Cutting Through Trump's Blizzard of B.S.
How to make sense of the chaos.
Trump is trying to “shock and awe” us with so many actions that we’re left speechless, but it’s mostly the same old story. Billionaires want to screw us over and don’t want government to stop them. They buy Republicans who pass tax cuts for the rich and gut the programs that keep us safe and improve our lives. They deflect the anger of the exploited by scapegoating the vulnerable. What’s different? A cruel president who abuses his power and encourages criminality.
Finding Order in the Chaos
The Narrative
What Trump is doing is morally wrong. By trying to undo the work of the federal government, he's overriding the collective decisions of generations of Americans about how we want to keep each other safe, improve our quality of life and meet each other’s most fundamental needs.
He’s threatening our health and safety, our jobs and economy, our efforts to slow the increase in dangerous weather, and even our national security. And he’s reversing efforts to bring down the cost of food, medicine, housing, and health care.
Why? Because global financial interests got him elected and have given him billions of dollars in bribes, and they do not want our government to work.
The collective power of the American people acting through our government, is the only thing powerful enough to stop them from continuing to exploit us both as workers and as consumers.
President Biden stood up to them, so they used their money and ownership of media to destroy his reputation and get Trump elected. Now they want their payback.
Corporations and the obscenely rich want Trump to get government out of their way and further slash taxes, even though they already fail to pay their fair share for the government resources from which they benefit the most. Trump is doing exactly what they want.
Trump is sabotaging whole departments with Trojan Horse nominees: incompetent or even dangerous people who will lie on the stand, because their real mission is to destroy the department they are supposed to run. He is trying to overturn laws without going through Congress, in violation of the law, the Constitution, and his oath of office. And he is abusing his power to crush anybody who tries to stop him.
So why do we keep reading about immigrants and transgender people? People are so mad about being screwed that they were happy that the CEO of a corrupt healthcare company got shot dead in the street. These rich guys don’t want us to blame them, so they get Republicans to point the finger at someone else, usually the people least able to fight back. Trump literally puts people’s lives in danger just to keep us all divided.Donald Trump shows a consistent pattern of abuse of power, criminality and corruption. His actions don’t just show total disregard for the law, they actively undermine the principle of the rule of law for our entire society.
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The Superstructure
We can use this framework to identify where each new story might fit into the themes that then link up to our larger narrative.
Government is a tool that we, the people, use to: 1) protect each other, 2) improve our quality of life, 3) meet each other’s needs, and 4) promote economic fairness.
Trump has been bribed by global financial interests who: 1) spent money to get him elected, 2) used their media properties to help him, 3) paid him through his cryptocurrency and family business interests, and 4) influence him through Project 2025.
They want Trump to: 1) slash regulations, 2) drastically cut their taxes even if it requires eliminating most programs and 3) privatize everything left over.
Trump is destroying the federal government from within. He is: 1) sabotaging whole departments with Trojan Horse nominees, 2) trying to nullify programs and appropriations established by law without going through Congress, and 3) firing people without cause and replacing them with political loyalists.
Trump is terrorizing vulnerable people to: 1) deflect blame from economic exploitation and 2) create political division.
Donald Trump: 1) shows total disregard for the law and the constitution, 2) abuses his power and 3) actively undermines the rule of law.
The Themes
The federal government IS the will of the people.
The Right has invested sixty years into convincing far too many people that the federal government is so hopelessly “wasteful” and “woke” that having a dictator tear it down and start over is actually a good idea.
We can no longer afford the luxury of defending individual programs while leaving their disinformation and demonization of government as a whole, unchallenged. We have to reframe government itself: both make the case for the government we have and champion what government should and could be.
Government is how people make and carry out decisions about how we want our society to work. We delegate our power and pool our resources to protect each other, improve our quality of life and meet each other’s needs. That includes making and enforcing rules that define how our economy works and who it works for.
People already love government programs. The temporary funding freeze set off an instantaneous uproar across America. We should seize this opportunity to connect the dots between those programs and “government” as we envision it.
Trump has been bribed by billionaires and global corporate interests.
Financial elites spent hundreds of millions on Trump’s campaign through dark money political action committees. They used their legacy and social media companies to interfere in our political process, attacking Biden and Harris and making Trump’s horrific and illegal behavior appear acceptable.
Trump’s launch of his own cryptocurrency created a way for people to bribe him by funneling billions of dollars directly to him. He also has billions on the line in financial investments in his family businesses from wealthy foreign interests.
Teams of corporate lobbyists created Project 2025, a set of instructions for Trump. Here is what they want from him:
The Billionaire Agenda
Our government is the only thing powerful enough to stop them from continuing to exploit us both as workers and as consumers. That’s why they want it crushed.
They want to get rid of regulations: public protection rules that we have for good reasons, like keeping them from making us sick or killing us, crashing the economy, and destabilizing our climate.
They want massive tax cuts. They want to be excused from responsibility for paying their fair share for the public services, education, infrastructure, research, technology, financial incentives, and government contracts from which they reap the lion’s share of the benefits.
Republicans always cut taxes for the rich. In public, they say that the rich create jobs. In private, they say that the purpose of tax cuts is to “starve the beast”: to blow giant holes in the revenue side of the federal budget equation, forcing Democrats to severely cut back programs.
Now they want to cash in by privatizing literally everything left standing, like they are already doing with their Medicare Advantage scam.
Sabotaging the Federal Government
The President doesn’t have the right to unilaterally invalidate laws or shut down programs. Congress writes laws and decides how much money gets spent and on what. Once passed, the President has to carry out those laws, and that is what Trump is refusing to do. Maybe Trump didn’t put his hand on the Bible because he had every intention of violating his oath of office?
Trump is sabotaging whole departments with Trojan Horse nominees. He did the same to the Supreme Court: his nominees lied in their hearings and then overturned established precedents and gave him permission to break the law. Note: Attacking nominees’ personal qualities is ineffective. What matters is their intent to undermine the mission of their department.
Trump caused total chaos and nearly ruined people’s lives by attempting to cut off or “impound” funding for whole government programs. His order was halted by a judge almost immediately, and he rescinded it. Impoundment is illegal and unconstitutional. Trump should know. He was impeached for trying to impound funding for Ukraine.
Trump is also trying to sabotage departments by slashing their staffing: firing people or driving experienced staff to quit. Through “Schedule F” he is trying to convert tens of thousands of independent civil service positions into political positions who can be fired at will and replaced with Trump loyalists, if at all.
Scapegoating the Vulnerable
The Right has always used hate, “othering” and demonization to create political division and scapegoats to misdirect anger away from exploitation by the wealthy. Immigrants and refugees, women seeking reproductive care, and transgender people are the latest victims, but the hate seems more visceral and the danger more concrete, with threats of withholding needed medical care, arrest and deportation.
Abuse of Power and Undermining the Rule of Law
When you call someone a fascist or an oligarch, it often sounds like you are just calling them names. It helps to remind people why obeying the law, respecting the limits of your power, and treating everyone as equal before the law matter in a society that is supposed to be fair and free.
All the power that our government has, has been granted to it by the American people. It is conditional and limited, to be used for their benefit only, and never, ever to violate their rights.
Trump is abusing the power of his position to enrich himself and his friends and punish the people he sees as enemies, and that includes anyone who stands up to him or tries to stop him from breaking the law.
Trump is a habitual criminal. He has always been protected from accountability by his wealth and then by the Supreme Court. Now he is using pardons to encourage criminal behavior from people like the January 6th insurrectionists.
Trump actively undermines the rule of law. For people to be free, laws have to be applied equally, not used to control or coerce according to the whims of the people in power. It is a sad fact that our justice system treats people differently due to their wealth and their skin color, but we have to move toward true equality and justice, not run in the opposite direction.
I know this is dark and difficult, but I hope it helps wrestle this chaos into some semblance of order. Perhaps by focusing on these themes, we can get through to the American people what’s really going on.
Meanwhile, please take care of yourself and stay connected to the things that bring you joy.
In solidarity, always,
Antonia
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Contact me at antonia@antoniascatton.com or (202) 922-6647
Trump is a Trojan Horse, made by the billionaire elites to destroy the ability of the Public, or We the People,” to govern themselves from within. That’s a great narrative that explains what is happening.
Thank you for cramming so much meaning into so few sentences, Antonia! This narrative helps people understand the chaos and deserves to gain traction.