by Jim Quinn, The Burning Platform:

In Part I of this article I discussed why the “Us versus Them” mindset permeates society and how Trump has become a lightning rod for hate. Now I will assess his progress in fighting the Deep State and try to peer into a murky future.

In addition to not being Hillary, the main reasons I voted for Trump was he promised to build the wall, he promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, he promised to end our foreign military interventions, he said he would bring fiscal sanity to the budget, he said the Federal Reserve had blown an immense stock market bubble, he questioned the fake economic data spouted by government drones, and he called out the fake news bullshit media. When I regularly assess his progress on these issues, the standard response from Trump acolytes is “Would you rather have Hillary?”. No, I would not. But that doesn’t get Trump off the hook for his failures in my book.

He can blame establishment Republicans and left-wing Democrats, but he had both houses for two years and did not get money appropriated to build the wall. Mexico didn’t pay for it. There are more illegal immigrants pouring over the border now than under Obama. The U.S. government is now dumping these illegals in cities across America. Trump bloviates at his weekly rallies, but this has been a miserable failure. He can blame the decaying rotting corpse of McCain for his failure to repeal Obamacare, but he failed. The medical industrial complex is still in control; premiums, co-pays and deductibles are higher than ever; bureaucracy expands; and the quality of care continues to decline. Another major fail.

He has massively increased our subsidies to the military industrial complex, while supporting the wars of the murdering House of Saud and the Israelis. He has surrounded himself with unhinged war mongering neo-cons itching for war with Iran, Russia and China. The appeals to patriotism are incessant on commercials, sporting events, and in the news. The great businessman adapted quickly to Washington DC math. Cut taxes for mega-corporations and billionaires, while increasing military spending by hundreds of billions, and not cutting anything, shockingly is leading to a $1.2 trillion deficit this year. He missed balancing the budget by just a smidgen. Of course, the Trump apologists now say debt doesn’t matter. But it does, and it will.

The most disappointing flip flop from Trump has been his complete reversal regarding the Federal Reserve. He declared the stock market as a big fat ugly bubble when the Dow was 18,000 in the summer of 2016. And he attributed the bubble to the recklessly low interest rates perpetuated by the Fed. Now he tweets daily about the great market at 26,000 and ridicules and scorns the Federal Reserve for raising rates to 2.5%.

He acts like a Wall Street shyster pumping a worthless Uber IPO with his blatant attempts to goose the market with fake news about the “imminent” trade deal with China. With a global recession imminent, he desperately needs a rising stock market to keep the plebs believing his great economy narrative.

I wrote articles month after month during the Obama administration proving the BLS and BEA were producing fake manipulated data to paint an untrue positive picture of the economy. Trump railed about the fake numbers during the campaign. Now he worships at the altar of BLS bullshit. The unemployment numbers, CPI and GDP are now unquestioned. Don’t dare question the tremendous economy narrative, or the Trump sycophants will attack.

Does anyone with two brain cells actually believe your everyday inflation is less than 2%? Home prices are at all-time highs. Apartment rent is at an all-time high. Car prices are at an all-time high. Tuition costs are at an all-time high. Healthcare costs are at an all-time high. Gas prices are up 25% this year and 25% since Trump took office. The price of beef and pork is up double digits. The corporate food companies reduce package sizes while keeping the price the same.

The price of electronic gadgets you buy every few years falls (until Trump’s tariffs start to bite) and of course, your wages stagnate at 2% or less growth. Anyone living in the real world knows their real inflation is north of 5%. Record credit card debt is a function of stagnant wages and rising prices for everything else. And if real inflation is north of 5%, then the fake GDP numbers would show negative growth in the economy.

If we are now supposed to believe the BLS then let’s examine the best jobs market ever narrative. Direct from the BLS website, 4.5 million jobs have been added in the 27 months of Trump’s presidency, or 167,000 per month. In a blow to the Trumpeteers, 4.8 million jobs were added in the last 27 months of the Obama presidency, or 178,000 per month. Bummer for the narrative. But the unemployment rate has fallen from 4.8% to 3.6%, as 1.8 million more people “voluntarily” left the workforce. There were 102 million working age Americans not working in January 2017 and there are still 102 million not working. Men in their prime earning years of 45 to 54 have seen 300,000 more job losses since Trump ascended the throne. Not exactly as spectacular as the narrative spun every day on the interwebs. But, rooting for the home team will continue unabated.

“This is where we are at right now, as a whole. No one is left out of the loop. We are experiencing a reality based on a thin veneer of lies and illusions. A world where greed is our God and wisdom is sin, where division is key and unity is fantasy, where the ego-driven cleverness of the mind is praised, rather than the intelligence of the heart.” ― Bill Hicks

Bill Hicks wrote those words in the early 1990s. The thin veneer of lies and illusions has become thick coating of blatant lies and delusions. Avaricious greed rules the world and manufactured divisiveness is used by the Deep State to keep the masses ignorant of their true purpose. The red meat issues like abortion, transgender freaks, the drug war, reparations, wedding cakes for gays, diversity quotas, SAT adversity adjustments, college admission scandals, mass shootings, the war on terror, false flags and other social justice bullshit keep the anger flowing on social media and in the fake news mainstream media, as the opposing teams battle for followers, likes and expansion of their personal brands. It all seems so contrived and managed. It’s almost as if we are living in a reality TV show with evil producers and directors making sure the actors follow the plot and play their parts.

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