Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Tariffs and the Petty Politics of Personal Retribution
Donald Trump trafficks unashamedly in the politics of petty personal retribution. Since the former and future president emerged from that gold escalator on June 19th, 2015, and announced that he would launch what we foolishly assumed was a quixotic and impossible presidential campaign, Trump has been about punishment.
Then and now, Trump seems less interested in rewarding his cultists than in punishing his many enemies. However, it would be more accurate to state that Trump rewarded his slavish followers by punishing the massive percentage of the American public that he sees as his enemies and, consequently, the enemies of the American people.
Since he entered the political arena through birtherism, it’s all about making people pay for Trump. That rage-poisoned instinct predates his entry into presidential politics.
The Democratic Party wants to make people pay in a markedly different, even antithetical fashion.
AOC and Bernie Sanders want to make billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. This would make society more equitable, and we could fund programs that help people at the bottom have at least an opportunity for upward mobility.
That message should resonate with the sizable portion of the American public that are not billionaires, or even millionaires, for that matter.
Kamala Harris played the “let’s make billionaires pay their fair share” card, albeit less aggressively and authentically than her more left-leaning colleagues.
It didn’t work. Republicans have been able to gaslight the Americans into thinking that making people who live in gold houses and have diamond elevators pay slightly more in taxes is Communism and Class War and will bring about the end of Democracy and capitalism as we know it.
They’ve tricked the working class into thinking that the enemies they should hate so much that they want to see them punished are drag queens, trans athletes, Black Lives Matter activists, unauthorized immigrants, the media, big tech, government employees, Democrats (or the Deep State.
Those are just the enemies within, as Trump has deemed the entire Democratic Party. Then there are our external enemies, who Trump has deemed almost as serious a threat to our nation’s survival as Adam Schiff and 60 Minutes.
Trump has vowed to make other nations pay for not doing what he wants all the time by levying steep tariffs on imports from China, Mexico, Canada, and all of the other countries Trump hates because they’re insufficiently worshipful towards him.
It’s the essence of Trump: these bad countries are cheating and not playing fair, so we must use our enormous power to even the score.
The problem is that consumers end up paying for tariffs, literally and figuratively, through inflation, higher costs,, and trade wars.
“High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. The result is more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and less and less competition,” noted Communist and America-hater Ronald Reagan.
Reagan might not have been the smartest man in the world, but he understood economics enough to understand why high tariffs might seem like a money-maker but are generally a bad idea and another sign that while Trump may understand posturing and pretending to be a tough guy, he’s incredibly stupid when it comes to shit like that.
In a surreal reversal of the usual dynamic, Trump has empowered Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, with a fortune of four hundred and twenty-nine billion dollars, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who has a mere billion dollars, to go on a wild firing spree that will result in tens of thousands of people losing solid, good-paying government jobs with benefits.
In the GOP’s mind, the bureaucracy is the Deep State, and the Deep State must be dismantled or destroyed.
On his social media site, Twitter, Musk promised that working for him at DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, would entail “tedious work,” making “lots of enemies,” and, as the poisonous icing on this ten-layer shit cake “compensation is zero.”
That might seem harsh or unappealing, but Musk only has four hundred and twenty-nine billion dollars, so he certainly couldn’t pay the salaries for what he describes as “high IQ” “small government revolutionaries” eager to work eighty hours a week ruining the lives of the middle class.
We know that Ramaswamy and Musk are serious people with serious ideas who should be taken seriously, because the name of the new agency comes from a meme of a cute widdow doggie and that was then transformed into a form of crypto.
These are serious, dignified, deeply kind people. It would be an HONOR to lose your livelihood and insurance to these billionaires. Ramaswamy tweeted of an interaction that attests to his vivid imagination, “Just got approached by a federal employee who asked for a selfie & shared how much she appreciates DOGE: “It has to happen & if I get fired, I’m ok with it.” Most humans are good people & yes, that includes most federal workers, too. It’s the size & scope of the *bureaucracy* that’s the problem.”
Here’s the thing, fuckface: the “bureaucracy” is made up of good people. They may be sinister abstractions to Trump and his Cabinet of Cruelty, but they’re people with children and mortgages and dreams who do not deserve to lose their livelihoods because the richest man in the world has a hard-on for firing people.
I should know. My dad had one of those government jobs with benefits, a 401K, and a solid salary when I was a kid. My family could live a comfortable middle-class existence because of my dad and his good government job.
My dad was valedictorian in high school, graduated from the University of Chicago, and got a job that wasn’t sexy or exciting or even satisfying but was solid.
My old man had his little slice of the American dream. Then, his office was closed due to inefficiency, and he never had another halfway decent job with benefits again. His wife left him, and he struggled to take care of me and my sister.
My sister ended up going to a prestigious boarding school, and I spent my teen years in a group home for emotionally disturbed adolescents.
The closing of my dad’s office had a massive negative effect on my his life and my own. My children suffer and are affected by my dad’s office closing because I have PTSD from my childhood (and, full disclosure, adulthood) that affects the way that I parent. I wish it didn’t, but my depression and anxiety can’t help but inform the way I behave and see the world.
Multiply that long-lasting damage by tens of thousands, and you have the possible outcome of Musk and Ramaswamy cost-cutting. My dad might have been an unnecessary expense in their mind. To me, he was everything. Then he lost what he had. He never recovered.
Small government advocates made my dad pay for being redundant and unnecessary. My family is still paying. Call me crazy, but I would prefer if billionaires were forced to pay their fair share rather than having them take malicious glee in dismantling the social safety net en route to creating a future that’s rosier than ever for the super-rich and a nightmare for all of us struggling just to get by.
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan doesn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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