An ominous year

The year 2017 began with most of the world still reeling in jaw-dropping shock from the awareness that the most powerful country in the world had somehow managed to elect an ignorant, narcissistic buffoon as its champion. Incredulously, we prepared for the worst. We weren’t to be disappointed.

The Trump camp occupied the White House already feeling the heat from evidence of collusion with the gangsters who rule the country’s most immediate threat and the ongoing legacy of the boss’s social media addiction. It continued by fomenting quarrel after interminable quarrel with legislators, the leaders of the President’s own party, the media, scientists, mayors, football players, prosecutors, and a nuclear-armed Korean lunatic, to name just a few.

Meanwhile, using the powers of the executive branch, he has dismantled or undermined key government agencies that deal with everything from the environment to regulating financial transactions. He has devastated health care, independent science, the courts, education, and civil rights enforcement, and encouraged intolerance, racism, and intransigence, He has made a mockery of any American claim to moral leadership and has left a once-solid system of alliances confused, frightened, and vulnerable.

The above, of course, is but a condensed list of the accomplishments of the 45th president and it’s a list that grows exponentially as his outrages go unchecked and unpunished. Things could get much worse, of course, and they will, unless 2018 ushers in a fundamentally new way of doing politics in the American Republic. It doesn’t bode well.

In November, a third of the US Senate and the entire House of Representatives are up up for grabs and this election could be more pivotal for America’s future than was even Trump’s.

The Republican Party establishment was as shocked by the Donald’s victory as were its opponents and in the process of capturing the party nomination, Trump both humiliated and frightened party stalwarts into line. At first horrified by the outrageous nominee, party leaders were cowed into submission and sold their souls to protect their precious agenda, which focused on tax reduction, the end of public health care reform, and immigration and border control. Despite the leader’s obvious and numerous shortcoming, they believed the monster could be tamed sufficiently to allow them to assume control. In the meantime, they forgot about their own incompetence and lost any opportunity to harness the lunatic that now owned and operated the asylum.

In the coming year, both major American political parties will enter the campaign season with an unusual amount of uncertainty. Dozens of incumbents, including some key veterans, will not be seeking re-election this year, opening the door for younger, more varied replacements. On the Republican side, many others will face primary challenges from insurgent Tea Party stalwarts and Trump enthusiasts who threaten to steer the party even farther to the authoritarian, pseudo-christian right and hobble the voices of reason that still exist within the ‘conservative’ movement. For the Democrats, the glaring need for reform that last year’s loss exposed has to be dealt with and reconciliation forged among the Democratic establishment, unrepentant ‘Bernie Bros,’ and the more radical left. In the end, it will depend on the enthusiasm of voters and the willingness of the same to take a clear stand.

In this setting, the American people will elect a new legislature that will set the course for the future of American society and its place in the world. If, despite the scandal and the ongoing crises, the American people should validate the current administration’s course by electing another Republican Congress, the final shoe in the upcoming American Revolution will have dropped. The average American will not yet have felt the long-term impact of the short-term tax cut that will add an additional trillion dollars to the national debt. Many will have a few extra dollars in their pocket (a few will be billion ahead) The pain will come a few years later as individual tax cuts are repealed and services are cut to reduce the new deficit. Everybody notices tax reductions right away but service cuts come more gradually and are only felt individually when these same services are needed.

The hope for major tax reductions for the wealthy and corporations rests in the discredited fantasy of \trickle down’ economics,’ which tells us that these cuts will lead businesses and corporations to make needed investments and create jobs. For many smaller firms, this might actually play out as planned. For larger conglomerates and major industries, however, the end result might not be so beneficial. In the first place, many major companies have already announced that they will use the tax breaks to compensate stock holders through dividends that will also increase stock market value. The investments that are made are likely be aimed at increasing production, which in this world usually means automation and the use of robotic labour. While this trend creates a few new types of jobs, it also eliminates countless more, particularly those that require limited skills. The effect is already being felt in the manufacturing and service industries and will only spread as time goes by. In the long run, minimum wage jobs will become increasingly prevalent, denying huge swaths of the population the benefits that a wealthy society should provide. The creation of an Orwellian ‘proletariat’ tamed by popular media and driven by fear of ‘other’ lies on the immediate horizon and this might be the last chance to stop it.

The hearts and minds of the American working class were long ago conquered by the myths of capitalism and ‘individual freedom’ and this has allowed the steady decline in the influence of organized labour – the worker’s only defense against capital power. Labour has been commodified and has driven the real wages of almost all classes of traditional labour down to the point that the average worker can no longer afford to participate fully in what the country has to offer. Should the Republican plan unfold as desired, America will be wide-open to plunder by the few and the powerful at the expense of the vast majority who will survive by committing even more of their lives to producing for the profit of others.

Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, can stop both Trump and his oligarch allies and, assuming that the vote is held without too much foreign tampering, the American people can still return its government to saner hands. It’s best not to bet on that, however, as the signs of an ‘awakening’ are few and far between.