Unbridled Corruption In A Fascist America
The state legislature in Texas tried to pass a bill to redistrict the state to gerrymander five more Republican congressmen for next year’s mid-term elections. Democrat representatives refused to attend the vote, preventing the legislature from achieving quorum and effectively blocking the bill. The Republicans have now issued arrest warrants for the Democrats, forcing them to flee the state.
This is not the behaviour of a functioning democracy run by a government by the people, of the people, and for the people. It is a country in such a rapid death spiral of comprehensive totalitarian dictatorship that the first war the American government is winning in 80 years is the one it is waging against its own people.
The owners of that government are extremely wealthy oligarchs who have taken control of the machinery of government in all respects. It is not by accident that the three richest men in America had front row seats at the President’s inauguration in January. That the President feels he has the power to fire the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics for publishing jobs numbers that did not meet Trump’s rhetoric is a testament to the degree of decline the country is facing.
The gilded age referred to an era in which an extreme oligarchy rapidly industrialised the United States through bribery, monopolisation, and exploitation. The term itself is an allusion to the opulence of the robber barons of the era. Something that is ‘gilded’ is gold-plated, an unnecessary expense meant to display excessive wealth.
Donald Trump has referred to this era as when “the country was the strongest.” The rich were indeed at their richest in this era — but the working class were at their poorest. Democracy was weak, the oligarchs were powerful, and the government was funded through tariffs rather than income taxes.
The American dictator believes this period was the model for a modern America. He is planning shovels in the ground for a gold-plated ballroom to be built on the White House lawn at a cost of $200 million. The White House’s own website shows renderings of the 650-seat event hall, intended to replace the East Wing.
The plan to fund this monstrosity is for private donors — including Trump himself — to pay the cost. The White House is not meant to be a palace, it is the office of the President as much as it is his residence. Having a gold-plated event hall is one more step in making the government only accessible to the elite.
Moreover, if Trump is paying for it himself, he intends to use it. If other private donors are paying for it, they intend to use it. This is not a routine go-fund-me for a local town’s memorial gazebo.
Let us not also forget about the “gift” of a $400 million private jet that Trump will use as Air Force One, but retain after leaving office.
These are not the actions of a President who actually has any intention of leaving office at the end of his mandate. He said yesterday that he “probably” won’t run again in 2028, and this can be taken several ways, but the fact that he is saying “probably” means that he’s leaving the possibility open — even if the American constitution does no such thing.
More likely, he does not, in fact, intend to run in 2028 because he won’t have to. We are only six months in. By 2028, American democratic institutions will either be so thoroughly destroyed that an election is no longer feasible, or the American people will have woken up to the danger and deposed their dictator before it got to that point.
Which takes us back to Texas, where the Republican-controlled state legislature feels loyal enough to Trump and confident enough in their own abuse of power to even propose a gerrymander so blatant, so overt, as to announce that it would hand five Democratic seats in Congress to the Republicans. That they would consider arresting Democrats to force them back to vote against the move, thus allowing it to pass, is an abuse of power so dramatic as to be unheard of in any actual democracy.
If the Americans allow this abuse to go unchallenged, Trump will be right: his power will be so thoroughly entrenched that he probably won’t have to run in order to stay.
You are right on with facts and focus, but concern about the rhetoric becoming so negative and echoing MAGA- type lingo. Getting in the way of your message.