Occam's Razor

Has anyone noticed that the people Trump is picking for his administration are pretty much doggedly determined to work against the interest of those who voted for him? Okay, there are plenty of people, but the inconsistencies are so galling you would think his supporters would be up in arms. But there are few complaints from supporters so far.

Trump infamously promised to “drain the swamp”, but he’s apparently set on picking the wallets of those who voted for him instead. In other words, they’ve been masterfully played.

Sadly, this is the Achilles Heel of the white working class, which Trump understood. Racial pride comes before everything for them. You just have to pull the right strings. Trump is hardly the first to do it, but the first to do it so brazenly and completely. You have to play into the lie that white people are somehow special and better than others. And you have to look to scapegoats they can project their anger onto: Hispanics, blacks, gays and Muslims. It also takes a heap of phony patriotism. The idea is to obscure who is really to blame for their decline: global forces largely beyond anyone’s control and moneyed capitalists who will ruthlessly take out rungs out of the ladder of opportunity to advantage themselves.

Those others are actually people a lot like Trump. Trump succeeded by stomping down pretty much everyone unwise enough to work for him: employees, contractors and partners. Trump has screwed plenty of working class whites, particularly independent contractors and investors. And somehow he’s not going to keep screwing these people? Puh-lease. The evidence:

• Steve Mnuchin gets to be Secretary of Treasury. Trump railed against Wall Street insiders, but picked a partner at Goldman Sachs, one of the firms that gave us the Great Recession and stripped vast amounts of wealth from many of Trump’s supporters.
• Wilbur Ross will be Commerce Secretary. Founder of the International Coal Group, he was in charge during the Sego Mine Disaster, which killed twelve. He knew all about the mine’s safety issues and did nothing. He was also Rudy Giuliani’s privatization adviser while he was New York mayor.
• Andrew Puzder for Secretary of Labor. He’s managed two fast food companies (Carl’s Jr. and Hardees), doesn’t believe in a minimum wage and has talked excitedly about creating automated fast food restaurants.
• Tom Price for Health and Human Services whose mission will be for the department to stop providing health and human services. Of course he is against the Affordable Care Act, wrote one of the few bills that completely overturns it and will work to repeal it. The principle people to be affected if the ACA is overturned will be Trump supporters, many of whom depend on the ACA’s Medicaid provisions for health care. Many Trump voters may give their lives or shorten them considerably by voting for Trump.
• Ben Carson for Housing and Urban Development. Like the Arabian Horse Association president that ran FEMA for George W. Bush, Carson has zero experience in housing, unless you count the fact that his family depended on public housing to survive when he was a child. His mission will be to make sure that no others are as fortunate as he was.
• Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. She hates public schools, loves charter schools (even though their record is worse than public schools) and basically wants to dismantle the public school system. You’ll get vouchers instead, which won’t come close to paying the tuition for your kids’ education. Free elementary and high school education will be a thing of the past if DeVos is successful. Bring back the glorious 19^th century with a society full of illiterates and homeless urchins in the streets! Those were the good old days!
• South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley for U.N. ambassador, who has zero experience in foreign policy.
• Scott Pruitt to run the EPA. He wants to abolish all clean air laws. Who will be disproportionately impacted by dirtier air? The white working class for sure. All those particulates in their air are sure to spike asthma rates, emergency room visits and premature deaths. A lot of those factories will be spewing into nearby white working-class communities.
• Linda McMahon for Small Business Administration. She has small businesses experience like the World Wrestling Federation, which she ran.

I doubt his supporters will notice any of this. What they will notice and cheer on are the red meat appointments he is throwing out instead:

• Steve Bannon, an open racist for his chief advisor
• Michael Flynn, a xenophobe and Russian lover for national security adviser
• Lots of white faces, principally white men, running his administration. Yea team white!
• Distractions that will probably be more smoke than mirrors, such as efforts to deport up to 11 million people living here

Trump’s real genius is not getting people to vote for him, but to get them to voluntarily bend over and claim “I like this” while he screws them in the ass.

Working class America, you are about to be fleeced, discounted and shown the door. Sadly, most likely you will say, “Thank you and may I have some more?” when you unwisely vote to reelect this man in 2020.