What’s a little scaremongering among Republicans?
Donald “91 Counts” Trump is feeling especially vulnerable these days. For good reason. He sees his “empire” under threat on Monday of being seized to cover his half-billion-dollar bond in the New York financial fraud case. If he does not win the presidency, conviction in his other four pending cases could mean he spends the rest of his days in prison. The harshest cut of all is the damage to an ego so fragile it requires constant media and fan attention to keep from melting down.
So he and his campaign are in damage-control mode after his big mouth spit out words to the effect of his threatening Social Security and Medicare if reelected. In Trumpian “I know what you are, but what am I?” fashion, Trump issued a panicked “Truth” accusing Democrats of being the party threatening the safety net.
Big “tell,” Greg Sargent observes:
Plainly, what triggered this rage-rant was the news that a group of House Republicans has proposed a budget that would raise the retirement age for Social Security and restructure Medicare along lines that Paul Ryan–esque Republicans have long sought. Democrats have seized on this to bludgeon the GOP for threatening to cut the program.
Trump and his advisers know how big a problem this is for them. After Trump recently opened the door to Social Security and Medicare cuts, his campaign rushed to clean up his remarks. His eruption Thursday was clearly an effort to stanch the bleeding, now that House Republicans have opened that wound once again.
But here’s the thing: There is no particular reason to listen to what Trump says he’ll do on Social Security and Medicare. What really matters is that a large bloc of his party remains committed to the underlying principles of Paul Ryan–style economics and that when Trump is sitting in the Oval Office, he tends to hand control over to them.
True, Trump is no policy wonk. But as much as what was the GOP is Himself now, its zombified version still has vestigial reflexes and responds to basic stimuli. Despite Trump’s gee-hawing, Republicans will keep doing what Republicans do should he get reelected.
The fundamental difference here between the parties is that Biden and Democrats think we should raise taxes on the rich and corporations, fortify Social Security and Medicare without serious cuts to benefits, and expand the safety net and invest in other programs for reducing inequality. By contrast, Trump and Republicans oppose higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and want to cut entitlements and the safety net pretty much wherever they can.
Trump’s INVASION OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY SNATCHERS warning reflects a Republican reflex as deep as catering to the rich and keeping peasants in their places: hyping “stranger danger.” Conservatives know their marks, and they reflect their own anxieties onto them.
After the strangulation homicide of Jordan Neely, a Michael Jackson impersonator, on a New York City subway, I wrote:
Since the 1980s and earlier, unreasoning fear of the “other” has been cultivated and marketed. There was the moral panic over rumors of ritual Satanic abuse at day care centers. There was the repressed memory syndrome fad. There was “stranger danger.” The response of parents fearful of their children being abducted was to have them photographed and fingerprinted at mall clinics designed more for identifying bodies than for preventing rare abductions. There were ubiquitous “Baby on Board” signs in car windows. Danger lurked around every corner.
Stranger danger sells zombie movies and QAnon merch and MAGA candidates and the Big Lie. It feeds Trump’s anxieties that burble out in social media posts. Still, Trump thinks he’s the shmaht one. Everyone else is a sucker, and there’s one born every minute. What sells? Stranger danger. So with his ego fracturing and his empire under threat and his dreams tortured by images of jail cells, he’s selling it and selling hard. His zombie army shambles along behind.
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