First Destroy Then Rebuild

Commentators continue to speculate on Trump’s ulterior motives. Why is he doing all the things he is doing?

Much of what he and Musk are doing can be understood as essential steps to setting up any authoritarian government:

·        Replacing department heads with loyal lackeys, especially in the military and justice departments is necessary to give him complete control over the military

·        Intimidating judges and law firms so they will be afraid to fight back

·        Defying court orders to establish that he is above the law

Other things increase profitability of businesses at the expense of the people. These can be easily explained – he’s doing them for himself and his billionaire buddies.

·        Cutting all the consumer and labor protection agencies to save a little money from the budget but allow big business to increase profit at the expense of their workers and customers

·        Ditto with the Environmental Protection Agency – cutting pollution regulations increases business profits but makes life more miserable – and shorter – for the poor that have to breathe, drink and eat it.

·        Cutting certain programs like Medicare and Social Security so they can be privatized with healthy profits going to the businessmen

Some of the other things, though, are not as easily explained:

·        Slashing budgets and firing thousands of federal employees. It’s obvious that waste and fraud is just an excuse. Is all this really just to justify the proposed tax cuts? And why do it so carelessly – doing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel? Why the big rush?

·        Why the executive orders instead of going through Congress? Is it just to speed up the process? Is Trump too impatient? Does he just enjoy wielding his power this way? Is he undermining Congress to prevent it from turning on him later?

·        Why the attacks on universities? Using extortion to go after DEI, pro-Palestine supporters and other “wokeisms”. Do free universities somehow pose a threat to an authoritarian government? Or is it just for the sake of demonstrating power?

·        Why are they dropping hints that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid may have to be cut back. He must know these are popular and tampering with them will lose him all but his loyal base. Does he no longer need them? Is the savings from them really necessary to convince the Republican Freedom Caucus to pass his tax cuts?

Then there are the more inexplicable things. His motto from the beginning was Make America Great Again. So why is he doing so many things that are making America weaker both nationally and internationally?

·        Is he really too dense to understand the effect of his tariffs on the economy? The immediate results are increased inflation and higher risk of a recession.

·        Ditto with immigration. It’s clear now that he won’t be deporting 10+ million like he bragged. But even one or two million will have a negative impact the economy as it loses both workers and consumers. Agricultural crops are going to waste because the workers are in hiding.

·        Does he really think that sucking up to Putin and taking his side in the Ukraine war will make him and America look anything but weak and despicable? Is he so delusional that he seriously expects a Nobel prize for forcing Ukraine to surrender?

·        How can he possibly think that withdrawing from NATO will make America stronger? Or that pissing off America’s two closest trading partners – Canada and Mexico – will improve America’s economy?

·        Cancelling USAID and all the good will that America bought with it around the world and letting Russia and especially China step in to take over - how does that make America great?

·        Shutting down the Voice of America that made the country a leader in pro-democracy around the world. I suppose if you are shutting down democracy at home why promote it elsewhere? But again this weakens America’s image in the world, the opposite of making it great again.

·        The anti DEI campaign that’s taking up so much of the government’s time – is all that just to satisfy Trump’s and his followers’ racism and misogyny? Do they really believe that eliminating women and gender minorities from society will make the country stronger? Or are they just catering to their ignorant base?

·        Why the attack on science and medicine – cutting research grants for everything from climate to cancer research? America is (or was) a world leader in research in many areas – why risk losing this? Is the attack on climate science again just catering to their ignorant base? But then why cut medical research – is it just to save money for the tax cuts?

Can Trump’s whole administration be explained with just ignorance, greed, racism, narcissism and hunger for power? Or are there ulterior motives behind Trump’s actions? Several commentators believe so.

Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Ruth Ben-Ghiat in an interview with Jen Rubin this morning for the Contrarian shared her analysis of the Trump regime. Ben-Ghiat is a professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University and has written about fascism, authoritarianism, and democracy.

She explained that universities are targets of every authoritarian government and changes are imposed on the pretext of “removing politics from learning”. Curriculums are re-written, entire departments closed, faculty and students are purged, all to get rid of any opposition to the government (socialism and pro-democracy). Another objective in the take over of universities is to “kill off American prosperity and soft power in fields of research.” [more on this in a bit]

Ben-Ghiat said that authoritarian regimes typically assault the judiciary – discrediting judges that rule against them. Going after law firms is important to prevent them from defending democracy or individuals targeted by the regime, and also to control the source of future judges.

She described the anti-DEI campaign as “a really concerted and organized effort to rewrite the history of America as only white activity” and that all non-white heroes have to be deleted from history, erasing their records and taking down their pictures. “This is a classic authoritarian thing”, she stated.

Another classic authoritarian thing that Trump is doing is realigning America away from democratic countries towards authoritarian regimes like Hungary, Russia, and China.

Then Ben-Ghiat made the dramatic statement that Trump and Musk are “in office to destroy government and to destroy America. And so all of the soft power and other power footprint of America abroad has to be diminished or even erased.” This explains the destruction of USAID and the American leadership in science, technology and medical research. First, anything that that is associated positively with America and democracy has to be destroyed before America can be asserted as an autocratic power.

This regime is remarkable for several reasons. First the speed at which it is taking over the country. The second is that there are two Strongmen – Trump and Musk –  which is very unusual. The third is that the oligarchs are actually part of the government; in most authoritarian regimes they are outside and prop up the regime by, for example, controlling the media.

So now it's all beginning to make sense.

So according to Professor Ben-Ghiat, Trump is working to destroy America. First destroy anything great that’s associated with democracy so he can then make it great as an autocracy. Sort of like when Trump in his first term cancelled Obama’s Iran nuclear deal so he could impose his own - but on a much vaster scale.

Jennifer Rubin quoted Governor Pritzker of Illinois who said something similar: “they are trying to destroy America and remake it for their own use”.

The destruction of America that we are witnessing is not accidental or incidental, it’s the whole point.To compare this to a house renovation project, we’re in the demolition phase. it's bad enough to have to live through the demolition but the resulting great new America they plan to build on its ashes will be great only for the very wealthy, not the working class and certainly not the poor.

Also this morning Thom Hartmann wrote in his substack about the movement behind the Trump regime that he calls the Dark Enlightenment. I’ll dig into that tomorrow.

 

Sources:

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/ruth-ben-ghiat-and-jen-rubin-on-the

https://hartmannreport.com/p/dark-enlightenment-rising-the-billionaire-071