As I've said recently, if you study political science, your message is "Be afraid!" If you study history, your message is "Be patient." We are seeing some of that in action right now.
One of the most pernicious ideas in American politics is the idea that we "need to run America like a business." The fact is most businesses fail. Government cannot be allowed to fail, and if you don't believe me, take a look at failed states.
"Business" typically organizes things hierarchically, with little democratic accountability. This results in things like terrible products - or good products/ideas that become worse over time as the product moves from the engineers or inventors to the MBAs. To the degree there's accountability it usually takes the form of bankruptcy or some other form of "restructuring" or mergers. None of these is really acceptable in a country.
What's more, there is no secret cheat code that unlocks when you become a businessman. We have all sorts of incompetence being demonstrated daily, like the hamfisted way they are shuttering grants.
Even the two most central animating principles of the Trump Restoration - tariffs and deportations - are being botched, simply as policy. Take tariffs. (Please, take them.) They are being touted as "Art of the Deal!" style negotiating. Trump is playing 11th dimensional chess! The reality is that every possible potential positive way to use tariffs has been botched. No one with two functioning brain cells should trust Trump to abide by any new trade deals, when he's violated the existing ones. He's isolated us from our allies at precisely the time he's decided to launch a trade war with China - which require coordination with allies.
On deportations, Trump (or more likely Stephen Miller) has taken the worst possible political stance on what was his strongest issue. He's deported people without due process and even suggested he would do this to citizens. The Abrego Garcia case has become central to our understanding of his policies, and that is the ground he is least favored on. Rather than take an actual MS-13 member who ideally has committed a serious crime, Trump has picked on a legal resident who is a good citizen. You want to see his poll numbers plummet among Hispanics? This should do it!
If you do down the line, from USAID to Education to cancer research, you can see a through line of stupid decisions executed incompetently. This is New Coke. This is enshittification.
Trump is now unpopular, and given how slowly new information sinks in, those numbers probably understate the collapse in his popular support. What's more, the real bite from his moronic tariff policy hasn't sunk its teeth into people's wallets yet. Recessions usually start in the fall for some reason, so maybe that will be the moment when we tip into the spiral that leads downwards into a true, undeniable recession.
When Trump ran his business, he ran it as a closely held corporation: no board oversight. Now, he's trying to turn America into the Trump business model. You know, the one he kept bankrupting because he's so fucking stupid.
No comments:
Post a Comment