(REUTERS)

The president is doing what he can to demonstrate his sincere belief that he’s the God-Emperor of the United States. But to hear some tell it, it’s still an open question as to whether Donald Trump is “extreme.”

There is no question, however, when it comes to a figure like Zohran Mamdani. A veritable consensus exists in which it’s uncontroversial – indeed, it’s simple common knowledge – that the New York City Democrat would be, if elected, the most left-leaning mayor in America.

The double standard is perhaps most evident in questions reporters ask, and don’t ask, according to historian Larry Glickman. No one hesitates to ask if Mamdani is a “communist.” (They ask so often he sounds guilty in his denials.) But there is immense hesitance to ask if Trump is a totalitarian, even as he prosecutes a totalitarian agenda.

Just today, he implied that a dictatorship is fine as long it’s “fighting crime.” “Already they're saying, 'He's a dictator!" The place is going to hell and we got to stop it,” he said. “So instead of saying 'he's a dictator,' they should say 'we're going to join him in making Washington safe.' They say 'he's a dictator!' and then they end up getting mugged.”

Is this not, yanno, an extreme thing to say?

No one’s asking.

This double standard is why liberal Democrats are at a disadvantage every time they propose making things more equitable and more just. They can’t call for tax hikes on the rich without facing the “simple common knowledge” that puts reformers like Mamdani in the position of proving they’re innocent of the allegations made by their enemies.

Indeed, for decades, Republicans (as well as the Democrats who fear them) argued that raising taxes on the rich is an act of class war and cutting them is an act of liberation. And during those years, the argument became so commonplace as to become indisputably true.

It wasn’t true, but let’s focus on how maintaining the facade required Republicans (as well as the Democrats who fear them) to cut taxes for the rich but leave more or less untouched programs associated with the New Deal and Great Society: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, weather service, medical research, science, and so on.

As long as inflation was in check, as long as employment was steady, normal people did not notice the one-sided class war against them.

I can’t help thinking something’s changed when I see footage like this. It’s from a town hall held by Republican Congressman Doug LaMalfa of California. Unlike his House colleague, Nebraska’s Mike Flood, LaMalfa acts like he’s in trouble, but his humility doesn’t matter, as the crowd booed and jeered with disapproval over his support for an unpopular president and his unpopular agenda. I mean, just listen to that roar.

Here’s CNN:

“At both town halls, LaMalfa was pressed over how Trump’s agenda, which includes historic cuts to federal support for the social safety net, would affect rural hospitals, particularly those in his district.

“Other attendees asked questions about transparency around the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files. At the morning event, LaMalfa called it a ‘bad look’ to have Epstein-related information continue to be ‘suppressed.’ Still other attendees warned the president’s tariffs would harm farmers in California and attacked the congressman’s credibility.

“‘If you’re not here to either announce your resignation, why aren’t you here to apologize to the farmers of the north state because of your support for the Trump tariffs?’” one audience member said” in Chico.

The Congressional Budget Office released an analysis Monday of the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (BBB). The law will make the rich richer and the poor poorer. “The top 10 percent of earners in the country will see an average boost of $13,600 per year over the next decade as a direct result of provisions in the law, while the bottom 10 percent will see an average annual decrease of $1,200,” according to a report by The Hill.

Pennsylvania Congressman Brendan Boyle, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said “Trump is enriching his billionaire friends at the expense of American families.” The BBB “is the largest transfer of wealth from working Americans to the ultra-rich in history.”

That’s a polite, technocratic way of saying it.

When put in context, another word comes to mind.

That context is this: Trump and the Republicans are taking the safety net out from beneath Americans, like Medicaid, food stamps and Obamacare. They are removing critical services that make a middle class life possible, like banking regulation, food inspection and vaccine research. And despite their talk of liberating us from the tyranny of taxation, there’s a tax they love, a national sales tax called “tariffs” – the most immiserating force any of us has faced in five decades.

Indeed, a Federal Reserve official said today that Trump’s tariffs are “a stagflationary shock” that could echo a time when wages kept falling but prices kept rising, while the cost of borrowing soared, making the 1970s first time the American middle class shrank since World War II.

When put altogether, it doesn’t sound like something benign, like “a transfer of wealth.” It sounds like theft. It sounds like a crime.

I’m reminded of what comedian Trae Crowder said.

“The worst part is that the amount of wealth the rich are going to gain from [the BBB] is negligible to them, relatively speaking. This bill effectively takes a few thousand dollars out of the pocket of a regular American per year and puts a few million dollars into the pocket of an American billionaire per year. Well, if a billionaire was walking down the street and a few million dollars fell out of his ass, he wouldn’t debase himself by bending over to pick it up. But if you take three grand away from an Iowa school teacher, her whole life is ruined.”

Crowder went on:

“This bill is the equivalent of taking a life preserver from someone who’s barely treading water and chucking into the incinerator of a super yacht owned by a guy who invented a drone strike app, or whatever. And that guy don’t need it. He just doesn’t want you to have it.

“It pleases him to take it away from you.

“The way you flail makes him giggle.”

It’s early yet. Perhaps normal people will never fully figure out that billionaires have been waging class war against them. And many may be content with suffering as long as perceived enemies suffer more.

But at this rate, the president will need to cheat to prevent the voting public from trying to hold him responsible for the ongoing debilitation of their lives and fortunes. (That’s what he and the Republicans are trying to do with the redrawing of congressional maps in Texas and other red states.) Or he will have to turn everything into a “national emergency” to justify the continuing prosecution of his totalitarian agenda. Escaping accountability will require silencing the people.

Today, the “emergency” is crime. Tomorrow, it could be voting.

A class war could turn into a real one.

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