Asset-stripping the US
The Trump administration is overseeing a massive degradation of government services and loss of intrinsic value. Seem familiar?
Many government departments have been headed up by people who did not believe they had any value, so precipitating their gutting of staff and budgets, leaving mere empty shells with none of their power. Alliances are being jettisoned with the catch-cry of pseudo-nationalism, but are really about weakening the US's influence on the world. The tariffs are bleeding US consumers dry, making it easier to transfer their little remaining wealth to the oligarchs. All this does not appear like a country rebuilding itself, but like it is being stripped of its value.
Really, this is what predator companies do to other companies that have lost their ability to generate income, so they are stripped of their assets and left as a shell with little value except to write off. This is the ultimate irony for a country that has thrived on ruthless corporate greed to be the final victim of its own business modus operandi. The ultimate hara-kiri!
This puts all the other actions taken over the last few years into perspective. It seemed strange that conservatives would go to so much trouble to rig the supreme court and build a comprehensive plan to destroy the US democracy, only to put in incompetents to oversee the government, with the most incompetent Trump in charge. While the conservatives could have built a strong authoritarian regime to actually rule the country, it allows the country to be gutted without interference from citizens. That is, authoritarianism is now the new cover.
Who benefits?
△So who benefits from a destroyed US?
With oligarchs operating more transnationally, a US that does not justify the amount of investment it needs to become properly great again is a losing proposition. There are plenty of poorer countries for exploitation that just need a tweak to have enough middle-class to make a worthwhile domestic market. Afterall, China did just that and has become an economic powerhouse in mere decades. We are seeing the decline of the US empire, not in decades, but in years, as it becomes the last shop to close its doors, leaving its peoples lost in their own delusions.
The ultimate dissolution of the American dream! And all it took was to activate and feed the selfish delusions of white men and let them believe they were important. Then leverage their support to bully politicians into playing ball. American oligarchs are taking the opportunity of reduced impediments to pick the US bones clean. After all, they do not need a economically strong US as a base, but just a compliant tax-haven that allows them legal free reign to run their global enterprise empires as they see fit without interference from governments or their citizens.
The global economic systems have long been under the control of a few money managers operating behind the scenes while they gather control and wealth, free from interference. What is happening with the US now is that the newer technology-based elites and their corporations are in public view staking their claim to global wealth and expressing their distain for democracy and the legal threats that have plagued them. Disabling the power of the US finally frees them. It is the logical outcome of Reagan's pivoting from Keynesian economics and its pretence of balancing wealth with public duty.
While Africa seems the perfect opportunity for exploitation by US oligarchs, they face competition from China's soft diplomacy in building infrastructure and pan-African resilience-building, both of which are far preferable from an African perspective than more post-colonial exploitation with a US oligarch face. What weakens African nations is the continued presence of post-colonial corruption that is exploited by the corporations of their ex-colonisers. Nonetheless, they and nations in other continents still have nascent middle-classes that could serve as viable consumer markets to exploit.
What are dictatorships for?
△The pertinent question that the US situation raises is what is the real purpose of authoritarian regimes around the world?
While the dictators may rant about how they are protecting their countries from subversive ideologies, we see them largely enriching themselves and the oligarchs who support them. While the US formerly criticised such regimes as the enemies of democracy, it showed no remorse in past decades in overthrowing democratically elected socialist governments to continue its exploitation of their countries. It appears that authoritarianism has always been a cover for exploitation.
Misreading the signs
△So, why is no one else calling out this asset-stripping as an end goal?
Economists and politicians are still under the delusion that this is all just an authoritarian playbook. They seem to still believe that the excesses can be stopped by following their favourite version of neoliberalism, pursuing court cases or engaging in protests. However, the Supreme Court is basically overturing any lower court decisions unless the actions taken were very illegal, but by the time they get there, the actions have had the desired effect. Frivolous cases in retribution against those who created problems for Trump just clog up courts.
Some politicians express defiance but it is all bravado and bluff. How far can we really expect them to go because they mostly have had no problem with the Israeli genocide of Palestinians? Anyone who can rationalise support for that can find a myriad reasons to walk away from risking their cushy jobs. The resistance has to be a lot more brazen, massive and swift if there is to be any halting of the progress of the decay of the US. Talking about how bad it is useless without laying out the many resistance actions that need to be taken, now!
Until pundits see the core goal of all the chaos, they will not understand how their expectations of restoring the US are ungrounded. Actually combatting the situation requires facing the faulty thinking and beliefs that have enabled the situation to get this bad, but also requires mobilising power cooperatives towards purging the US of those elites and their neoliberalism exploiting its people. Only then will there be an opportunity to have a true democracy with respect for citizens' agency.
For other nations, not understanding the US trajectory will lead them to procrastinate while they try to both negotiate with the Trump administration and find alternative markets, rather than divest from dependency upon the US as soon as possible to minimise the effects of the fallout from a weak US. They will also need to examine their own elites and how they have been undermining their own democracies and economies. No time to maintain illusions and delusions of who is doing the damaging and who their governments need to serve.
From here?
△So what do we do from here?
It is clear that we have to always examine the real motives of those who seek to govern us and who is the real power behind them. The US situation shows us that it is a short step from what appears like democracy to becoming full-blown exploitation under the cover of an authoritarianism that claims that its actions are for our benefit. Always be wary of those claiming to protect us because if they feel they need to say that, they probably are not doing that.
We can now see that elites do not have anyone else's interests at heart. Thus we who lack the wealth and power they have need to come together to decide what sort of societies we want that allow us to all have a share in prosperity without imposed propaganda that promotes the elitism that has derailed our democracies. This process will involve a re-examining of all the ideologies that have ended up being perverted to create our oligarchies. We need to examine how we can make our societies more truly egalitarian and resistant to expropriation by selfish elites.