When the next generation asks, "What did you do to protect us?" What will our answer be?

Never has there been a time in history when so many have buried their heads in the sand in the hope that the pain will stop. Nobody is coming to the rescue; this is on Americans

Those of us who have been around the block a few times should now be able to see the clear and present danger that this administration represents to the well-being of all but the top 10% in America. The sense of denial of the truth is palpable as those who should know better keep shifting the red flag further and further away from the truth, saying we’ve not quite reached the crisis point yet.

If things continue, history will reflect that, for the economic welfare and safety of the nation, Trump should have been arrested by the military and held indefinitely in a place where he no longer posed a threat to American society. It should not take someone from outside the country to wake people up to the inevitable fate of freedoms that have been so long taken for granted.

In some bizarre mind game, Republicans have convinced millions of uneducated Americans that Trump is one of them and he has their interests at heart, when the truth is the polar opposite; he views them as an army of useful idiots there to protect him from the educated who can think for themselves and see him for the charlatan he is. Time and time again, we have witnessed respected voices say, ‘He won’t go that far, the military will never support his efforts to militarise our streets and challenge Americans’ right of assembly and their freedom to exercise their First Amendment rights lawfully. Each time they claim ‘we’re not there yet’, Trump pushes harder.

It’s the height of delusion to continue this game of words as he marches on past every norm on his journey to theocratic autocracy. It’s happening, and he’s preparing the ground as all autocrats do, to limit the ability for anyone who does not support him to challenge him, either in the media or at the ballot box. I’ve warned about it time and again; it’s a slow-burning process of democratic erosion that is embedded in the Heritage Foundation and its partners’ vision for a reimagined society.

Trump has successfully tested the use of the military in American cities to enforce his will and is building a state security apparatus under the guise of immigration enforcement. ICE’s annual budget for 2025 is $28.7 billion, with $75 billion allocated for the agency over the next four years. The budget surpasses the yearly military spending of Iran, Turkey, Spain, Mexico, and at least 23 countries in the top 40 militaries around the world. He has castrated corporate media, the judiciary, and law firms. He has taken social media hostage so that all the mechanisms that existed to hold him to account are under his control. He’s created a permissive environment for a single-party state, and if you think he’s not going there, you should invest in a mental health check. He already has all but absolute control, as was the objective from the outset.

For some bizarre reason, it is beyond far too many Americans to see the extent to which lower and middle-income workers are becoming the cash cows of the top 10%. If you’re a comfortable middle-income earner who does not lie awake at night worrying about putting food on the table, funding childcare or your kids' college education, paying your car loan, and rent/mortgage, you are increasingly becoming a rare breed in Trumpworld.

The US is the biggest consumer economy on the planet, spending $19 trillion in 2023, which represents around 68% of US GDP. To put this into context, this is larger than the whole of the GDP of China in the same year. Below, I have included a breakdown of the spending.

Source - visualcapitalist.com

You can see that the most significant spending on goods is on groceries and vehicles. Linked with healthcare, housing, and utilities, this accounts for $8.55 trillion. This is why inflation plays such a prominent role in the political conversation. In the real world, prices are increasing at a not insignificant rate. Every avenue to saving costs for families is slowly being choked off. Trump is, without question, the 21st-century Sheriff of Nottingham. The only problem is, there is no Robin Hood to take money from the rich and give it to the poor, because Trump has gutted the IRS and given the rich permission to drive Americans into economic slavery.

People look at the stock market and claim people like me are catastrophizing. That is not the case; the economy is being propped up by the top 10% who currently account for 49% of consumer spending. This is creating a distorted perception of economic resilience. Trump has now become dependent on the consumption spending of the top 10% to mask the ever-decreasing spending ability among those in the middle and at the bottom, as their disposable income evaporates under the strain of what has become a de facto federal sales tax.

There is no better example right now of an economy for the few than the US economy. No matter from which angle you view it, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at the fastest rate ever. The wealth gap is widening exponentially, and the social implications are dire, and will become even worse as Medicaid cuts and nutritional assistance are removed in 2027. 64% of Americans are estimated to be living paycheck to paycheck, with 20 million households earning less than $25,000. This was before Trump’s monstrous budget bill. Never has America been such an unequal society in recent memory.

All of these usually would provide the kindling for revolution, but Trump has managed to distract people from this with his campaign of division and hate. He needs the MAGA base to be at war with Democrats because if they were to focus on how their cost of living is becoming more tenuous by the day, then he’s in big trouble. This isn't the coming together of a perfect storm; it’s a carefully crafted storm designed to deceive. By the time MAGA discover they’ve been played, it’s too late, their money will be with the rich.

Every day, Americans in Trump’s new world are subsidising the rich at every twist and turn, and the latest turn relates to the opposite of what Trump promised. Just as he lies about foreign countries shipping container loads of cash to the US treasury, he claimed energy prices would be lowered ‘bigly’. When exactly the opposite is happening, as the surge to dominate the AI space intensifies. Big tech requires vast amounts of energy to quench the thirst of its ever-expanding data centres. This is forcing energy companies to invest heavily in infrastructure.

Projects to improve the energy grid and add more capacity are usually done on a long-term investment cycle, but that’s not good enough for the tech giants who need the capacity NOW. The challenge and the consequences are well documented in a report by Ivan Penn and Karen Weise in the New York Times, which I have gifted here so you can read it without the paywall. They note:

Just a few years ago, tech companies were minor players in energy, making investments in solar and wind farms to rein in their growing carbon footprints and placate customers concerned about climate change. But now, they are changing the face of the U.S. power industry and blurring the line between energy consumer and energy producer. They have morphed into some of energy’s most dominant players.

To cut a long story short, they are effectively using higher consumer energy bills to offset the costs of powering their data centres, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the Trump administration will not regulate to stop them from fleecing consumers to achieve their objectives, the same consumers who have already had their healthcare and SNAP payments removed to provide them with tax cuts to help pay for their data centers. You really couldn’t make it up. By the way, this is not just a plan for the future; this is already happening right now. The report goes on:

A June analysis, from Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University, found that electricity bills are on track to rise an average of 8 percent nationwide by 2030 and as much as 25 percent in places like Virginia because of data centers.

In some places, it is happening already. Starting in June, the electricity bill for a typical household in Ohio increased at least $15 a month because of data centers, according to data from a major local utility and an independent monitor of the electric grid that stretches across 13 states and the District of Columbia.

The point I am desperate to make here is that this is a multi-pronged act of state-sponsored theft on hard-working Americans up and down the country. The deception is now so woven into the fabric of Trump’s false narrative that nobody can escape their thieving hands, and silence prevails in the corporate media, but we know why. The burning question is what kind of world will future generations inherit after we sell their inheritance to the highest bidder?

The truly disappointing thing is that corporate media is failing, yet those of us who, in good faith, work hard every day to deliver the real truth struggle to cover costs. Don’t let anyone tell you that telling the truth pays; I’m proof it absolutely does not.