Donald Trump and the Deconstruction of America

[CousinIT]

Donald Trump and the Deconstruction of America

Every day, Americans are bombarded with the bad news of Trump 2.0: concentration camps; cruel ICE raids targeting law-abiding residents; health insurance being yanked from millions; elite universities, media companies, and law firms yielding to mob-like extortion; crypto deals and other brazen grifting tied to a corrupt White House; rampant abuses of governmental power and threats of sham criminal prosecutions against the administration’s critics and political foes; drastic cuts in food assistance; assaults on women’s rights; the withholding of disaster relief; the reckless shutdowns and eviscerations of crucial government services and agencies that will result in hardship (and, in some cases, death) for Americans and people overseas.

This is, of course, a partial list. And it is exhausting to keep track of and absorb each new outrage. That is the clear intent. The Trump transgressions come so fast they distract from each other. Public attention rarely remains focused on any one atrocity. We’re bludgeoned by the never-ending stream of misdeeds and affronts—which each day come wrapped in propaganda extolling a new Golden Age and assorted false glories of Dear Leader. When one is caught in the crossfire, it is hard to see, let alone address, the big picture.

That is to Donald Trump’s advantage. For a long time, commentators have noted that he relishes generating chaos and believes he can exploit disorder for political advantage. It’s an escape route for him. The dizzying whirlwind he creates places critics and opponents off-balance. And perhaps best of all for him and his crew, it hides their overall plan and inhibits the development and promotion of an overarching counternarrative. Their foes are stuck decrying the individual acts of villainy, one at a time, without doing what is most necessary in American politics: telling a story.

Trump and his gang are deconstructing America. This is their purposeful goal and an obvious one, if you look past the daily barrage of absurdity, indecency, corruption, wrongdoing, and abuses of power. It is the story that must be conveyed to the citizenry.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/08/donald-trump-deconstruction-america

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Hope people are paying attention, I still wonder about that 70 million

Too busy on TikTok to bother to vote last time, are they?

[Mr.Bee]

5. They're trying to escape

this madness - I know several - they can't stand the news anymore
so they're hiding in their safe spaces!

[Moostache]

2. Let's remember the scorecard here...

One day - and that day cannot come soon enough - our morbidly obese nearing 80-year old painted clown will die. Hopefully today and if not, then the day after. Once he is gone, the wreckage will either be cleaned up and those supporting him out of fear now will be held to account for this, or we will end up in a second shooting Civil War. There is no resetting this Trump disaster into a 'new norm' - its one or the other. It's full accountability and prison terms or its baricades and offensives and sieges of enemy strongholds.

In short:

1) cruel ICE raids targeting law-abiding residents;
- ANYONE that hires into ICE from January 2025 until the death of Trump is liable for full prosecution of any and all violations of Civil Rights, Human Rights and laws... They will be prosecuted and jailed and serve 100% of their sentences, period. If you get your rocks off by serving in the modern Gestapo under the wannabe Furher, there are consequences awaiting you.

2) health insurance being yanked from millions;
- Medicare for All will be enacted, codified and made unassailable by the next Democratic administration with a majority to pass the measures in Congress... OR, we can split the nation into those who actually see health care as a right and those who want to watch others die while congratulating themselves for being masters of the universe.

3) elite universities, media companies, and law firms yielding to mob-like extortion;
- If you are any of these things today AND you capitulated the Trump in ANY way, you are no longer 'elite' in the post-Trump world, you are the equivalent of a used condom and infectous human waste. These institutions that failed to stand up can stay on their knees permanently and be driven out of business, out of academia and out of business. Fuck them all, they had a chance to do the right thing and chose the easy thing instead. Actions have consequences.

4) crypto deals and other brazen grifting tied to a corrupt White House;
- prison time and bankruptcies abound for the grifters and thieves, in 2009, we blew the chance to jail the bankers and thieves that crashed the global economy and kicked off this current downward spiral that we have yet to fully recover from at the lower levels of wealth in this country... Letting the dude-bro class of crypto-finance bros skate would be unacceptable. Jail them all.

5) rampant abuses of governmental power and threats of sham criminal prosecutions against the administration’s critics and political foes;
- Trump associates and lackeys? We are going to come for you and if it means stripping the Presidential pardon from the Constitution, or simply enforcing the laws that you are breaking with impugnity today, then that is what must happen.

6) drastic cuts in food assistance;
- All monies that are currently being syphoned off to I.C.E. will start with health care and food assistance increases until the I.C.E. money is used up.

7) assaults on women’s rights;
- Codify Roe v. Wade as the law of the land and rebalance the Supreme Court with 6 new justices added to the court with the understanding that none will be named to the court again until at least 6 justices resign, retire or die. This 'super-majority' stolen sham of a court MUST be addressed and rebalanced or we might as well start the shooting Civil War part now and redo the court when its over and a second American republic can be formed.,

8) the withholding of disaster relief;
- any "red state" that acted to withhold the funding for its citizens will be named and shamed and the aid delivered to those in need with a full breakdown of why they were delayed or denied by the GOP assholes. This message - in the affected areas - will be broadcast as state-sponsored Television 24/7 until the message sinks in - THEY WANT YOU TO DIE INSTEAD OF PROVIDING AID.

9) the reckless shutdowns and eviscerations of crucial government services and agencies that will result in hardship (and, in some cases, death) for Americans and people overseas.
- See above for the remedies here - the first part is to restore the practice of American aid being given to the neediest and then attach the shame and ridicule of the Trump legacy to anyone and everyone dumb enough to try using it in the future.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. OT: DESTRUCTION, dammit, not deconstruction ! Deconstruction is a literary term of art, meaning pretty much 'analysis'.

Consider the etymologies of 'analysis' ("breaking down" in Greek) and 'deconstruction' ("reverse of building together" in Latin) -- clearly both are meant to express the same idea. Taking things apart conceptually, not physically. For the latter we have the well-worn antonym, DESTRUCTION.

Curse Steve Bannon (and all in the NewSpeak RWNJ echo chamber) for corrupting the language, thus limiting its usefulness. I guess you'd expect that from a bloviating, mis-educated pseudo-intellectual who says "I am a church militant", with no understanding of the import of that phrase, either.

1
: a philosophical or critical method which asserts that meanings, metaphysical constructs, and hierarchical oppositions (as between key terms in a philosophical or literary work) are always rendered unstable by their dependence on ultimately arbitrary signifiers
also : an instance of the use of this method
a deconstruction of the nature–culture opposition in Rousseau's work
2
: the analytic examination of something (such as a theory) often in order to reveal its inadequacy
Did you know?

Deconstruction doesn't actually mean "demolition;" instead it means "breaking down" or analyzing something (especially the words in a work of fiction or nonfiction) to discover its true significance, which is supposedly almost never exactly what the author intended. A feminist may deconstruct an old novel to show how even an innocent-seeming story somehow depends on the oppression of women. A new western may deconstruct the myths of the old West and show lawmen as vicious and criminals as flawed but decent. Table manners, The Sound of Music, and cosmetics ads have all been the subjects of deconstructionist analysis. Of course, not everyone agrees with deconstructionist interpretations, and some people reject the whole idea of deconstruction, but most of us have run into it by now even if we didn't realize it.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deconstruction

Someone needs to send a memo to every editor in the English-speaking press, warning authors how stupid they look when they adopt Bannon's malformed vocabulary.



ETA: What the Radical Right is attempting may just as well be termed "disintegration". To "integrate" means "to make into a whole", and "disintegrate" is exactly, literally what MAGA wants -- loss of integrity, in more than one sense.

[Blue Full Moon]

4. He's done more damage than Julius and Ethel Rosenberg