Trump to debt hypocrites: See, I made you care

To get Democrats and hypocrites to really care about the national debt is no mean feat

I’ve been semi-binge watching Breaking Bad, because I was busy from 2010 to 2013 and never saw it when it aired on AMC. I’m in the middle of season 3, before everyone says it gets really good in seasons 4 and 5. There’s this speech that Gus Fring’s “fixer” gives to Walt about half measures in the episode I just watched, and it rang a bell about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and our national debt. See, there was a guy who became a wife-beater when he was drunk, and when the fixer was once a cop, he decided to teach this guy, whose battered wife was too scared to press charges, a lesson. So he said he took the guy out to the desert put a gun barrel in his mouth, and told him this is the end. The guy soiled himself in fear, and promised never to lay a hand on his wife again. So the fixer let him go. Two weeks later, he murdered his wife in a very grisly fashion.

Photo by Alice Pasqual on Unsplash

In case you didn’t get it, the lesson of the story is that half measures don’t work. When people are scared for their lives, they’ll say anything or make any promise. But the deeper lesson is that people are hypocrites, and they do what’s in their interest, or what they’ve become a slave to.

In politics and social action, we see it all the time. The Southern Poverty Law Center should have folded up and declared victory long ago, but they kept finding more victims and more haters, including people like evangelical radio host Dr. Michael Brown, who has never hurt a fly, to my knowledge, but adopts a Biblical stance on the sin of homosexuality and therefore is guilty of hate in their eyes. The real motive, of course, is that organizations like the SPLC don’t want to fold, they want to continue forever, so they can never declare victory.

Examples in the right wing abound. All the anti-abortion, pro-life networks still raise money, and if they’re raising money to help single moms, or to promote safe sex (or abstinence, fine), then that’s great. But if they’re raising money to fight legal battles or political wars they have little chance of winning, because they should have declared victory when the Dobbs decision came down, they’re really doing a disservice to the cause. What I mean is the more these issues are brought forward as Balkanizing dividing lines, the more abortion-rights advocates win at the polls and in the courts.

Handing the opposition wins is not sound social or political strategy, but it’s good for fund-raising when you can point to “the enemy is winning!” to continue your relevance (and get money).

The gun lobby, and the gun control lobby have been in this spin cycle for decades. When Republicans controlled Congress, Democrats did sit-ins. But when Democrats controlled Congress, they didn’t take the opportunity to enact sweeping gun control. They blamed the filibuster and other democratic processes. But really, they simply didn’t want to do it and then when it didn’t work (it never works because the Second Amendment will not be repealed), they wouldn’t want to admit that the laws on the books are sufficient, if only they’d be enforced. That would hand a bigger victory to gun advocates, so they’d take the small loss to ensure the cause continues, and everyone involved gets to keep their paychecks coming.

I could go on. The environmental lobby, the green agenda, religious freedom versus protecting LGBTQIA+++, immigration, you name it. Declaring victory and folding up when you win is not in the cards, because when paychecks and organizational vision is on the line, people become hypocrites. The wife-beater doesn’t stop drinking just because a cop put a gun in his mouth in the desert. The only way the wife-beater was going to stop is if the cop pulled the trigger. No half measures.

Now we come to the confluence of the national debt and President Donald Trump. Trump is in sun-god mode right now, fresh off victories in Iran, at NATO, on the border, and so far, in Congress. His victories are by no means complete or even large, but they are not losses, so he claims them as his. Trump dragged our finances out to the desert, put a gun in its mouth, and is about to pull the trigger. I see no reason he will stop at half measures.

With tariffs, Trump did the half measure. With DOGE, he did the half measure. With trade and China, he did the half measure. He saw how the markets reacted violently, and pulled back. Trump fully earned the nickname “TACO” for his yeoman chicken work. But in the debt, all those other half measures planted the seeds of a full measure. See, the global currency and bond markets get a vote, and they’re voting against the dollar.

The long U.S. treasuries are being vacated by smart money offshore, and central bankers from Antwerp to Beijing are eyeing opportunities. It’s not at a crisis point just yet, but the lack of half measures in OBBBA may push one to bloom. The stock market may burst forth, but if the underlying reserve currency is weak, it’s really just a mask for inflation. And if Trump decides to replace Jerome Powell at the end of his term with someone who doesn’t care about the national debt, and cuts interest rates for political gain, watch the crisis bloom like an Amorphophallus titanum.

OBBBA so stokes the debt, adding trillions without addressing the massive load in any way, that it has gotten the attention of the hypocrites who themselves would tax and spend like our budget is a bottomless vault of cash. So now we have the New York Times publishing detailed explainers of our national debt and how it’s damaging to the average consumer. That’s like getting the SPLC to publish a detailed explainer of Romans chapter one regarding sexual sin.

It’s not just the spending. It’s the hits to tax revenue, and the underlying mercantilist trade policies, detached approach to trade deals and treaties, and the ability to take half measures on important things, but full measures on others, that has the most ardent Abundance Agenda virtue signaler worried enough to forget about handing the other side a small victory in exchange for closing shop.

OBBBA is beyond overreach. Its logical end is actually war. Think about it. Increasing the defense budget, at a time when America is basically a military hyperpower, but cutting other services that deal with the general welfare of the civil population, along with snubbing our allies, forcing peaceful countries to arm up, pushing Japan to become a nuclear power, these things make the world more stoked for conflict. And creating a massive economic crisis for the U.S., which still commands the world’s reserve currency, builds the case for getting resources and money some other way.

If you put nations in a strait jacket and limit their ability to produce or obtain needed commodities, while simultaneously promoting a rigorous “arm yourself” policy abroad, this, by extension, and by policy, leads to war. Someone will decide that it’s not worth following the written rules to get what they need, and will take it by force. Look at Vladimir Putin, who has lived by that credo his entire life. And the Trump administration is rewarding Putin because Trump believes in taking what you want, getting the best “deal” using whatever weapons are available.

Using the dollar as a weapon leads to other nations fighting back with their own currency. And turning the U.S. economy into a weapon, where others buying our debt is not a good financial risk decision, will lead to an inescapable crisis. We cannot dig our way out by spending more, or by taxing, at some inflection point, it will simply be too late. Of course, progressives won’t want to admit this, because then they’d have to close up shop in so many political and social movements (and fund raising opportunities).

OBBBA has got them abandoning their hypocrisy and actually caring, because now, like the fixer in Breaking Bad, there are no half measures. Trump is about to pull the trigger, and they’re very worried. He made them care.

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