Trump and his fascist accomplices are using the COVID-19 coronavirus to steal more money from the American people. They want to bail out the industries, while leaving the American people vulnerable to both the virus and an economic crash. This is the principle behind the Shock Doctrine, which happens by design.
The Shock Doctrine & Disaster Capitalism
We can laugh or fret about Trump’s incompetence in various situations, but there is a deeply sinister plot behind what he is doing, especially with the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Back in 2008 before Barack Obama got elected, I read Naomi Klein’s book Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. It really opened my eyes to the GOP’s sinister plot of how the GOP and their cohorts were using situations with “terrible shocks and violence to implement their radical policies.” They use these events, like with COVID-19 coronavirus, when people are most vulnerable and panicked, to take more and more control of our government, take more of our rights away, and transfer more wealth to themselves.
They literally are looting the U.S., like what happened as the Soviet Union was falling. While Trump is their ultimate champion, this has been coming for decades. In fact, Klein goes back to Chile in 1973 to show how the U.S. government began implementing this strategy and continued its implementation throughout the decades, including in Iraq in the 21st century. Shock Doctrine is a must-read book.
Trump Is Just a Symptom of Much Bigger Problems
These problems, as Klein shows, go back decades. Trump is just a symptom where the rich and powerful corruptly thrive on these terrible occurrences. Many times, they help create the events just to take advantage of the situation, or they make the situation much worse, like Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. People in government took advantage of the Puerto Rican people to skim money off the top. These corrupt people amass obscene wealth and use it to usurp the power of the American people, leaving millions to suffer.
I wrote a dairy "Elizabeth Warren Said We Have One Shot – It’s Not Just about Beating Trump," showing the decades-long history of how we got Trump. That diary is from a different angle than what Klein describes. In fact, I wrote how Richard Rorty in his 1998 book Achieving Our Country, predicted – based on history and human behavior – exactly why we were headed for authoritarianism. In that diary, you will see that this was by design, spanning 40 years.
The Koch Brothers & Dark Money
In 1980, not only did Reagan become president, but also the very rich brothers Charles and David Koch began plotting how to “buy their way to political power.” Of course, Reagan helped these people by cutting taxes and destroying the unions, which represent the power of the people to keep corporations in check.
In a NYT book review about Jane Mayer’s book Dark Money, the review says
What the Kochs and their allies have created, in her view, is a private political bank capable of bestowing unlimited amounts of money on favored candidates, and doing it with virtually no disclosure of its source. They have established a Republican Party in which donors, not elected officials, are in charge. In 2011, when House Speaker John Boehner was desperate for Republican votes to prevent the government from defaulting on its debt, he went to see David Koch in Manhattan to plead for help. “It had taken years,” Mayer writes, but the brothers “were becoming a rival center of power to the Republican establishment.”
Since the donors are in charge of Republicans in Congress, “We the People” don’t matter. Corruption is running rampant, and we see why the Republicans are doing everything to hurt the country for all but the super-rich – the oligarchs. And this COVID-19 crisis is yet another example of how the government bails out the rich, while everyone else suffers.
Also, it’s an example of the “Shock Doctrine” in action to enact radical policies, when people are really vulnerable and scared. For example, Trump wants to cut payroll taxes. This will not really help Americans because the taxes are used to fund Social Security and Medicare. Instead, this helps Trump, the Koch brothers, and other oligarchs to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. People need real economic help, not this bogus stuff.
Folks, the Koch brothers undermined President Obama. They wanted him stopped because he was so popular and a Democrat, which is why they went so hard after Bill Clinton. Also, I’m sure that Obama being Black raised their alarm through the roof. The Republicans blocked everything Obama wanted – precisely to harm the country. (Of course, there was plenty of racism involved.) They knew if people felt the pain of the recession with the government not helping, those folks would vote for change. This is a fact of human behavior, which has been repeated many times in history. It was an Evil strategy. (Many counties in the country still have never recovered from the 2008 Great Recession.)
The Kochs & Their Friends – Radicals Undermining Democracy
The Koch brothers have other super-rich conspirators, whom Dark Money talks about. The Kochs and other robber barons have been paying universities and schools to indoctrinate young people into their ranks. They have radical libertarian views.
These people are anti-government and have “helped to finance and organize an interlocking network of think tanks, academic programs and news media outlets that far exceeded anything the liberal opposition could put together.”
They bought plenty of politicians and lobbyists to get what they want, which is basically a redistribution of wealth and power to themselves, leaving us with crumbs.
Check out this great video from CBS This Morning on how little wealth the middle class and poor have.
This is why the super-rich are antithetical to democracy. It doesn’t work when a few people have all the money, which is power.
The right-wing propaganda machine, the mouthpiece of these super-rich, is also undermining democracy. It spews out lies and bigotry every day to divide us. Also, by design, they want us to fight among ourselves, so that we don’t unite and take back power. As a result, racism, misogyny, religious bigotry, etc. are on the rise. Bigotry is literally destroying democracy, but it’s designed to be.
Why Can’t We Get Action on the Climate Crisis?
If you wonder why we can’t get anything done in this country, all of this is a major part of it. Worried about the climate crisis? “The Koch-sponsored advocacy group Americans for Prosperity has been at the forefront of climate-change opposition over the past decade.”
Also, the Koch brothers and other radical libertarians hate regulation of any kind, so if you wonder why Trump is rolling back regulations on the EPA and elsewhere, the Kochs are a big reason. They have been huge polluters and contributors to the climate crisis.
These people want military and police funding, but that’s about it. No action on the climate crisis, no Medicare/Medicaid, no Social Security, no welfare, no food stamps, no SNAP for children. No safety nets of any kind. They steal all the money, and the rest of us have to fend for ourselves. Without safety nets, millions of people will die. Many in our government don’t care because they believe in reprobation: the sick and poor deserve it because they have sinned. These heartless people want to “decrease the surplus population.”
They Are Stacking the Courts with Radicals
Also, the GOP and oligarchs have been grooming radical libertarian lawyers to become judges and filling the courts with them. The Federalist Society is giving us people like Brett Kavanaugh, one of these radicals. This is another pet project of the Koch brothers.
Do We Want Democracy for ALL or a Dictatorship Under the Oligarchs?
Buying elections and subverting the will of the people is overthrowing democracy. We only think our government is a democracy – of the people, by the people, and for the people. Wake up folks! We need to take our democracy back and make it work for ALL of us. Everyone deserves a seat at the table and to be treated with dignity and respect.
However, we can never achieve this unless we get rid of Trump, who is a fascist authoritarian, along with the rest of his evil cohorts. If we don’t get rid of him by November, he and his fascist friends will totally destroy this country and the planet for their own selfish benefit. In December, I wrote an article comparing him to another vile figure from history.
Anand Giridharadas wrote a great article “The Billionaire Election: Does the world belong to them or to us?” He asks a great question.
These rich people have amassed wealth at the expense of workers (like sweat shops – Microsoft; or no health benefits – Walmart) and at the expense of society because they pay little to no taxes and undermine democracy. Also, many of these rich people and their businesses prey on the most marginalized, standing on their backs. We are ALL being stood on with the people at the bottom feeling the most weight. And because of systemic racism, Black and Brown folks are the most marginalized.
Contact Your Senators & Representatives
Evil takes over when good people are silent. Those of us who have the ability, we have to speak up! It’s clear our government doesn’t work for us but the oligarchs. WE need to demand positive change from our Senators and Representatives and make it work for ALL of us.
I’m contacting my Republican Senators and giving them a piece of my mind about their complicity in this crisis. I hope you do, too. We all need to work together on this.
Also, we need to work hard to vote these people out by funding down-ballot Democrats and getting out the vote for them.
Please keep in mind that this isn’t just about who the president is. Government doesn’t work if we don’t have down-ballot support for Democrats. Check out this great video by YelloPain. Don’t be fooled by the title “My Vote Don’t Count.” He explains why this isn’t just about the president and why Obama had problems getting things done. To make our votes count, we need to focus on the other governmental branches, too.