The New York Times reports Hillary Clinton saying that if Trump wins the 2024 election “we may never see another actual election.”

Nancy Pelosi tweets: “This moment is a somber one for America. Trial by a jury of peers is a fundamental principle of democracy, which must be respected.”

Really ladies, do women of your experience and wisdom really think like that? You think that Trump could stop elections in the United States -- even if he wanted to? And surely you both know that trial by jury started way before anyone thought of modern democracy, let alone “Our Democracy?” Perhaps you say such things just to energize your supporters.

I keep coming back to this. To understand our liberal friends in the Trump era you have to understand that the wheels are coming off the liberal bus -- and they can’t believe it. How could a carnival barker like Trump become President? Inconceivable! How could populist nationalist movements be popping up all over to challenge the wise rule of People Like Us? Gotta be a conspiracy!

It’s not a conspiracy. Trumpology is occurring because you liberals, Clinton and Pelosi included, did it.

Here’s the problem, dear liberals. It’s not the world that is coming to an end. It’s your world that has reached its sell-by date. The problem is that your regime is crashing and burning. Crashing and burning because your ideas don’t work. And like all rulers down the ages, the last thing that occurs to you is that your power is overweening, your ideas are stupid, and your programs Make Things Worse. No, it must be that far right insurrectionist behind the tree. So you strike out at your fellow Americans, insult them as racist-sexists-homophobes, and treat them as existential enemies and traitors.

And you have a point. If Trump wins it will be the end of Liberal World as we know it. Why, I dare say he will reduce the 18 agency Intelligence Community a teeny bit by folding a couple of the smaller agencies into the bigger ones. Or vice-versa, depending on the decisions of the Trump Intelligence Agency Commission that reports in 2027.

Let’s forget about how you Make Things Worse for ordinary people. Let’s just look at how you Make Things Worse for young educated people.

Housing Prices: “Over the past three decades, there has been a dramatic change in young adults’ living arrangements, with fewer forming their own households and more living with their parents or with roommates.” Yep. When I got my first job at $685 per month in 1968, I rented a one-bedroom apartment close to downtown Seattle at $125 per month. Just for me.

College Costs: In 1970-71 tuition and fees for public, in-state college was $170 per year. In 2022-23 in-state tuition and fees was $9,750. That’s 57 times higher. GDP is 25 times higher.

Inflation: Real US GDP is four times higher than 1970. Nominal US GDP is 25 times higher.

IQ Going Down: “[T]here is no shortage of theories in the scientific community, including poor nutrition, worsening health, media exposures and changes to education.”

LGBT: I used to think the same as actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell in 1910: “Does it really matter what these affectionate people do -- so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!” But now, at the age of 77, I believe that if you don’t have children and grandchildren it will be as if you never existed. And the LGBT cult mainly influences the children of the educated class.

Of course, the real liberal crimes against humanity have affected the lower class, the oppressed peoples that our rulers fight for.

Births to unmarried women: 18.7 percent in 1980. Up to 41% in 2009.

Unmarried births by education: “In 2016, births to women who did not finish high school or obtain a GED were more than six times as likely to be nonmarital (62 percent) as births to women with a bachelor’s degree or more (10 percent).” Note the disgraceful privilege of the educated.

Home ownership: “[T]he current system of low-income housing assistance is strongly biased against homeownership.”

I could go on.

Do you not understand, dear liberal friends, that your problem is not Trump, or bitter clingers, or deplorables, or clowns. Ordinary middle-class people are voting for populist nationalist parties and politicians all over the western world not because of racism or hate or white privilege, but because your ideas, your politics, your rule Makes Things Worse.

You can chain Trump to a rock and have a bragging eagle eat his liver, as in the olden time. The liver won’t grow back tomorrow, but another Trump will arise the day after to challenge your power, your failed ideas, and your unjust rule. That’s not prophecy: that’s just the way the world works.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Picryl