Did We MAGA? An Economic Analysis

By Best in Moderation

The Trump presidency is nearing its end. As it closes, let’s take a look back at the impact it had on our country in economic terms, because it’s the economy, stupid. Let's look at Obama's numbers and compare them to Trump's using both the entire Obama presidency and his two individual terms. We will use this to see if in the last four years we truly did make American great again.

Jobs (Non-Farm)

Job creation is one of the most common figures touted by an administration to show improvements to the nation. Until this year, no president in recent history had lost jobs overall.

	Number start	Number end	Number difference	% increase
Obama	138,000,000	153,000,000	15,000,000	10.87%
Trump	153,000,000	150000000	-3,000,000	-1.96%

Obama dealt with a massive job loss rate coming in from the 2007 Recession; from 2007-2010, the economy lost 8.7 million jobs. The sequester in the second term also took almost a million jobs away. From 2009 on to 2016, 17 million jobs were created. In total, Obama oversaw an 11% increase in jobs. From 2012-21016, that growth was 7%.

Donald Trump dealt with a massive job loss in 2020 with COVID-19; from 2020 on, the market lost 25 million jobs. Prior to COVID, jobs were at 158732000, meaning Trump had created 5 million jobs, or a 3.75% growth rate.

Job creation goes to Obama (O=1 - T=0)

Trump's personal rating here: 1/10

Unemployment Rate

Unemployment rate indicates how people people are looking for a job and not finding one. Usually every administration changes how it is calculated, however, thankfully the differences between the Obama and Trump administration's methods are all in counting those who are not looking for work, and do not impact the unemployment rate itself.

	Number start	Number end	Number difference	% decrease
Obama	9.3	4.9	-4.4	89.80%
Trump	4.9	6.7	1.8	-26.87%

Obama was coming off a recession, with unemployment rates at the end of Bush's term topping 10-11. Before the financial crisis it was around 5.8%. Obama's first term say some reduction, to around 7.7, and then his second term dropped the rate dramatically by 54% to end at 4.9.

Trump came in on that slope, and continued it until the COVID pandemic hit. Prior to the pandemic, the rate was 3.5, giving Trump a drop in unemployment rate of 40%, half of Obama's total and less than his second term rate.

Unemployment reduction goes to Obama (O=2 - T=0)

Trump's personal rating here: 4/10 (Covid Related, otherwise 8/10)

Average wages

Average wages are a good indicator of where the most people are in terms of income. It is not perfect however; multiple jobs are part time, massive outliers skew the averages, and world events leading to unemployment or saturation can alter these figures dramatically. As an indicator for the employed and their growth, however, this is an accurate portrayal.

	Number start	Number end	Number difference	% increase
Obama	$18.00	$21.50	$3.50	19.44%
Trump	$21.50	$24.87	$3.37	15.67%

Obama had two terms in which to increase the average wage; splitting off the first from the second shows an increase of only 7.5% from 2012-2016.

Trump's figures actually received a boost from COVID-19, as many low paying jobs were lost. Prior to the pandemic, average wages were $24.01. This means Trump had an average wage growth of 11.67%.

Average Wage increase goes to Trump (O=2 - T=1)

Trump's personal rating here: 6/10 (it's still just $2.51 increase over four years)

Stock Market

While it has absolutely not causal relationship with the economy, the stock market is nonetheless a good indicator of the confidence investors have in the economies where these markets are based. To do this comparison, we will be using the DOW.

	Number start	Number end	Number difference	% increase
Obama	6172	17895	11723	189.94%
Trump	17895	31098	13203	73.78%

Obama's second term began with the market at 11410, meaning from 2012-2016 it grew by 56.84%, and his first term was 84.87%. So Trump's numbers beat him in the 2nd term but lose in the former. Given that the stock market took a hit due to the 2017 crisis, I'm giving this one to Trump, as he not only beat out Obama's second term but also set a far higher record than Obama did.

Stock Market value goes to Trump (O=2 - T=2)

Trump's personal rating here: 9/10

GDP Growth Rate

The economy's expansion can be seen in how much our gross domestic product grows, or if it shrinks. Growth indicates the job, money and stock markets are doing well, so the most growth indicates the better economic impact.

	Number start	Number end	Number difference	% increase
Obama	0.25	2.08	1.83	732.00%
Trump	2.08	-0.15	-2.23	-107.21%

The GDP took massive hits from 2007-2010. For his first term, GDP hit a high of 4.5 and a low of -4.4, culminating in an average of 1.45. Second term was better, with a high of 5.5 and a low of -1.1, averaging to 2.44.

COVID also impacted the GDP negatively, leaving Trump with a negative growth overall. Prior to COVID, his rates were high of 3.9 and low of 1.3, averaging to 1.81. Neither his heights nor his average beat Obama's figures

GDP Growth rate goes to Obama (O=3 - T =2)

Trump's personal rating here: 2/10 (Prior to COVID, 4/10)

Inflation Rate

Inflation impacts how much our money is worth, and the FED goal has always been to keep it around 2%. The USA is deathly afraid of deflation, meaning their policies are geared to keeping much closer to 2 than to 0.

	Number start	Number end	Number difference	% increase
Obama	0.2	2.3	2.1	1050.00%
Trump	2.5	1.2	-1.3	-52.00%

Obama's administration introduced several economic measures to keep inflation up post crisis, thus in his first term it rose from 0.2 to 1.7. His second term was much more stable, increasing only by 35.3%

Trump saw a significant drop in the rate thanks to COVID; before then, we were heading to higher inflation at a rate of 2.5, trending upwards to 2.5

This is actually one of the toughest ones to judge, because Obama purposefully hyperinflated, and the inflation rate was tapering off prior to COVID dragging it far further. If we judge it on the FED standard of keeping it between 1.8 and 2.2, however, Obama takes the lead with his second term results. Stability and accuracy wins.

Inflation rate goes to Obama (O=4 - T =2)

Trump's personal rating here: 4/10 (5/10 pre-covid)

Trade Imbalance

This has been a hot topic for many, noting that the USA has a negative Trade Balance and questioning how much that negatively impacts our economy. It is generally understood that you want either an equal or positive trade balance for a healthy economy, though the USA's robust system is seen as an exception to many balance rules of economics, including debt.

	Number start	Number end	Number difference	% increase
Obama	-39257	-43625	-4368	11.13%
Trump	-43625	-68142	-24517	56.20%

July 2009 saw the trade imbalance collapse to -26000, before shooting back up as world economies recovered. In Obama's second term there was also a dip to -34000, but that also went back up before 2016. Obama's second term saw a growth of 5.56% in the trade imbalance, while his first saw a similar nominal growth but thus more of a percentage growth (6.4%).

Trump saw no such swings, instead having a steadily increasing trade imbalance, which prior to COVID hit -46104, for a growth of 5.68%.

This one is also hard to judge, because while Obama saw many periods of reducing the imbalance, in the end his numbers clock in slightly less than Trump's. Neither brought it down in the end, and COVID contributed to a much greater imbalance, though indicators showed the trade wars were also having quite a negative impact. Since we'll never see those figures, based on what did happen alone prior to COVID we'll give this one to Trump.

Trade Imbalance change goes to Trump (O = 4 - T = 3)

Trump's personal rating here: 1/10 (4/10 pre covid, though better than Obama's 3/10)

Federal Debt to GDP

US debt is massive, but it is not always an issue, since the USA can borrow for practically nothing and leverage its debts easily. However, recent events this century have put that position in jeopardy, and thus we will look at how much our debt eclipses our GDP to see if we can exist well as any other nation not in our position could.

	Number start	Number end	Number difference	% increase
Obama	82.3	105.3	23	27.95%
Trump	105.3	108.32	3.02	2.87%

Debt to GDP rose dramatically in the 2000s, from 54.8 to 82.3 under Bush (50% rise), and then in 2009 - 2010 up to 100.3, a 22% rise. Obama's second term was much more manageable, with an increase of only 4.57%.

COVID response massively increased out debt, but prior to COVID our debt had still risen, to 106.9, for a 1.33% increase. Trump however did not see it rise, even with COVID, to Obama's levels.

Federal Debt to GDP goes to Trump (O = 4 - T = 4)

Trump's personal rating here: 4/10

Budget Deficit

The deficit and the debt are often mixed up; while the latter is how much we owe in total, the former is how far over budget we are each year. The only way to reduce the debt is by not having a deficit at all, a feat only produced recently by President Clinton.

	Number start	Number end	Number difference	% increase
Obama	9.8	3.2	-6.6	-67.35%
Trump	3.2	16.00	12.80	400.00%

Our budget deficit was extremely high at the end of the Bush era, having climbed steadily upwards and hitting the peaks during the financial crisis. In his first term, Obama cut the deficit slightly to 8.45 average, and in the second, cut it in threes down to 3.13 average. That's a decrease of 30% and 21%, nominally, and 13% and 170% average.

Trump increased the deficit immediately due to tax cuts and heavy spending, jumping the rate up to 4.6 before COVID, and it skyrocketed from there. His till 2019 increase was 44%, with an average rate of 4.0 during his first three years.

Budget Deficit Reduction goes to Obama (O = 5 - T = 4)

Trump's personal rating here: 1/10 (3/10 Pre COVID)

US Export Prices

Our ability to export goods is one of the primary ways the nation makes an income off of other nations, and the price to do so is determined both by their import fees and our policies, as well as international regulations. Since we control one and only influence another, and have no say over the third, it is hard to rate this. But we can compare purely on outcome for businesses, which in turn provide health to our economy.

	Number start	Number end	Number difference	% increase
Obama	127	121.8	-5.2	-4.09%
Trump	121.8	123.9	2.1	1.72%

Export prices rose prior to and during Obama's first term, culminating in a top rate of 135. Then it dropped drastically as world markets recovered and policies were enacted to reduce costs for exporting to our allies. The actual 2nd term drop was 9.78%.

Prior to COVID, export prices had actually risen to 125.8, and fell as nations shut down their economies and relaxed their export and import rules to encourage logistics. That gives Trump a non-covid related increase in export prices of 3.28%.

US Export Price Reduction goes to Obama (O = 6 - T = 4)

Trump's personal rating here: 4/10 (2/10 Pre COVID)

US Import Prices

Similar to the above, our ability to import cheaply into the nation allows the flow of goods and services globally, and means factories have access to materials for less cost. We will compare the same way as above, though this value we have far more control over as we control import fees and regulations.

	Number start	Number end	Number difference	% increase
Obama	136	122	-14	-10.29%
Trump	122	123.5	1.5	1.23%

Similarly to the above situation, in Obama's first term the import costs went higher as markets struggled with the financial crisis, ending on 141.5. His second term saw a dramatic fall of nearly 14% as he reduced both the price to import from allies and the cost to import into the US for allies.

Trump's trade wars spiked import prices from allies and non-allies alike, leading to a 125.2 pre-covid, an increase of 2.62%. It undid all the gains made by the Obama administration in terms of reduced import/export costs between allies.

US Import Price Reduction goes to Obama (O = 7 - T = 4)

Trump's personal rating here: 4/10 (2/10 or 3/10 Pre COVID)

A Note on Taxes

It is practically impossible to get consensus on the economic impact of taxes. As such, I will not be doing a straight up comparison on impact. I will state the facts: Trump reduced the Corporate tax rate, by 40%, to 21%, the lowest since the 1940s. Obama never reduced it at all. The maximum personal income tax was 35% in Obama's first term, and 39.6% in his second, an average of 37.3%. Trump reduced that to 37% in his tax cuts, though this reduction is set to expire in 2021. In general, taxes went up under Obama, and down under Trump. How that impacted take home income and the health of the economy I will leave for hearty debate.

Minimum Wage

Neither president changed the minimum wage of $7.25.

Other Figures

There are far more figures I can show on the economy, but I hope this has covered the big ones. But if not, a quick rundown of some you might be interested in:
Personal Debt to GDP: Increased by 1.71% pre-covid, no figures out yet for 2020.
Exports: reduced by 5.54%
Imports: increased by 7.82%
Government Spending: increased 7.54% pre-covid, 108.7% in 2020.
Internal Weapon sales: increase of 13.22% (compared to Obama's 43.45%)
Terrorism index (as it interrupts trade): increase of 6.81%



Overall Summary

Donald Trump's presidency was defended primarily by his supporters as his positive impact on the economy. From the data we have, that's a mixed bag. While he was good for cutting taxes and increasing the stock market, as well as providing a slight growth in average wages, his job creation numbers lagged and then sagged in 2020, his trade wars caused losses in imports and exports, overall GDP growth was lacking, and the budget deficit blew up. He may have kept up a bit with Obama's record, but mostly those were in areas where Obama himself didn't do very well. Neither president has done much to increase the economic health of the working class, preferring to focus on their economic strengths of trade and low taxes, respectively.

In Summary, the data rates Trump as subpar economically, and the state of our Economy compared to 2016 is poor. We have less jobs, more unemployment, low to negative GDP growth, inflation AND deflation indicators, a much larger trade imbalance, less exports, more imports, more cost for both, a higher debt and a much higher deficit, and more government spending for less services. We also have a booming stock market, only slightly higher average wages, a big corporate tax rate drop and a diminishing personal tax rate drop for the highest earners. That's good news for pure investors and international corporations, but poor news for the rest of the nation.

Economically, we are not great again. We are worse off.

A nation imploding: Digital tyranny, insurrection and martial law

 By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead

“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. You can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization…filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort … to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love… What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.”—Robert F. Kennedy on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is what we have been reduced to: A violent mob. A nation on the brink of martial law. A populace under house arrest. A techno-corporate state wielding its power to immobilize huge swaths of the country. And a Constitution in tatters.

We are imploding on multiple fronts, all at once.

This is what happens when ego, greed and power are allowed to take precedence over liberty, equality and justice.

Just to be clear, however: this is not a revolution.

This is a ticking time bomb.

There is absolutely no excuse for the violence that took place at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Yet no matter which way you look at it, the fallout from this attempted coup could make this worrisome state of affairs even worse.

First, you’ve got the president, who has been accused of inciting a riot and now faces a second impeachment and a scandal that could permanently mar his legacy. While the impeachment process itself is a political beast, the question of whether President Trump incited his followers to riot is one that has even the best legal experts debating. Yet as First Amendment scholar David Hudson Jr. explains, for Trump’s rhetoric to be stripped of its free speech protections, “The speaker must intend to and actually use words that rally people to take illegal action. The danger must be imminent—not in the indefinite future. And the words must be uttered in a situation in which violence is likely to happen.”

At a minimum, Trump’s actions and words—unstatesmanlike and reckless, by any standards—over the course of his presidency and on Jan. 6 helped cause a simmering pot to boil over.

Second, there were the so-called “patriots” who took to the streets because the jailer of their choice didn’t get chosen to knock heads for another four years. Those “Stop the Steal” protesters may have deluded themselves (or been deluded) into believing they were standing for freedom when they stormed the Capitol. However, all they really did was give the Deep State and its corporate partners a chance to pull back the curtain and reveal how little freedom we really have. There is nothing that can be said to justify the actions of those who, armed with metal pipes, chemical irritants, stun guns, and other types of weapons, assaulted and stampeded those in their path.

There are limits to what can be done in the so-called name of liberty, and this level of violence—no matter who wields it or what brand of politics or zealotry motivate them—crossed the line.

Third, you’ve got the tech giants, who meted out their own version of social justice by way of digital tyranny and corporate censorship. Yet there can be no freedom of speech if social media giants can muzzle whomever they want, whenever they want, on whatever pretext they want in the absence of any real due process, review or appeal. As Edward Snowden warned, whether it was warranted or not, the social media ban on President Trump signaled a turning point in the battle for control over digital speech. And that is exactly what is playing out as users, including those who have no ties to the Capitol riots, begin to experience lock outs, suspensions and even deletions of their social media accounts.

Remember, the First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows people to peacefully air viewpoints, vent frustrations, debate and disagree, and generally work through the problems of self-governance. Without that safety mechanism in place, self-censorship increases, discontent festers, foment brews, and violence becomes the default response for resolving disputes, whether with the government or each other. At a minimum, we need more robust protections in place to protect digital expression and a formalized process for challenging digital censorship.

Unfortunately, digital censorship is just the beginning. Once you start using social media scores coupled with surveillance capitalism to determine who is worthy enough to be part of society, anything goes. In China, which has been traveling this road for years now, millions of individuals and businesses, blacklisted as “unworthy” based on social media credit scores that grade them based on whether they are “good” citizens, have been banned from accessing financial markets, buying real estate or travelling by air or train.

Fourth, you’ve got the police, who normally exceed the constitutional limits restraining them from brutality, surveillance and other excesses. Only this time, despite intelligence indicating that some of the rioters were planning for mayhem, police were outnumbered and ill prepared to deal with the incursion. Investigations underway suggest that some police may even have colluded with the rioters.

Certainly, the lack of protocols adopted by the Capitol Police bear an unnerving resemblance to the lack of protocols in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, when police who were supposed to uphold the law and prevent violence failed to do either. In fact, as the Washington Post reports, police “seemed to watch as groups beat each other with sticks and bludgeoned one another with shields… At one point, police appeared to retreat and then watch the beatings before eventually moving in to end the free-for-all, make arrests and tend to the injured.” Incredibly, when the first signs of open violence broke out, it was reported that the police chief allegedly instructed his staff to “let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.”

There’s a pattern emerging if you pay close enough attention: Instead of restoring order, local police stand down. Without fail, what should be an exercise in how to peacefully disagree turns ugly the moment looting, vandalism, violence, intimidation tactics and rioting are introduced into the equation. Tensions rise, violence escalates, and federal armies move in.

All that was missing on Jan. 6 was a declaration of martial law.

Which brings us to the fifth point, martial law. Given that the nation has been dancing around the fringes of martial law with each national crisis, it won’t take much more to push the country over the edge to a declaration and military lockdown. The rumblings of armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington, D.C., will only serve to heighten tensions, double down on the government’s military response, and light a match to a powder keg state of affairs. With tens of thousands of National Guard troops and federal law enforcement personnel mobilized to lock down Washington, DC, in the wake of the Jan. 6 riots and in advance of the Jan. 20 inauguration, this could be the largest military show-of-force in recent years.

So where do we go from here?

That all of these events are coming to a head around Martin Luther King Jr. Day is telling.

More than 50 years after King was assassinated, America has become a ticking time bomb of racial unrest and injustice, police militarization, surveillance, government corruption and ineptitude, the blowback from a battlefield mindset and endless wars abroad, and a growing economic inequality between the haves and have nots

Making matters worse, modern America has compounded the evils of racism, materialism and militarism with ignorance, intolerance and fear.

Callousness, cruelty, meanness, immorality, ignorance, hatred, intolerance and injustice have become hallmarks of our modern age, magnified by an echo chamber of nasty tweets and government-sanctioned brutality.

“Despite efforts to curb hate speech, eradicate bullying and extend tolerance, a culture of nastiness has metastasized in which meanness is routinely rewarded, and common decency and civility are brushed aside,” observed Teddy Wayne in a New York Times piece on “The Culture of Nastiness.”

Every time I read a news headline or flip on the television or open up an email or glance at social media, I run headlong into people consumed with back-biting, partisan politics, sniping, toxic hate, meanness and materialism. Donald Trump is, in many ways, the embodiment of this culture of meanness. Yet as Wayne points out, “Trump is less enabler in chief than a symptom of a free-for-all environment that prizes cutting smears… Social media has normalized casual cruelty.”

Whether it’s unfriending or blocking someone on Facebook, tweeting taunts and barbs on Twitter, or merely using cyberspace to bully someone or peddle in gossip, we have become masters in the art of meanness.

This culture of meanness has come to characterize many aspects of the nation’s governmental and social policies. “Meanness today is a state of mind,” writes professor Nicolaus Mills in his book The Triumph of Meanness, “the product of a culture of spite and cruelty that has had an enormous impact on us.”

This casual cruelty is made possible by a growing polarization within the populace that emphasizes what divides us—race, religion, economic status, sexuality, ancestry, politics, etc.—rather than what unites us: we are all human.

This is what writer Anna Quindlen refers to as “the politics of exclusion, what might be thought of as the cult of otherness… It divides the country as surely as the Mason-Dixon line once did. And it makes for mean-spirited and punitive politics and social policy.”

This is more than meanness, however.

This is the psychopathic mindset adopted by the architects of the Deep State, and it applies equally whether you’re talking about Democrats or Republicans.

Beware, because this kind of psychopathology can spread like a virus among the populace.

As an academic study into pathocracy concluded, “[T]yranny does not flourish because perpetuators are helpless and ignorant of their actions. It flourishes because they actively identify with those who promote vicious acts as virtuous.”

People don’t simply line up and salute. It is through one’s own personal identification with a given leader, party or social order that they become agents of good or evil. To this end, “we the people” have become “we the police state.”

By failing to actively take a stand for good, we become agents of evil. It’s not the person in charge who is solely to blame for the carnage. It’s the populace that looks away from the injustice, that empowers the totalitarian regime, that welcomes the building blocks of tyranny.

This realization hit me full-force a few years ago. I had stopped into a bookstore and was struck by all of the books on Hitler, everywhere I turned. Yet had there been no Hitler, there still would have been a Nazi regime. There still would have been gas chambers and concentration camps and a Holocaust.

Hitler wasn’t the architect of the Holocaust. He was merely the figurehead. Same goes for the American police state: had there been no Trump or Obama or Bush, there still would have been a police state. There still would have been police shootings and private prisons and endless wars and government pathocracy.

Why? Because “we the people” have paved the way for this tyranny to prevail.

By turning Hitler into a super-villain who singlehandedly terrorized the world—not so different from how Trump is often depicted—historians have given Hitler’s accomplices (the German government, the citizens that opted for security and order over liberty, the religious institutions that failed to speak out against evil, the individuals who followed orders even when it meant a death sentence for their fellow citizens) a free pass.

This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.

None of us who remain silent and impassive in the face of evil, racism, extreme materialism, meanness, intolerance, cruelty, injustice and ignorance get a free pass.

Those among us who follow figureheads without question, who turn a blind eye to injustice and turn their backs on need, who march in lockstep with tyrants and bigots, who allow politics to trump principle, who give in to meanness and greed, and who fail to be outraged by the many wrongs being perpetrated in our midst, it is these individuals who must shoulder the blame when the darkness wins.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that,” Martin Luther King Jr. sermonized.

The darkness is winning

It’s not just on the world stage we must worry about the darkness winning

The darkness is winning in our communities. It’s winning in our homes, our neighborhoods, our churches and synagogues, and our government bodies. It’s winning in the hearts of men and women the world over who are embracing hatred over love. It’s winning in every new generation that is being raised to care only for themselves, without any sense of moral or civic duty to stand for freedom.

John F. Kennedy, killed by an assassin’s bullet five years before King would be similarly executed, spoke of a torch that had been “passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Once again, a torch is being passed to a new generation, but this torch is setting the world on fire, burning down the foundations put in place by our ancestors, and igniting all of the ugliest sentiments in our hearts.

This fire is not liberating; it is destroying.

We are teaching our children all the wrong things: we are teaching them to hate, teaching them to worship false idols (materialism, celebrity, technology, politics), teaching them to prize vain pursuits and superficial ideals over kindness, goodness and depth.

We are on the wrong side of the revolution.

“If we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution,” advised King, “we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.“

Freedom demands responsibility.

Freedom demands that we stop thinking as Democrats and Republicans and start thinking like human beings, or at the very least, Americans.

Martin Luther King Jr. dared to dream of a world in which all Americans “would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

He didn’t live to see that dream become a reality. It’s still not a reality. We haven’t dared to dream that dream in such a long time.

But imagine…

Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to stand up—united—for freedom…

Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to speak out—with one voice—against injustice…

Imagine what this country would be like if Americans put aside their differences and dared to push back—with the full force of our collective numbers—against the evils of government despotism.

https://augustafreepress.com/a-nation-imploding-digital-tyranny-insurrection-and-martial-law/

The Radical Right GOP Legacy

We will be left with many things as the legacy of the last four years of radical right politics. Here are some of them. Presumably, these aren't lessons that the left are going to accept or start practicing the way the radical right GOP has. 

A legacy of normalized lying

Normalized acceptance of death and incompetence

A legacy of normalized waste and blatant hypocrisy

Normalized extremism, distrust, hate and bigotry

Normalized rejection of facts and acceptance of crackpot conspiracies

Normalized acceptance of liars, felons and traitors in government

Normalized subversion of the rule of law

Normalized corruption and nepotism

Normalized acceptance of conflicts of interest

Destruction of impeachment as a tool to protect America

from a corrupt, incompetent or treasonous president

The Patriots Scramble for Cover

Various sources are reporting that people involved in the insurrection are trying to hide their involvement. The AP is reporting that some of the people who worked on the president's campaign may have been involved in planning or execution of the coup attempt. Those people are now trying to hide or distance themselves. The AP writes:

Members of President Donald Trump’s failed presidential campaign played key roles in orchestrating the Washington rally that spawned a deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to an Associated Press review of records, undercutting claims the event was the brainchild of the president’s grassroots supporters.

A pro-Trump nonprofit group called Women for America First hosted the “Save America Rally” on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, an oval-shaped, federally owned patch of land near the White House. But an attachment to the National Park Service public gathering permit granted to the group lists more than half a dozen people in staff positions for the event who just weeks earlier had been paid thousands of dollars by Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. Other staff scheduled to be “on site” during the demonstration have close ties to the White House.

At least one was working for the Trump campaign this month. Megan Powers was listed as one of two operations managers for the Jan. 6 event, and her LinkedIn profile says she was the Trump campaign’s director of operations into January 2021. She did not respond to a message seeking comment.

The AP’s review found at least three of the Trump campaign aides named on the permit rushed to obscure their connections to the demonstration. They deactivated or locked down their social media profiles and removed tweets that referenced the rally. Two blocked a reporter who asked questions.

Caroline Wren, a veteran GOP fundraiser, is named as a “VIP Advisor” on an attachment to the permit that Women for America First provided to the agency. Between mid-March and mid-November, Donald J. Trump for President Inc. paid Wren $20,000 a month, according to Federal Election Commission records. During the campaign, she was a national finance consultant for Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee between the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee.  

Wren was involved in at least one call before the pro-Trump rally with members of several groups listed as rally participants to organize credentials for VIP attendees, according to Kimberly Fletcher, the president of one of those groups, Moms for America.

Wren retweeted messages about the event ahead of time, but a cache of her account on Google shows at least eight of those tweets disappeared from her timeline. She apparently removed some herself, and others were sent from accounts that Twitter suspended.

AP describes a number of other GOP operatives who are deleting Tweets or otherwise distancing themselves from the attempted coup.