All over the country people will be going here or there this memorial day weekend traveling on crumbling roads, dated bridges, and passing through tunnels badly in need of updating. President Trump this week stormed out of a meeting with Democratic leaders in congress in which they had planned to discuss funding for a $2 Trillion dollar infrastructure package. In typical Trump form, the President walked into the meeting, stood at the head of the table for something like three minutes, cried because Nancy Pelosi said she believed he’s been involved in a cover up, railed against congressional investigations of his presidency, and swore that he would not negotiate with Democrats on getting anything done until they stopped investigating corruption within his administration. He then stepped out onto the Rose Garden and delivered a statement complete with big note cards, about how he’s the most transparent president in history, he doesn’t “do cover-ups”, and how the Democrats Considering impeachment are just trying to scuttle his successful presidency. (blah blah blah I’d like to point out the astounding level of projection coming from the GOP, which is in fact the only party that has done any scuttling over the last 30 years, see Nixon Presidency, see Obama presidency, and Clinton Presidency, but I digress) Once again the work for which the American people have enlisted civil servants has failed to get done under Trump, and the president blames the rule of law while we get a bucket of double-talk dumped on our heads.
This is perhaps not as straight forward an impasse as it might seem, however. Trump’s anti-oversight theatrics were also very convenient because they disguised the fact that he cannot now, or ever, deliver on his signature promise to create a “great” infrastructure program. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled that he has absolutely no interest in a big infrastructure plan if it requires rolling back any part of the GOP’s 2017 corporate tax cut. You see, this Republican party has abolished the days of history in which both parties could come together and agree on a certain course of action that might benefit their constituents, even if it meant that people and businesses had to pay taxes to live in a nice country. Time and again Republican leadership has proven to whom their allegiances lie, and it’s not to the middle class. The 2017 tax bill cuts taxes heavily for multimillionaires and billionaires, and offers some temporary tax cuts to some middle class Americans. The average tax cut for the middle class has been about $500 and they have an expiration date, 2025. Obviously, this has ballooned the tax deficit in this country to absurd levels (something Republicans bemoaned endlessly during Obama’s presidency.) This has left Trump with lots and lots of BIG promises, and no way of financing their fulfillment (not to mention the damage that will occur when they don’t get fulfilled) that doesn’t strap the cost onto the backs of the middle class. Perhaps the real reason that there was no place set for the president at that infrastructure meeting, and why he’d had pre-made note card graphics ready for use at his Rose Garden propaganda display is not that Nancy Pelosi accused him of a cover up, but because the Republican Senate and Mitch McConnell will not budge on their position of 0 corporate cooperation with the government to accomplish projects that this Country needs to thrive, and perhaps to survive the coming crises that will arise as a result of climate change and shifting world economic power. We have a GOP with deeply libertarian values of limiting government, and nonexistent civic responsibility for big business wealth traps. I could go on about how short sighted this libertarian ideology is, and how it’s more often than not served as a cover for billionaires to create moral equivalency for themselves while they rob the American people blind and take us one tiny step at a time closer to our roots as the wild west. That’s a conversation for another day.
Donald Trump is between a rock and a hard place, he must either choose to don the persona of a weak, embattled president who has been stymied by investigations which he simultaneously paints as “The greatest hoax in the American history”, “an attempted coup”, and a “complete and total exoneration” As if these are all compatible narratives, Or he must admit that his political ineptitude, and his choice to tie himself into a parasitic GOP that for the last 50 years has resorted to cheap tricks, and dirty political virtue signals to harness power for the interests of big business and the very rich while claiming conservative, evangelical, and southern ideologies in order to gain the undying support of a less discerning section of the populace. Donald Trump’s incompetence is perhaps not a bug, but a feature of what the GOP wants to see out of this administration. Republicans don’t actually want to see anything get done by the government. Mitch McConnell has described himself as the “grim reaper” of any legislation backed by the Democratic House. To me, this sounds like a complete dereliction of duty, and an abandonment of the purpose for which he was elected, but to Republicans this sounds like one more knife in the back of a big daddy government that liberal cucks need to tell them how to live their lives. Oh no, these Libertarian ideologues in the GOP love to see liberal snowflakes cry, even if it means cutting their own legs off to make it happen.
My American Life 