By Cliff Kincaid
Compared to Barack Hussein Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of America, the Trump version is far more radical. Trillions of dollars are supposedly flooding into the United States but grocery prices are still high and farmers are going broke. Meanwhile, President Trump has welcomed a new currency option, crypto, that he once opposed, and the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already throwing people out of work.
No wonder a socialist is going to win the New York City mayoral race. The American people fear socialism but they seem scared out of their wits by the current “affordability crisis” and what the “technocrats” around Trump have planned for them.
In this period of rapid change, some Republicans have abandoned the free market alternative.
It is reminiscent of when Republican President George W. Bush said, in response to a financial crisis, “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”
The term RINO stands for Republican in Name Only and is supposed to refer to liberal Republicans who act more like Democrats. Now it applies to “conservative” Republicans who want to abandon Republican Curtis Sliwa in the New York City Mayor’s race, in favor of voting for Democrat Andrew Cuomo over Democrat Zohran Mamdani. Cuomo is the disgraced former governor who sent 15,000 seniors to their deaths because of his COVID policies.
On Tuesday on Fox News, Kaleigh McEnany trashed Sliwa because the polls suggest he cannot beat either one. That is a fact, given the Democratic Party voter registration advantage. But I thought Republicans wanted Republicans in office.
McEnany, Trump’s former press secretary, is an example of the “new” version of the RINO, and she is not the only one. She is afraid to promote the Republican Party in New York City, apparently because she doesn’t understand the Republican philosophy of limited government or because she doesn’t think the voters of the city understand it. Either way, she backed away from the fight.
Fox News and the New York Post, alleged conservative outlets, are on the Cuomo bandwagon, viewing him as the savior of New York City. They are prepared to overlook his serial killings of old people during COVID because they fear Mamdani’s policies, or else they welcome the election of a Marxist/Muslim so they can point to him as the future of the national Democratic Party. This gives them, in their view, a political target. But it could backfire.
Tragically, Trump seems to agree with his former White House press secretary, making him into the Chief RINO, a strange designation for someone who has come to epitomize the leader of the Republican Party. He says he would rather deal with a Democrat than a communist. That kind of statement inspires people to vote for Mamdani.
If Trump really fears Mamdani, let him order his arrest on charges of being a foreign agent of Iran. Mamdani is a “Twelver” in sympathy with the Iranian regime. That should be enough for Trump to act. But he may welcome a Mamdani win so the Marxist/Muslim can be a foil for national political battles.
But what if socialism is a winner politically? Or what if Mamdani wins and blames the failures of socialism on Trump and the Republicans?
The problem is that Mamdani’s political approach may be a winner not only in New York City but the nation. That is because Trump’s “fundamental transformation” of America through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and crypto currencies is frightening to many people. During massive changes like this, many of the working class might be pushed toward socialism to save their jobs.
Look at the headlines from Tuesday: UPS Has Cut 48,000 Workers, Amazon has cut 30,000 jobs, and Target is cutting back. This year alone, companies such as Nike, Starbucks, Meta, and Microsoft have also cut jobs.
In this battle, Trump seems aligned with the globalists and the “Big Tech” oligarchs pushing the new technologies. The socialists will argue that they will protect the workers from the globalists that Trump once said he opposed.
That phrase, “fundamental transformation,” was associated with Obama but has now come to characterize the Trump Administration approach. It means records in the stock market but little positive change in the lives of ordinary Americans. It is based on the notion of a “hot country” with big money flowing into AI and crypto.
However, Trump’s approach is facing serious opposition from “the people” who find no benefit in the rush to AI and crypto.
Even more astonishing, one of Trump’s Big Tech backers, Peter Thiel, gave a series of lectures on new technologies that he said could give rise to what Christians call the anti-Christ, a world-wide system of control.
Trump says we must pursue AI because Red China is doing so. But if what the globalists are proposing is basically the same as the Chinese communist system, what have we gained? If the communists or the globalists run the world and our lives, what difference does it make?
The American people fear these new technologies, AI and crypto, and the fact that socialism does not work may not be enough to convince them to go forward with the Trump approach. Hence, Trump and the Republicans could be wiped out politically in 2026 and 2028 if the Democrats perfect their socialist message and win over millions of people to their cause. They can argue that Wall Street wants to eliminate the jobs of ordinary people to benefit the big corporations.
Seton Motley, a conservative commentator, predicts that “AI will very rapidly move throughout all manners of traditional employment – consuming just about everything. It won’t just be blue collar gigs gone and forgotten.” Trump will take the blame.
Another danger is that an AI investment bubble is developing and it will burst, causing more economic anxiety and damaging political fallout for Repubicans.
Citing a White House document, “America’s AI Action Plan,” another conservative commentator, Patrick Wood, argues that Trump “has totally caved in to the Technocrats he appointed,” although Trump does not really understand what he is doing. Wood says “this appears as a push against bureaucratic inertia, but in reality, it amounts to an explicit transfer of authority from elected bodies to expert committees and interagency working groups.” He calls this “technocracy” and writes extensively on the topic.
This is a political recipe for a huge backlash from ordinary people scared of losing their jobs. It is a crisis that we already see developing in the announced job losses that will accelerate and the socialist Democrats exploit the human suffering for their own benefit politically.
On this basis, political socialism of the kind argued by Mamdani will look preferable to a high-tech future where ordinary people lose their livelihoods in despair, causing the social alienation that Karl Marx predicted.
Endorsing Cuomo, who already lost to Mamdani, is a way for the new RINOs to avoid a serious discussion of what the Trump Administration is getting us into. Their maneuver may help the socialists the RINOs claim to oppose.
- Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org
