Americans themselves, not Mexican cartels, are to blame for America's long history of addiction to opiates

The Louisville Courier Journal recently printed an investigative story on how the tentacles of a relatively new and powerful Mexican drug cartel, CJNG, have reached small town Kentucky. Although the story admits that generally this cartel as others holds its operatives in the U.S.—who are not all necessarily “Mexicans,” but could be buyers and dealers who are “Asians, black guys, outlaw motorcycle gangs, white trash” says one DEA agent—to not bring attention upon themselves by engaging in the kind of violence that is common in Mexico, the authors can’t help but ring out the alarm bells at full throttle, engaging in anecdotes that ignore the larger questions. “They” are killing the “next generation” says the anguished parents of a son who overdosed on fentanyl the day before he was to go into rehab. Who are “they”? "They," of course, are the ones responsible for “The unending stream of narcotics has contributed to this country’s unprecedented addiction crisis, devastating families and killing more than 300,000 people since 2013.” The story doesn’t tell you straight out that most of those dead died as a result of Mexico’s “war on drugs,” although it alludes to the violence there a few times, but just throws out those big numbers because they both excite outrage and sells newspapers. That there might be a "cell" of a “violent cartel” in an “unsuspecting town” doesn’t mean their “violence” is here, save in incidental episodes of threats to keep a few operatives “in line.”

There are the usual complaints that Mexico is not doing enough, and there is certainly reason to blame a country with very real and persistent social and economic inequities (film director Guillermo del Toro looks more “Anglo” than Mexican, which may explain why he has never employed a Hispanic actor in any of his American-produced films), and its corruption through all levels of government is well known. Law officers tasked to stop the drug trade profess never to speak about their operations to anyone outside their own inner circle or DEA agents, due to the proliferation of cartel informants; one officer admitted "If you provide information to the Mexican government, it’s probably the last thing you would say." President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “plan” to stop violence in Mexico was to decriminalize all drugs in Mexico, but that will remain a useless gesture as long as the same drugs are criminalized in the U.S. AMLO has been criticized for concentrating federal troops on its southern border to control illegal immigration instead of using them to “control” the cartels; this is again a bit hypocritical, since Donald Trump threatened tariffs on Mexican goods unless it did “something” about controlling Central American migrants, and the only way Mexico could comply was to send troops to its southern border instead of fighting cartels—which has often produced more defeats than “victories.”  

But the biggest hypocrisy of all is the fact that the U.S. really has only itself to blame for its drug problem. The synthetic opioid fentanyl was not “invented” in Mexico, it was invented right here in the U.S., and because of its potency and effects similar to another opiate—heroin—it quickly became the subject of abuse. The Smithsonian Institute website has an interesting post concerning the history of opiate abuse in the U.S. dating from its founding. The opium poppy, which originated in Turkey and was “domesticated” specifically because of its “medicinal” properties, eventually traveled eastward to Afghanistan and to China and Southeast Asia for its production, and the “product” of course made its way to Europe and America. 

During the Revolutionary War, opium was used to treat wounded soldiers, and Benjamin Franklin used it to control pain from a bladder stone. But it was the American Civil War that set off America’s  epidemic of opiate abuse; the Union Army issued 10 million opium pills to soldiers, plus 2.8 million ounces of opium powders and tinctures. With the invention and use of the hypodermic needle, doctors really got carried away with administering opiates. In David Courtwright’s book Dark Paradise: A History of Opiate Addiction in America, he notes that “Though it could cure little, it could relieve anything. Doctors and patients alike were tempted to overuse.” In the 19^th century, the opiate morphine was considered a “wonder drug.” Opium powders very much like today’s OxyContin led to the opiate addiction of one-in-200 Americans by 1900. Doctors even self-medicated themselves; there is a scene in Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun where Maria’s doctor, after giving her a health clearance, conceals himself as he shakily gives himself an injection of an opiate, implying that he is a drug addict. 

By the late 19^th century women were 60 percent of opiate addicts. Although the dangers of opiate addiction was recognized, doctors often ignored warnings because patients demanded that their pains be relieved and there were few alternative methods. Because at the time the majority of opiate addicts were women, it was deemed a “scandal” but not a crime to be an addict. Courtwright points out that only when the majority of addicts were males and its use done more openly did addicts receive less sympathy from the public and addiction became a “crime.” 

The U.S. occupation of the Philippines following the Spanish-American War set-up a major pipeline to transport opium from Asia. A law “regulating” trade in opium passed in 1909, but it did not stop its use. Instead, it merely drove prices up for what was available. The street price of a “can” of opium went up 12 fold overnight. Drug dealing “gangs”—mostly white and some Asian—were the precursors of the drug gangs of today. But because these original “products” were usually not “high value,” users eventually gravitated to more powerful opiates, like heroin. 

Courtwright points out the similarities between opiate addiction then and that of today, but the differences are also quite apparent.  Today there are more “options” available to doctors and patients than a century ago, but drug companies are putting pressure on doctors to prescribe their new “wonder drugs,’ which are merely more sophisticated varieties of opiates, and opioids in particular. He notes that the reason why opioids have infected “small town” white America is that opioids are technically “legal” even when abused, and less subject to punitive action—the real reason why opioids are “threatening” Kentucky’s “kids.” Blaming Mexican drug cartels for the opioid problem in this country is merely hypocritical and self-serving.

According to the DEA website, the three main sources for illegal opium used to create opioids are Burma, Afghanistan, and Colombia—not Mexico, which supplies the “middlemen.” The DEA admits that it is difficult to control opiates in the U.S. because “Opium and heroin are ideal trade products–they are in great demand, are very profitable to produce, and the products take up little space. With modern transportation, opium and heroin can be moved from one country to another within days or a few weeks. Opium and heroin have a long and stable shelf life, allowing the products to be stored for long periods of time.” 

The “difficulty” in controlling opioids in the U.S. comes also from a schizophrenic history of “legalization” of opiates in the U.S.; at one time or another, opium, morphine, heroin and codeine were or are still “legal” for use in the U.S. Codeine, which is used in cough suppressants, can be “abused” by consuming large quantities of cough medicine, or consuming it “pure.” But the point is that the U.S. has a long history of opiate addiction, and it occurred long before there was a problem with Mexico. The “blame game” targeting Mexico is hypocrisy run rampant, since Mexico would not be stricken with the violence it is seeing now if there wasn’t a vast market for illegal drugs and virtually unregulated sale of guns in the U.S. that dates back since the very birth of this country. That is the part of the story that reports like that of the Courier Journal keep missing. Americans need to stop blaming other countries, and look at themselves squarely in the face.

Trump's "interest" in California's homeless problem, like that of corruption in Ukraine, may be a cover story for another "interest"

A federal court in Oregon blocked the Trump administration’s latest anti-legal immigrant rule, which would deny visas to immigrants, who have otherwise legally satisfied all other requirements, if they cannot “prove” they will immediately have health insurance. Obviously this ruled targeted immigrants from poor countries and those who did not have “high tech” jobs already waiting for them. Judge Michael Simon ruled that the Trump administration’s use of a “public charge” rule—which has a sinister history and responsible for the deaths of untold thousands during World War II—was “inconsistent” with the Immigration and Nationality Act in its de facto effect of discriminating against those races and “ethnicities” regarded as “undesirable,” especially by the definition of white nationalist and neo-Nazi sympathizer Stephen Miller. 

But that is only one of the many schemes that Miller and the far-right have been cooking-up in order to lower and even eliminate the legal immigration of those considered “undesirable”—which in the case of Miller and a battery of far-right commentators who have the ear of Trump, like Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, Lou Dobbs and Tucker Carlson, the target is Hispanics in the particularity. Coulter complains that there are just too many for her to tolerate looking at, Dobbs thinks they bring in diseases, Buchanan and Ingraham complain that Hispanics are to “destroy” American culture, Malkin fulminates over crime (even though Hispanic crime rates are in line with their percentage of the population and far lower in real numbers than either whites or blacks), and Carlson complains that they make the country “dirtier.” Carlson’s complaint is somewhat ironic since people like him actually make the country dirtier with all the waste they generate to support their extravagant lifestyles, and someone has to clean-up the mess they leave behind.

Carlson’s “dirty people” campaign, like so many other Fox News “causes,” seems to have caught the attention of Trump and his familiars, especially Miller. While it is “hard” to say for a certainty, Trump’s complaint about homelessness in California and threats to “do something” about it sounds like it is just a cover story for a plan that Miller is just the type to cook-up: in the “assumption” that many if not most homeless people in California are immigrants and “probably” illegal as well, this is another way to clear the “undesirables” out of the country. Note that Trump’s complaints about the homeless creating “water pollution”—an absurdly out-of-proportion charge given the amount of chemicals, sewage and waste dumped into the oceans by businesses and municipalities—are very much in line with Carlson’s “dirty people” complaints. 

But as The Nation points out, the Trump plan to fix the problem of homelessness in California—a state that “presumably” has a “lot” of homeless Hispanics than in other states, save “red state” Texas—has a police state-like dimension,  and it has perhaps another, more sinister, intention. The Trump anti-homeless (the more appropriate designation than “anti-homelessness”) program mentions “affordable housing” only twice in its 41-page “action plan,” but it does spend a lot of ink on the role of law enforcement in rounding up homeless people and incarcerating them in what it calls “government-run facilities.” 

Some cities already have a policy of arresting homeless people, ticketing them and throwing them back out on the street—changing nothing about their lives except that they are now homeless people with “criminal” records. The Trump administration obviously wants to take this a step further: to target specifically not just homeless illegal immigrants, but legal immigrants who are homeless, and by Miller’s and ICE’s definition, subject to deportation. Just as Trump doesn’t really “care” about corruption unless “investigating” it benefits him politically, Trump doesn’t really “care” about the homeless other than as a talking point to bash Democrats and advance his and Miller's anti-immigrant campaign. 

If Trump was actually “serious” about combatting homelessness, that problem is in every state; in the state of Washington, I’d say about 90 percent of the homeless population is white male, at least in King County. But Trump is clearly targeting just California for both political and immigration reasons, having already suggested that San Francisco’s “sanctuary city” status is the “cause” of its homeless issues. Doubtless carrying out this intention would raise more issues about the Trump administration’s inhumanity, but like the policy of holding children in concentration camp-like facilities, this likely will “blow over” in a short time as well, because, well, these people are not quite as “human” as others people—as the Trump administration’s continuing refusal to release disaster relief funds to Puerto Rico is proving even now.

If you are a real American, you should care that the Trump administration is corrupt to its very core

Who is the more patriotic and loyal to the ideals of this country? Soldiers who abide by the rules of war as enunciated by the Geneva Convention, or those who murder unarmed civilians or prisoners? This country hasn’t erased the shame of the My Lai massacre more than 50 years ago, in which 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians were killed by an Army platoon on the orders of Lt. William Calley; then as now there was wide disagreement over whether such action was a crime or not depending on your political leanings; naturally those on the right saw Calley as “unjustly” crucified. By the way, the U.S. is not a signatory of Protocol II of the Convention, which prohibits torture and “outrages on personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

But Donald Trump would have us believe that soldiers and sailors who are convicted or charged war criminals are more “patriotic” and loyal to the ideals this country allegedly stands for than the vast majority who did fight “by the rules.” That is just like Trump, who never plays by or respects civilized norms of behavior. The Navy has such a rigorous standard of discipline for Seals that it removed the Trident pins from 150 since 2011; Trump refused to allow the review process to go forward to see if Edward Gallagher should be allowed to keep his, and if Gallagher himself respected the code of discipline for Seals, he would not have gone on Fox News and whined about his predicament, but removed the pin himself. Oh, and by the way, one of those being charged with the hazing/murder of Green Beret SSG Logan Melgar is a Navy Seal; before Melgar was strangled to death, one of those involved admitted that they also intended to sexually assault him. Why? Because they felt he had "disrespected" them and was critical of their "juvenile" behavior.

Instead, Trump wants Gallagher and the rest of his storm trooping “warfighters” to go out and campaign for him as a return “favor.” Who are the kind of people who don’t buy in on the principles this country fought a war of independence and a civil war for? USA Today quotes an unnamed retired senior naval officer: “The larger issue for me is this ‘cable Cabinet’ at Fox News that seems to be able to unilaterally convince the president on issues they care about. He should be held accountable. But what do you do about Fox News? Who holds them to account for advising defense and foreign policy?” Trump often has taken a keen interest to Fox News’ latest far-right “cause celebre,” and Gallagher and his fellow war criminals were feted to such interest.

While the Trump Justice Department is ignoring thousands of clemency requests that have legitimate claims, Trump prefers to act on those cases in which he can benefit politically. USA Today quotes a law professor who notes that “He is doing it to reward political supporters to benefit those who would benefit him politically. What he is doing is serving up red meat to the base.” In other words, Trump and his Fox News-watching “base” don’t really have any moral or ethical “principles”; whatever issue that Fox News or far-right commentators like Ann Coulter suddenly decide has too much support from mainstream or “liberal” media, it is fair game for alternate universe “interpretation.” 

Note that Fox News likes to push the latest Ukraine conspiracy theories, and Venezuela is also a frequent target, mainly because its current government is considered “socialist.” But corrupt governments exist everywhere, including in this White House. Talking about corruption in Russia, where corruption is a way of life, is a non-starter because Trump likes Russia and is particularly fond of its current dictator, Vladimir Putin. During last week’s impeachment hearings, we heard a lot from Donald Trump and his Republican familiars about the “disloyalty” to America by Ukrainian-Americans Marie Yovanovitch, the ousted ambassador to Ukraine, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an NSC official who was the first to come out publically concerning Trump’s July 25 phone call to the Ukrainian president in which he “asked” for an investigation of the Bidens. But why are the people who are allowing Russia to undermine American interests not considered the real “disloyal” and “unpatriotic” characters in this country? Because for Trump, Republicans and 100 million supporters in this country for whom words like “loyalty’ and “patriotism” are nothing more than code words and dog whistles for “America First” fascism and white nationalism? 

Let us remember that although the Mueller investigation claimed to have found no hard evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign “colluded” directly with Russian officials, there are outstanding indictments against three Russians companies and 25 total Russian operatives for interfering with the 2016 election on behalf of Trump, and that Julian Assange very likely received his Democratic email dumps from the Russians. The Roger Stone trial suggests that the Trump campaign did through a roundabout way collude with the Russians, and in any case the Mueller report stated that the principle reason why no collusion case could be made was that those interviewed either gave false testimony, or refused to talk. As we discovered this past summer, as soon as Robert Mueller in his public testimony refused to clear-up the collusion angle, Trump made his infamous July 25 phone call in which he basically asked the Ukrainian president to “collude” with him in investigating the Bidens. The difference here was that unlike the Mueller investigation, this time Trump was caught red-handed, and that there were public servants who were willing to tell the truth. Those people were the true “patriots.” 

Trump’s claim that he is only interested in rooting out “corruption” is as blatantly a lie as they get. First, the claims against the Bidens have thus far proven to be mere conspiracy theories first pushed by disgruntled Ukrainian officials ousted from power, and then picked up by the far-right media here; even the original “sources” of those conspiracies have now admitted that there was nothing to them. Secondly, Trump is only interested in the undermining Joe Biden, not against corruption as a concept. As long as polls suggest that Biden will be his principle obstacle to reelection, he will keep pushing this con until another “frontrunner” emerges to threaten him.

As noted, Trump has shown no interest in “investigating” the corruption of other countries engaged in much worse—including that of Putin. “Officially” Putin’s presidential salary is $133,000 a year, and he lives in a “small” apartment.  Yet Forbes suspects he may be the richest man in world, which is the only explanation for how he can own a brand new $1 billion palace and a $500 million yacht—and those are just the more expensive ones he owns. He also allegedly “owns” 58 airplanes. From once a lowly KGB agent with no apparent business acumen, estimates of Putin’s wealth now range from $70 billion to $200 billion. It also has been claimed that he has $40 billion stashed in a Swiss bank account. 

How did he manage to “buy” all of this on his government “salary”? Maybe like Major Healey he stole Jeannie from Major Nelson for a while and got carried away, unable to explain how he could live in a mansion with servants and owned a yacht on his astronaut salary—except that, of course, in a country as corrupt as Russia is, Putin is the “genie” of corruption, and he is never required to explain himself. It is probable that Putin helped himself both to the nation’s treasury, and extorted a “price” from major Russian companies, principally in the energy sector, for “favors” he was in a position to give. Like any head of a criminal organization, Putin could and did “punish” those who refused to contribute to his “kitty” fund—and have assassinated journalists who tried to expose his corruption. What would Trump say about all of this? Well, naturally he would be “impressed,” and wished he could fleece the government coffers (like he tried with the G7 meeting) and extort “favors” if he could.

The level of corruption that Trump has introduced into government has not been seen since the Warren G. Harding administration. And it is not just of a political nature but of a moral and ethical nature. Policy seems never to be evaluated by its human cost, but by its “cost” to Trump. The passage of the Affordable Care Act cost the Democrats dear in the 2010 midterms, but there was no denying that Democrats had the well-being of the people in mind. Nothing Trump has done has been for the benefit of the country as a whole. As mentioned yesterday, his tax cut for corporations has not only not had a positive effect on the economy, but potentially may leave the country unable to right itself because the federal deficit is already at levels which would be expected if the government was infusing money into the economy to combat the effects of a major economic downturn. The UN’s report on climate change now says that unless drastic measures are done now, there will be no hope for the planet; what has Trump done to “combat” this global as well as national emergency? He rescinded Obama era regulations that led to yearly reductions in total CO2 emissions; in the past year, CO2 emissions have increased 2.7 percent in the U.S. But that isn’t the “worst” of it: Trump has managed to so divide this country into warring factions with his ignorant, inhuman behavior and pronouncements that have been transformed into literal “policy,” the “justification” of which appeals to the lowest, most “instinctual” element of the bigot’s psyche. Taking into consideration the humanity of others is no longer a part of the national dialogue.

The tentacles of Trump’s corruption have spread far and wide with the help of his familiars. Rudy Giuliani is perhaps the most notorious, with revelations that he not only is the most conspicuous of the conspirators, but apparently he has been enriching himself by providing “legal” advice to some shady characters. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who are currently under arrest for laundering foreign money into Republican campaign accounts, have close ties with Giuliani, and Parnas claims to have assisted Giuliani with digging up “dirt” on the Bidens—which of course constitutes “collusion” with foreign entities. The other day the Wall Street Journal reported more federal subpoenas were issued to confederates of Giuliani: among the potential charges: obstruction of justice, money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the United States, making false statements to the federal government, serving as an agent of a foreign government without registering with the Justice Department, donating funds from foreign nationals, making contributions in the name of another person or allowing someone else to use one’s name to make a contribution, along with mail fraud and wire fraud.

Parnas has also accused Rep. Devin Nunes and his representatives of seeking assistance from foreign entities in domestic political dirt gathering operations. Many in Congress and the media are mystified by the fact that Nunes “stupidly” keeps bringing the fact of Russian interference into the picture even as he tries to deny it as a “hoax.” And while Jeff Sessions left his familiar, Stephen Miller, to carry on his racist anti-immigrant fight in the White House, so too apparently has Nunes, whose protégé Kash Patek was accused by Fiona Hill as misrepresenting himself to Trump as the “go-to” source for NSC opinion on Russian and Ukrainian intelligence. Patek has very likely been feeding Trump the various conspiracy theories in regard to the Bidens and alleged Ukraine “interference” against Trump that Nunes has been pushing during the impeachment hearings. 

But does any of this “matter”? You have one-term Republican congressman Allen West, the senior advisor to the CREEP-like  Committee to Defend the President and Fox News’ Laura Ingraham quoting one of MSN News “pop quiz” polls to chide Democrats “I told you so” that the American people don’t care about impeaching Trump. This man is so patently unfit to be president that nobody “cares” except the “fake news” media? As Adam Serwer of the Atlantic Monthly is pointing out, “Trumpists are not operating from an ethical framework that even allows acknowledgment that the president is capable of being guilty. Trump is the nation, and the nation cannot commit treason against itself. On the contrary, it is Joe Biden who is guilty of betrayal, defying the tribune of the people by seeking to run against him, and it is Trump’s treacherous staff who convict themselves of treason with every statement that implicates the president. The more evidence of Trump’s misdeeds the Democrats uncover, the more they reveal themselves as traitors. For Trumpists, there is no higher patriotism than bending to Trump’s will, and no more base corruption than defying it.”

For those who simply do not care, Serwer would remind us that we “should not lose sight of why the president is being impeached, and it is not because of a good-faith dispute over Ukraine policy. Trump and his advisers conspired to rig the 2020 election on his behalf, scheming to defraud the American people of a free and fair election. A genuine republic cannot survive chief executives who utilize their powers to make anyone who might challenge their authority into a criminal by extorting weaker entities into leveling false charges at their political rivals. Indeed, the republic’s Founders foresaw such a circumstance, and created the impeachment clause as a last resort against it. The high crime that the president has committed is not against Ukraine, but against America.”

After Trump, the deluge

According to a recent New York Times story, in 2017 Fedex owed $1.5 billion in taxes; after the Trump tax cut, its 2018 tax bill was $0. FedEx CEO Frederick Smith lobbied hard for the tax cut from 35 to 21 percent, claiming that “If you make the United States a better place to invest, there is no question in my mind that we would see a renaissance of capital investment.” The law would allow corporations to deduct the full cost of such investment from their tax bill. But whereas FedEx paid a 34 percent tax in 2017, they paid 0 percent in 2018, somewhat less than 21 percent How did they manage it? By “capital investment”? According to the Times,

As for capital investments, the company spent less in the 2018 fiscal year than it had projected in December 2017, before the tax law passed. It spent even less in 2019. Much of its savings have gone to reward shareholders: FedEx spent more than $2 billion on stock buybacks and dividend increases in the 2019 fiscal year, up from $1.6 billion in 2018, and more than double the amount the company spent on buybacks and dividends in fiscal year 2017.

In other words, FedEx was busier using their tax cuts to increase its own equity from stock buybacks and using much of the rest in passing out dividends to those who still held stock. FedEx is defending itself with a lot of double-talk, but it is a common refrain to explain why in 2018 more than $100 billion more has been saved in taxes than was predicted, which of course only increases the federal deficit even more. Most corporations never did pay the top tax rate to begin with, and today companies in the S&P 500 are averaging a little over half that rate. But three dozen major corporations like FedEx either pay no taxes or were actually “owed” refunds.

While capital investment did rise significantly in the first two quarters since the tax cut went into effect, over the year since then not only has investment decreased to levels below that from before the tax cut was passed, but GDP growth has slowed or fallen. According to the Times, rationalizations for this by the “experts” runs the gamut from trade war uncertainties to the fact that “high” taxes never had anything to do with investment in the first place. This was certainly true of FedEx, whose investment plan was to actually spend more money, not less, before the tax cut was passed. Why? Because it was the best way to reduce its tax liability; after the tax cuts went into effect, there was less incentive to spend more on investment. Remember that Smith talked about “capital” investments; those investments decreased by over $400 million from the company’s original “projections” before the tax cuts. The Times also pointed out that corporations like FedEx that have unpaid tax liabilities benefited by the lower tax rate being essentially retroactive. 

FedEx did use some of its infusion of extra cash for more hiring and raising hourly wages initially, although FedEx customers probably did not notice an improvement in service. But since then, due to market “confusion” over Trump’s trade wars, FedEx, like other corporations, are back to “downsizing.” On the website TheLayoff.com, current and former FedEx employees are sharing rumors about potentially major layoffs in 2020, particularly in the company’s SmartPost division, as well as major cutbacks in various benefits packages.

What has been “lost” in the discussion about these tax cuts is their long-term effects on the federal budget. The budget deficit is projected to increase by more than $200 billion this year and surpass $1 trillion the next two years. Now, people will point out that there were trillion dollar deficits during Barack Obama’s first term, but these deficits were incurred by spending to offset the effects of the “Great Recession.” The irony of this was that in the last years of the Clinton administration the federal budget was actually in surplus, and the Bush administration used it as an excuse not to eventually erase the federal deficit, but to enact a major tax cut that immediately led not to “dramatic” growth but were at the time record deficits, and the “official” numbers did not including “off the books” spending on the Iraq War. The federal budget deficit fell to $442 billion in 2015; the 2019 deficit is projected to be $984 billion, and over $1.1 trillion in 2020.

Remember that the economy is still supposed to be in a “robust” growth phase. What will happen when the country goes into another “great” recession or worse? The federal budget deficit will already be in “disaster” mode thanks to the Trump tax cut, and who will be expected to be the beneficiary of “relief” if there is any? Well, of course the corporations and banks will be crying they want “more, more, more.” And we the working people will be the ones suffering because, well, they never really mattered in Trump’s world to begin with. It will already be enough to hold back the deluge of white nationalism that Trump has unleashed on the country, and the economic disaster blame game--for which working class whites will pile their wrath on minorities, immigrants and the "left"--will only become worse.