When the election of 2016 was complete, I turned to my husband and said, “You watch; by the end of this guy’s tenure, we’ll either be a dictatorship or the next and newest third-world country.”
Mind you, I think the term ‘third-world country’ is a horrible label overall, but it seems fitting to apply it to the actions of the first president I know of to flout the separation of administration, executive, and legislative branches, seemingly with impunity.
It is announced today that Y.A.E.O. (yet another executive order) has issued; this one, stampeding over the Congressional authority, halts payroll taxes, delivers $400 a week in unemployment benefit, a decrease of $200 from the previous package, stop evictions for housing that receives federal funding, and extends zero percent (0%) interest on student loans.
It is a remarkably sharp compromise, which I suppose it should be, when you’re knocking over the establishment. It doesn’t directly endorse a party, it doesn’t ask more of the already overwhelmed People, and it even concedes (albeit tacitly) that current posture ‘we can’t pay them more than they’d make… they won’t work at all’ is both dismissive and dissonant in relation to the reality of a economic crisis that affects all, with the somber neutrality that causes and effects retain regardless which label weighs upon those impacted.
Are we seeing another tacit admission, too? Trump is actually trying to pull this increasingly disintegrating fat from the fire? The man actually stayed ON SCRIPT (well, but for one or two words, a veritable miracle). It occurs to me that the Republican party thought they were getting a Reagan. Imagine that surprise!
Delicate balancing act, this. If you’re into political theater (and used to sitting in the peanut gallery), it’s a lot easier to see the progressive erosion of an intentional and logically motivated separation of powers. What remains murky is how much of this is confidence and how much is confidence game. And, of course, if the latter, who are the players?
Current theory here? Business is in process of a economic coup via lobby and campaign funding. All the usual industries and players, naturally. But the hardest nut to crack? Getting access to federal funding without an act of Congress.
And what did we just hear today? Why “that maverick, Trump” just wrote himself an executive order and did it.
The media outlets moan appropriately about it, but take none to task.
The politicians scramble to plot how best to spin it for their own (re)election purposes, but neither challenge nor take up their mantle as representatives and guardians of the People.
The governors, still reeling from a variety of prohibited incursions and violations of state’s rights, are struggling to keep their People protected while fighting the same issues on the literal homefront.
The People? We? Well, as is common in bad times (even in their nascence), the closer the problems get to home, the more likely a response. And the more response in an environment this divided, the more likely there will be one that can justify the only remaining block to out new and ascendant overlords, United States, Incorporated.
I suppose we could just have another tea party. But the extremists of the land murdered that concept neatly. To conceive of a new term, party, or movement seems redundant. We have history that points to the solution needed, but it comes to the same struggle as always – the needs of the collective and the needs of the individual – and, in a world, nation, and country increasingly less inclined to value the latter, it seems difficult to believe the former has any motivation to do more than continue, quite literally, with ‘business as usual’.
We are, I think, about to find out exactly what happens with the interests of collusion, cronyism, and corruption meet head on the interests of continuance.
I’d call what is to come a revelation, but that would be too much like pandering. I’d say I wish it were a revolution, but that term has also long ago bled out behind a convenient woodshed. Perhaps we can finally get the reinvention we need? Doubtful, but then… this is the confluence of several generational transition points, most importantly, a dip in population that means current assumptions about labor are soon to be put on their heads.
That… that might actually be the key.