Too Late to Turn the Tide?
The push back against the Billionaire Bandits that won the 2024 elections has begun. Progressive groups are energized, organized, and fighting back against Trumpism and the Project 2025 agenda. But is it too little too late?
A Bigger Problem
Trumpism is a symptom of a larger disease within the systems and culture of the United States. The founders of Indivisible.org seem to understand these basic facts. This gives me some hope that they can build a grassroots movement that will not just fizzle out and fade away, like the brief, reactionary Occupy Wall Street movement.
HUMAN STUPIDITY
may provide some of the answers.
WATCH: Why Stupid People Are More Dangerous than Criminals
There are two main classes of people that support Trumpism and the far right agenda of Project 2025.
1. BILLIONAIRE BANDITS
Since Citizens United and Trump 1.0 the super-rich have gotten super-richer and have used that wealth to influence (BUY) elections. Some 26 billionaires contributed at least $1 million each to Trump’s 2024 election and 13 billionaires have been tapped to serve various roles in the Trump administration. Elon Musk, born in South Africa, contributed over a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump’s 2024 election, and is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire within the next few years.
These Bandits know they will grow their obscene wealth even more as Trump rolls back regulations, laws, and protections that serve the interests of workers, consumers, retired people, the environment, and a healthy civil society.
These obscenely wealthy people are BANDITS. They use the broken, unjust systems of unfettered capitalism that built America and modern private equity to acquire and control their vast fortunes and power. Bandits are using their wealth and power to corrupt political systems, destroy governmental systems, exploit people, and pillage the public treasury and the natural world.
Unfortunately, the systems and culture of the United States have always rewarded the Bandits. The U.S. Constitution was designed to protect them. There is a cultural worship of the rich and powerful that was perpetuated by Horatio Alger’s rags to riches stories focusing on the myth that with luck and hard work, you too can join the “successful” wealthy class.
The truth is that it is a rare person that is able to break out of the economic class into which they were born. The truth is that many, many intelligent, hard-working people are homeless in today’s America.
Consider America’s celebration of wealth. Celebrities of wealth get their own “reality” TV shows like The Apprentice — Trump. Or Keeping up with the Kardashians — a family that serves no useful function to society, but receives the attention and adoration of millions of people.
The “American Dream” mythology was encouraged by the wealthy class to keep the masses striving and hopeful and controllable. Keep the populace divided and fighting each other to get up the ladder so that they do not band together and figure out how to tip that ladder over.
BANDITS are the only people who will truly benefit under the reign of Donald J. Trump. Make America Great Again is a lie. The very people MAGA just elected have stripped the U.S.A. of the good manufacturing jobs of decades past by automating and offshoring those jobs. Next up, these same Billionaire Bandits, in bed with big tech, will use artificial intelligence to strip hundreds of millions of white collar jobs from the economy.
Progressives and Centrists and Traditional Lincoln Republicans must find a way to band together to mitigate and later repair the damage that Donald Trump 2.0 is doing to America.
2. STUPID PEOPLE
STUPID PEOPLE: There are more stupid people out their than you realize. According to Reuters, Trump had the support of 77,168,458 voters in the November 2024 election.
MAGA and most of the people who support Trumpism and the extreme right agenda are STUPID PEOPLE. They are humans behaving stupidly. That does NOT mean they are evil. They are gullible, ignorant, desperate people looking for change and a better life for themselves. They have bought into the propaganda of fear, white exceptionalism, and religious fervor. The belief that someone like Donald J. Trump, a first class Bandit and Con Man, can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN is evidence of their stupidity.
Americans have always been prone to fantasy, magical, thinking and stupidity.
If you want to understand Donald Trump and the culture of twenty-first-century America, if you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must read this book.
STUPID PEOPLE cannot be fixed. They will cling to their stupidity like a security blanket. That is one of the rules of Human Stupidity.
STUPID PEOPLE ARE NOT RATIONAL. Do not try to reason with them. Keep them at a distance. Yes, this may mean skipping family gatherings or traditional events with friends.
The STUPID PEOPLE that just put Trump in charge, believe that anyone who disagrees with the Dear Leader, God’s Chosen One – Donald J. Trump must be a liberal sent by Satan himself to make their lives miserable and destroy America. THAT MAKES THESE STUPID PEOPLE DANGEROUS.