Why Trump is Starving America, or Finance, Fascism, and Collapse

I warned you many months ago. People would begin to lose everything. That isn’t point scoring. I’m here just to teach and to guide you. 

There’s Trump, starving America. (If you’re in the rest of the world, about 40 million Americans are at the edge of hunger now because Trump suddenly cancelled food subsidies. They are in despair, as you might imagine, unable to feed their kids.)

If he’s capable of using starvation as a weapon, which is survival itself, what do you think he’s going to do to the nation’s wealth? To your money? But I’m getting ahead of myself.

When I said that people would begin to lose everything, perhaps you thought of yourself. That’s OK. That’s how the American way of thinking works. I meant it as a cascade, as a process, and here you can see it happening. Most of you are wealthy. You don’t have to worry about basics like food. To have to worry about food is to not have any wealth to depend on. And so this is how it begins.

Those who are most vulnerable are struck first. But it doesn’t stop there. Does it ever? This is fascism. You should know how it works by now. But you must understand how serious it is and how deep it goes. 

Here we have a would-be dictator starving his people. In a matter of months. Is that too blunt? Have I overstepped the mark of decency, as the New York Times might say? Who’s the indecent one here?

Why is Trump starving America? 

Which answer will suffice? Let’s dispense with the obvious ones. Because he can, since America “voted for this.” That answer will, ironically, make many on the center left angrier than on the right, which is sort of funny, but we’re discussing tragedy, not comedy. Still, it isn’t a satisfying answer, in the way of helping you understand what is to come next.

Nor is it about money. The total cost of keeping America fed, aka SNAP, is barely even a rounding error—less than half a percent of GDP. So it’s about power. But what kind?

There’s the micropolitical answer. The dictatorial theater of pain. Here is Trump, saying: see how much power I have. See how far I am willing to go. Obey me, or starve. It is naked, raw, tyrannical power at its most absolute. Bread and circuses—now let me take away the bread. I will reduce you to nothing. I will obliterate you. Nothing will be left of you. Your life is mine.

So what about your money, by the way, but I’ll come back to that, of course.

A better answer is outside the purview, really, of American ways of thought. It’s more European, and it’s psychoanalytical-organizational. Don’t worry, we’ll come back to the boring subject of money soon. This answer goes like this, and you know a bit of it already. Trump is a narcissist. We throw that word around to the point it’s become meaningless, but in Trump’s case, of course, it’s all there is. Narcissists feed. Insatiably. They’re empty inside. Trump is feeding on the despair of the starving, and of course, it satiates, if only for a moment, his grandiosity, his delusions of omnipotence, the narcissistic craving for power, control, and domination. I am the only who deserves nourishment.

This answer will be unsatisfactory to Americans, though, because of course, they reject macropsychology as a way of socioeconomic explanation, since it’s outside the bounds of capitalism, plus it doesn’t really give them a sense of hope. Let me assure you, there isn’t much. When a dictator is starving his people, a society is at an incredibly bleak and disturbing point.

There’s the macropolitical answer, too, by the way. That one goes like this. Trump starved the world not so long ago—estimates range in the millions of deaths to come from the shuttering of aid flows from America. Did Americans think it wouldn’t happen to them? Of course, this feeling of sanctity in the dictators’ arms is an essential part of fascist collapse, too. It can’t happen here. Foucault’s Boomerang says it will—that’s the principle which says that what imperial powers do abroad eventually comes home.

All these are reasons why Trump is starving America. They are as plain as day. It’s only America, really, which fails to understand them well—and to really grasp events as plainly as: a would-be dictator is starving a nation.

Is this as obscene as it looks? Of course it is. In America, we don’t discuss this topic much, because it’s a hyper capitalist society, and there’s a stigma attached to needing government subsidies. Make no mistake that we all need government investment in some form. Even the wealthy drive on roads and visit hospitals. There is no society on earth in which a soul receives nothing from government. But in America, because this topic is one of shame, since under capitalism, you are a liability this way, it’s brushed under the rug—just how much of America needs help to just survive. It’s a stark indication of how badly America did fail, to begin with, and an even starker one that now those who are hungry to begin with are left to starve. 

Now. Let me come to what all this means.

How long do you think the world will look at a country that starves its own people, and say to itself, that’s a safe place to invest? How long do you think the world will look at a country with a literally non-functional government, to the point people aren’t being fed, and say, this is a good bet to pay back debts to us? LOL, don’t kid yourself. This is the stuff of imploding states.

This kind of collapse, and I should point out that this is all a very real form of collapse, a dictator starving a society, has a price. That price isn’t just in the misery and despair of the poor. It’s also in the macroeconomic and macrofinancial stability of such a society. If it can’t feed its people, what hope does it have of making good what it owes, being a safe harbor for investment, safeguarding the sanctity of its currency, nourishing innovation, or any of the other basic functions of barely adequate governance? 

And by the way, when people go hungry, is that good for an economy? Shall we ask the Great Depression?

This set of larger costs is ultimately borne by all of a society, and that is the part that affects even you. It leads to the destabilization of a nation’s economy, as capital seeks safer shores, as it turns away. And make no mistake, the world is not like America. It does not look on pleasantly at such obscene spectacles and shrug. For it, participating in such moral repugnance is something that is ugly, and stains its own reputations, institutions, and economies. The world hesitates to say much in this case, because it is America, the world’s former superpower—but only for that reason. The idea that all this malice and cruelty will not lead to an exceedingly severe set of macroeconomic and macrofinancial consequences, as the world shudders in revulsion and fear at what Trump is capable of doing to America, and so to it—that idea is folly. 

Sadly, you are still hearing it from your financial advisors, Wall St, pundits, and so forth. Everything will be fine! No big deal! Just a dictator…starving his country! 

Wrong. 

If he can starve people of food, what can he do to my capital? Can a figure like this, a society like this, a place like this, be trusted? Should I be part of something so obscene and repellent? What does it say about my own integrity and wisdom and intelligence? That is what the world is asking. The answers will be as obvious as they seem. 

I suggest you begin asking the same questions.

Love,

Umair (and Snowy!!)

❤️ Don't forget...

📣 Share The Issue on your Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

💵 If you like our newsletter, drop some love in our tip jar.

📫 Forward this to a friend and tell them all all about it.

👂 Anything else? Send us feedback or say hello!