Now that we’re Making America Great Again, let’s take a minute to define what that means, so everyone understands: saying “Make America Great Again” means America is not great, while implying America once knew greatness. With the election in the books, it’s worth specifying when, precisely, America was great, as that creates a roadmap for Trump to deliver on his most essential promise.
Obviously America wasn’t great during Biden or Obama, Bush or Clinton, any MAGA can tell you that, they lived through it. The slogan existed before and after the first Trump presidency, which means even MAGA could not Make America Great Again, at least in any lasting way.
Other eras of American History also jump out as not so great.
Really, any time before the Civil War ended slavery. You can’t have a white guy driving black slaves around like cattle you can rape for more slaves, who then gets down on his knees every Sunday morning to Thank God for His Blessings; if you see anything great in that you’re fucked up beyond repair. Even the most traditional loving MAGidiot isn’t calling for slavery. Safe to say, when we say “again,” we’re not talking pre-1865.
Fast forward to 1941, with Pearl Harbor in flames, not feeling too great, and dropping a couple nuclear bombs on cities full of civilians, it’s hard to see World War as a time of greatness, even in victory, and MAGA agrees, they elected Trump to avert World War. World War I can be excluded for the same reason, and with The Depression in between, this era, where we lost and starved and killed, is not one anyone wants to bring back.
The Roaring 20s were a time of excess, an unregulated market where FOMO created a bubble, led to a stock market crash, a run on the banks. Good times for sure, be they didn’t end well. Sounds familiar though.
After the Civil War and before the First World War you had Jim Crow segregation, the completion of Native American genocide, the emergence of the Robber Barons, who I guess were like Trump and Musk, toasting themselves in tux and tail. Meanwhile, poverty wage workers were in the streets, fighting violent protests in defense of our most basic rights. Children were free to work a long day without overtime, there was no Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, no unemployment compensation or tuition assistance, food stamps, etc., the era of the Robber Barons was capitalism as it was always meant to be, where it was clear who the winners and losers were. Filthy streets and streams, chimneys belching smoke, railroads clanging through neighborhoods. Not great, for most.
Seems if America truly enjoyed a time of greatness, it must have been after 1945, yet in the 70s we had Nixon, Vietnam, long lines for gas, high inflation, cities in decay — no one says, Make America Great Again, like the 70s! The same is true for the 60s.
Some confuse the Reagan era as great, but in reality that’s where MAGA hate began. Reagan-era policies, like allowing banks to grow beyond state borders, led straight to the Financial Crisis, the Freedom Caucus, the Tea Party, on so on. MAGA expects Trump to fix the problems created by Reagan, not double down on them.
It seems America’s potential period of greatness, then, is 1946-1959, after The Bomb, before JFK.
Of course mistakes were made then, too, and their effect continues to be felt. Once the Republicans got back in the White House in 1952 you seen a rash of poor decision making. The CIA overthrew the elected leader of Iran and placed the Shah back on the throne, now Iran is a fundamental theocracy, leader of the Axis of Evil, America’s most ardent critic, busily building a nuclear bomb for its neighbors, a source of funding for the terrorists our bloated military remains unable to fight no matter how much money we give them. In support of exploitative multinational companies in search of outsized profits, and to avoid a wave of nationalization, we meddled in Latin America, planting the seeds of the Border Crisis by installing systematic instability and generational poverty. At home, Republicans used television to silence and blackball people they didn’t agree with, and more sinister technologies to track and monitor our movements, violating the Bill of Rights with careless ease. During the 50s the Military Industrial Complex became so dangerous Ike himself outlined the nature of its threat in his final speech as president. This is the problem when you whitewash history, people start longing for a time that never existed.
Yet, there were aspects of greatness in the 50s. Many important metrics peaked. Guys could afford a house and car, a couple kids, all while the wife stayed home. Healthcare and college were affordable. For one generation guys could retire from their first job, with healthcare and a pension. Perhaps it marked the ultimate evolution of man. The corporate tax rate stood around 90%. Investments were made in infrastructure. The peak for organized labor lifted wages across the board. A focus on workers’ rights seemed to solve all of society’s problems: a healthy middle class, earning and spending, with only tiny minorities of super rich and destitute poor, it was an economic miracle.
So there was an American greatness, and it’s ok to pine for its return.
The problem, obviously, is the politicians who profited most by claiming they want to Make America Great Again are about to enact the exact opposite wrong set of policies. Republicans hate unions and have dedicated the last fifty years to eviscerating the middle class. A single dude now needs three dead-end jobs to pay rent, has no healthcare, no plan for retirement, and he voted Republican because he thinks they can make it all go away. As Marco Rubio cautioned members of his own party, be careful, if these working class people keep voting for us, they will eventually expect us to do something for them in return.
Lucky for the Republican party, there’s a sucker born every minute. With cuts to education and targeted social media newsrooms, truth has become a concept without relevance. It really doesn’t matter. Believe whatever you want.
The mistakes made during the Reagan presidency were in aid of Trickle Down economics. The results are in: historic inequality and corporate profits, inflated prices, poor service and quality, no accountability, an insurmountable $35 trillion debt, and nothing to show for it but a bunch of fat generals and admirals and the vast obsolete oil-dependent military industrial complex they risked everything to preserve.
Prior to Reagan, companies were banned from using profits to buy back their own stock. Makes sense, right? In that world, companies needed to spend the profits or have them be taxed, so they would hire more people, provide more benefits and compensation, improve their facilities, etc., etc., instead those profits go right into the pockets of the people who decided to use them to buy back their own stock.
Innovation and improved skills have increased productivity, yet wages are stagnant, hours have increased, and retirement age becomes another meaningless concept once Social Security goes belly up.
Don’t forget: it was Reagan who poisoned Labor when the Air Traffic Controllers went on strike and the president refused to uphold the laws he had placed his hand on The Bible and sworn to defend.
If Reagan at all sounds like Trump to you, you see the biggest damage done.
Reagan showed rich people how easy it was to get tax cuts. By controlling the media, rich people could parley celebrity into Electoral votes, and that means Supreme Court Justices. Once the right court was in place, the learned scholars would agree to pervert campaign finance law, seeing corporations as immortal citizens, with First Amendment rights, which would include spending as much money as they want on any election: it’s Free Speech.
All celebrity politicians ask for in return is applause. Once we elected an actor, politics became a joke, the White House, home to clowns.
Despite the evidence that Trickle Down was not working, Bush also cut taxes on the rich, as part of his energetic response to 9/11. Everyone knows Trump’s only legislative win was cutting taxes on the rich, and he did so without excuse. Trump’s tax cuts did not pay for themselves, and in the intervening years, half of the benefit went to the richest 5%, while the debt doubled.
Yet, those same Trump tax cuts are set to expire during the next presidency.
In your natural life, have you ever seen a rich guy surrender a hard earned tax cut?
When the Bush era tax cuts expired during the Obama administration, what did he say? “I’m going to work with the Republicans on this one.”
Democrats can’t get away with that line anymore, so it had to be Trump.
That’s why I said six months ago Trump would win.
Rich guys love tax cuts, and rich guys get what they want. Who do you think is giving you the news, telling you what to think? They legitimized Trump and made him not just electable, but Christ-like.
Trump promised to cut taxes on the rich again, prompting Musk to admit he would be ruined if Trump lost. Musk spent a couple hundred million to get Trump elected, but that’s chump change compared to what he stands to make. It’s pretty clear, buying the right politician is one of the most important investments any businessman can make.
Yet, which of them do you think is telling the truth, and when?
Musk made his name selling electric vehicles, something Trump is supposedly against. In this way they seem unlikely allies, meaning their bond runs deeper.
Trump has been critical of the Pentagon and Forever War. On his way out the last time he authorized the Secretary of the Army to bring home all US troops from everywhere around the world, which is certainly in his power as Commander in Chief, but he found out that day the Pentagon is more autonomous than he thought.
Enter Musk.
If you think the Pentagon is going to let just any free spirit come along and launch a thousand satellites into outerspace, you have to be some kind of fucking idiot. He’s the Pentagon’s boy, carefully selected for his many talents.
Musk is not a proponent of free speech. He bought Twitter precisely because it had become the tool those in power fear the most, an unfiltered and immediate means of communicating with large groups. Remember when DNC Leaks was trending, which led to the resignation of the DNC Chair on the first day of the convention, that whole story? Twitter proved how dangerous it was that day. It wasn’t like Facebook, which no one takes seriously. Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter quickly became another platform no one trusts. You notice how no one complains about the billions of dollars in lost market value. The people that put up the money to rob people of the freedom to communicate, whatever the cost, it was definitely worth it.
Give Musk credit, he’s up on his Goebbels ñ “always accuse your opponent of doing what you’re about to do right before you do it, it’s guaranteed to create confusion.” I hope Taibbi and Weiss, the whole Twitter Files crew takes a good long look at how Musk used Twitter to get Trump and other Republicans elected, not just with censorship and misinformation, but manipulating algorithms to control what goes viral. Musk’s personal account averaged an incredible number of tweets per day. Next time a CEO tries to tell you how busy he is, just remember Musk is supposed to be running three of the country’s most important companies but still has time to tweet and fix every inefficiency in the federal government.
I understand it’s nearly impossible for any serious journalist to admit, in writing, yeah, I got played for a cuck, but I guess that’s why they say, once a cuck, always a cuck. It’s you who you have to see in the mirror every morning, not me. If you can accept being played, more power to you, that much should be clear by now to any journalist: look at the promotions Jeffrey Goldberg and Natasha Bertrand earned simply by parroting the latest CIA talking points.
Elon Musk is the civilian the Pentagon tapped to invade space. He’s perfect. If all those satellites had Space Force insignia, we’d be talking about a new Arms Race, and the people would demand to know where the money is coming from, the damage to the atmosphere, the risk of space junk.
The top brass at the Pentagon have been through more appropriation meetings than you can imagine. They know when it’s time to involve the private sector in national defense.
We all know who Musk is now, he’s a small, small man, the kind of guy who forces his workers to stay up all night trying figure out why Biden’s “Go Eagles” tweet had more likes than his, and fixes it.
So congratulations MAGA, you swallowed it whole; just make sure you get what you ordered, you know how they always fuck you at the drive through.
I hope you’re still standing by.
The way things are going you might have to storm the Capitol again, but this time it will be to stop your own elected representatives from delivering on the promises they made to get your vote.