Trump's Treason?

What is treason?

Technically, it is:

the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.

So, in a democracy, treason consists in an attempt to destroy the sovereign people, or overthrow the government elected by the people.

How does that relate to Donald Trump?

Well here, before addressing that question directly, is a comment by Yusef, one of our few but highly intelligent readers:

One of the things bugging me is I believe suffering in the USA will be more intense than elsewhere in the West is the USA pretty much dissolved, or drastically reduced, its social safety net, most dramatically starting in the 1980's. I'm not even sure if enough of the remaining administrative infrastructure is sufficiently strong to be revved up in this soon-to-be emergency situation. As you mentioned above, the politics of both parties, and their policies, have been in the interests of one class, and that's not been the working class. The working class had been sold out by its representatives and "leaders" and the consequences of this were becoming all too apparent even before Covid-19 delivered its coup de grace. I still think there's a lot to be said for the speculation both Covid-19 and the BLM riots and violence, are ways of deflecting blame and rage away from those sell-out politicians and those for whom they sold out. Especially the BLM riots.

In response to which we would say that, for ordinary folks, the best welfare program is a job creation program. However, in the US today, the labor of many Americans at the legislated minimum wage is not cost-competitive in a globalized labor market.

 In reaction to that fact there are two common views. There is the NeoCon view as expressed in 2016 by Kevin Williamson writing in the National Review about the white American underclass, i.e., the inhabitants of towns that lost their reason for existence as manufacturing jobs were off-shored to the sweatshops of Asia:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul."

That last bit about "they need U-Haul" being added to soften the essential message which is: "Let the useless scum die, and the sooner they kill themselves with opiates or whatever, the better."

The alternative to the "let the scum die," position, is the view that it is the government's job  to create conditions insuring the availability of work at a living wage. 

The latter was precisely the position that Donald Trump adopted during the 2016 Presidential election. And where are we now? Eleven percent unemployed versus 4% when Donald Trump took office in 2017, or about 31% according to John Williams' Shadow Stats report. 

So is Trump a traitor to the sovereign people of the United States, relying on the Covid pandemic and the BLM rioters and Abraham-Lincoln-statue tossers to provide cover, as Yusef suspects? Or is there nothing the US government could do to alleviate widespread unemployment and poverty?

The answer is clear. US unemployment is an unnecessary evil that can be largely eliminated. 

How?

(1) Restore the tariff wall behind which America rose  to be the world's dominant manufacturing power, a protectionist measure in place from 1816 until the adoption of free trade in 1945. 

(2) Enforce immigration law and restrict immigration, legal and otherwise, whenever unemployment rises above the frictional rate. 

Trump has waffled and fiddled to suggest adherence to a belief in tariffs and immigration control while achieving essentially nothing. Trump is thus, either a useless blatherskite of a traitor. As a long-time employer of thousands of low-wage immigrant hotel chamber maids and desk clerks, you might be able to guess which. 

But whichever is the case, Trump's fiddling while much of America's working class suffer the seering emotional and physical consequences of poverty serves Trump's own class—that is to say the very rich—extremely well, for as the famous British economist David Ricardo noted, 

Wages plus profits, together, are always the same.

meaning the simplest way to raise profits is to lower wages. 

And in America today corporations lower wages by: 

(1) offshoring jobs to more or less unregulated Asian sweat shops with collapsible factories and nets to stop workers killing themselves by jumping off the building; and

(2) sucking in illegal immigrants to work in the black, tax-free, economy where third-world wages prevail.

And it should be remembered that a policy of screwing the workers serves the great bureaucracies of the Western world very well too. Public sector wages are paid by the long-suffering tax payer, and are not therefore subject to the same stringent Ricardian control as those of workers in the goods and useful service producing, private sector. Thus, those in the public sector benefit from the low cost of living to which low wages give rise, while skimming high wages at the expense of rich and poor alike. 

So what do readers think? Is Trump an incompetent fool, or a traitor?

      Related     
CanSpeccy: GLOBALIZATION IS GOOD (For the Rich)
Kurt Nimmo: Year Zero in America: Pulling down statues is only the beginning

the Corona Virus Response: A Media Induced Panic For What Reason?

Here's a comment from an actual expert on viral respiratory diseases:

Dr. John Oxford, virologist, Professor at Queen Mary College, University of London, and a leading expert on influenza, including bird flu and the 1918 Spanish Influenza, and HIV/AIDS.

What he says:

Personally, I would say the best advice is to spend less time watching TV news which is sensational and not very good. Personally, I view this Covid outbreak as akin to a bad winter influenza epidemic. In this case we have had 8000 deaths this last year in the ‘at risk’ groups viz over 65% people with heart disease etc. I do not feel this current Covid will exceed this number. We are suffering from a media epidemic! Source

So why the continued lock-down?

Many unofficial reports are now emerging that reveal Covid19 infection rates in the general population that are huge multiples of officially reported rates.

 That means that infection rates in many communities are pretty certainly past the point necessary to achieve herd immunity, which is to say the point at which the disease spreads with ever increasing difficulty before dying out entirely.

Yet no government has reported a survey of the general public to determine whether herd immunity has been achieved.

Why not?

Presumably, because governments do not want the public to know.

And that presumably, is because governments want the lock-downs to continue for reasons quite other than those stated.

What are those ulterior and unstated motives?

Interesting question that:

To drive up unemployment while destroying small businesses that are the chief employers of low-wage labor?

Why would governments want this?

Many reasons come to mind. Here are a couple:

1. By creating a much larger pool of the unemployed, a desperate and docile pool of cheap labor is made available to the corporate giants that own the government.

2. While thousands upon thousands of small business that have been forcibly closed -- shops, restaurants, a multiplicity of service enterprises -- the big boys, Amazon, Star Bucks, Tim Hortons, Crispy Kreme will have been planning how to take over the space newly created for their own expansion.

3. Or is the objective simply to create widespread poverty on a permanent basis?

Is it the idea that living standards for the majority having been crushed, they are to remain crushed?

What, after all, is the point of so many people stuffing their faces with junk food, pissing away energy and other resources on  hedonistic cruise vacations, trips to Vegas and stuffing themselves with toxic, obesity- and diabetes-inducing  grease- and sugar- loaded junk food.

Welcome to the new peonage.

Other possibilities? Suggestions welcome!

And here's one obvious alternative: a Deep State plot to get rid of Trump.

Related:
LA Times: Hundreds of thousands in L.A. County may have been infected with coronavirus
Perspective on the Pandemic: Interview with Prof. John Ioannides

Thierry Meyssan: Covid-19: Neil Ferguson, the Liberal Lyssenko
Ron Paul: What If The Lockdown Was A Giant Mistake?
Jim Fedako: Exactly How Many Deaths To Justify Giving Government's Control Of Everything?
ZH: Why The Shutdown Must End

Brilliant Billionaires, No. 79: Bill Gates and Chicken Economics

Poverty stalks the land, but Bill Gates has the answer: get a chicken.

Every poor person should raise chickens, says Bill.

“They’re a good investment.”he says. “Suppose a new farmer starts with five hens. One of her neighbors owns a rooster to fertilize the hens’ eggs. After three months, she can have a flock of 40 chicks.”

Wow. So after five years at that rate of multiplication “she” (or I guess it could be a fella, but let’s keep this PC) could have five trillion chicks, which, says Bill, would have a sale price [when full grown] of $5 per chicken — which is typical in West Africa.”

So there you are, being poor is just about being stupid really, and anyone following Bill’s easy to follow tip can become rich beyond the dreams of avarice in practically no time at all.

Problem for some, though, may be getting that first chicken. So why doesn’t Bill give everyone in the United States a chicken to get them started. At five bucks a piece it would cost him practically nothing out of his $79 billion pile. And for those without a yard to keep a live chicken, no doubt a fresh frozen, oven-ready bird would be most acceptable.