Contemporary fascism is usually described with words, but numbers will also work. Trump’s proposed budget is remarkable for quantifying cruelty, shifting the tax burden from the rich to everyone else and offering hopes and prayers rather than food and shelter for the neediest among us. Of the $1.6T total budget fully $1.2B goes to the cost of past and future wars and the Department of Homeland Surveillance. They get an increase of $155B, including $25B for a missile defense system. Recall that we spent over $100B on Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative that never worked except to funnel huge amounts to military contractors. Non-defense spending has been cut $163B. The biggest losers are HHS (from which was taken $33B), HUD (down $34B) and state/international programs (down $49B). Simple enough to understand: Tax cuts for people earning MORE THAN $500,000/year and massive and painful service cuts for the working poor. About 17M Americans who have had health insurance will lose it.
The Senate might have been able to bring some reason to the “process” we use to govern a great nation, but did not. A lone Republican Senator, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska had only bad things to say about the catastrophic effects of the bill on working class Americans, but voted for it anyway. She signaled a moment of courage and then, without ceremony, capitulated. Senate Democrats proposed a tiny increase in the tax rate for incomes over $5M (from 37%, as it was under Clinton and Biden) to 39% and even that was rejected.
Whatever is in there we can be sure that Trump will cite it for authorization to take heinous and anti-constitutional acts. Does he have any idea what he just signed? Trump famously does not read — anything. The Department of Defense and the intelligence agencies have begun making videos in Fox News style as the President’s Daily Briefing (PDR) to get him to consume any new information, since if it is put to paper he will refuse to read it. The PDR is what the USG (US government) knows about what is happening in the world and sets up the strategic decisions that our nation must make to stay ahead of events. Trump could give a shit what it says, and instead of harnesses facts and reason will go with his gut, and take the rest of us with him.
Trump’s budget priorities are clear: Help the people who are on “our side” and bring great harm to people who are not. And so if you are an Ivy League elitist, immigrant, Black American, gay or lesbian, Muslim, Palestinian, concerned about global climate change, supporter of renewable energy, a poor and working poor American or an even poorer, ill, sick, starving non-American you should suffer. Balancing the budget is clearly not the point, since Trump will borrow $3 TRILLION from your children and grandchildren to reward his wealthy supporters. Their shared hatreds is the point. Trump’s validation of the prejudices of the ignorant and uninformed is his gift to them. Their uncritical support for him regardless of policies that are not in their own best interests is their gift in return. Gift exchange, even older than capitalism itself.
We already incarcerate a large percentage of our population than any country on earth, and we have the greatest income inequality, the massive almost unimaginable difference between those at the top and bottom of society. Under Trump all that will get even worse.
