The Bigger Picture: Greed Is the Real “G” in MAGA

Shouldn't America be better than that?

Democrats and their allies narrowly lost an election in November. This is the political reality everybody –regardless of outlook– will have to deal with in the coming months.

The question becomes, for those of us enamored of another path for civilization, what are WE going to do about it? The most commonplace answer from the general public, from what I can tell, is nothing.

We/They are sick and tired of the political choices presented to us by a process mostly divorced from our everyday lives.

An Associated Press / NORC poll, released the day after Christmas, says sixty-five per cent of American adults now feel the need to limit their consumption of news about politics and the government. A Great Tune-Out is in progress, regardless of persuasion.

TV networks, sans Fox, are tanking viewers. The consolidation of legacy media by believers in the market as the primary determinant of our culture and morality is nearly complete. “Follow the money” never seemed so prescient as it does now.

Therein lies the weakness of the rightwing/cult visioning. It’s based on the acquisition of wealth as the highest power, and the promise of advancement for all provided they buy into the belief system. (Yes, it does resemble the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” in this regard.)

What lies unsaid here is that the game is rigged. Sure, you can get a mortgage. It just won’t be the same as the loans Elon Musk takes on his stock value.

Speaking of money, the cost of running for office has never been more expensive or time-consuming, giving an outsized advantage to well-connected super citizens of the future. Just 1% of lawmakers currently serving in state legislatures either currently hold or most recently held jobs that are traditionally considered working class professions. Our national legislative bodies often look more like an assisted care living facility, rather than gatherings of people looking for the best ways to advance the common good.

One study I reported on this year found that just 1% of lawmakers currently serving in state legislatures either currently hold or most recently held jobs that are traditionally considered working class professions. These are the minor leagues for democracy and they are chock full entitled idiots.

We all know –or think we know– what Trump 2.0 has envisioned for the United States of America. Our nation’s future will be guided by those who would engineer an unartful attempt to reorder society along the lines of the gilded era.

This seemingly will be easy to do, facilitated by an erasure of history and failed expectations. The incoming administration’s allies are so confident in the imminent arrival of a MAGA utopia that they feel little need to sweat the details.

That’s why nominations for executive positions include an array of deluded simpletons and commonplace grifters. They will be expected to do what they are told with the promise of each action being a part of a greater good and/or the consequence of banishment, persecution, or mob justice.

Larger policies promised as balm to the masses will be undermined by exceptions to the new rules. Exemptions to tariffs will be the price of doing business (funding the ongoing authoritarian regime and its stewards) in the new era. Governance will be refocused on greasing the wheels of wealth acquisition, with things like the social safety net and enforcement of minority rights cast aside under a cloud of conspiracy.

The cost of government will (theoretically) go down, as having fewer actual constituents (the already wealthy) is cheaper than funding for large parts of the populace’s wants. In reality, as we can see from the perspective of fallen authoritarians throughout history, greed is the most expensive vice.

Getting back to the original question, namely WTF can we do about Trump V2, the answer isn’t putting all our energies into fighting bad-faith legislation on a one-by-one basis. The law, after all, in an era where wealth is the basis of power, only counts when it serves the ruler’s needs.

What Trump V.2 really stands for is the final enshittification of government. It’s just a gussied up version of what Republicans have been doing for years, namely decrying the administrative state as a bad thing, and then proceeding to make it so when elected. Watch what happens to the US Postal Service if it gets privatized.

History, though, also has a way of defying expectations, and there are forces at play threatening the continuing existence of nation-states and their rulers. Much has been made of creeping authoritarianism internationally which threatens to upend the existing world order.

The migrations fueling xenophobia and ultranationalism are not driven by race based conspiracies of conquest; they are an ongoing consequence of the shortsightedness of an industrial civilization ignoring the totality of its actions in the biosphere.

Anti-science narratives are useful in this authoritarian movement because of the doubt they raise over the sanctity of officialdom. Yes, big Pharma is bad. It’s not bad because of science, it’s bad because of its allegiance to The Market as the rule of law.

The reemergence of spheres of influence as a political framework for international relations as envisioned by Putin, Xi, et.al., are underlying factors behind Trump’s shopping trips for nations to dominate or acquire. (Anybody who remembers the Axis of Germany, Italy, and Japan in the mid twentieth century should have an idea of where such visions are headed.)

Climate change and authoritarian governments driven by greed or creed are consequences of an existence built around our species as the arbiters of sentience. According to some futurists we can add artificial intelligence to that list.

We’re not at this juncture simply because Trump won an election. We’ve been headed in this direction for a while, as Jason Linkins, writing in The New Republic, explains:

• The sad fact of modern life is that we’ve been trending toward oligarchy for a long while now. Over a decade ago, a study released by Princeton University researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page reached an unsettling conclusion: that “rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will” of the people. “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy,” they wrote, “while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

• Ten years on, this is no longer an esoteric matter or a funny feeling running in the background of American life. The once and future Trump era promises to put the cherry on the oligarchic sundae. Between the anarchy wrought by various Supreme Court rulings (notably Dobbs and the administrative state–decimating Loper Bright decision), the renewed potential for financial ruin in the form of government-endorsed crypto rug-pulls and the widespread rise of addictive sports gambling apps, a defanged federal government allowing financial predators and polluters a freer rein, and the coming loss of health care coverage as the GOP renews its war on the Affordable Care Act, the next few years are going to come with a substantial body count.

• They will also come with a collapse in faith in government, just as we have soured on the increasingly shitty tech platforms that dominate our lives. A citizenry that was once fairly well cared for will realize that they’ve been abandoned to the wolves, alone in the world against all manner of natural disasters, high-tech criminals, and a consumer world no longer protected by any kind of watchdog. It’s hard to know what the United States will become once everyone is more like a cornered animal than an actual citizen. As the former CEO of United Healthcare might attest, it’s probably not the best idea to leave such a heavily armed populace so discontented and disconnected. In that way, we might come to learn the most important role that the administrative state plays in our daily lives: It helps keep the peace.

Piecemeal opposition to specific actions nor calls for prosecuting wrongdoing don’t amount to a solution to what we’re facing. (Some fights are needed, but they amount to winning battles, not wars.)

What’s needed is a vision, one that won’t start with assumptions inclusive of The Market as a ruling force. Yes, the billionaires and political consultants will hate it. That’s kinda the point.

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The Battle Over What to Tell Americans About Drinking via Robin Caryn Rabin at The New York Times

• Health authorities all over the world have been encouraging people to drink less, quit drinking altogether or aim for two to three alcohol-free days each week.

• In recent years, the World Health Organization, Canadian health authorities, the United Kingdom and several other countries have all signed on to the idea that there’s no safe level of drinking. Lately some scientists have ventured the opinion that the risks could start with the first drop.

• But the official advice in the United States has not much changed, despite the conclusion of the 2020 scientific report that the risks associated with low consumption may have been underestimated.

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Texas sues to impose bigotry on the rest of the country by Lisa Needham at Public Notice

• Everyone knows that the GOP has made transphobia one of the centerpieces of its messaging, with the explicit goal of running trans people out of public life altogether. They’ve particularly fixated on trans women athletes, declaring that it is their deep love for the sanctity of women’s sports that drives them. So, it’s not surprising that Republicans have been demanding that the NCAA entirely ban trans athletes from competing.

• But here’s the thing. There are roughly 510,000 NCAA athletes. And, according to the president of the NCAA, there are fewer than 10 trans athletes total. Even if all of these efforts to “protect” women’s sports were in good faith, this would still be a solution in search of a problem.

• Needless to say, these efforts are not in good faith, which is why, for example, the state’s complaint won’t even use the term trans woman or trans athlete, instead calling them men or “biological males.” It’s why there are dozens of paragraphs about athletes who are not trans, are not NCAA athletes, and are not even American athletes, like Caster Semenya and Imane Khelif. Invoking Semenya, a South African runner, and Khelif, an Algerian boxer, is a favorite tactic of transphobic right-wingers, sending the not-so-subtle message that they will police the gender of anyone they deem insufficiently female.

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How Sheriffs Might Power Trump’s Deportation Machine by Jessica Pishko at The New Yorker

• Trump’s new Administration is poised to alter existing guidelines so that even more arrestees can enter deportation proceedings. In some states, it is possible that sheriffs will be able to arrest people for simply crossing the border. In 2023, Texas passed Senate Bill 4, which would allow local law enforcement to arrest individuals suspected only of violating immigration law; it is being disputed in the courts. Similar bills passed in Iowa and Oklahoma, where they are also under court challenge, and in November Arizonans voted to implement Ballot Measure 314, a comparable law. Though the newly elected sheriff of Maricopa County, Jerry Sheridan—the lieutenant to the infamous sheriff Joe Arpaio—has said that he doesn’t think the law applies to his office, he has expressed a willingness to detain people in something “similar” to Arpaio’s Tent City.

• Because most sheriffs are elected, governors or attorneys general have little power over them. They are excluded from the Hatch Act, which bars some government employees from engaging in political activity while on the job, and largely permitted to campaign in uniform. They can make decisions about department policy without seeking approval and with low risk of public opprobrium. They often voice political opinions; before the Presidential election, one Ohio sheriff went so far as to threaten residents who publicly supported Kamala Harris. In a 2021 fund-raising letter, the Claremont Institute—a conservative think tank that the Times has called a “nerve center of the American right,” and a part of the advisory board for Project 2025—asserted that sheriffs have “jurisdictional latitude.” In the institute’s view, this “places them on the front lines of the defense of civilization.”