I think that the American president satisfies most if not all of the criterion necessary to be labeled a common criminal. There’s nothing masterful about grift and corruption. There’s nothing clever about sexual assault, and although I’ll admit that pathological lying requires some inventiveness, I think that Mr. Trump lacks the logical part of pathological. His lies are more suited to a playground middle school and should be received as an insult to anyone with the capacity to open a bottle of childproof pain medication.
However.
For some reason the American voters have chosen to place a common criminal into an uncommon position. No one should be the least surprised then when he simply continues with common criminality, but at an uncommon scale. It’s who the man is and it’s who the man has always been. The voters are not exclusively burdened with all of the responsibility of this positioning. The supreme court immunity gift, and congressional fellation also bear responsibility, although I suspect it will be the voters who will be left to manage the consequences.
I thought for a moment that an animal analogy would be appropriate to assist in what I’m trying to describe. But snake in the grass implies stealth and predatory patience. The American president possesses neither quality. Then I thought that perhaps fox in the henhouse might work. But a fox is considered sly and cunning. Mr. Trump is neither. The best animal analogy I can muster is bull in a China shop, and I think it’s somewhat fitting.
Lots of noise and lots of damage, with the shopkeepers of America left to sweep up the broken glass and start trying to reassemble the shop after the bull has departed. If and when the shop is restored to it’s former state, the shop owners are then left with no choice except to wait and see if any of the customers come back.
They might come back eventually, or they may decide that the China from China suffices. Customers are like that, They prefer their merchandise unbroken and free of bullshit from bulls.
I think that my musings to this point may suggest that I have distain for America. I do not, but I struggle to differentiate between Donald J, Trump and the system that allows him to exist. The system is difficult to define because it’s hidden behind American flags that disguise the corporate machine that actually makes the decisions for Americans.
Mr. Trump likes to hug those flags, but in doing so he has folded them around himself and allowed a look at what exists behind the stars and stripes. I think the corporations prefer subtlety and secrecy to their strategies, but Donnie possesses neither of those qualities, and what he’s done is probably the only honest thing that he’s provided to the American people in six years of his reign.
Essentially Mr. Trump has expanded the corporate and capitalist mantra into governing. His cabinet is composed of billionaires, and he brags about it like this is a good thing. It is a good thing for billionaires, but the old adage from Heller’s Catch 22 that what’s good for General motors is good for America was bullshit when it was written and it’s bullshit now. What’s good for any corporation is good for that corporation. Exxon and Elon give zero fucks about anything other than self enrichment and power and influence acquisition.
He views all diplomacy as transactional, and doesn’t even try to hide hostile takeovers as American diplomatic policy. The methodology differs depending on who he’s trying to fuck over, but the end result is the same. The corporations do remarkably well and the people, both American and otherwise do not.
Venezuela for example is a brown country deserving of little or no restraint from the corporation that is the current American government. So you send in the military to kidnap their president, and then declare the resources of that country the property of Exxon or Conoco or whoever gave Don the most cash.
Canada is a different story. Although Don would like to send his corporate enforcement arm to disappear Mark Carney, the situation is tricky. Mark is white and he has friends, so deploying steal team six isn’t a great alternative at the moment for direct acquisition of Canadian resources.
So, instead you do tariffs, and roll out your propaganda network portraying Canada as an enemy of America. It’s the same goal as Venezuela and Cuba, but the strategy differs somewhat. The next step is to threaten force once economic coercion doesn’t immediately provide the result you’re looking for.
So you send out Scotty Pissant and Howie Nutlick and Petey Pigbreath to saber rattle and prepare the American public for a military intervention, because Canada won’t hand over it’s sovereignty to American corporations. The good news for Pigbreath is there’s probably no need for aircraft carriers to invade Canada. You can just drive your tanks over the Gordie Howe bridge after you rename it the bridge of America.
Because aluminum and oil and rare minerals and water and potash are necessary for American national security. Also not having unfettered access to those resources creates a situation where you can declare a national emergency and possibly cancel the midterms. I’m doubtful that Donnie has thought far enough ahead to consider Canada as the reason for cancelling elections, but it’s likely that one of his billionaire buddies has given the idea some consideration.
Farmers going bankrupt? It’s Canada’s fault for not giving away potash and refusing to buy corporate farm milk. Beer going up in price? It’s Canada’s fault for not giving us their aluminum. Gas prices skyrocketing? It has nothing to do with Iran. It’s Canada’s fault for doing yearly oil field maintenance.
And also Ukraine’s fault for bombing Russian oil facilities.
Either way it’s crystal clear that Donnie see’s corporate oil thievery as more important that Ukraine’s survival or Canada’s sovereignty. I should add that this attitude and the associated behaviour is common for despots. Hitler blamed the Jews and the communists for his territorial ambitions and Donnie is blaming Canada.
And Cuba,, Mexico, and Venezuela.
I’ve got to circle back to tariffs for a moment. I don’t understand why your average American hasn’t done some math. Tariffs increases prices for goods. The government collects the increase from corporations and businesses. Businesses then raise the price of their goods to offset the cost add on to them. So the consumers are really the one’s who pay. The businesses just hand the cost off to people who buy toilet paper from Walmart.
So, why then does Walmart get the tariff dollars back from the government? They didn’t pay the fucking tariffs. Your average wipe your ass every day American paid the tariffs by throwing a few more bucks at Walmart for three ply royale.
So it seems to me that another commonality is that no matter how reckless or absurd the policies of Trump may be, that the wealthy will always benefit. Tax breaks were just the tip of the dick. The rest of the shafting is arriving with tariff refunds, deregulation, market manipulation and trade wars.
America is now a corporation. They walk like one and they talk like one, and corporations need to be regulated. But if the only regulatory agency is the government, then America has a problem, and now that problem belongs to everyone outside the American borders as well. The only step left to complete the transformation of America would be to grant the president the power to deploy the military after the chairman of Exxon requests marines to invade Alberta, or Amazon asks for the national guard to suppress a union recruitment drive.
Oh wait. Apparently Donnie already has that power.
For emergencies.