The country was still in the so-called "Progressive Era," named for the coalition of middle-class professionals, labor activists journalists, and socialists that fought for political reforms (and won, sometimes)
"We've got to start to make this world over," Thomas Edison said.
The "Like, Really Smart" Age?Flash forward another century and, as the maps say: You are here. Donald Trump represents a threat to our nation's well-being. And he, like the "kids" of an earlier time, says "the darndest things." Who can look away from a wreck like that?
But this moment in history, like any other, takes place at the confluence of larger historical forces. While we ponder Trump's state of mind, the leaders of his party are busy reshaping the country in their own morally misshapen image.
Their ambitions are big -- as big, in their own way, as Monroe's plans to subjugate the continent. They want to conquer and colonize the public economy, reducing government to an empty shell and turning its activities into profit centers for corporations whose power cannot be questioned. In this way, public good becomes private gain.
The just-passed tax bill illustrates the scope of their ambitions. It throws a few short-term financial crumbs to an American majority that's under so intense financial pressure. But it's an enormous tax giveaway to millionaires and billionaires who are already enjoying the fruits of runaway economic inequality. It will make that inequality worse -- and in the end, as the Washington Post's Greg Sargent notes, most Americans will pay more in taxes.
Dark AmbitionsBut that's just the beginning. Their goal is to throw state governments, as well as the federal government, into fiscal crises that will allow Republicans to realize their ultimate ambition: the gutting of our shredded social contract and the dismantlement of the modern civil state.
Don't take my word for it. Ask them.
This is what House Speaker Paul Ryan had to say as his party prepared to pass the tax bill: "We're going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit." Ryan also said: "This has been my big thing for many, many years."
His fellow Republican, Sen. Marco Rubio, said: "You also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn't the driver of our debt. The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries."
They're not "entitlements," gentlemen, they're "earned benefits."
This fixation on debt and deficits is misguided in any case, whether it's expressed by a Republican or a Democrat. But it's especially galling when expressed by Republicans whose tax bill adds a projected $1.5 trillion to the deficit. It's illogical, unless their actual goal is to dismantle government programs that have succeeded where the private sector has failed.
But then, that's been the Republican ideology since Ronald Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." As the old saying goes: When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
Equally HostileMick Mulvaney, the former Tea Party congressman who now serves as both Trump's budget director and head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has expressed open hostility to benefits programs and indirect opposition to the idea that the rich should pay any taxes at all.
Republicans are equally hostile to regulations, which is another way of saying they are opposed to letting us protect ourselves from the death, disease, injury and devastation caused by private-sector greed. That's not just talk. The Trump administration has already dismantled regulations that protect the global economy, the coastline, and the lives of elderly residents in nursing homes. Some of those protections were written after the 2008 financial crisis and the BP oil spill, both of which could reoccur on a much larger scale.
To ensure the success of their dystopian enterprise, Republicans are also engaging in a full-scale war on the democratic sphere of activity, including the fundamentally American right to vote. Liberals who celebrated the death of Trump's "voter fraud commission" -- actually, a voter suppression commission -- were gravely misguided. By moving its activities into the Department of Homeland Security, Trump put the entire weight of the nation's national security apparatus behind this anti-democratic effort.
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