Making Progressivism Great Again!

Some people call them subsidies. Others call them bailouts. In every case, they are arbitrary and coercive acts of big government, designed to “compensate” businesses that are being adversely affected by a combination of market realities and harmful government policy, through the means of economic redistribution — which American conservatives used to call “socialism,” before they joined the Trump cult and their world turned upside down.

After promising to do so last week, Trump has followed through on massive subsidies for farmers hurt by his own trade policies. Sixteen billion dollars of redistributed wealth, i.e., socialism. Sixteen billion dollars of overtly prioritizing one segment of society over the others, i.e., social engineering. Sixteen billion dollars of damage control to cover over his own damage to farmers and the U.S. economy, i.e., social media propaganda. 

Trump, in a typically Trumpian act of tarting up his failures as successes, boasts to the crony-farmers whose votes he has just purchased, “I’m very honored to have done this for you. I don’t consider this a gift at all, it’s not a gift.” 

No, it’s not a gift. It is socialism on stilts. It is vote-buying. It is centralized economic control. It is a declaration of defeat. It is everything Trump continually whines about other countries doing. It is the difference between a defender of free markets and a dyed-in-the-wool progressive power monger. But it certainly is not a gift.