Like Reagan With a Shotgun
Links for Friday, February 7
The Once and Future Kings
Many have said that the election of Donald Trump could be the last U.S. election in, well, forever. And Trump has fostered this fear by saying, lightly or not, he wants to be a dictator, but just “on day one.”
He later said this:
“So I have to be careful with this. I said once about a month ago, you only have to vote this one time, and after that, everything would be good,” Trump said on Sunday. What he appeared to be referring to was his statement in July, when he claimed during a Florida event summit that if he was elected for a second time, “you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
“And the fake news said, ‘See, he wants to be a dictator and take over the country.’ No, no, that’s not what I said,” he said Sunday, in an apparent attempt to tamp down concerns that he wants to be a dictator. “We got to fix the country. Got to make sure, and then the country will be great, and we’re going to have, hopefully, some great person, whether it’s J.D. [Vance] or somebody else.”
That didn’t settle hearts who’d rather he not. Actions that Trump’s taken since have left many convinced their pre-election worries were on the mark.
I differ. What we’re seeing is not a new autocracy, but the old coup, the one called “neoliberalism,” the one we’ve been watching since Reagan: the complete dismantlement of government-by-the-people till only the rich have rights. It’s not the removal of the big FDR state, but its slow, then faster replacement by an equally muscular state responsive to wealth.
Does that sound familiar? It should. We’ve been watching this drama play out for most or all of our lives. Since Reagan, in fact. Trump and Musk aren’t Hitler. They’re Reagan with a shotgun — same target, a whole lot more shooting.
Shock Doctrine USA
Carl Biejer highlights this point in a recent paid-only piece, “The shock doctrine comes to America.”
Beijer’s point: This isn’t a new autocracy he’s creating, but the same old tried-and-true shocking. The war’s not being waged by Trump, but by “capital” writ large.
[T]his has been the story over and over with Trump’s administration: they’re all unreliable narrators, and events are moving so quickly that it’s impossible to verify anything in a timely manner. … [I]t was this very atmosphere of chaos and confusion that made me realize: this is the shock doctrine.
This is what neoliberals have done over and over again to dismantle the state in other countries. …
The neoliberals are taking an axe to the government rather than a scalpel, and this means that the left could very well see all kinds of programs related to US empire and the security state undergo some significant defunding. But we should not have any illusions about what is driving this: neoliberal austerity.
Like Reagan, but worse. Didn’t Reagan appoint pro-logging, pro-development James Watt as Secretary of Interior, where he unleashed a “reign of destruction”? Or the horrid Ann Gorsuch Burford (mother of Neil) as head of the EPA?