I was walking this morning, turning over yesterday’s little political vaudeville act in my head, Donald Trump stepping out with great fanfare to announce that, in the spirit of lowering your Thanksgiving grocery bill, he’s rescinding tariffs on agricultural imports.
Touching, right?
A leader thinking of the people.
Like Santa Claus, but sweaty.
Except, minor detail, he’s also been assuring us with the consistency of a televangelist on the wrong meds that those same tariffs never had any effect on prices.
No cause and effect.
No inflationary pressure.
Just a harmless little patriotic surcharge nobody paid.
Totally illusionary.
Like a unicorn, or a Republican infrastructure plan.
So when he suddenly removes the tariffs to lower prices, America collectively reacts the same way Slim Pickens did when that toll booth materialized out of thin air in Blazing Saddles.
“LePetomane Tollway? What will that asshole think of next?”
The man told us the toll didn’t cost anything.
Then he cancels the toll to save us money.
American doublethink.
We don’t dismantle the toll booth.
The tariffs both mattered and didn’t.
Prices rose and didn’t.
The President told the truth and didn’t.
And the public, instead of confronting the obvious, shrugs, and like Slim digs in its saddlebag of cognitive dissonance, turns to the posse, dead serious and half-mad, and hollers:
“Somebody’s gotta ride back to town and get a shit-load of dimes!”
(Follow Robert on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robhawks61)
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