“Comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted is a political posture that requires no courage; indeed, requiring nothing except a willingness to project a false façade in service of villians.”
The
great untold story of the election of 2016 is that Donald J. tRUMP defeated the
elites of both parties by running not on the right of the political wrong but
by adopting a ‘populism’ and running and winning from the left. This was certainly true in the Rescumlican
primaries and, to a lesser degree, is also true of the general election.
Adopting
a posture reminiscent of Louisianan Huey Long, tRUMP—a veritable Rescumlican
Bernie Sanders--railed against trade agreements he said savaged the middle
class; he spoke of the return of high-wage manufacturing jobs (presumably union
jobs for there were in days gone by few others); he promised to hold Social
Security, Medicaid and Medicare sacrosanct; and, significantly, he spoke of
replacing ObamaCare with a plan that would include everyone, and provide better
services at lower costs—indeed, even speaking favorably of the Australian
national health insurance, a single-payer system. This was the agenda that elected Donald J.
tRUMP and it is an agenda that is anathema to the Rescumlican Party.
From a
purely political standpoint, the tragedy that is Donald J. tRUMP is that of
wasted opportunity. Having crushed the
political elites of both parties—defeating first the old main-line Wall Street
conservatives in his own party and then turning on the Democrats and
vanquishing the Clinton led ‘liberal’ establishment—tRUMP, on the day following
the election, stood as the first politician since Andrew Jackson to have
defeated the entire political establishment.
A president-elect beholding to no one.
But something happened on the way to the forum or, in this case, the
White House.
What
happened is that since his days living in a college dormitory and masturbating
to lurid images put in his head by the literary fictions of Ayn Rand, Paul
Ryan, now Speaker of the House, had been consistently pushing bills through the
chamber savaging not only health care but the entire social safety net; had
been aggressively pushing legislation limiting the power of workers in the
workplace; had been consistently passing budgets that not only comforted the
comfortable but afflicted the afflicted.
Why tRUMP signed on to an agenda he had so recently shredded is the
great mystery of the hour.
Perhaps
it is because the leadership knew that he is, so to speak, on the Russian
payroll. (1) In any case, tRUMP was soon
enough seen appointing at least four executives from Goldman-Sachs to important
financial posts, staffing a cabinet of billionaires whose fortunes equaled that
of half the nation, reversing himself on economic policies as they pertain to
Chinese competition, embracing NAFTA and other trade agreements, and adopting
the entire Rescumlican establishment’s position on fiscal and budgetary issues,
including the savaging of the safety net and the all-out-war on ObamaCare and
everything Obama.
This is
not why the Teabaggers sent him to Washington.
tRUMP’s populism, they will discover, will prove every bit a fiction as
the ejaculations of Paul Ryan’s ideologically inspired budget surpluses; for
tRUMP’s brand is to genuine ‘populism’ what Ayn Rand’s literary fiction is to
real political philosophy: the former being simple fraud; the latter a more
pious strain. tRUMP, always speaking in
hyperbole, is simply another man-on-the make; an uncommon Carnival Barker, a
cheap-jack hustler seeking public office to validate and, perhaps, enrich
himself in the bargain. It is classic
“Bait-and-Switch”, a common enough business practice wherein the public is
drawn by false claims and quickly directed and pressured to buy more costly
merchandise not necessarily in the consumer’s best interests; practices that
inspired the Latin injunction “caveat
emptor”, or “Buyer Beware”.
Nowhere
has this fraud been more amply demonstrated than with the Rescumlican fetish
with repealing and replacing “ObamaCare”.
For seven years the Speaker and his cohorts have been feverishly
masturbating to visions of outright repeal, for it is now clearly apparent that
they had no real plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. Tin-hat conservatives and racists on the
political wrong were likewise pleasuring themselves reading, listening and
watching more graphic smut on the internet, talk radio and “Faux and
Friends”. What followed, in the nearly
complete collapse and nearly totally absent leadership from their anointed
‘leader, was a “comedy of errors” for the “Boomers” were once again to
demonstrate that they know not how to govern.
tRUMP
and his White House, publicly demonstrating that they have no understanding of
the legislative process quickly organized a ‘signing’ ceremony in the Rose
Garden providing a photo opportunity and a chance to declare ‘victory’, even
though the bill had passed only the House.
In fact, the measure was then only about a quarter of the way down the
road to becoming law. Yet to come is
passage by the Senate, then off to a conference committee (because both houses
rarely pass identical bills) for differences in the House and Senate bills to
be worked out, then each house must then pass the final version again without
amendments. Here was Caesar Disgustus, declaring
a hollow victory; perhaps fitting a man who is likewise hollow to the core. The
Bill was then sent to the Senate where, the unsettled were assured, Rescumlican
mendacity would become more civilized.
These
assurances proved short lived for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell began
proceedings in the Senate by declaring that he needed only 51 votes would move
forward. The Rescumlicans have
fifty-two, basically telling the opposition that their participation would not
be welcome. Accordingly, he set up a
panel of half a dozen Senators, all men, who would write the Senate
version. What emerged was a plan that
according to the CBO would strip eighteen million Americans of health care by
2018, twenty-two million by 2026. After
withdrawing the measure for lack of majority McConnel ‘tweaked’ the bill and
brought it to the floor last week Tuesday.
It failed 45-55 with seven Republicans joining all the Democrats in
opposition. Then in an act of desperate
mendacity McConnell dropped the ‘fig leaf’ of replacement with a measure that
would simply repeal ObamaCare with no immediate replacement.
Oh yes
there was talk of Rescumlican plans developing that would replace the act in
two years, but the Scums have been campaigning for seven years on Repeal and
Replace and have voted—when they knew Obama would veto any such measure—over
sixty times to repeal the ACA, but not a single step has been taken to
formulate measures to replace until they were confronted with having to govern. Nevertheless, there was deep suspicion among
several Republican Senators, that should this so-called ‘skinny repeal’ pass,
an act that the CBO estimated would have stripped 32 million Americans of
health insurance, that Ryan and his ideologically driven and racist cohorts
would simply have rammed it through the House without amendment and send it to
the White House where tRUMP, caring more about a ‘victory’ than the people’s
business, would simply sign it. The
measure went down to defeat and there was a great sigh of relief, indeed
celebration about the land, but it is a worrisome victory.
For lost
in the celebration is the awful reality that this so-called “skinny repeal”,
the most savage and mendacious of all the Rescumlican efforts, lost by a mere
one vote. John McCain, returning from
brain surgery to remove a blood clot and a cancerous tumor, cast the deciding
vote in what is now being celebrated as a decided “profile in courage”. That it may be, but it was a vote for sane
and solid public policy. In a statement
McCain made clear his hatred for ObamaCare, echoing the Rescumlican disdain for
all things Obama and their crusade to do their utmost to expunge the black man
from the historical record. But let us
not forget here that McCain had joined the other Scums in voting for the
previous bills to Repeal and Replace even though the “replacement” would have
stripped millions of coverage, re-established the rights of insurance companies
to drop coverage for “pre-existing” conditions and allowed insurance companies
to re-establish lifetime caps on coverage.
These features of ObamaCare, incidentally, our now AWOL fearless leader
promised that he would protect.
Mitch
McConnell has promised to “Move On”.
Don’t believe it. The Scums have
a fetish about Obama long past the point of pathological. Moreover, they need the ‘reforms’ to not only
save their billionaire paymasters the taxes that the ACA imposes on them, but to
realize budgetary savings that can then be translated into tax cuts for the top
one percent without creating horrendous deficits. Mind you there will be no
balancing the budget for all this ‘sacrifice’—for this pain inflicted upon the
afflicted--for the savings, such as they would be, will be immediately handed
over to the ones who have bought and sold this Congress.
The real
story of the election of 2016 was that the people, once again, voted for real
change. The tragedy of 2016 was that the
people elected an empty shirt, a complete incompetent, a miserable little lord
Fauntleroy who quickly turned his back on them and now has no idea where to go
or what to do and, in any case, is too corrupt and incompetent to get them
there.
Impeach and Imprison
(1). See reference in post: July 24, 2107: Whole World Laughing, Serving the Kremlin,
Very Useful Idiot
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