The Goose that Laid Golden Eggs
Either Trump is not going to last all four years or we're not...
There once was a farmer who has a goose that laid golden eggs. Every day, the goose laid a golden egg. The farmer would take the egg down the market and sell it. One day, the farmer became impatient. He convinced himself that there must be more golden eggs within the goose, so he slaughtered it. The corpse of the goose laid, bloody before him with no more eggs. He had killed his goose that laid the golden eggs.
In this parable, the American working class is the goose that lays the golden egg, and corporations are the farmer. They have squeezed us for all that we are worth, pushing us all the way to late stage capitalism, causing us to feel economically squeezed which is what we felt under President Joe Biden. Now, that there’s very little value left to extract from the American worker as consumer we have been pushed into Authoritarianism and Donald Trump is a Fur (German for leader, i.e. dictator).
We are 11 days into his presidency, and havoc has already ensued. An American Airlines jet has collided with a military helicopter killing 67 people, and a private jet crashed into a residential area in Pennsylvania all within the span of 3 days. Elon Musk, the co-president, has fired the head of the FAA and the TSA.
Trump has removed the US Constitution from the White House website and has purged information from the CDC website. He froze all federal funding, and then he walked it back, but many states could not access their Medicaid portals.
He is trying to buyout federal employees to get them to leave. Elon Musk is trying to access private social security information of US citizens even though he SHOULD NOT have government clearance at all. Trump has also placed 25% Tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and a 10% Tariff on China.
Basically, it’s been less than two weeks and Donald Trump has thrown the country into chaos a few times a day. Presidents Biden, Obama, and Clinton didn’t even throw the country into chaos during the entirety of their terms. Yet, that is a part of Trump’s madness. He wants people to be afraid, and then he wants to shift the blame to immigrants, DEI (black people, women, and disabled people: as if people with mental impairments can be air traffic controllers).
I read a post today that said that the blanket Tariffs on Canada will grind the US Auto Industry to a halt. US Auto manufactures will be unable to absorb the cost of the 25% increase in the cost of imported materials before they pass the cost on to their customers, so they will simply have to shut down. This will leave countless Americans in Rustbelt states unemployed.
At this point, I don’t think that Trump is going to continue with the Tariffs on Columbia, but if he did, it would more likely mean that none of us are drinking coffee anymore, than it would mean that price of coffee is going to rise exponentially.
The way I see it, if Donald Trump continues the way he is going, he will probably break the US consumer by the end of 2025, and quite frankly, I don’t think he cares. Even if he cannot achieve his mass deportation numbers that he wants… Even if he is only on track to meet President Obama’s 2.9 million figure, just the threat of deportation without due process is enough to make a lot of these immigrants relocate.
A lot of the services that we take for granted are going to become drastically more expensive. The price of food is going to continue to inflate, because of the decreased undocumented populated. Add Tariffs to that and the price of many foods we enjoy will be astronomical. The price of gas and home repair will also be explode. Even domestic companies will raise their prices simply because their foreign competitors are now more expensive, and they no longer need to offer competitive prices. The value of the American dollar with continue to devalue.
Yet despite that, I don’t see the working class American as a real threat to Donald Trump unless most of us unite and stand up together, and I really think we should. We deserve better than this. We work too hard to see our hard earned dollars be reallocated to Donald Trump and his band of gangsters who wish to steal our rights away.
No, the real threat to Donald Trump are the corporations. Do you think American Airlines is happy about losing their billion dollar plane because Donald Trump fired the head of the FAA? Do you think that American Airlines is happy that Americans are probably apprehensive about flying right now, and every time another plane doesn’t land safely because the FAA is understaffed Americans will drive or take a train instead of fly? Do you think that Ford, GM, and Stellantis are going to be happy when it cost too much for them to build cars? Do you think giant medical groups are going to be happy when they can’t get any credible information from the CDC? Do you think private Universities are going to be happy when students can’t afford to go to school, because Trump froze all the student loan funding? Do you think Tyson chicken is going to be happy when they can’t get any immigrants to come work in their meat processing plants? Do you think banks are going to be happy when Trump guts the FDIC and the Federal Reserve?
The list goes on.
New flaws. None of them are going to be happy. Corporations speak the language of money, and Trump is messing with their money!!!!
Now, do not get me wrong. I am not trying to paint any one of them companies as angelic figures. As far as I’m concerned, fuck all of them. I am so sick and tired of capitalism. I really am. This system is inherently destructive and is like a snake eating its own tail. We are 160 years out from the American Industrial Revolution and on the verge of the collapse of American Capitalism as we know it. That in and of itself shows just how corrosive this system is.
Now, you may say… “Well, other countries capitalist systems haven't collapsed, and are likely not on the verge of collapse…”
And I’d answer… “Yeah… That’s because they have more social safety nets like Universal Healthcare, paid maternity leave, livable wage, caps on political donations, etc.”
However, the problem with Plutocracy, Overt Oligarchy, Doctoral Authoritarianism whatever you want to call it is that it serves the interests of a very, very, very few individuals. It does not serve the interests of many, and many businesses in America have complex and competing interests.
A lot of those interests meet the various needs of the American consumer, but do not line up neatly with the idiotic tech bros who aligned themselves with Donald Trump, because they thought that they could control him.
Which… to all, who may be reading this in the future, Donald Trump is completely uncontrollable and that is not hyperbole. What you see of him in videos in not facade, that is what he’s really like. He is a clownish, petulant, narcissistic, toddler, who is completely incapable of running the most powerful nation in the world. The powerful people who align themselves with Donald Trump align themselves with him, because they want to exploit his popularity, and they think that they can control him to get what they want which is power for themselves.
I digress.
Though Donald Trump and the billionaires do not care about us everyday working class Americans, we can make them care about us. We can make them care about us with our wallets. Once again, they speak one language. The language of money.
It is time to become self-reliant. It is time to boycott. It is time to cancel memberships. It’s time to take on hobbies that don’t require subscriptions anymore. It’s time to touch grass and get involved in your local community.
If you can, stop shopping at Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club, Amazon and other places that support Trump or rolled back DEI (Download the Goods Unite Us App). Stop banking at major banks and start banking at a local credit union. Stop using Audible. Start using your libraries audio book service. Go to Barnes and Nobles less and find your local book store whether its black-owned, queer owned, mom and pop owned, or woman owned, find a mom and pop owned pharmacy, for the love of god stop getting your meds from CVS pharmacy and get them from Costco or Mark Cuban’s website if you can, get your groceries from ALDI or a mom and pop owned grocery store, start going to your community center regularly, start hanging out with your friends more and going on more walks, if you play video games stop buying AAA and buy Indy instead. Meet you neighbors, say ‘hello’, take them a nice desert.
If you can, buy a gun (both a shotgun and handgun), take a gun safety course. You may need it. Know your state’s laws in advance. Carry a personal protection knife, pepper spray or both on you AT ALL TIMES (especially, if you are a woman, LGBTQ, or a minority). Keep a copy of the US Constitution, your passport, a notarized copy of your passport, your birth certificate, a notarized copy of your birth certificate, you SSN card, and a notarized copy of SSN card all in safe. ALWAYS carry your REAL ID Driver’s License and a notarized copy of your passport on your person AT ALL TIMEs. Know your rights in the event that you are stopped and questioned by ICE.
If our food is contaminated they’re (the government) not going to let us know, so it’s time to start prepping. I haven’t done this process myself yet, but I am in a reddit for preppers (r/preppers). If you’re not sure about prepping, start growing your own food. Make a garden in your backyard, you can buy elevated garden boxes from Costco every spring. I also recommend buying hens. I highly recommend buying a black hen (they deter hawks from eating the rest of your hens). If you want a lot of meet you may want to contact a local farmer and see if you can purchase a cow. The farmer will raise the cow for a year, and then you can coordinate with a local butcher to have it slaughtered.
My point is that we all need to rely on one another and not our government and not our corporations to stay safe. Imagine that we are living in America before Henry Ford created the Model T, be safe out their y’all and love your neighbor.