Shifting, Always Shifting

It would be immediate golden age.

OK now there’s going to be a recession, but that was the plan all along.

The stock market was set to soar to new heights.

OK, now it’s tanking, but don’t worry because Trump is playing 4-D chess with the market.

Inflation was going to drop.

OK now it’s accelerating, but the president couldn’t care less if you pay more for basic goods and services.

If you are a rational person, you might think back to Trump’s promises to make every American instantly wealthier on day one of his administration, and contrast it with the reality of just three months later, when recession signs are flashing, Americans' expectations for the economy are at their lowest level since the end of the Great Recession, and financial experts say our nation’s fiscal strength is “on course for continued decline.”

But if you are a MAGA supporter, you see the best of all possible worlds.

For hardcore Trump fans, it doesn’t matter that “almost everything the administration and congressional Republicans are doing to the economy is making a collapse more likely.” It is irrelevant that Trump’s policies “have shaken a once-solid economic outlook.” And it is an insignificant detail that the GOP wants to fling America back to the Gilded Age of the 1890s, which was a great time for the rich but a horror show for everybody else.

You see, Trump’s followers have a history of not just moving the goalposts, but tearing the goalposts down, leaving the stadium, and passing out drunk in the parking lot while denying anybody was ever trying to kick a field goal in the first place.

Back in November, virtually nobody voted for a complete government overhaul that would be orchestrated by an unelected, unvetted, unaccountable billionaire. Republicans never said this was even remotely part of the plan, much less the whole objective. Many people claimed their vote for Trump was because of fucking egg prices.

But now, a lot of those same voters are cheering on oligarchs who are “effectively gaining control of the U.S. government” and threatening to end Social Security. They have rationalized their horrible decisions.

The economic outlook has gotten so bleak that a brand-new conspiracy theory — we can never get enough of those — has erupted to explain why Trump is screwing over the very people who voted for him. 

It’s a QAnon for tariffs, and it attempts to explain Trump’s “incoherent, inconsistent, self-destructive mess” and transform it into “a carefully orchestrated master plan to revive American manufacturing, reduce the national debt, reconfigure the international-alliance system, and deliver the greatest geopolitical deal of the century.”

In truth, the theory is so preposterous that it is “less a genuine plan than a way for Trump’s backers to put a strategic spin on the president’s inchoate impulses.”

This conspiracy theory has “somewhat implausibly gained adherents, if cautious ones, in respectable quarters” because of “the intense demand for some kind of coherent rationale” that covers Trump’s bizarre, self-destructive actions.

His followers can’t accept the fact that a belligerent man-child has taken over the Oval Office (again) and has no idea what he is doing.

The need to justify Trump’s nonsensical policies is evident in the fact that congressional Republicans recently passed a measure saying, “each day…shall not constitute a calendar day” as a legislative maneuver to help the buffoonish chief executive out of a legal quandary. But the GOP’s insistence that “a day is not a day seems to prove the truth of Burke’s observation that by trying to force reality to fit their ideology, radical ideologues will end up imposing tyranny in the name of liberty.”

Again, there are no goalposts here. And there never were.

Tariffs Are Terrifying… I Mean, Terrific!

Listen, I know you’re feeling nervous about the economy sinking faster than an anvil thrown into a black hole. Hey, even people who mere months ago were saying, “Get over it” are now screeching for salvation from the economic tsunami towering over us. And those people are billionaires — most of whom are apparently not very smart.

In any case, this should make you feel better: the president doesn’t give a fuck about you or the economy.

OK, maybe that’s not very comforting, but it is the truth.

You see, Trump has been “insulated from the consequences of his own actions his entire life and appears to care very littleabout the economic sinkhole he just created.”

In fact, the guy is more defiant than ever. And because there is no master plan, and no real desire to improve the lives of Americans, this bloated and rambling lunatic will continue to lead the nation down a path of chaos and despair until we hit Great Depression levels, at which point he will declare victory.

That’s what he did when he paused his idiotic tariffs for 90 days that will no doubt be filled with apprehension, dread, and confusion. But the damage has already been done.

In the interim, economists and financial experts will debate if the Trump tariffs are “the dumbest economic policy in modern history,” or merely a harbinger of recession. 

One can’t keep up with all the rationales the Trump administration has given for their arbitrary and mathematically challengedpolicy. But what the justifications have in common is that they are, at best, the kind of conservative magical thinking that got us the Iraq War and an imaginary wall on the border that Mexico paid for.

At worst, they are the active mechanization of oligarchs and madmen who want to burn the country down and reduce us all to serfs.

Somewhere in between is the most likely scenario, at least from Trump’s perspective, which is that he said he was going to do this, and now he is doing it, no matter the consequences to anyone else. In 90 days, or less, we will likely go through all this needless suffering again.

The bizarre and random nature of the tariffs have led some politicians to claim the Trump administration “is the most sloppy, unprofessional, arrogant and stupid group of people ever assembled in government.” They are saying Americans “haven’t learned yet how to battle this stupidity, [and] the country and the world is suffering from the whims of a madman.”

By the way, those are the words of Republicans.

It’s that clear to everybody. 

The tariffs are “a torrent of nonsense that threatens to destroy the very thing Trump insists on saving,” which brings up the disturbing realization that “if this is what it looks like when Trump decides he wants to save the economy, God help us if he ever decides to destroy it.”

It’s like they always say — never trust a narcissistic sociopath with 32 felonies and a half-dozen bankruptcies.

Well, maybe they didn’t say it before, but they are most certainly saying it now.

Too bad it’s far too late.

Astronomical Odds

So it appears that we are doomed.

Maybe it won’t be the collapse of civilization (although that is a charming possibility). But at the very least, America is headed for a financial cataclysm.

Is this because Trump insists on pushing through tariffs that are virtually guaranteed to tank the economy, for no discernable reason other than “because I said so”?

Yeah, that’s one factor.

Another issue is that this administration appears to be staffed solely by incompetents, lunatics, dullards, and stooges. 

Also, an egomaniacal oligarch and his fellow billionaires are raping the government so they can add another zero at the end of their net-worth calculations.

All of that is true, and the horrific combination is enough to tilt us toward economic Armageddon.

But there is another reason why America will likely be scrounging for pennies and begging for spare change soon. And that is because Republicans are in charge.

Oh sure, you are saying, once more I’m lambasting the GOP and shrieking that they will lead us into ruin. 

Actually, I’m not saying that. Historians, economists, and scientists are saying that.

You see, a recent Harvard study analyzed decades of America’s economic performance and assessed the odds of financial outcomes being based on random chance or political choices.

For example, it is a fact that the last five recessions all started under a Republican president. The researchers put the odds of getting that outcome by chance at about 3%. 

Let’s keep going. The researchers point out that “a remarkable 9 of the last 10 recessions have started when a Republican was president, [and] odds that this outcome would have occurred just by chance are 0.0098%.”

But wait — it gets crazier. Ten times since World War II, an incumbent from one party handed over the White House to a leader from the other party. In five of the last 10 transitions, a Republican followed a Democrat, and each time the economic growth rate went down. In the other five transitions, a Democrat followed a Republican, and each time the economic growth rate went up. As the researchers point out, this means, “No exceptions. Ten out of ten.” 

So when people talk about a Republican inheriting a good economy, messing it up, and then having a Democrat come in to clean up the disaster? Yeah, that’s a real thing. It has literally happened 10 times in a row over the last 80 years.

Again, what are the odds of this happening by chance? The answer is the same odds of flipping heads on 10 coin tosses in a row, which is one out of 1,024. The researchers say the “difference is statistically significant at the 99.9% level.”

What does it say about a political party that is consistently, overwhelmingly wrong on economic policy? What does it say about Americans who continue to vote for that party, generation after generation?

The answers are both disturbing and illuminating. And they likely explain why our country is the richest in the world by many measures, and yet our citizens are far poorer, stressed, and more miserable than just about any other industrialized nation.

So why does the GOP suck so bad at economic policy?

Well, other researchers have theorized that a main reason for this discrepancy is because Democrats, when faced with a financial crisis, will focus more on objective facts and try different approaches to resolve it. Republicans, on the other hand, have exactly one answer for everything: tax cuts for the rich. This is not an exaggeration. Witness the current GOP, which is desperately trying to figure out how to slash Medicaid or Social Security for the express purpose of extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which benefitted only the wealthy and did not prevent America from sliding into economic chaos. 

Throwing money at billionaires and hoping for the best is the GOP’s only method for boosting the economy, getting out of a recession, and presumably, treating frostbite and losing those last pesky 10 pounds.

This philosophy persists despite mountains of evidence that supply-side economics doesn’t work.

If we think of the economy as an automobile, and the political parties as mechanics, it’s as if the GOP’s fix is to attach square wheels to the car. And they will do this whether the car suffers from a busted engine, a cracked windshield, or an oil leak. It will be square wheels, every time.

The Democratic mechanic, in contrast, will diagnose the issue and try to repair the problem. And they will take the square wheels off the fucking car. And the car will run fine until four years later, when the car’s owner (the American people) will insist that the previous mechanic was better.

We are now entering our latest square-wheel era.

The Fisting of America

It’s not something to brag about, but I’ve seen Caligula, that 1970s cinematic monstrosity that is widely regarded as the most expensive porno ever made.

The film is repulsive, but it makes an impression.

One scene that I’ve never forgotten is when the mad emperor, played with wild-eyed intensity by Malcolm McDowell, saunters into a wedding celebration of one his army’s generals. Everyone is terrified to see him there, because they know he is a sociopathic lunatic. Sure enough, he rapes the bride in front of her newlywed husband, then rams his fist up the general’s ass. The whole movie is like that.

In any case, I’ve always wondered why everyone in ancient Rome, even tough military leaders, allowed Caligula to issue psychotic orders, destroy their society, and literally rape them without objection.

I don’t wonder about that anymore.

We live in a society where people with advanced degrees argue that tariffs will lead to prosperity, that white men have been unfairly excluded from leadership positions, and that European countries are bigger threats to us than Russia.

They believe this because one old man who struggles to speak in coherent sentences has insisted it’s all true, and they have fallen in line.

People who, just a year ago, would have guffawed at the idea of the United States annexing Canada are now seriously advocating for making that country the 51^st state (against its will, no less).

There are several reasons for this, ranging from the infantile need to “own the libs” to the zealotry of the true MAGA believer to the conservative quest for power.

But one of the chief motivators for hardcore supporters is psychological preservation. Admitting that you are wrong, especially about something major and/or central to your identify, is incredibly disturbing for most people.

If you’ve enthusiastically supported Trump to this point, despite years of evidence that he is a menace to the nation, it’s not so easy to say, “Woopsie, I guess those libtards were right after all.”

In fact, the individuals who are most likely to admit their mistakes “tend to be empathetic, self-aware, and curious — all traits that prevent ever having voted for Trump in the first place.”

So people in red hats with Trump flags in their yard will come up with tortuous explanations for, say, administration goons who endangered national security “by chatting about a military strike in a Signal chat that included a journalist.” 

Now, that’s a really crazy example, because nobody is that bafflingly stupid, right? But if this were to happen, Trump fans will not admit the administration displayed ungodly levels of incompetence and exhibited glaring hypocrisy. 

Hell, they will even defend the administration for deporting their spouses rather than admit they were wrong to vote for a corrupt autocrat. Think about that — even after Trump has destroyed their lives, his devoted followers will not acknowledge that the man is anything less than perfect.

Of course, there is another reason why so many people acquiesce to Trump, and that is simple fear.

But as powerful as that emotion is, it remains in second place when it comes to subservience to Trump. Fear is not the reason why Republicans are trying to “make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday, rename Dulles Airport in Trump’s honor, carve Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore, and create a new $250 bill with Trump’s likeness.”

That’s just blind obedience. And there is a lot of it going around.

What Remains

When I was in college, my poli-sci professor said that if you’re ever asked about the root cause of any aspect of American culture, you should pinpoint one of three events:

The Civil War 

The New Deal

The Vietnam War

He said the odds were great that you would be right.

I went to college a million years ago, so since then, another event — the September 11 attacks — can safely be added to that list. But there is a fifth epoch-defining catastrophe that is a strong contender for history-altering status.

I’m talking about the Covid-19 pandemic, which as we all know, is celebrating its fifth anniversary this month. Even at the time, many of us realized that the pandemic was not going to be a weird pop-culture snapshot, like lines for gas stations in the 1970s or the OJ trial in the 1990s.

No, this little bug was going to fuck us up permanently.

When we look back at the pandemic, it’s fascinating how so-called alarmists were closer to the truth than anyone else, and how many people who foresaw the calamity were dismissed.

The list of how Covid-19 changed America (overwhelmingly in negative ways) is lengthy. We are now unhealthier, angrier, and more socially isolated than before. We drink more, are more distrustful of our institutions, and more likely to be anti-vaxx. The pandemic decimated the economy, set our kids back academically and socially, and destabilized the government. Covid gave us an America more into fascism, social Darwinism, and nutjob conspiracy theories. 

And this is an incomplete accounting of the disaster.

The pandemic left Americans “more alone, detached, and disconnected — changes that have lingered.” Those gray months in 2020 have to be understood “not as a singular event but as a multifaceted crisis that exposed deep-seated fault lines in American society.”

Five years after the start of lockdowns, mass death, and political malfeasance, “America stands fractured yet paradoxically transformed” because “the crisis magnified our deepest divides — urban versus rural, privilege versus poverty, individualism versus collective survival — while stress-testing democracy itself.”

We have never gotten over Covid. The pandemic is a direct cause of our nation’s current state, which is somewhere between “teetering democracy” and “full-blown collapse.” 

Weirdly, the pandemic is a chief reason why Trump lost the 2020 election and why he won in 2024. You see, “in the wake of the pandemic, which [the Trump] administration badly mismanaged, the country grew more skeptical of government.” But rather than blame the incompetent buffoon who suggested guzzling bleach as a cure for the virus, the nation’s “trust in the media, science, medicine, the judicial system, and other mainstay institutions of American life plunged as more voters embraced the doubts Mr. Trump had sown for years.”

Pandemics “tend to make people frightened, and more willing to embrace magical solutions.” They also push people toward authoritarianism, and alter the very core of a nation’s identity.

No, you will not catch me among the misguided, delusional group of Americans who feel nostalgic for the pandemic.

But I am among the Americans who were forever altered when Covid hit the country. Because that group includes all of us.

The virus has never really gone away.