I am amazed how many words have been wasted trying to explain this or that government policy that is hurting the American people.  Don't we know by now that if a government program seems not to be useful, it was designed to be that way?

Instead of taking each program and dissecting it, the trick here is to bundle them together to better understand their motivation: importing cheap foreign labor, increasing energy costs, the irresponsible tolerance of cancel culture, vaccine mandates, anti-ableism, defunding the police, bail elimination, supporting inflationary policies, the failure to prosecute rioters on the political left while taking political prisoners on the right, promoting racial division, stamping out debate on government policies, assaults on private property rights, selectively enforcing the law, etc.

What ties these policies together?  The U.S. government, in the form of many elected officials and the permanent bureaucracy, is deathly afraid of the People of the United States.  Likewise, members of the government characterized President Trump as evil arose because they feared his policies.

Both ordinary Americans and President Trump have badly misunderstood the nature of our government.  They believe that it has the potential to be a benign force for good.  With that in mind, by repeating many times and in many fora the idea that our government is "of the People, by the People, and for the People," the People have scared the living daylights out of government lifers, elected officials, and the powerful elites outside government.

It is for this reason that President Obama acquired and distributed huge amounts of weaponry to myriad government agencies.  Government employees needed these weapons to defend themselves should the People come rapping at their door.

The members of the government have the illusion that they are the real People of the United States.  In this way, they can insist that under all circumstances, government employees are entitled to their pensions, which are funded by taxing those without pensions or by printing money that, by creating inflation, impoverishes those without pensions.

The members of the government wish to retain at all costs the opportunity to retire from the government into a cushy private-sector lobbying position.  The members of the government covet their special medical coverage, which is unavailable to the general public.  If it is true that members of Congress and their staff have had ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine available to them during the COVID pandemic, then that means that their lives have been deemed of greater worth than the average person who was not permitted to put in a supply of these drugs or have Medicare pay for them.

And the only fix to these matters favoring special privilege both in and out of government seems to be future crises.  When the government runs out of money from taxing the population, it will turn to money-printing in a bigger way than is the case currently.  It can maintain this defective approach only until growth slows to the point where it can no longer service debt.  Then the government will default, destroying saved wealth.  Let me state clearly: destroying saved wealth is a policy of deep leftist governments everywhere, including ours.

Smart economists have wondered why wealth has skyrocketed through increased stock values but (until recently) inflation remained low.  It is a trick, a sleight-of-hand.  The academics make a strategic error by assuming that the elites have placed their money in stocks, making them big stakeholders in the financial health of America.

No, they are not!  It is the People's money that is tied up in the stock market through IRAs and other savings programs.  Rather, the money of the elites has been socked away in land purchases in the United States and other countries and in the means of production.  They knew long ago that the way to go was to jump ship to the next source of wealth before panic at home set in.

Nobody should doubt that Trump's policies of confronting China scared the elites silly.  They had decided long ago that America was going to fail, fully or partially, and they needed to move their wealth to China and other Southeast Asian countries.  The elites have stakes in factories all over China and other poverty-stricken countries.  Therefore, it would be very bad for them to have Chinese wealth squeezed and China's progress hamstrung by moral judgments from America, with its demands for fairness, reciprocity, respect for intellectual property, level playing fields, etc.

We have now reached the point at which elections cannot be counted on to straighten out problems with obvious solutions.  Those solutions do not service the powerful people who matter.  At this strange moment in history, Americans of the ordinary kind are left only with hope, prayer, resignation, and as a last resort, groveling until our floundering economy is forced to respond to the realities of a failing complex system.

Image: William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building (edited in befunky).  Public domain.

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