An Amoral Trump Is No Accident

The American right wing alliance is far more insidious than they are given credit for, reminiscent of a religious-oligarchal pact that has defined another region's politics for centuries.

One of the first memes to spread in the United States following last week’s presidential win by Donald Trump was of the slogan “Your body, my choice”, a naked admission of the misogynist mindset at the core of America’s right wing.

Aside from “your body, my choice” trending, “repeal the 19th” — which refers to the 19th amendment of the US constitution, granting women the right to vote — and “get back to the kitchen” are other popular terms circulating across American social media. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is no longer theory, but rather it is about to become the foundation of American society.

Americans have so confidently, resoundingly, and thoroughly voted against their own interests that it is imperative to explore both who truly wanted it, and why.

The American oligarchy broke the final line of defence against money when the Citizens United case was decided at the Supreme Court in 2010. The core of the ruling is that money is a form of speech. Since Congress cannot limit speech under the 1st Amendment, the role of money in politics is, according to American jurisprudence, constitutionally protected.

While some campaign donation and spending limits still exist, Citizens United allowed for “SuperPACs”, super political action committees, to fundraise and spend without limitation for or against political causes or candidates on the single and virtually unenforceable condition that they do not coordinate with candidates’ campaigns.

The result? In the 2024 election, American billionaires directly spent an estimated $1.9 billion on the campaign, with the vast majority going to Republican candidates. Elon Musk alone is estimated to have spent $133 million of his own money on getting Trump and his Republicans elected — placing him in a paltry 4th place, though that doesn’t count his Russian-backed purchase of Twitter.

Musk’s direct contributions translate to about $185 million Canadian. In contrast, the last Canadian election saw a combined national spending limit between all parties of $172,364,610.25. That single high profile billionaire’s contribution to Trump’s election could have paid for every party in Canada to spend the maximum they were allowed to spend in our last campaign — with about $13 million left over. And he wasn’t even the biggest.

Billionaires seldom achieve their level of obscene and unjustifiable wealth through philanthropy. Their money grows to that scale because they invest it, and at that without ethical boundaries. It does not take a rocket scientist or space entrepreneur to figure out what it is they are after.

While billionaires spent nearly $2 billion getting Trump elected, the collective net worth of the world’s top 10 billionaires increased by $64 billion in the first day following the election. Musk’s $133 million investment alone saw an increase in his net worth of $26.5 billion, a return on investment of some 20,000% (none of it taxable) — so far, and Trump hasn’t even been sworn in yet. When he is, he plans to name Musk to his cabinet, responsible for the new “Department of Governmental Efficiency,” whose mandate would, by its very nature, give him limitless access and control of every aspect of government spending.

The oligarchy are about to get a whole lot wealthier and the working class are one step closer to living in the shanty slums the oligarchs want for them. It’s all remarkably similar to the rise and empowerment of Putin and Russia’s oligarchy.

Getting rid of the millions of immigrants in the United States that do the hardest labour in agriculture and construction is no accident either. Removing them from the country will ultimately force those still present to do those tasks. In the inevitable mass labour shortage that would result, it is not hard to imagine that the same people who believe women and minorities should not have any rights will believe that those same people should be forced to do hard labour against their will. The country has considerable historical precedent for that, which previously took a civil war to stop.

So why the moves to make the United States an uneducated society barren of foreign-born labour and set women’s rights back at least a hundred years? The filthy rich don’t especially care about any of that except as it applies to ‘workforce flexibility,’ their term for ensuring workers need jobs more than employers need workers, driving their wages down. Like the pact between the Wahhabis and the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia in the middle of the 18th century, it is a simple marriage of convenience. The religious right want to implement a fundamentalist misogynist white-Christian supremacist society but don’t have the financial resources to do it. The oligarchs want a return to feudal society so they can remove all limits to their wealth and power, but don’t have the public backing to do it. Their objectives are largely complementary.

Together, they take on a divide-and-conquer strategy to get Americans fighting with each other, and both get to achieve their goals. The Wahhabi-Saud alliance lasted over 270 years and it is only in the past decade that the Saudi government under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (MBS) is just beginning to move on.

An amoral Trump represents the opposite of every value Americans claim to espouse. Accepting a serially bankrupt convicted criminal — who could legally apply for few other jobs — a serial cheater both in his personal and business life, a man who has no shred of honesty or decency, is exactly what the alliance needs to achieve its ends.

Convincing the American people to choose someone like Trump as leader clears the slate. Going forward, anything is acceptable. There are no more boundaries. There are no more standards. With him as the figurehead, his alliance can restructure American society the way a recruit in the army is reprogrammed during basic training: everything you thought you know about who you are is wrong; they’ll break you down and build you back up the way they want, ready and able to serve their interests and follow their orders. Whether he is there in 2028 is completely irrelevant, he has already served his purpose.

‘Your body, my choice’ is not only about removing hard-fought women’s rights and returning to a time when women were simple possessions of men, it is about making the working class men, as well, the property of the American oligarchy. It is about breaking society to be ready for a new foundation.

It is profoundly ironic that those spreading this slogan have not figured out that it is really about them, too.

This shirt was available on Amazon.com following the election. It has since been removed. Similar apparel remains available through multiple on line stores, often with descriptions pretending that it is in support of women’s rights.