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Suicide By Trump

In a life filled with countless mistakes, voting for Donald Trump is easily the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. Such has been my horror at the God-Emperor’s actions since taking office, I almost forgot there was a Plan B when I stepped into the voting booth.

Plan B was this: Should Trump actually turn out to be the baboon’s ass with a bad hairpiece his detractors claimed him to be, he would almost assuredly destroy the Republican party. With the recent passage by the Republican-led House and Senate of the wildest reverse-Robin Hood tax “reform” since President Ronald Alzheimer’s Reagan trickled down all over America, Plan B is now in full effect.

My Plan B presupposes the Democratic Party went down in flames by foisting pre-ordained candidate Hillary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton on a base that clearly preferred the openly socialist Jewish grandfather I never had, Bernie Sanders. After 10 months of the clearly lithium-addled President Trump’s tweets and speeches, it’s undisputed by most experts that my Jewish grandfather would have kicked his fucking ass in the general election.

And now the Republican Party has done gone and committed suicide by Trump.

How exactly the Republican Party has killed itself may not be immediately apparent here where I live in Hannityville. Here in Hannityville, the steadily eroding rural United States that hasn’t yet recovered from the Great Recession, we pride ourselves on self reliance, but rely on substantial government largess, state and federal, to compete in a political economy now pretty much based on game theory.

Everyone wants to be a winner, but we’re all losing out here, aren’t we? So we take it out on the losers less than us, the blacks, the illegal immigrants the poor white trash roaming the streets in search of the next fix—the one thing that will make the grotesque apparition that is their chaotic reality dissipate—patting ourselves on the back for giving the vagrants a bus ride out of town.

We pass laws banishing the weak and deny that it makes us weaker. We call ourselves Christians, but live in what existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre called “Bad Faith.” We forget that without that government largesse, we’re pretty much fucking doomed, as far as developing a vibrant rural economy in the United States is concerned.

The Republican House and Senate just cut off that largess, by eliminating the federal deduction for mortgages and state taxes in blue states such as I live in, California, and canceling Obamacare’s individual mandate, which amounts to a tax increase on all health insurance polices for the middle class. That means less dollars in middle class pockets to spend locally. Take that to your local mall, if it’s still open.

In addition, both the House and Senate bills add an estimated $1.5 trillion to the now $20 trillion national debt over the next 10 years, which tells you how desperate Trump and the Republican party were for a “win” after losing for 10 straight months.

The negative effects of these measures—and countless others hidden in a 500-page bill no member of the Senate read in its entirety before voting on—won’t be felt until after the 2018 elections. That’s why right-wing radio host and alleged Christian Glenn Beck, after roaring that, “This tax bill is an abomination!” on his program last week, said, “I’ll take it.”

This sort of cockamamie bullshit is beamed into every nook and cranny in Hannityville via public radio airwaves, starting at 6 a.m. and continuing until at least 9 p.m., 365 days per year. It’s all about winning. It’s infectious and I freely admit it has infected even me. Nothing sounds more convincing than a trained professional trying to sound convincing.

The thing is, winning is winning, and rural America is kaput. It’s not going down. It’s down. Sooner or later, more likely sooner, since this has been going on through the years of Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama and now Trump, rural America is going to wake up. The tax reform just passed by the Republican House and Senate will kill Hannityville, and you can’t help but feel it’s by design.

In the New World Order, who needs country folk anyway?

R.V. Scheide

R.V. Scheide is an award-winning journalist who has covered news, politics, music, arts and culture in Northern California for more than 30 years. His work has appeared in the Tenderloin Times, Sacramento News & Review, Reno News & Review, Chico News & Review, North Bay Bohemian, San Jose Metro, SF Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, Alternet, Boston Phoenix, Creative Loafing and Counterpunch, among many other publications. His honors include winning the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s Freedom of Information Act and best columnist awards as well as best commentary from the Society of Professional Journalists, California chapter. Mr. Scheide welcomes your comments and story tips. Contact him at RVScheide@anewscafe.com..

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