The Scorched and Salted Earth

 (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

To anyone who knows the first thing about world military history, the scorched earth strategy has served generals and dictators since the 6th century AD. It was used by the Russians in Russia in the wake of Napoleon's failed campaign in that country. Over a century later, it was employed by Stalin when the Nazis made their own ill-fated invasion of Russia during WWII. It was used by General Sherman during the Civil War in his infamous march to the sea.

     Everyone who had successfully used it no doubt had defended doing so in the wake of a humiliating retreat. The idea, of course, is to destroy resources that could otherwise be used by the enemy in their advance. From a cold-blooded military standpoint, adopting the scorched earth strategy is a brilliant tactical move intended to starve the enemy of badly-needed resources. 

    But doing so is a classic case of throwing out the baby with the bath water- It deliberately and conveniently forgets that it also deprives the townsfolk and villagers of the resources they, too, would need. These military geniuses also conveniently forgot that the civilian populace are the people they're supposed to be protecting. But if you're a general or dictator in retreat, winning or at least losing with some savage, spiteful satisfaction becomes everything.

     Donald Trump is plainly doing this in his own retreat from the world stage. To him, the "enemy" he'd be denying in retreat is the Democratic Party who would be hobbled in his toxic wake no matter how huge the Blue Wave will be. Largely with the aid of his chortling stooge Mitch McConnell, who recently laughed at his Democratic opponent Amy McGrath when she accused him of killing hundreds of Democrat-sponsored bills passed by the House, he has packed the federal judiciary with 200 mostly young right wing ideologues who will be salting their own little patches of earth for decades to come. With McConnell, he's shoehorned two vastly unqualified right wingers on the Supreme Court and, with ghoulish dispatch, within three days of Justice Ginsburg's death, had advanced yet another right wing ideologue, Amy Coney Barrett, as his third SCOTUS nominee.

     Trump had said after nominating Barrett that he fully intends on using her and the 6-3 majority to throw out potentially millions of ballots that don't go his way and using the dodgy rubric of massive amounts of Democratic voter fraud that simply do not exist. But of greater and more immediate importance to the vast majority of Americans who don't get top-notch health care for free is Barrett's assured vote against the ACA. A week after Election Day, November 10th, the SCOTUS will begin hearing oral arguments to gut the ACA on which tens of millions of Americans depend for quality, affordable health care that Trump and other Republicans get for free. Who cares if the rest of us go without?

     But packing the federal judiciary with right wing ideologues is just one front of Trump's strategy to scorch and salt the earth and douse it with malathion just for good measure and to do it in ways that can't easily be reversed, if ever, when Biden wins in three weeks.

How He'll Do It

In his infamous Harrying of the North, William the Conqueror had ordered in 1069 the burning of countless Northern English villages and their inhabitants slain. Food stores were destroyed and whatever survivors there were had to resort to cannibalism, with some stories recounting the cracking open of skulls so the brains of the dead could be eaten.

   Hopefully, we've gotten a little more civilized since then even if our Social Security fund is bankrupted because of Trump's suspension of the payroll tax that funds Social Security (In a ominous prophecy, Trump had said he'd make the tax suspension permanent if and when he got reelected. How that's supposed to make him popular with seniors who depend upon it is anyone's guess.).

    Yet, however much of a fraud he is, however big of a failure he is, however much debt he's in, I still think it's safe to say that Trump will never have to depend upon Social Security to make ends meet or to fund his addiction to Adderall. And Trump, as uniquely bizarre as he is, is still a typical Republican in that he couldn't give a shit if Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA go down the tubes for the simple reason that he'll never need them.

    Who cares if over 8,000,000 in this country have preexisting conditions just because of the coronavirus that he'd actively allowed to spread even to himself and his own family? On a quiet night, you can just hear the chop-licking and hand-rubbing of HMO executives openly salivating like a Ridley Scott Alien moving in for the kill. 8,000,000 people with costly preexisting conditions they can turn away at the door, just like in the good ole pre-Obama days! No more coverage for offspring up to the age of 26 leeching off their parents' health care plans! Oh, you were treated for a hangnail once a decade ago? You're on your own, loser.

     That's the Republican health care plan they keep promising but never deliver and never give details about. A return to the status quo before the Affordable Care Act in which preexisting conditions like cancer or a heart problem or lupus could get one booted off their health care plan because Congress long since had given HMOs the power to arbitrarily decide which of their paying policy holders get to have health care and which don't. In which copays and prescription payments still ran into three digits and deductibles, an ingenious dodge to give people the illusion they still exerted some control over their health care plan by making them pay less for plans with deductibles as high as $10,000.

     Again, that 's the Republican health care plan- A simple dusting off of the pre-ACA status quo that killed 45,000 Americans a year. Or, to quote former Rep. Alan Grayson; "Die quickly." As Adam Serwer reminded us not long ago, the cruelty is the point.

     This is how Trump is scorching and salting the earth and soaking it with malathion just for good measure. He knows he will not need Medicare or Social Security because he will get a fat pension courtesy of the US taxpayer as well as free health care for life. In a recent interview, Michael Cohen related an anecdote in which Trump had arbitrarily bloated his net worth from $7 billion to $8 billion within seconds. Cohen asked Trump if he was afraid the tax bill would come due and that the Trump Organization and even his children wouldn't be able to cover it. Trump dismissively told Cohen that it would be his kids' problem and that he'll be dead and beyond caring.

     And if that's how little he thinks of his children, imagine how little he thinks of you.