"Trump is trying to collapse our economy": War on "woke" revealed as a war on all Americans

[marmar]

"Trump is trying to collapse our economy": War on "woke" revealed as a war on all Americans
Christian nationalists behind the spending shutdown aim to punish everyone, not just imaginary Marxists

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published January 29, 2025 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) Initially, the most striking detail in the White House Office of Management and Budget memo that has put a "pause" on huge swathes of the American economy, is how unhinged the paranoia is. The order insists that all federal grant and loan spending must be halted to combat "Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies." Ordinary people may see nothing but a local bridge being repaired, broadband internet being installed or a park getting cleaned up. Through MAGA-colored glasses, it's all a plot to turn you into transgender Marxists and probably vegans, who are worse than Satanists.

(As of Tuesday evening, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., has temporarily blocked the funding freeze in response to a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Democracy Forward. A separate lawsuit contesting the order has also been filed in Rhode Island by attorneys general for 22 states and the District of Columbia.)

Despite claiming to stand for "hardworking American families" — who are typically considered to be a different category of human beings than woke Marxist transgender green-dealers, at least within the Fox Cinematic Universe — this new executive order from Donald Trump's White House is a loaded shotgun aimed at every American who is not a billionaire hiding out in his apocalypse bunker. Elon Musk and his DOGE buddies may believe that federal grants and loans all go to frog-gender research and DEI knitting circles, but the vast majority of that money goes for banal but necessary investments into people's everyday lives: infrastructure maintenance and building, federal loan programs for mortgages and small businesses, food assistance, student loans, disaster relief and school programs like Head Start, to name a few. Oh yeah, and federal health care programs like Medicaid and CHIP, which cover nearly a quarter of all Americans.

....(snip)....

The memo reads like it was written by an AI bot trained exclusively on Twitter accounts that follow Elon Musk, but there's no doubt who's behind this Dr. Strangelove effort to launch a nuclear bomb right at the heart of the American economy: Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist ghoul Trump nominated to run the OMB. Vought pretended to be a mild-mannered public servant during his confirmation hearing last week, but over the past few years, especially in his leadership of Project 2025, he has revealed himself as a terrifying ideologue fixated on a fantasy of destroying the United States in order to rebuild it as a Christian theocracy.

....(snip)....

The heavy usage of scare terms like "transgender contagion," "woke" and "Marxism" is meant to reassure ordinary Americans that someone else is being targeted by these grotesque MAGA power plays, and not them. But if you examine how terms like "Marxist" and "woke" function in these circles, it becomes clear that they're talking about a majority of Americans, including many or most Republican voters. In reading the Project 2025 policy document, which guides Trump's executive orders, it's striking that almost no one escapes condemnation as part of what is sneeringly referred to as the "Great Awokening" of America. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/01/29/is-trying-to-collapse-our-economy/

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Salvation through Suffering. The more misery they create, the more money they rake in

from all the guilt, pain, abuse they peddle. It is a political control game. Always has been.

[Irish_Dem]

2. Who benefits from a collapsed economy and how?

Last edited Wed Jan 29, 2025, 11:25 AM - Edit history (1)

[Rebl2]

6. Certainly

doesn’t benefit lower and middle income maga folks now does it.

[newdeal2]

8. Elon and the billionaires

They will get fat government contracts if not privatize agencies, and deregulate the rest in order to "spur" economic activity. Plus tax breaks. Always got to have a good tax cut for the rich when the economy is down.

[Irish_Dem]

9. Like in the great crash in 1929.

The rich swooped in and bought properties for Pennies on the dollar.

[mwmisses4289]

3. Duh.

Another item for the "No shit, Sherlock" file.

[Emile]

4. I laugh everytime I hear them say WOKE. You

would think they could come up with something better than that.

[Danascot]

5. "All roads lead to Putin."

[Initech]

7. Literally everything we're seeing right now is revenge for 2020.

And these sadistic psychopaths are just getting started. Fuck the GOP. Fuck Fox News. Fuck the Heritage Foundation.

[gohuskies]

10. Fascism fully unleashed..

All of this oligarchic b.s. is the MAGA wet dream of implementing full on fascism. I never believed my country would trek down this path. It is completely an anathema to me. 2026 elections may not even occur when we fall into this dystopian totalitarian society.