By David Rutter
Stealing is wrong. I get that, but then I’ve never been close enough to a large pile of cash as to be tempted.
So I have cheaply bought morals.
But let us assume that stealing is wrong. On that valid and traditional proposition, we all should be aghast that Donald Trump, hereafter to be known as The Former Guy, persuaded Americans to give him $200 million to win several elections he already had lost.
This is “past posting” on a grand stage. Past posting allows a skimmer who knows who won the televised horse race to bet against others who don’t know who won when the replay comes on air.
It’s the Barn Fire Fund After The Horses Left.
Why did TFG’s small contributors do this?
There are several ancient Latin phrases that name this phenomenon. The most pertinent is caveat diuinator stultus – which translates roughly as “beware blithering idiot.”
Of course, blithering idiots seldom are aware in real life, which is one reason they are blithering idiots. Blithering and idiot seem to be linguistic twins joined at the hip.
Whatever the etymology, the American patrons who gave TFG his $200 million since last November where not effectively caveating their stultus.
He has put it all in his pocket and walked away, though the main motive ostensibly was to stop Democratic skullduggery from stealing the Georgia Senate special elections. Records show he never spent a dollar on Georgia, though his campaign sent out 40 solicitations begging for money for that specific cause.
How is this relevant aside from proving TFG is always going to be TFG?
When you spend your $1,400 stimulus check this month from Washington, thank TFG for that. Had he spent the money to win the Georgia seats, the COVID relief bill would never have passed the U.S. Senate this week. No Republican in this galactic nebula voted for it.
The total margin for its existence was the two Senate seats TFG let twist and die on the vine.
Had TFG not kept the money in his pocket, there likely would be no enhanced childhood tax credits for parents; no millions for restaurants; no money to open schools; no $10 billion for emergency mortgage aid; no $25 billion for emergency rent aid.
This might be the most ostentatious con, as in obvious, in the history of cons. This is almost a Matisse.
Or maybe the givers were betting on an insurrection that would make them traitors as well as schmucks.
Though unconscious in TFG ‘s mind, the mechanism is plain enough. It’s like betting on the World Series after your team has lost in seven games. Can we also still get 21 points, and still bet on the Chiefs winning the most recent Super Bowl? After all, the 31-9 score could have been a media illusion. Or a lie. Or Tom Brady stole it.
Trump spent $13 million of his haul on Giuliani-Level legal expertise and black hair coloring for Rudy, and put the other $187 million in his pocket. None of it was his. But he gets to keep it.
The law says he can do that because the law was written by legislators who would want to do the same thing some day.
This manipulation clearly is a bad thing. This is stealing. I am appalled.
Except that I am only partially, superficially appalled because cons always hide in plain site, which affords some protections for the con-Quistador. Hey, he might say, I told you it was a con job, and only schmoes won’t believe what is obvious.
TFG’s con was always like giving money to strippers on the theory that really loved you. It was always a con. The strippers think you’re creepy.
Americans, at least many of them, are witless schmucks with their money and must be protected from their schmuck tendencies. You have to help where you can. I always have been in the liberal interventionist camp because I’m a buttinsky. Also, it seems humanely sound to protect dopes from their dopiness.
But there are limits, even to feckless helpfulness for those who need “caveat” but don’t want it.
You can sympathize with them, but only in general philosophical way. In fact, I have come to an alternate natural selection point of view.
What if nature has created genetically designated crooks whose main predatory function is taking money from people unfit to have it?
Have you never encountered a rich person who seemed too stupid to have accumulated that much money?
TFG never has been master of a project – financial, governmental or personal – that was not a scam and did not ultimately fail. That’s an empirical fact. He is the master of mass hypnosis and modified Ponzi schemes.
But he always made others pay for his bad investments.
There can be no other plausible reason why Deutsche Bank among other institutions bankrolled him with millions of dollars. It has to be a money-laundering operation by a national state with tons of smudged dollars to hide. It’s a Tootin’ Putin deal.
But there is another way of looking at this transfer of wealth from middle-class wallets into TFG’s bank account.
He does not seem the sort who saves up for a rainy day. He’s a spender – big houses, big hotels, big-haired women. He has spent his millions on the same things for 60 years. It’s what a poor person thinks he should buy if he were rich.
Big spenders like TFG have their function in a capitalistic economy. After all, it was never money he actually earned.
The cash goes right through their hands and back into the economy in some path. Shit through a goose. Nazis bury their gold; TFG spends his. He becomes ironically useful to the system.
Eventually, real people get the money he stole and then spend it on food, clothing, homes and schools.
This is the natural order at work.
It’s the only benefit to TFG’s entire existence.
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David Rutter is the former publisher/editor of the Lake County News-Sun, and more importantly, the former author of the Beachwood’s late, great “The Week In WTF” column. His most recent piece for us was How Mark Giangreco Blew Himself Up. You can also check him out at his Theeditor50’s blog. He welcomes your comments.
Posted on March 12, 2021