On "ME", Distance and Timing

7-6-2025

On “Me”, Distance and Timing: Politicians understand that there’s an art to doing unpopular things. They know we will rebel if a critical mass of us are negatively impacted by something they do. They know we are less prone to hold them accountable for things we don’t see happening. They also know that if they convince us that some other group is taking advantage of us, we will ignore all kinds of brutality, cruelty and the resulting despair done to those groups. Strangely this does not include the wealthy or greedy. If they throw a few breadcrumbs our way, we’re easily bought and silenced. The “Big Beautiful Bill” (BBB) is a perfect example of these manipulations and more.

BBB has it all. Its changes don’t impact everyone at once. They are targeting “others”, and the bulk of us won’t “feel” their impact in our daily lives. The worst of the BBB has been delayed until after the mid-term elections, so that the impact won’t be felt when we vote for their re-election. The bread crumbs drop right away (but are temporary). The folks that will lose out on the BBB have been demonized and made sub-human. We feel they “deserve” to be mistreated because they’re all criminals, bums, anti-American and are not worthy of our help. Not only don’t we criticize these take-aways, we justify and herald them.

As our attention is kept on how victimized we supposedly are, the BBB gets off Scott-free in its major purpose. To put another couple trillion on our national credit card and hand it over to wealthy folks without any effort to require that money be invested rather than squandered. They tell us all this will be paid for by a half-percent increase in the GDP and the income from massive tariffs. But even these, are promises that are as elusive as they were in this Administrations first term. To be blunt, they didn’t happen then and they aren’t happening now.

But with all these political tricks, things really are not going well. Polling indicates that the vast bulk of Americans do not agree with the BBB. Even more surprising to the current Administration is the push-back on its attack on Medicaid. After all, Medicaid is essentially “socialism”, that is a “handout” to those undeserving slackers in our society. If they want healthcare, get a job! But slowly, the fact that most of Medicaid recipients either are working, are taking care of someone, are in school or are not able to work, is emerging. Then it turns out that Medicaid has become a support beam for the lower middle class. Those folks that voted for the current Administration, thinking it would go after the “others”. The attack on Medicaid will shutter essential rural healthcare. Again, hitting Administration stalwarts. It also turns out that “red” States politicians rely on federal Medicaid reimbursements to get re-elected. Oops! Add that to folks who agree we should offer a hand-up to our less fortunate, and the trickery dissolves.

The BBB features massive funds allocated to our war on brown people (you might have heard it called illegal immigration). The support for this comes from the unproven claims that we have been overrun by a criminal element of illegal immigrants who are murdering the good citizenry and feeding off our social support network. Here too, cracks are beginning to show in the falsity of these claims. ICE can’t find all these non-existent criminals, so it has taken to deporting law abiding and long-term immigrants. Now is expanding its dragnet to legal residents. It also is getting increasing pushback from employers, who need these workers to do the essential work of our nation. As ICE grabs people off the streets, with no due process and little concern for the facts, people are starting to do community patrols and obstruct ICE activity. They realize that this “criminal” element have been their neighbors for decades, have held responsible jobs and pose no threat to the nation. In fact, they are contributors. The Administration is now saying it wants to find ways to keep these workers here, a massive admission that their immigration policies are destructive and based on unjustified fear-mongering.

Much of the BBB was based on the claim that the R’s would “balance the budget” and be responsible stewards of the public purse. The so called “Freedom Caucus” even got a promise from R leadership that there would be a dollar of cuts for every dollar of spending. Well, the BBB adds trillions of dollars in new debt. Even with the draconian cuts to our social safety net. The “Freedom Caucus” collapsed like a cheap tent. More and more Americans are seeing the BBB as looting, not balancing. More deception unraveling.

All of this is just what the public knows now. This wasn’t just the President’s sleight of hand. Every one of the R’s that voted for the BBB negotiated their piece of the pie. Much of this “pork” is buried deep in the legislation, at the last minute, and unknown by most who voted for it. We used to decry this kind of budget by bribe, and as the details come out, the public is getting a sense of the size of this robbery.

Essentially this is the Wizard of Oz saying “pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain”. Will the Wizard pay a price for his manipulations? Hard to tell. Even with all that’s becoming clear, the opposition to this is mired in its own ineffectiveness and disunity. We may stay with the devil we know vs the one we have questions about. For the Administration and the R’s, this is running ahead of the flood-waters. A gamble for sure. For the D’s it’s a race to get their shit together. No one’s betting on that to happen quickly. For a nation that is awakening to this reality, the question is “what do we do now”?

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