The SCMP reports about a analysis of economic impacts of djt's insults and threats to foreign countries:
The US economy is set to lose billions of dollars in revenue in 2025 from a pullback in foreign tourism and boycotts of American products, adding to a growing list of headwinds keeping recession risk elevated.
Arrivals of non-citizens to the US by plane dropped almost 10 per cent in March from a year earlier, according to data published on Monday by the International Trade Administration. Goldman Sachs Inc. estimates in a worst-case scenario, the hit this year from reduced travel and boycotts could total 0.3 per cent of gross domestic product, which would amount to almost US$90 billion.
Other reporting notes that Canadian flight reservations for the summer tourist season are down 70% after djt repeatedly insulted Canadians and threatened to annex the country to make it the 51st state.
A comparison of this cost assessment with prior djt trade wars indicates that over time, this will probably be more costly than past anti-trade moves by djt.
Impact/Event | Estimated Economic Loss | Timeframe | Source/Notes |
2025 Trump policy (Goldman Sachs) | $90 billion 0.3% of GDP | 1 year | Lost tourism/export revenue |
2018–2019 retaliatory tariffs | $27 billion | 2 years | Direct export losses[9] |
2018 tariffs (real income loss) | $7.2 billion | 1 year | Net of revenue/producer[10] |
2018–2019 trade war (GDP impact) | 0.25% of GDP | 2 years | |
2018–2020 trade war (total cost) | $316 billion | 2–3 years | Bloomberg Economics[11] |
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CONTEXT
Experts collectively warn that propaganda and demagoguery thrive in environments where truth is fragmented and institutions are politicized. Combating these forces requires reinforcing epistemic guardrails—independent journalism, civic education, and transparent governance—to preserve the shared reality essential for democratic functioning.
The article asserts that America now shows all the classic symptoms of hypernormalization. Objective truth is increasingly elusive. Important content and reality are tossed out and replaced with crackpot conspiracy theories, lies and slanders. The US information ecosystem has degenerated to the point where deception is commonplace and structurally essential to MAGA's authoritarian agenda.
During his first term, djt epitomized reality distortion of reality by repeating major lies, ,e.g., claiming that the legitimate 2020 election was “stolen.” He lied about criminal indictments of his supporters, calling them “political persecution.” He lied by calling climate science a Chinese “hoax.” Each lie was more brick and mortar to construct a powerful and debilitating mind-trapping morass. Many people who could see past the thick layers of deceit felt powerless to tear it down. They just watched it happen.
In a bit of evidence that NPR and PBS may be starting to see the seriousness of their plight, an NPR broadcast yesterday on 1A (I think) discussed why public funding of CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) was important and socially useful. The head of NPR was trying to justify public funding to its audience.
djt's attack on reality
Trump’s Soviet-Style Coup Against Reality
Trump's whitewashing of January 6 and pardons of the insurrectionists are examples of a terrifying hypernormalization of U.S. societyThe article goes on to point out that the term hypernormalization was coined by anthropologist Alexei Yurchak in his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. Hypernormalization goes past regular dark free speech by institutionalizing deception and crackpottery. Lies are methodically integrated into society and its institutions. The lies are so blatant that even MAGA political elites know, but everyone just continues pretending there is normalcy. Over time, reality and reason becomes weaker influences while fundamental dysfunctions and moral rot fester.American democracy faces an unprecedented crisis. Trump’s second victory represents more than a mere political setback or symptom of political polarization—it constitutes a systemic assault on shared reality and a gradual erasure of objective truth.
America is experiencing what scholars call “hypernormalization”—a quiet coup against reality, replacing it with an artificially engineered alternative, leaving citizens disoriented within an increasingly surreal existence. Mass societal delusion in which millions of citizens believe in “alternative facts” due to propaganda outlets and industrial-scale disinformation is novel to Americans, but there is a historical parallel: the manufacturing of a fake reality in the Soviet Union.
During the Soviet Union’s final decade, citizens found themselves living in a strange contradiction: they knew their government was lying about the country’s implosion, yet understood the futility of resistance. Despite endemic corruption and nearly half the population living in poverty, the state continued to pretend that everything was fine. Citizens participated in this collective fiction, not from authentic belief, but because confronting collapse was more terrifying than maintaining the charade.
The article asserts that America now shows all the classic symptoms of hypernormalization. Objective truth is increasingly elusive. Important content and reality are tossed out and replaced with crackpot conspiracy theories, lies and slanders. The US information ecosystem has degenerated to the point where deception is commonplace and structurally essential to MAGA's authoritarian agenda.
During his first term, djt epitomized reality distortion of reality by repeating major lies, ,e.g., claiming that the legitimate 2020 election was “stolen.” He lied about criminal indictments of his supporters, calling them “political persecution.” He lied by calling climate science a Chinese “hoax.” Each lie was more brick and mortar to construct a powerful and debilitating mind-trapping morass. Many people who could see past the thick layers of deceit felt powerless to tear it down. They just watched it happen.
Unfortunately, because public opinion usually does not influence policy, they were and still are mostly powerless. Researchers have shown evidence that in US politics, economic elites and organized interest groups have a substantial influence on U.S. public policy, while the general public has "little or no independent influence." The rise of unlimited political spending and lobbying, especially after the 2010 USSC decision in Citizens United, further entrenched the power of economic elites at the expense of the public interest and civil liberties. With some exceptions, the overall trend is clear. Special interest money usually outweighs majority opinion in shaping policy.
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Other MAGA-related news is deeply threatening and aggressive and uniformly grounded in ugly dark free speech, especially outrageous lies and slanders. Most of the MSM continues to be insane by treating what is going on as some form of pro-democracy conservate normalcy. The MSM is still afraid to call djt and MAGA things like authoritarian, autocratic, kleptocratic, plutocratic, theocratic or anti-public interest. The MSM has been cowed by scared corporate ownership or subverted by ownership that is complicit and sympathetic to one or more forms of authoritarianism and kleptocracy. I think the latter is more common than the former.
Over the last 3-4 weeks, I've sent to NPR and PBS multiple news topics about authoritarianism that are very important but grossly under-reported. So far, no response from anyone. I ended my suggestions with comments like these:
And for what it’s worth, if anything, if you don’t want to report on this kind of authoritarian mind manipulation content out of fear of angering Trump or MAGA elites, I believe that ship sailed the day Trump and MAGA elites were put back in power in the 2024 elections. Neither silence nor subservience by NPR and PBS can appease an aggravated Trump or MAGA elites. They want vengeance, including taking public funding from both. That was made explicit in MAGA's Project 2025. Your own reporting on that point has been quite clear.
In a 3/26/25 hearing on NPR and PBS, Marjory Taylor Greene (chairman of the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE)) said that (i) NPR and PBS were attacking MAGA and America, and (ii) doing that on the public's dime would not be tolerated. MTG ranted and lied incoherently, falsely claiming that their programming was “radical left”, “communist” and was “grooming and sexualizing children” using taxpayer money for “attacks on Americans who love this country.” She also lied, saying “for far too long, federal taxpayers have been forced to fund biased news. This needs to come to an end and it needs to come to an end now. We look no further than the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as the culprit for US debt.”
For context, total public funding of CBP amounts to ~$0.55 billion/year (~$550 million/year). Federal funding constitutes about 1% of NPR’s budget and about 16% PBS’s budgets. The CPB is not the culprit for US debt.
Q: Is this an instance of MAGA's authoritarian hypernormalization of lies, slanders and crackpot conspiracy blither, or are MTG and MAGA elites basically right that NPR and PBS are communist, grooming and sexualizing children, and other horrors?
