I posted this as a quick comment on Facebook, but realised it might make more sense to turn it into a quick, blog-gy piece instead. I’ll be writing more of these very short pieces in the future. Posting them on my site gives them more permanence and searchability. Thank you for reading and reposting. If you like this, please support my work.
It’s so, so easy to make fun of Donald Trump. My feeds everywhere are bristling with (mostly) leftists and many liberals mocking him for yet another ludicrous statement: broad, overarching, completely dissociated from reality. His new regime of tariffs is ill-advised and threatens to break things everywhere, but Trump has (so far) not given up on statements that are a version of, “They’re going to make us rich again. We’re going to be so unbelievably rich, you won’t believe it.”
Leftists love this sort of thing: they get to tear his rhetoric apart on the grounds of, well, sound economic theory, splashed with a bit of Marx here and there. And they, along with their liberal brethren, love to go on about how ill-informed he is and then, of course, insult him using epithets they’d never use on anyone else.
I will, once again, warn you: don’t mistake Trump’s statements on anything, especially the economy, as proof of his lack of intelligence. He knows how to spin messages to reach the crowds he needs to reach. You, a Marxist well-versed in all your Marx, can laugh and pull it all apart, with a loud hahaha, but he really doesn’t have to care about you. He knows how to stay afloat and create a system wherein he has to pay for nothing. You can go on about how he’s not really a successful businessman, sure, but the man probably can’t remember the last time he ever had to pay for a meal or much else.
Now, whether or not the people he’s reaching are as large in number these days or have the effect that many imagine is entirely another matter.
But, seriously: do not, ever, underestimate him and his ability to do whatever it takes to preserve himself. He’s not even doing it for his children or grandchildren, only for himself. If you want to change things: ignore the rhetoric, stop wasting your energy on mocking him, focus on the actions, and commit to your own. (The fact that most Marxists are lost when it comes to the notion of “action” doesn’t help, but that’s a tale for another day.)
I realise that liberals and too many lefties like to jerk off to the idea that they’re dealing with a dum-dum. You do that at our collective peril. Never underestimate him.
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Image: Joan Miró, Personage, 1925
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