267) Day 35, Reason #35 to revolt against Predatory Capitalism: We do not understand what is going on

A key reason to revolt against Predatory Capitalism is that we, the public, the ones who are SUPPOSED to ultimately be in control of our democracy, don’t know what the hell is going on. This is a direct result of many things, especially the Manufacturing Consent problem and the politic-speak problem described in recent posts of mine.

Case in point — Why IS Trump doing all the things he’s doing?  From canceling CANCER research and treatments for god’s sake, to attacking trans people, to disallowing infectious disease experts from communicating about DISEASES to the public, to making deals with EL SALVADOR to stick people, even American citizens that Trump doesn’t like, in their famously-horrible-worse-jails-in-pretty-much-the-entire-world, to attacking babies born in the US by immigrant mothers from whom Trump wants to take away citizenship, to saying he wants to turn Gaza into the “Middle East Riviera”, to waging economic war against Canada, and Mexico, and other ALLIES, , to threatening Denmark, to threatening Panama, to gutting the entire federal service, to giving Elon Musk ILLEGAL access to the Treasury Department, to releasing criminals, drug dealers, pedophiles and people who violently assaulted police officers back onto the streets, to removing most the USA’s foreign aid to countries around the world thereby leaving the world wide open for China to gain influence and make deals with thereby supplanting US power with their own, to choosing clearly unqualified picks to lead the major departments of government, and on and on and on and on, we are all left wondering, what the hell is he doing?

And there are lots of theories!!  So many theories!!  And I’m not talking crazy QAnon theories, like Trump is the Saviour and is rooting out a Satanic pedophile network of immortality-seeking Democrats.  Those exist too, of course.  But, I’m talking credible, sensible, actually plausible theories, the kind that are suggested on the news and through major media figures.

Such as:

• Trump is a Russian asset who Putin has so much blackmail dirt on that he’s basically working for Putin, and his whole Trumpian agenda’s purpose IS to destabilize and weaken the United States.

• Trump is a corrupt businessman who is servicing the interest of countries like Russia because he knows there will be huge $$$-kickbacks for him in terms of real estate development deals.

• Trump is a puppet that the billionaire-class is using to make all the changes they want to make in order to steal even more money from the American taxpayer and make themselves even wealthier.

• Trump is in some kind of $$$-deal with Elon Musk and letting Elon re-form the government so that it is mostly run by Elon’s gigantic “xAI” company of artificial intelligence.  And Elon, in turn, is doing this because once he is in charge of basically the entire government, he will make untold TRILLIONS of dollars off it.  

• Trump is a dumb-ass malignant narcissist who just wants to make himself look like a Supreme Leader and reshape the world is in own image, but he doesn’t understand jack-shit which is why so many of his decisions seem utterly crazy.

• Trump just wants to make money, so is using the whole “downsize the government” mantra to let himself give himself (and his donor-buddies) tax cuts, de-regulate everything, and install corruption everywhere he can, while his treasure hoard grows.

• Trump is a petulant man-child who felt so rejected when American voters elected Biden over him, that now he is just exacting revenge and doing whatever he has to in order to make “his enemies” pay.

• Trump is a political opportunist and knows that “culture war” issues like race, abortion, trans rights, etc., will appeal to the White Nationalists and fundamentalist so-called-Christian voting base, so he is doing most of this stuff just to gain their votes.  Even the weird things, like canceling cancer and medical research, is part of “owning the elites” and appealing to the uneducated masses who don’t trust the system, especially after COVID when they all convinced themselves that doctors are part of a medical conspiracy….

• Trump has some kind of perverse need to destroy things, harm people, cause chaos, and make himself out to be the Big Man, even if it means taking the country, and the world, down with him.  It’s all for his legacy as a “key figure in history.”

• Trump’s rampant avalanche of illegal, corrupt and horrifying things are just a smokescreen, a distraction, while his goon, Elon Musk, robs US citizens of their money, and the Republicans’ army of lawyers and judges and such, dismantles democracy while everyone’s too busy arguing about where trans people should be allowed to go pee.

• Trump is just an incompetent asshole.

• Trump has frontotemporal dementia, and is simply losing his grip on reality.

• Trump is part of a global fascist conspiracy, probably the one led by Stephen Harper and the IDU, and what we’re seeing in America is just an extreme version of the kind of democracy-takeover that IDU members have been working on, for decades, all over the world.

Etc.

I’ve heard ALL these theories in the past two weeks, repeatedly suggested online, in the media and blogs and social media threads.  So many theories!  Trump gets “all the best theories”….

I’m sure there are even more reasonably plausible theories out there.  Especially at a smaller scale when you look at single decisions.  E.g., the tariff BS between Trump, Canada and the US could be nothing more than intentionally destabilizing the stock market in a reliable way so that he can inform his family and businesses partners about what’s about to happen and they can make WILD profits as the stock market plummets and recovers, plummets and recovers.

And so, what is REALLY happening?

Nobody knows.  And there seems to be no real way to find out.  

Trump can continue operating with chaotic impunity, simply because he does, and it turns out that the legal guardrails on our democracy don’t really exist.  They’re like the rules of a board game; they make everybody play the game properly AS LONG AS THEY AGREE TO THE RULES.  But the person who picks up the board and throws it across the room?  Well…the rules can’t really stop that.  

So we, the public, are left with an incomprehensible shit-show, an abuse of power, an abuse of our own lives, and a future so full of question marks that anyone who feels vulnerable (which should be anyone who is not wealthy, straight, white, Christian, and male) is now facing a future of fear.  And not only is it near-impossible to figure out how to stop it, we don’t even know WHY it’s happening.

This is a direct consequence of a media that is owned by the very people who need to be exposed for corruption.  It’s the consequence of a political system in which politicians NEVER have to actually answer the questions they are asked, but can just repeat whatever slogans they want.  It’s the consequence of an education system that gets under-funded and broken, decade after decade by “certain political parties” so that the public is less and less capable of critical thinking and a higher-level systems understanding of how the world works.  It’s the consequence of us tolerating the diverse lies of ‘influencers” who have been poisoning the public against simple, straightforward humanitarian things — like public health care, and race and gender equality, and how science works.  And it’s the consequence of the public, so overwhelmed with the complexity and struggle of regular life, so distracted by the entertainment industry behemoth, and so confused by the incredible amount of “spin” and “lies” and “corporate gaslighting” and sheer MAGNITUDE of problems we are facing, that we are all left with the never-ending, always-growing questions,

“What the hell is going on?” and “Why?”