The Alchemist of Bullshit

 

“What can a man do in the face of the world’s injustice? Unite with others seeking non individual means of action.” Ricardo Piglia, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: Formative Years

Create reality. Stage a “faux” public hearing, with Rudy G center stage, and have Donald Trump call-in. Give Trump space to spew lies about the election outcome, the fraud, the steal, the conspiracy. Get the images and sound bites on Fox, send them to the far corners of the right wing reservation. By force of repetition, make millions of people believe in something that didn’t happen. Trump’s all-in for the game. Whatever he can do to tarnish Joe Biden’s convincing win, cast doubt on it, challenge it on the basis of slogans and opinion, blame Democrats, leftists, Antifa, Hillary Clinton, Hugo Chavez and the Evil Empire, Venezuela. Win the narrative war, turn defeat into victory. 

Trump is a salesman of non-refundable dreams. He can turn any negative into a positive, come up with a counter-accusation every time he is confronted with his failure or stupidity. Lack of shame is one reason Trump is so vile. The worst thing that has ever happened to Trump, the most public rejection he’s ever faced, is losing to Joe Biden by six million votes. This is intolerable to Trump’s fragile psyche. That’s why he’s not conceding his loss, and persistently testing the guardrails for weaknesses. I expect Trump to turn up the rhetorical volume as key dates in the certification and electoral college process draw near. Trump’s not done, he doesn’t realize that he’s trapped by cruel reality. 

Covid, the pandemic Donald Trump turned his back on, quit on, like a golfer who drops his clubs and walks off the course. 

Democracy is fragile. More so than I ever before believed. Think about what Trump is doing -- he’s actively attempting to subvert our democratic election. When he called in to the faux hearing he said, “We have to turn the election over?” How is what he’s doing and saying not an attempted coup? 

Trump’s latest gambit is to ignore the 80 million votes that Biden received and instead declare that since he, Trump, received more popular votes than Ronald Reagan, he should win re-election. Such is the logic of Trump World. Every move Trump makes is part of an effort to transform make-believe into hard reality. 

Trump is an alchemist of bullshit. 

When the DJIA (the stock market index) hit 30,000 this week Trump naturally took credit for it, with Mike Pence at his side. Trump called it a “sacred number.” He didn’t need to reveal who the number was sacred to because that’s obvious: he meant his class of people, those with money to speculate, those who climb up on the backs of other people, those who lie, cheat and swindle, those who equate money with morality, and those who are rarely held accountable for the harm they do. That number doesn’t mean a damn thing to the majority of Americans who work for a living, draw a paycheck, pay their full share of taxes. That the DJIA hit 30,000 -- on the same day the news was full of stories about lines of cars outside food banks all across the country -- was the perfect snapshot of this country at this moment. Grotesque and perverse wealth inequality. It was also the day records for Covid-19 infections and deaths were broken. Covid, the pandemic Donald Trump turned his back on, quit on, like a golfer who drops his clubs and walks off the course. 

A 30,000 Dow simply means that the speculators and money-changers had a good day. It doesn’t shorten the line of cars waiting at the food bank, or calm hungry and anxious people who fear the food might run out before their turn comes. The economic shock caused by the Covid pandemic and Trump’s failed response has only begun -- there’s more to come. We are witnessing the first stage of the pain. Our most vulnerable citizens are the canary in the coal mine. The DJIA hit 30,000 because the Federal Reserve, the institution created to facilitate the needs of our banking system, has created a monster asset bubble. When it comes to matters of capital, labor, speculation, and the financialized economy Americans are woefully uneducated. We don’t understand how thoroughly finance and corporate power have taken over, obliterated the middle class, and brought us closer to fascism than we have ever come before. It’s a Tyranny of Finance. 

The Biden administration will resemble the Obama administration in the same way the Obama administration resembled the Clinton administration: centrist, corporate-friendly, supportive of military adventures and fiscal austerity for working Americans. Biden will rearrange the furniture, toss the gaudy and gauche, but he’ll never change the architecture. If the country is really lucky, Biden will be a maintenance & repair president. Forget transformation, it won’t happen. Our country’s in bad shape. The economic structure is not sustainable. The political system is so broken and riven with partisanship that it cannot respond to the needs of the people. Right now we need sane, sober, steady and serious leadership. 

But January 20, 2021 is still a way’s off, on the far side of a minefield.