I didn’t think that souls could move from celluloid to the real world until last week. When the so-called big beautiful bill was passed by Congress, that changed. The Manchurian Candidate’s brainwashed killer, Raymond Shaw, is still alive and residing in the White House. Other explanations might exist. However, outside of the Loony Theater, it is hard to see why a U.S. president would give China the greatest act of strategic self-destruction, second only to China’s own suicide in the 15th century.
China is currently the most creative investor and green technology developer. By the time the president limps through his third term, it was supposed to be the largest economy in the world. While the United States re-fossilizes in the bog of petroleum and desecrates innovation and the environment to sustain production of Jurassic energy, the bill would accelerate both tendencies.
The tax credit of $7,500 for your next electric vehicle purchase? Lost. Therefore, is there a chance that American automakers will be able to compete with China’s EV manufacturing? Twenty-four plants had been established by American automakers to manufacture vehicles eligible for the tax credit. The employment are at risk. Your 30% tax rebate for installing solar panels on your roof? Lost. Those 30% tax breaks for businesses constructing solar and wind farms? Lost. (At least a proposed solar excise tax was withdrawn from the bill at the last minute as a bribe to get the support of Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.)
Do you get tax credits for your heat pump and other energy-saving improvements in your house? Lost. Prepare to pay more for electricity and have less money to fight it. Rewards for the development of electric batteries? gone, giving China a stranglehold in the industry. According to Albert Gore III, son of Al Gore, the measure dealt a blow to the domestic EV and battery supply chain that will be felt in towns around the nation.
It seems as though William McKinley had doubled down on subsidizing the horse and buggy in 1900 and issued an executive order removing all tariffs safeguarding the fledgling American auto sector. (I realize it’s ironic. But rather than extending a faltering economy, McKinley’s tailored tariffs were meant to stimulate a new one.
That was before to the disastrous tax cuts financed by deficits and the theft of food stamps, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIPs), and Obamacare, which resulted in the loss of health insurance for 12 to 20 million individuals. (The Senate’s Democratic Joint Economic Committee has a higher estimate, with 1.9 million people in Florida losing coverage, while the Congressional Budget Office has a lower estimate.)
And then there’s debt. The ratio is as high now as it was at the close of World War II, with the national debt exceeding the size of the economy. Then, we could afford it. By the time the Great Recession struck, that had dropped to 35 percent of the size of the economy during the economic boom years. We could afford to exit the slump once more. However, we never settled the bill. Biden, Trump, and Obama are all at fault. Even with the longest economic expansion in history, the debt has returned to its post-World War II level of 100 percent of the economy. The annual interest on the debt alone is close to $1 trillion. At the end of Trump’s first term, it reached $345 billion, making it the budget item with the quickest rate of growth. Compared to Medicare and the military budget, interest payments account for a larger portion of the budget. Only Social Security surpasses them, and not until 2026.
A disaster is not only possible. Mathematically, it is unavoidable. Ask England, a country that believed her empire would last forever.The Economist, the old seer of the empire, said this week that bankruptcy is a phenomenon that develops gradually until suddenly happening. There isn’t any panic yet, but when the history of the disaster is written following the crash in 2029, the large, evil BBB will likely be the subject of a chapter or two.
Alternatively, simply monitor the Chinese jubilation index. There was a Trump in China. He was a follower of Zhu Di, the Ming emperor who introduced the Enlightenment to China four centuries before Europe did in the early 14th century. He established a thousand-ship navy that might have competed with the Age of Discovery, promoted religious tolerance, and funded a vast amount of education. Columbus might have been Chinese and found San Francisco Bay.
Rather, Zhu Di’s son rose to become his era’s Maga Ming. He turned everything off. Before its resurgence in the 1980s, he destroyed the armada, banished the academics, destroyed their writings, sealed the borders, and proclaimed a China First policy that sentenced the Middle Kingdom to six centuries of isolation.
While history does not repeat itself, it also does not invent the wheel. The Chinese are aware. They are chuckling at the American president’s amazing embrace of national slumber as they watch him mimic one of their own. Without them doing a single thing. It will not be long before there is a Maga gift shop on Tiananmen Square.
Raymond Shaw ultimately acts morally and puts a halt to the Chinese plot against America in The Manchurian Candidate. It doesn’t seem like that admirable aspect of him has moved to the White House. China produced the celluloid.
FlaglerLive’s editor is Pierre Tristam. This article is broadcast on WNZF.
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