Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Make America Great...Again?



During the course of Donald Trump’s campaign, his slogan was to “Make America great again”.  Now this campaign slogan was long on generality and real short on specifics, so let’s look at the promises Donald Trump made as part of his plan to “Make America Great Again”.

The Great Mexican Wall
To keep Mexican from streaming over the border to pillage and plunder low wage jobs with no benefits and questionable working conditions in this country, Donald wants to build a wall. A wall spanning the length of the US/Mexican border. A border about twenty miles short of 2,000 miles. Now the last time anyone tried to build a wall this long it took a few centuries and the slave labor of millions of Chinese. Now Donald realized, if dimly, that it was technically and logistically impossible to build a wall the whole length of the US/Mexican border and amended the plan to a wall only 1,000 miles long, thanks to “natural barriers”. But, that is equally infeasible, even if he could force Mexico to pay for it. As to how this would “Make America Great Again”, well, it wouldn’t. It would only bankrupt the US, after all, it wouldn’t do to raise taxes on himself and his oligarch buddies to pay for this boondoggle, so Grammie and Gramps would be eating cheap dog food because Social Security and Medicare are gutted in a vain effort to pay for the Great Wall of Mexico. And the rest of us, well, we’d be reduced to serfdom. So, now Donald’s Great Wall of Mexico is reduced to about 200 miles of chain-link fence and razor wire. That’ll “Make America Great Again”.

Repealing the Affordable Care Act
How would stripping nearly 20 million people of their health insurance “Make America Great Again”? The short answer is that it wouldn’t. All it would do is throw these people off insurance. They would, once again be dependent on emergency departments for their primary care. Now to put that in perspective, an uncomplicated emergency department visit costs around $600 to $1000 depending on where you live. A visit to a doctor’s office costs about $60 to $100. You do the math. But these folks won’t be having an uncomplicated visit to the ED. They will arrive sicker be admitted with longer, more complicated hospital stays, higher mortality and morbidity, and much higher costs than if they’d been able to get access to affordable healthcare. You know like the ACA has tried, imperfectly to provide. Oh, and don’t forget, if you have a pre-existing condition, well you’re not gonna get coverage at any price. The net result is that insurance premiums, copays and deductibles will spiral out of control, forcing even MORE people into the ranks of the uninsured. And since the brunt of these costs are borne by not-for-profit hospitals, many will likely be forced to close their doors as they can no longer absorb the costs, rendering safe healthcare an even more limited commodity. This means that only the wealthy can afford medical can without being pauperized. So, will repealing the Affordable Care Act “Make America Great Again”? In a word, no.

Creating a Registry for Muslims
So, some of the more rabid Islamophobes in Donald’s inner circle want to create a “registry” for Muslim Americans. Now, as history has shown us, this leads to a very slippery slope indeed. You start with a “registry”, but then a requirement for pinning a yellow crescent and star on one’s clothing is enacted. But wait, it’ll be easier to segregate Muslims into ghettos where they can be closely monitored. Internment camps will be even better as Muslims can be entirely isolated from the rest of the population. What would the final solution be? Would this “Make America Great Again”? No, history shows nothing but grief and horror to be the result.

Trying to Cure “the Gay”
How will criminalizing the LGBT community “Make America Great Again”? It won’t. I mean except to show what great homophobes folks like Mike Pence…yes, Trump’s VP…are and how they are firmly convinced that “conversion” therapy is real, and works. Especially with the liberal application of electrical shocks to the brains of those afflicted with “the gay”. Will this “Make America Great Again”? No. The only ones that need fixing are the homophobes and closet queens in the GOP and their religious right wing-nut base through lots and lots of psychotherapy. That means YOU Mike Pence.
Repealing Dodd-Frank
Repealing Dodd-Frank will NOT “Make America Great Again”. Dodd-Frank is the only thing standing between working Americans and another nuclear melt-down of the American and, potentially, the world economy is Dodd-Frank. A bill signed into law in 2010 after the 2008 recession. A recession caused by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act and its replacement by the Graham-Leach-Bliley act in 1999. These barriers had existed since the 1930’s and had provided an unprecedented security and stability the American and world financial markets. But with their removal, the stage was set for the meltdown of the US housing market. Bill Clinton’s willful participation in the passage of Graham-Leach Bliley into law, the transformation of the Democratic party into GOP Lite was complete. So, if you think repealing Dodd-Frank will “Make America Great Again”, think again. It will result in the wealthiest Americas laughing all the way to the bank while everyone who works for a living is left holding the bag, penniless and in soup lines. Trump’s economic populism ended on November 8th.

The Resurgence of White Nationalism and Racism
This weekend, the “Alt-right” held a conference in Washington. Now we need to perfectly clear, “Alt-right” is simply a polite euphemism…a “rebranding” …if you will, of white nationalism, racism and neo-Nazism. These racists and anti-Semites have found a hero in Donald Trump. Trump’s history has been one of racism and his rhetoric, from the beginning of his campaign, has been racist. First attacking Mexicans, and Hispanics in general, then moving on to other minorities and Muslims. Between November 8th and November 14th, the Southern Poverty Law Center “has reported that there were four hundred and thirty-seven incidents of intimidation… targeting blacks and other people of color, Muslims, immigrants, the L.G.B.T. community, and women.” (Okeowo, 2016). And then we have Trump appointing Breitbart CEO, racist, anti-Semite and misogynist, Steve Bannon, as his “strategist”, Jeff Sessions is his pick for AG, Mike Flynn for DHS and Mike Pompeo for DCIA, all meeting the approval of David Duke, former imperial wizard of the KKK. And this week-end, we saw the spectacle of white-supremacists screaming “Hail Trump” with a stiff right arm in the stereotypical Nazi salute. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum felt compelled to issue a statement on this white nationalist conference, stating that “The Holocaust did not begin with killing; it began with words” and for “all American citizens, our religious and civic leaders, and the leadership of all branches of government to confront racist thinking and divisive hateful speech” ("DW-US Holocaust Museum," 2016). Yet we hear no disavowal of this movement by Trump, and only limp-wristed, Milquetoast denouncements by his surrogates. The silence from the GOP leadership in the House and Senate is equally deafening, their silence being equated with assent. This will not “Make America Great Again”.

Conclusion
I could go on, for hundreds of pages. But if you haven’t gotten the point by now that Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” is as empty as the hard vacuum of interstellar space, you’re not going to. And that is because you prefer to remain willfully ignorant. Trump will not “Make America Great Again”. He will, instead, turn America into a pariah state, loot the treasury for the benefit of himself and his sycophants, and grind everyone who works for a living into serfdom.


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