What Paul describes — and documents — as spendthrift, I call waste. Organize the various numbers of the economy into trends, the details/movements show a political economy organized as a model of wealth and waste.

Here’s why: using FRED data, full-time wages, hourly and salary for all workers, in the last ten years ranged from 332 (a low of 330 in 2014) to 345 currently, down last quarter (under Trump) from 352 (the high). Clearly, working wages have been tightly controlled, which can explain the lack of savings.

FRED maps show the gains in income and employment are taking place in the rural Red states of the Midwest [https://geofred.stlouisfed.org/map/?th=ylorbr&cc=4&rc=false&im=fractile&sb&lng=-85.122&lat=43.557&zm=6&sl&sv&am=Average&at=Not%20Seasonally%20Adjusted,%20Annual,%20Dollars&sti=2013&fq=Annual&rt=state&un=chg&dt=2014-01-01] Montana to Texas, mainly tied to fracking and drilling. FRED graphs also show real output (hourly, all workers), always highly cyclical, is shrinking under Trump. FRED shows stock market trades as a percentage of GDP are down, from 313 (2013) to 224. Stock market capitalization is also trending down, as a percentage of GDP, yet share prices are increasing — signs of a bubble. FRED shows corporate profits rising rapidly in 2017.

But private housing purchase rates are nearly half of what they were in 2006. Under Trump, healthcare insurance has risen 9 percent. What we see is growth, with workers left out. The economy Trump touts is a picture of expanding corporate and capital wealth. Working families whose wages are stagnant, housing unaffordable, healthcare expensive, and savings disappearing are losing ground. His words can’t change the facts.

There’s an old adage about action: how it speaks and all the rest walks. Not Trump; he who is in great shape rides in electric cars; at least he did in the G7 in Italy, when he was the only world leader unable/unwilling to walk to the conference center, up a hill.

A quick review of his action highlights begins with a travel ban twice shutdown by the courts, with the non-appearance of 1000s of terrorists streaming in. The ban caught graduate students at airports, grandparents at ticket counters, homeland security agents confused, and has led to visitor travel being reduced by 4 percent, with the lost of 100,000s in related jobs. That’s America last!

Paul Krugman reported new coal jobs totaled 500. Meanwhile, Houston has 10,000 healthcare positions open. Trump is silent on the powerful justice movement that set firm boundaries on a woman’s body, the movement at odds with his own admitted crotch grabbing and verbal insults to demean women. He has not congratulated Prince Harry on his American bride. In manners, civility, and morality, America last.

Add school shootings on his watch, as he assigns death by immigrants to his opposition. No action or leadership on school safety. Where else are youth shooting their class mates? America last.

Disclosing state secrets, the Russians running security at the Moscow embassy, Mexico paying for the wall, his ogling the French President’s wife? Ignoring real problems for fakes and constant fights, threatening allies? America. Last.

Yes, Trump Is A Racist

Sure, Trump is a racist! But his racism — his embrace of its system, his use of its levers, his willingness to deploy its narratives — is the bigger threat, the greater danger.

Trump is also a white supremacist. Yet, he has great relations with the blacks who offer themselves for him to exploit, out of misguided loyalty, blind self-interest, or a belief a black presence is important, no matter how repulsive are the words and ideas he speaks about people of color. His racism has been consistent, his entire life!

No talk radio; you cannot separate race from economics, when America’s early and sustaining wealth was built on black labor who built boats, picked crops, raised children, and defied nasty, vile remarks and violence, then and now.

No apologists; plain talk can exhibit good manners and common decency. Is that too much to expect, even from a racist president?

Yes America: it’s time to remember the truth of a complex history of race, power, and wealth, of laws and institutions that touched every region and town. It’s time to realize the nation is on the edge of change. The run on guns and ammunition days after Obama’s election was a harbinger that in the nation, many were not ready for race in the halls of power.

America should not forget the crazy little dances, the spontaneous shouts of Trump’s name, the rise in racial attacks and vandalism, the fear and pain when this racist won and took office. Denial is best confessed.

Trump’s Racist Words And Acts

Trump’s incontrovertible participation in two strategies that are main pillars of racism makes him racist. The debate over is-he-is-he-not only continues because a main element of racism is denial — racists always reject the idea that ideas and acts are racist by reproducing or referencing dubious claims. Denial exploits the ground of DuBois’ double consciousness. It consistently argues across eras blackness is void of humanity — by denying humanity to blackness.

One, Trump uses racist narratives. The narrative can be as simple as a demeaning word, used toward people of color, that would not be used toward non-people of color. Think: has the word in question ever been used toward communities in collapse from job losses, opioid addiction, a lack of resources? Has the word, or similar words, been used to describe the state of nations of non-people of color (Moldova, Albania). The word, vile, insulting, degrading, assaults the humanity by its reference, as the UN pointed out in its statement. Racism sets two standards of conduct. Narratives that historically violate the higher standard are racist!

Two, Trump’s acts are racist: his decisions block the participation of people of color in government and society. His White House has no black staff. His US attorney and judge nominations are nearly all-white. His lower level cabinet appointments are devoid of minorities. He overturns voter protections. He bans travel. He openly supported a racist child molester in Alabama. He equated Nazis with vests, clubs, and guns with counter-protesters. He has attacked the Muslim mayor of London. He treats terrorism by whites differently than terrorism by others. He has sought to nominate unqualified persons without trial experience to federal judgeships. He consolidates power in white hands!

Trump’s High Low Racism

Rima Regas correctly points out in her New York Times comment that Trump’s racism is also an deflection for more important racist attacks through policies, deregulation, and legislation, taking place on the streets of American now! [https://nyti.ms/2EIaX26].

Racism is both crude and sophisticated; crude forms advance the higher forms, where real damage is being done. As Rima points out, families are driven out of society by fear, in the name of law void of justice.

Racism is adept at this double deflection, using one form to hide the actions and intent of another form tied to changes in policy, law, and regulation. As Trump espouses racist invectives and narratives, the Congress in lock step refuses to fund children’s health, affecting the well being of children in poverty of all colors.

That’s a characteristic of the new racism: it is a wedge that is inclusive, aimed at whites in poverty, the elderly, women, single parent families, the unemployed, the addicted, Democratic voters — by words/acts of commission and omission. While its narratives center on race, stereotypes, smears, the blind mules of the GOP lead the charge to dismantle the social order — not the government — by using the government appointments, authority and budgets to benefit the wealthy, private and corporate.

It was racist when Trump undercut the ACA subsidies. It was racist when Congress tried to transfer $750 billion from healthcare to the rich. Racism divides whites who should be allies in the fight.

Charles Blow, in this morning’s digital New York Times, writes about the counter-narratives that whitewash history to preserve power and privilege in states whose structures and society still reflect the contradictions of history and democracy — especially on women and race.

The new narratives have a new quest: to hunt for ways to close the circle of progress, to deny its rights and prosperity, to preserve privilege and power for a smaller circle of old families and wealthy financial interests, even as within religion and its stone laws, once so important to Moore, morality wanes as we erect a politics of sin.

All of this is foretold as denial: Peter, Roy Moore, Trump, Harvey Feinstein engaged in denial, but the first (Peter) out of fear; the others for more nefarious purposes, with sizable machinery to impose their new formula: brokenness does not matter, personal integrity does not count as long as a politician or predator pledges to hurt his state/the nation/its families for the gain and benefit of wealthy special interests.

Finally, the new narrative appeals not to facts, but to belief. We know Moore/Trump are wrong and immoral, but some believe them still!

Belief is personal power; the content/context for continuing actions. The new beliefs demand clashing tensions! Ineffectiveness is great!

We know better. But the new beliefs have venality and versatility, and like the Red Queen, we, too, believe in impossible things. The new belief changes the fundamentals; it is not aimed to match truth, but to secure the rule of the social order and its wealth.

The “jobs” to be created result from a set of conditions that make assumptions and projections about facts that are inherently speculative, not real. What kinds of jobs will be created: distributed where, paying what, corporate or small business? Or will new jobs be more related to South Carolina’s in-migration and foreign investment (Mercedes-Benz, for example) than tax cuts?

The math and methodology is not specified or reviewed!

More: suppose South Carolina raises taxes? Has a natural disaster? How do those numbers compare to the projected number of jobs SC would create under present federal rates?

Sen. Scott omits the price of those jobs — tax cuts add $1.5 trillion to the federal deficit over a decade, a Republican red line Congress is joyfully leaping across, leaving a giant hole of debt! Suddenly after decades of warning and drum beats of danger, the Tax Foundation says: “government budget deficits have only a small effect on private investment.” This complete contradicts the GOP position of over a decade! In fact, it agrees with Nobel Winner Paul Krugman, the most liberal of economists!

The biggest omission in Senator Scott’s email is its failure to note tax reform raises taxes on many in the middle class. And for those paying less, the reforms will expire after 5 years, while cuts for the rich are permanent.

Finally, Sen. Scott leaves out the reforms cut healthcare and will cause 13 million Americans to lose coverage. How many of those are from South Carolina or your state? Because of cuts to Medicare contained in the bill, an estimated 33,000 jobs will be lost in South Carolina. That’s a net deficit of 20,000 jobs if this bill passes.

We are increasingly a nation of the powerful who bend the law to their will, to suit ideology or profit (sometimes both!). Unlawful imprisonment is another third world attempt by the Trump administration to undermine democracy, making single cases more important than the larger issues — the lost of civil liberties and freedom curtailed. It is time to remember, that living in a democracy implies risk. It’s a risk we all accept — to protect the freedoms of each other. We all serve in a democracy, shouldering the risks for a higher cause — freedom. Sessions’ fear-mongering, artfully omits that reducing the risks (by ignoring the law), reduces freedom.

Sessions doesn’t seek justice, only vengeance and political advantage.

That image is the magic thinking of a blind mule. He is leading the team.

Policy is becoming a vehicle for national theft, by thieves-in-waiting who requisition Air Force jets for telephones and to inspect the gold in Fort Knox, escorted by a wife draped in designer labels worth more than a year’s salary to a worker in West Virginia or South Carolina. Indifference is the prelude and postlude to moral shame, by mortals who worship the idols of wealth and power. They rule to the sound of their own praise — the kinds Trump received from his cabinet and from pastors who laid their hands on him in praise.

Trump’s indifference is the lie of the mask. No prayers were offered for the health of the nation!

Remember this quote from Octavia Butler posted by MSNBC’s Joy Reid on twitter:

To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all the coward fears.
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.
To be led by a liar is to asked to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

Blind Mules And Bunce was originally published in One Mule Drag on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Discussions of racism/white identity politics/white supremacy confuse white identity with white supremacy! These discussions also completely ignore the space in-between: the shifting continuum that occurs during crises or perceived crises. These shifts are not the dormant/active expression of “identity;” instead, “whiteness” shifts in its political activity–not based on crises, but on the perception of power and in the easy comfort of familiar levers of blame.

One key dynamic in the shifting white vote that discussions have overlooked is every major black political advance has been followed by a massive backlash–black observers (non-media) knew that Barack Obama’s presidency would be followed by an inept white male, to refute the benchmark Obama set. Hillary never worked through this silent backlash, which acted as a passive bulwark for Trump. Its invisible presence, manifested on election day, again shows racism is tethered to power. Equality is about changing and realigning power relationships. Diversity is about sharing power, opening opportunity and institutions. Inclusion is about establishing authority, redefining the norms of the social system. Cries of “political correctness” conceal the white power fix — the sustained rigid rush of supremacy and identity maintained through power. White identity is the soft edge of racism. A bridge that traffics in both sides of racism, the denial and liberal pretense that blinds whites to racism’s hard edge.

Trump attached his open racist appeals to power, its exercise, but especially to its narratives: racial myths of threats and dangers were turned into mass conspiracies of lost jobs, high taxes, giant giveaways, and constant threats–all formed from group behavior assigned by race that must be refuted by power–white power.

His real agenda has proven uglier than his imaginary threats.

In another key dynamic of race-as-power: minorities in power are never allowed to push white people around, to berate them by ethnicity, to target them politically, to blame them collectively for the nation’s ills. That privilege is reserved for whites only! Its narrative is a defining cultural value–a limit and boundary–one which adapts its deviant beliefs to ensure inequality not among people but in power.

This contradiction–between people and power–allows non-racist whites, comfortable in their personal relationships, to feel secure in their power relationships: police will not shoot them, etc. However, Trump is about to tip this balance: his endorsement by excuses, denials, and deflections of white supremacy is egregious (He openly quotes white racist logic!) and embarrassing. It is forcing whites to go past identity and confront their relationships with power — seen in Trump’s new racist and cultural norms. Should power deny the vote? Should heritage be a celebration of the legacy of slavery and bondage? Should it openly discriminate? Should it limit the civil liberties as a class? Should it pardon former law enforcement officials found guilty of contempt for constitutional violations of the fourth amendment’s provisions on search and seizure against undocumented residents? Should it selectively ban travel from countries with large Islamic populations? Can the law provide for transgender Americans to be administratively dismissed from military service, under the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution?

“Rough-em-up” Trump is forcing a choice between Nazis openly advocating violence and Black Lives Matter, openly advocating non-violence. Many whites see any confrontation by blacks to authority as a threat. They do not see the absence of justice in the calls for law and order. White supremacists split this important difference, ignoring the ends of justice to proscribe the means of law and order. Trump’s open sympathy for white supremacists and Nazis carrying shields and clubs, dressed in flak jackets and helmets as “fine people” who were under attack doesn’t square with the long “history” Trump says counter protests — and the “media” — are “trying to take away.” That “history” by white supremacists is genocide, hate, violence, lawlessness — a history of terror.

Greed, power and ideology drive Trump. He tried to redistribute healthcare as a tax cut; the natural wonders of federal lands are not “beautiful” if business can make a buck. The white supremacist code he repeats, “history and heritage,” echoes the Nazi formula, “blood and soil.” With a tweet, he violated democratic process: denying civil liberty to a class of American military personnel because they didn’t fit his balance sheet — despite transgender medical costs being one tenth of the military costs of ED treatments. He calls his discrimination and open loathing “a favor.” As women face abortion bans, Trump bans selected medical services for transgender military personnel.

Trump builds no bridges; he wants America hostage to a wall. He is a busy victim: by his count, attacked by the intelligence community, the media, Democrats, Congressional leaders, the courts, foreign leaders, he whines and rants, as a columnist noted, his wounded ego more important than the raw wounds of his country whose hurt he magnifies. His business and arts advisory committees resigned en masse. One resignation letter contained the acrostic, I-M-P-E-A-C-H. But in his largess, Trump finds time to do “favors” for hate.

Greed, power and ideology don’t permit progress; their common platform is destruction. These forces take profits and resources to benefit the few; extend authority by fiats and tweets, and rule by division and diversion. Instead of equal protection, Trump sees the law as granting special protections; he is widening the breach in the system as his Justice Department abandons voters, revokes discrimination remedies, denies civil liberties and consumer protections — to return to legal discrimination based on race, religion, gender and sexual orientation. Trump constantly seeks dimensions of his power that put his authority above the law, whether in owning properties or in pardoning convicted former public officials who are repeated violators of the constitution’s requirements of due process.

Trump is using power to extend authority into a destruction of civil liberties and civil rights in every corner of society: he expelled and blocked transgender military personnel with a single unvetted tweet! The keeper of the nation’s security, the Pentagon was caught off guard by his blitz attack, which was outside process and channels. No government founded as a democracy can permit its elected head to exercise power with such extreme prejudice. Tweets have replaced democratic process. Its 140 characters is now as devastating as the nuclear option.

The Feds two biggest economic weapons are its ability to set interest rates and expand or shrink the money supply. Neither will improve an economy structurally flawed and broken in ways taxes, trade, and interest rates cannot fix. The political economy — a series of decisions, regulations, and social choices — should aim toward progress. But for 50 years, progress has been reversed; politics meant retarding working class wages (explained as necessary for competition), than eliminating work (by closing or moving plants), and now shrinking safety nets. It also meant abandoning giant non-consumer industries, major engines of global growth, esp. infra-structure (rails and ships). Top and bottom, the economy squeezed the middle!

Politics directed the economy into several shocks and then a deep recession; public and private regulatory safeguards failed and politics provided more blame than rebuilding.

Now we are challenged by two political blind spots beyond the Fed’s reach: a mature economy, we face diminishing returns, difficulty in increasing aggregate demand (for more cars, phones, pants). Two, capital no longer depends on labor or production; its excesses now create waste! That waste began with cities (the Rust Belt), created a gig culture (part-time work with no benefits), lead to negative interest rates, and now its greed is after the country’s largest safety net (healthcare).

If this structure, where wealth shrinks rather than generates production, is not reversed by a new political vision, the Fed’s numbers will be impotent powers.