I wonder: Could he be *even a little bit* more obvious,
do you think?
***
Recently, Donald Trump had this to say about Kamala
Harris:
“She's a Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist.”
On the one hand, this isn’t worth taking seriously. After
all, he’s putting everything he has mentally into
stringing together words, any words, in the hope of
scamming us into believing his lies. Whether it’s
“Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist” or “person,
woman, man, camera, TV,” it’s all kinda the same to the
delusional and demented.
On the other hand, we should take this seriously.
I don’t mean asking whether Harris is a “Marxist,
communist, fascist, socialist.” She isn’t. I mean asking
whether Trump is. Most of us understand why he’s a
fascist. Too few of us understand why he’s a communist.
In any conventional sense of the word, that’s what he is.
And economics can have nothing to do with it.
Just ask Ana Navarro, a former Republican who fled
communist Nicaragua. At the Democratic National
Convention, she said:
"Trump and his minions call Kamala a communist. I know
communism. I fled communism from Nicaragua when I was 8
years old. I don’t take it lightly. And let me tell you
what communist dictators do. …
"They attack the free press. They call them the enemy of
the people, like Ortega does in Nicaragua. They put their
unqualified relatives in cushy government jobs, so they
can get rich off their positions, like the Castros do in
Cuba. And they refuse to accept legitimate elections when
they lose and call for violence to stay in power, like
Maduro is doing right now in Venezuela.
"Now you tell me something. Do any of those things sound
familiar? Is there anybody running for president who
reminds you of that?"
That’s about power, but economics plays a role, too.
History is filled with communist dictators who enacted
economic agendas not because their policies were based on
sound principles and solid data but because they served
an immediate political interest. The outcome was
sometimes the ruination of their country’s populations.
Trump wants to decimate the labor supply by deporting 20
million “illegal immigrants.” He wants to impose an
across-the-board tariff of 20 percent and more on all
imported goods. And he wants to seize control of the
Federal Reserve Bank’s power to set interest rates.
A new report by the Peterson Institute, a very
conservative think tank in Washington, found that these
economic policies would “not only fail to solve inflation
– they would make it much worse,” according to CNN. They
would moreover depress growth, spike inflation and wipe
out jobs to such a degree that the carnage would be felt
well into 2040.
“We find that ironically, despite his ‘make the
foreigners pay’ rhetoric, this package of policies does
more damage to the US economy than to any other in the
world,” the Peterson Institute’s working paper said.
This is not news.
Anyone who knows anything about economics knows
indiscriminate tariffs would help no one while harming
everyone. Yet he keeps talking about them as if he cares
about their real-world consequences. He doesn’t. He only
cares about whether they work for him politically.
In that, he’s just like a communist dictator.
But there’s more to being a communist than power and
economics.
There’s character, too, or lack of it.
The most important thing to Donald Trump is whether you
like him.
If you do, you’re good. If you don’t, you’re bad.
It doesn’t matter that you once called yourself a “Black
Nazi.” It doesn’t matter that you once said you would
like slavery to return so you can own a few slaves. It
doesn't matter that you once said you liked “tranny porn”
and that you fantasize about peeping on women in public
gyms.
You can do all the things that North Carolina
gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson has reportedly done
and it won’t matter to Trump.
But Robinson likes him.
So he endorsed Robinson.
Former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory warned for
years that Robinson was a “ticking time bomb.” He told
CNN that even the quickest glance at his record would
reveal things that are disqualifying.
But McCrory is one of those RINOs (Republicans in name
only). His warnings went nowhere, because if you don’t
like Trump, he doesn’t like you. Due to the scandal
surrounding Robinson, Trump might lose North Carolina.
But defeat won’t be his fault. It will be McCrory’s.
Such are the hallmarks of communist dictator.
To be sure, my argument is a hard sell. Reasonable people
may buy the idea that Donald Trump is a fascist, but not
that he’s a communist. After all, he’s a billionaire.
He’s on the side of the billionaire class.
How can he be a communist?
But reasonable people are overthinking it.
Trump isn’t defending capitalism. He’s defending white
power. If you prefer, he’s going to war against the
enemies of the white collective. He’s prepared to use
every instrument of the state toward that end.
Reducing the labor supply (deportations), increasing
taxes (tariffs) and seizing the power to set interest
rates will hurt the country generally. But they will hurt
nonwhite people more than white people. It would be a
race to the bottom for everyone except the richest of
Americans.
But Trump wouldn’t be to blame.
He’d find someone outside the white collective to accuse.
Just like a communist.
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