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Grifting the USA

Blogging has been sparse lately, as I’m still getting over the shock. It’s not easy facing up to the fact that I will quite likely witness the end of a republican (small “r”, you’ll notice) government in the United States. Sooner or later everything put together falls apart, but I figured we had at least several more decades.

On that cheery note, a few observations. I am just beginning to get back into reading the newspapers and my blogs, as I couldn’t face them for a while. Something has struck me, and while I’m sure I’m not alone in this observation, I’ll still pass it along.

It’s an odd thing that while Trump is the man in the middle of the forces that are destroying the American experiment, it is totally unclear whether he has any significant role in what is being done in his name, other than the corruption that is his stock in trade. Just to remark on one thing, consider the Trump tweets.

Recently Trump tweeted something to the effect that flag burners should be imprisoned or lose their citizenship. This was a brilliant move, or at least it was if it was a strategic move. But it’s impossible to tell. It is perfectly possible that Trump is just exhibiting the symptoms of his mental illness, and is not at all aware of the political function served by these tweets.

Why are they brilliant? Because they serve admirably to distract attention from the actual harm he and his handlers/minions are doing. At around the same time he tweeted about flag burning, he signaled, in a far less attention grabbing way, that he was on board with Paul Ryan’s plan to destroy Medicare.

So, what do we hear about? My wife tells me that the New London Day devoted an entire article today to flag burning, a form of protest that is both rare and self defeating. The press is like that. It may hint at the fact, or even come right out and say, that Trump’s tweets are absurd and full of lies, but like dogs following a scent, they will keep to the trail that he lays down. Meanwhile, the actual harm that he is doing is pretty much ignored. Has the Day covered the fact that he wants to destroy Medicare with the same thoroughness that it covered the flag burning non-issue? Not likely. Are the American people being made aware of the fact that the nominee for Secretary of Education wants to destroy public education, and that she makes even Obama’s charter school loving appointee look like a public school fanatic. Are they being made aware that his nominee for Attorney General is a racist, or that his nominee for Secretary of the Treasury is a Goldman Sachs alum, the same Goldman Sachs that he trashed on the campaign trail. I’m not saying that these facts cannot be discovered; I’m merely saying they aren’t getting anywhere near the attention that his seemingly mindless tweets are getting. Distraction is a useful tool if you want to manipulate people into not just accepting, but embracing, policies that cause them harm. Trump is a grifter, and, whether deliberately or through pure instinct, he’s bringing those skills to bear on the presidency. It won’t work if the grift is exposed, but the chance of that are slim to none.

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