Trump movement cannot brag about still-worsening economy

Trump is looking for some good news to give the American people hope, and to attack his detractors, given the overall disaster of a nation America has become since Inauguration, thanks to the ever intensifying elite sabotage of Trump himself and the broader populist-nationalist movement.

There is a widening Deep State coup in plain sight, a first ever and a new low in the history of our democracy. The media are complicit in this coup, operating 24/7 as agents of the Deep State against the Trump movement. Another low in how our institutions function.

Healthcare continues to be a disaster that is only getting worse.

Tax reform will take forever, crowding out important priorities, and will only manage to cut taxes without cutting spending, making our debt situation worse. That may get compounded by a $1 trillion infrastructure program, which would be fine if it were actually paid for. The Democrats are the party of "spend with already collected taxes," while Republicans are about "spend with ever ballooning debt".

And we stand ready to get sucked into at least one and possibly more new pointless wars, on top of remaining in Afghanistan -- maybe North Korea, maybe somewhere else in the Middle East, maybe Venezuela, and possibly Russia itself. We will fail everywhere as usual since the first Korean War, the failure will cost trillions of dollars (without raising taxes = more debt that balloons from interest), and these failures will be the coup de grace to military morale.

Not to mention the continued demographic trends that threaten the stability and prosperity of America and the American people, as illegal immigrants remain here in the same numbers as under Obama (15-20 million), and as the same number of new immigrants are invited in per year.

Other than that, things are turning out wonderfully!

Now, Trump and his voters realized that we wouldn't Make America Great Again in the first six hours, days, weeks, or months -- but once it gets to six years, and the cheerleaders are still telling us to wait, well...

And it is not the fact that we haven't made total progress in such a brief time, it's that in most areas we haven't even been moving the ball down the field. It has either stayed still or has been moved back toward our own end zone. That makes it no longer a matter of "just give it more time" -- sure, a little more time in the current direction, and Trump will get removed or assassinated. We need to reverse these trends, not just let things go on for a longer time.

Measures of voter support do not count as accomplishments per se. Trump has more followers on social media, still draws large crowds, and would win re-election against Hillary or a generic Democrat -- so what? The election is over, it's time to apply his popular support to some area outside of the ballot box, to actually accomplish the agenda that he campaigned on, given that the Establishment will not help us out one bit and will eagerly sabotage that agenda.

So far, the bright spot that Trump has been trying to point to, in contrast to all that garbage, is the economy, and primarily the stock market. Nothing has changed from the campaign trail when he said it was just a big fat bubble, and now that the Democrats are out of the White House, the Fed can safely pop the bubble by raising interest rates and be able to pin the blame on a Republican president. Most of the rise has been driven by a handful of mega-companies, none of them components of the Trumpian goods-based economy -- over-valued tech like Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, etc.

Job creation is no better than under Obama, still way down per capita compared to even the Reagan years when we were already declining as a great economy. The jobs are part-time, low-paying, and in dead-end or bubble sectors like healthcare, education, and other service staples of the gig economy. We can't even joke about retail jobs anymore, since those are going to Amazon fulfillment centers -- just as low-paying as retail, but now in more dystopian workplaces.

So just like Trump said on the campaign trail, the unemployment numbers are phony -- some guy working 10 hours a week as a barista counts as employed, and if he quits that altogether and decides not to look for anything new, he's still employed!

Wage growth has been falling since Inauguration Day, continuing the stagnation of the past several years.

As all these aspects of income and wealth have declined, expenses have shot through the roof. Median home prices rose for yet another year, they are now up 50% compared to the low of 5 years ago, and key regions like Southern California are higher than before the housing bubble popped last time. And tuitions keep skyrocketing. With so little income growth, that means debt keeps rising -- or that people are going without the thing in the first place, like renting instead of owning a home.

And most of the goods and services that we buy are not getting better in quality. Especially the big-ticket expenses like housing, healthcare, and education.

In other words, our standard of living has continued the deterioration of the past 40 years, and the conditions are worse than they were before the last Great Recession.

If the economic news were truly so much better over the past six months, you personally and many people you know or even run into and chat up would have great news to share -- a new full-time job, higher wages or salary, in a non-bubble sector that won't get wiped out when the Fed raises interest rates or the government scales back your workplace's grant funding, not to mention cheaper housing, cheaper cars, cheaper food, cheaper everything, and less and less debt.

Although enthusiasm and hope were high at the outset, six months later reality is starting to set in. It's not that people think Trump himself failed, or hasn't tried. Most will blame the rigged system, the Swamp, and all the other forces that had been fucking this country over for decades, and will continue to even with an anti-Establishment guy in the White House.

They will conclude that it's going to take a major assault on those Establishment forces in order to reverse longstanding trends, not just a kind-hearted negotiator who wants to make deals and bring everybody together. They are going to want Trump to say, "Hey I tried with the nice guy routine, and now it's time to get tough and not take "no" for an answer".

In the meantime, that is the attitude that Trump himself and his supporters must take. There is little more than symbolic token victories to point to so far, other than refraining from getting involved in yet another disastrous globalist trade deal or climate deal. That is more of a halt than a reversal, and the re-negotiation of NAFTA so far is leaving manufacturing by the wayside, and focusing more on agriculture, finance, and the media.

The more we try to gloat about the stock market, as though ordinary Americans own any stock and as though it weren't a bubble, and the more we try to spin the jobs reports as anything other than a continuation of the trend from Carter through Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr, and Obama -- the more out-of-touch we're going to sound to ordinary Americans, including Trump supporters.

The support of the masses is the sole, only, and exclusive leverage of the Trump movement, since it has no support but rather outright hostility in all elite institutions. So we must stay as in-touch with normal Americans as possible, or lose the only strength we have at the negotiating table against the elites.

If that means being brutally honest, so be it -- we can truthfully and easily tell people that the elites are still the problem since they're not honoring the election outcome, and continuing on with business as usual. Apart from being more honest and connecting better with the people's everyday lives, it will give them motivation to start mobilizing in one way or another against the elites. There is no other way to light a fire under the asses of our insulated and contemptuous elites.

The last thing we want to attempt is to tell the American people, or just Trump supporters, that everything is getting better, and to feel hopeful rather than worried about where things have been heading the first six months, and the next six months.

That will make them mistrust us, because they're not stupid and realize that the Establishment and its elites are a lot harder to force into serving the public than Trump made it seem during the campaign. And it will also keep them complacently or apathetically on the sidelines, leaving the movement and its President with nobody to have his back when and where it matters.