[image: Work Makes Freedom, Nazi death camp slogan]
Make America Great Again
When were America’s golden days? Certainly they were not in my lifetime. Perhaps they were in the roaring 1920s when jazz, dancing, and bathtub gin were popular. Or maybe they were in the 1890s when immigrants streamed into the halls of Ellis Island in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, populated the cities of the east coast, then took part in land rushes, and added to the experiment that was America. Or maybe they were in the 1840s when we annexed one-third of our land by taking it from Mexico. Or maybe it occurred in different times when we first took land away from Native Americans and drove them into clusters on reservations; or when we brought in black slaves and sold them like cattle; or when we stole all that land from Mexico and have been trying to keep it from them ever since; or when we brought in Chinese workers to build the railway system to the Pacific while they starved and died in droves; or when we rounded up American citizens of Japanese descent and put them in concentration camps because we feared they might not be loyal to America in our war with Japan. Pick your own time. Whatever it is, Trump wants to take us back to it. Here is the vision of greatness that I believe he has in mind:
Pick up any right-leaning newspaper, or report dealing with financial, economic, or investment news and you are likely to find one or more articles that warn about the dangers of our national debt, or how Social Security and Medicare are going broke, or why Obamacare, or Food Stamps and other aid to people need to be cut. And their solutions? Get rid of Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, Food Stamps, unemployment insurance, aid to dependent children, and aid to the disabled. Also, everyone should pay a flat tax of about 15 percent by filling in a postcard and sending the Treasury 15 percent of their pay. And the final cut is to get rid of the IRS. All of everyone’s financial problems would then be solved. We would all be on Easy Street. I think that is somewhere near the Trump Tower.
The only objections I have to this plan are the following: We have 57.3 million seniors who paid into Social Security and Medicare, who also depend on them, and who would be instantly in need of the same amount of aid. The same new needs would be generated for the 5.6 million disabled people who depend on Social Security Disability Income; true also for the 52.2 million of public assistance; true also for the 6.9 million drawing unemployment; same for the 47 million living in poverty; and true also for the homeless.
Those who would benefit are those who paid more than 15 percent in income taxes prior to having them cut. But that is a conditional benefit. It would apply only to those who could find their way over, under, around, or through the masses of humanity blocking and raiding supermarkets, and doctors’ offices, and hospitals, and government buildings, and hundreds of roads leading to all those places. These new millions of hungry, and homeless, and sick, and tired would likely all sit down and stop all traffic, by any means, such that those better off would have to go home, board up their houses, man their arsenals and get ready to protect whatever they have. The police, the National Guard, and the active duty military would not be able to do much about the new chaos. What could they do, and to whom? Would carpet bombing or nuclear weapons help?
Creative filmmakers tell us the U.S. economy would likely come to a standstill, all commerce would stop, and incomes would fall to zero, and it would pretty much be every man, woman, and child alone to fight and fend for himself, or herself. Sporadic battles would break out everywhere, and each new battle would create another, and another. It would be survival of the toughest, the fittest, the luckiest, and the fastest. Those aboard aircraft carriers at sea would have an advantage, as long as they didn’t care about their relatives, friends, and neighbors who were being killed daily.
Gasoline would become a scarce commodity. Clusters of raiders would be out and about stopping and killing those travelers who were not armed and ready for a fight—just for their gasoline. The same raiders would also be on the prowl for food, and medicines, and other survival items. The raiders would form clusters in compounds. They would return to add to their stockpiles whatever they could find while out seeking and destroying. They might even kill anyone who dared to get within 50 miles of their compounds.
Ultimately, we might all be forced back to the earliest days of our ancestors, c. 250,000 BC, that anthropologists tell us was marked by three driving forces—raping, pillaging, and plundering. But, why would that be a problem to those on the right who merely followed their instincts like lemmings to the abyss while a huckster told them he just wanted to Make America Great Again?
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Scott
If these dire (but necessary?) actions were taken, you have described two possible scenarios. The first would be a sit-down strike that would be peaceful and nonviolent and is unlikely to happen except the disabled community with no other recourse. In the second, more likely as you describe, would be anarchy, just what the conservatives want, ultimate freedom from all government control to do whatever one wants and can get away with. Oh, Mr. Trump, what a wonderful world that would be.
I can just see them storming the White House and yelling like they did in 1789 at the palace… "Off with his head! Off with his head!"
Ron
Love ya!
Jane