America’s shining city on the hill has stopped shining

Matein Khalid

Tariffs are to economics what leeches are to medicine, what voodoo dolls are to risk management and what astrology is to astronomy. The very fact that Trump believed in this nonsense with rigid consistency for 40 years as a solution to the very real havoc meted out by Davos Man and the apostles of globalisation to Joe/Jane Sixpack in Middle America is both laughable and tragic. Laughable because the very idea of American women stitching sneakers for Nike in giant digital sweatshops powered by AI and cotton T-shirts in Bangladeshi style all-girl factories from coast to coast for $16 an hour will not please bottom line Big Boss at Nike and Walmart.

So Trump has hit his MAGA base with a financial neutron bomb since his tariffs mean 5% inflation and a 6% unemployment rate for untold millions of working class stiffs who spent 98% of their disposable income just to put a roof over their heads and feed their kids now.

To add insult to injury, Trump has also triggered a $12 trillion financial meltdown just to score a negotiating point with Xi Jinping, who should gift Trump 2 pandas to atone the admittedly impressive zoological offerings at Mar-a-Lago.

The billionaire magnets of MAGA will unite with its unwashed masses to extract vengeance in the 2026 midterms from this lame duck economic ju-ju wizard. Who says political coups do not happen in the US? The Chicago Mob helped to elect JFK and the Dixie Democrats may have helped to kill him that terrible day in Dallas in 1963? Why were JFK and Jackie seated in an open convertible in a November winter, unless something sinister had gone wrong in the secret service sworn to protect him? Black swan, grey swan or pure dumb bad luck but the loss of JFK made escalation in Vietnam inevitable until it was time for the summer of love and “hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” (Answer: a lot more than Bibi Nethanyahu at his bombing best in the killing fields of Gaza).

Nixon’s resignation was engineered by the grandees of the GOP while the Reagan campaign made sure that Khoemini did not release the hostages in Tehran until their guy swore on the bible to protect the American people and Jimmy Carter was back picking peanuts in Georgia. The removal of Joe Biden last summer and anointment of Kamala Haris by Barry and Michelle to celebrate their 3rd term was a political coup no different than the kind that are so distressingly common in Pakistan, our land of the pure has a unique demoncracy with Fiends Not Masters. Our Hafiz General du jour has ousted his Talibanophile GHQ elected/selected cricketer as chief honcho. This is a surreal world. The Nasdaq rally was just a short covering bounce for a kitty fresh from the electric chair. The world changed last week forever and aint no sunshine when the big guy is gone. Lord Acton was so right, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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Also published on Medium.