Trump’s promise that if Republicans win the midterms, he’ll send $5,000 to every adult citizen, is a novel idea in only one area — in that we call it a bribe.
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So far, it is just like all the other checks he’s promised to send us: a $2,000 tariff dividend, and a DOGE dividend, and $9,000 for stay-at-home moms. But is this materially different from promising to extend Medicaid, or to cut taxes while increasing the debt, or to lower the price of gas? I would say no — except insofar as it pretends to benefit all Americans, which we say is crazy and unaffordable.
America will go bankrupt, we say, only if it pays the poorest of us, the richest of us, or most of everyone else. We can promise free aid to around 175 countries (go ahead, look it up!), but if we promise to send aid to all Americans, it presents “significant moral and legal hurdles.”
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This is beyond the significant economic hurdles. The idea that the government can benefit everyone is hampered by the idea that someone out there can be squeezed for it — an illusion that vanishes once the people getting paid are the same people getting looted. But this of was always an illusion, too. So was the idea that most of politics these days isn’t bribing anyway.
The real issue isn’t that somebody (or everybody) is getting paid; it’s the illusion that everyone isn’t going broke, and that Americans haven’t been morally bankrupt for decades and easily bought. We have lost the moral high ground that voting is “in the best interest of the country” — and the pissing contest that is election season is now happening right onto our feet.
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Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.