Orange Man Good: Selling Out On The Campaign Trail
After 20 years of forever wars, growing social decline and exacerbating economic demise, it seems that we are still immune to learning that politicians lie. Practically, the US is still in the same place it was in 2004, fueling raging conflicts across the Middle East. The treasury is still overleveraged to both its ears, the stock and housing markets again lie on the brink of implosion, homelessness still continues to rise, jobs are still scarce, and still nobody really knows how to pay for anything.
If there is a point to be made about US politics, it’s that it doesn’t matter whether the man in alleged charge of the country is an army-dodging goon that can’t figure out how to use binoculars, a progressive in t-shirts campaigning for unity and peace while bombing the life out of Somalians with automated drone warfare, or a literal dementia patient. Voting for Trump may temporarily muffle the echo haunting that empty space between your ears as you convince yourself to at least have done something to fulfill your imaginary patriotic duties, but it can’t change the moral corruption inherent to US politics – and it sure won’t change anything for Bitcoin.
Most politicians run from responsibility like a fat kid from a diet plan, and electing an overweight billionaire won’t lessen the White House’s appetite for cake. Overall, Trump’s campaign promises are the same as yesteryear’s, of which he kept roughly 23% according to politifact. Some of his failures can be attributed to the fact that it takes more than a president to just say things to pass actual legislation, while others seem to have been outright delusional from the get-go in attempts to garner votes.
Trump built around 40 miles of his infamous US-Mexico border wall, and no, Mexico did not pay for it – likely because it’s not so easy to make a foreign country do something to its own disadvantage, even when you’re holding the office of the most powerful man in the world. Even before COVID, Trump did not increase economic growth by 4% per year – likely because you can’t just grab the US economy by the pussy to bully it into submission like that “terrific guy” Jeffrey Epstein who is “a lot of fun to be with”. While Trump sure is an ace in the polemics of grandeur, voting is not a substitute for thinking.
There was no increase in local manufacturing, no creation of an infrastructure fund, no ban on lobbying for White House and Congressional officials, no movement on deducting health care premiums from taxes, no repeal of Obama Care, and no defunding of the education department. There were no cuts to the number of tax brackets, no repealing of the alternative minimum tax, no elimination of the carried interest tax break, no voluntary release of his tax returns while holding office, and federal debt went up – not down. There was no expansion of the right to carry in all fifty states, no increase in US Army soldiers, no rebuilding of the Marine Corps, no renegotiation of the Iran deal, and no special prosecutor appointed to investigate Hillary Clinton. Lie to me harder, daddy.
Trump did not deport all undocumented immigrants, did not deport all Syrian refugees, did not reinstate waterboarding, could not keep his Muslim ban in place, and did not triple ICE enforcement. He did not adopt the Penny Plan cutting spending by 1% per year, but he did pressure others to increase NATO funding, limit legal immigration, enact a travel ban, and kept Guantanamo Bay open – The US’ infamous torture site notorious for wrongful imprisonments and the producing of false information, which has cost the US $500 million since 2001 in addition to yearly operational costs estimated at $150 million, excluding costs for black budget operations.
Now Trump promises to declassify September 11 files and files on JFK, which he seemed to have had no interest in declassifying the first time around, but is not so quick to declassify the files on Jeffrey Epstein, likely due to his own implications in the Epstein scandal which, of course, is only guilt by association.
The most notable of Trump’s achievements may yet be his enactment of Operation Warp Speed and the moving of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership to accelerate the development of now widely known as more than questionable COVID-19 vaccines, enforced speedy clinical trials and the tracking of injection schedules for US Americans, and resulted in several controversial COVID vaccine promotion statements calling it “one of the greatest achievements of mankind”, while fairly anticipating that some of the vaccines produced would not be safe or effective – but at least he quoted Star Trek.
Trump’s relocation of official government buildings to disputed territories only exacerbated the conflict between Israel and Palestine, which is estimated to cost the US around $38 billion between 2018 and 2028 under the Memorandums of Understanding, excluding an agreed upon $500 million per year for the development of missile systems, and a few billion here and there in aid packages amid ongoing conflicts, like the one passed in 2023 totaling payments of $14 billion. At the same time, the US continues to sell bonds to Israel despite its shrinking economy, the terms of which we can only assume to be so embarrassing that the SEC has not published a prospectus on Israeli bonds since 2018.
When it comes to the Middle East, it really doesn’t seem to matter who US voters would like to see elected as it’s the same crap in a different color shitbag on both sides of the aisle. However, Trump did bomb the shit out of Iraq and Syria in attempts to make good on his promises of eliminating ISIS by continuing Obama’s Operation Inherent Resolve and killing thousands of civilians in the process, which cost the US $13.6 million per day.
The only thing looser than a US president’s pockets when it comes to spending war money may be the mouth of presidential candidates in election years. While many who appreciate Bitcoin as a tool for financial freedom have found the technology precisely because of its resistance to political meddling and their discontent with current fiscal policies, don’t mind them campaigning for potential presidents elect so long as the words chanted may lift themselves out of their agonizing irrelevancy, raising the question whether we’re practically capable of using our brains for anything other than decoration.
All it seems to take to support yet another senile rhetorician at the helm of our so-called democracy is a promise to free Ross, which Trump could have done if he’d actually believed in freeing Ross while serving the term of his past presidency, which instead he chose to use to plot the assassination of Julian Assange for those suffering from short-term memory. Meanwhile Bitcoin proponents cheer on Trump’s vows to protect the right to own Bitcoin under federal regulations, which we don’t need in the first place as the right to own property and the right to free speech governing the distribution of free software are already enshrined in the US constitution, but who needs constitutional law.
Trump’s pledges to keep Senator Warren away from us have found widespread recognition which we can very much do ourselves as, for one, the majority of Senator Warren’s anti-Bitcoin proposals remain borderline unconstitutional and could easily be fought in court, and two, nobody in US politics takes her seriously anymore anyway, thank you very much. Trump’s last straw to appeal to Bitcoin voters then is his alleged stance against CBDCs, to which the house already passed the CBDC Anti-Surveillance Act, but lucky for him it seems that we don’t actually pay attention to politics unless they’re preached by convicted felons living in a golf resort.
Claiming to want “all the remaining Bitcoin mining to be MADE IN THE USA” further demonstrates his complete lack of understanding of the Bitcoin network as well as his utter disregard for it’s security, as freedom money can only exist through decentralized mining infrastructure. If we want to avoid the Bitcoin network itself being used as a CBDC abstraction through transaction white-listing implementing controlled purchases and location based restrictions, such as the wonderful OFAC sanctions list, it must remain decentralized. For those incapable of reading between the lines: by promising to make all Bitcoin mining MADE IN USA, Trump actually advocates to make the Bitcoin network less secure and less usable.
It’s undeniable that Bitcoin will get more exposure with the endorsement of a president, but let’s not forget that Trump’s favorite offspring – Donald John Trump Jr., who is currently eyeing top positions in the Trump administration – already gave us a taste of what a Trump “pro-Bitcoin administration” may actually look like. Just last month, Jr. interviewed the infamous Bitboy, where the duo called people spending their bitcoin “stupid” and dabbled in tokenizing identities on the blockchain, which should make us think in conjunction with Trump’s apparent lack of enforcement against digital IDs.
While it is true that Bitcoin can take an increasingly influential stance in elections, we rather seem to be interested in using our potential to alternate between retarded takes in blue or red that all end up coming out as purple anyway as opposed to using our newly gained prospected mandate to withhold our endorsement and boycott the babbling polemics of fossilized opportunists only to continue to be governed out of a funeral home in the making.
Logical thinking does not seem to stop ‘Bitcoin advocates’ from bragging about raising Trump bucks, declaring him the top choice, and distributing lanyards across his rallies as his PACs plot to appeal to an army of perpetual basement dwellers grasping at their first chance at national relevancy, which must be a breath of real fresh air after spending the past thirty years having lunch alone. When your morals can be bought, you are not a patriot – you are a sell out.
This is a guest post by L0la L33tz. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
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