane professionals, bankers, stock brokers, realtors, professors, government workers, uppity women, journalists, and certainly non-white Democrats. That is, “outsiders” to Palin's "real America" who either thrive on brains, strategy or hard work or, horrors, on tax cheating, government subsidies or gaming the system — why, just like their orange hero all his criminal life. 

What gains can 95% of Trumpites attribute to this administration?  Have corrupt elites been reigned in — especially with the most predatory cabinet ever? Is bank credit any easier, as interest rates rise? Is the stock market boom lifting those boats without savings? Are potentially lost, disadvantaged kids getting job programs or job offers — or are they still mired in menial work, absent benefits or advancement?

Big surprise -- for Trump voters are flayed by the FOX News machine, per Wash Post’s Jennifer Rubin, built on

crackpot ideas and airing hateful rhetoric that feed the anger and resentment of its base. That means tearing down genuine heroes [like McCain] who challenge the Great Leader Trump. They are utterly comfortable voicing obnoxious slurs, revealing a stunning lack of human decency.

For anti-trumpers better off two years ago, the world hasn’t changed (no cheaper drug prices yet?).  So, Trump rally nonsense aside, urban haves continue to do better than rural have-nots. Millions of anti-trumpers have corporate health insurance so rising healthcare premiums roll off their backs. Who needs Food Stamps or job training when you have good jobs. Few affluent, college children get killed fighting needless wars — so Trump’s know-nothing saber-rattling is just noise.

Who's better, who's worse off?

Look, Trumpites, you’re under siege because your job skills don’t fit modern times — and you refuse to exit dying towns. You want your old-life cake and eat it, too, but you forget what your ancestors did: they courageously escaped starvation, learned new skill-sets and found prosperity in this promised land. Is being self-reliant — and adapting — now rocket science?

Ruthless capitalism needs workers on their terms, increasingly disregarding color or gender or background (even legal status, until forced to). The worst Trumpite delusion remains: that the devious Donald is the working man’s president — because he says so. Trump stays president only as long as 35-40% (and GOPers enslaved to them) are blind to our nation's greatest blunder — aided and abetted by his malicious appointments leashed to our biggest, baddest corporate owners.  

How long before millions get that believing Trump the Trash-talker is like taking opiates, for both remove control over your own lives? How does one know our political allies friends from noxious enemies?  Just ask, “am I better or worse off now than before Trumpery devastated the government, even what made America great?” November elections can't come soon enough.