Is this country playing out aspects of the plot of the 1962 movie The Manchurian Candidate?
In that feature, Communist Intelligence Operatives from China and North Korea kidnap and brainwash an American soldier and son of an influential political couple who espouse right wing conspiracy theories like Joe McCarthy and Donald Trump only to find that they themselves are the Communist agents who use their brainwashed son to assassinate rivals to achieve power.
Fast forward today and we have a person in the White House, with his war on science and knowledge, gutting programs in clean energy and laying off staff at NASA (while also putting the Secretary of Transportation, a person with no experience in the area in charge) that will put American Manufacturing, Leadership, and Standing in the Scientific Community, Clean Energy progress, and Space Exploration behind other advanced nations, especially China, who are making leaps in clean energy and space technologies every day.
This is in addition to the MAGA Know Nothings endless quest to gut other scientific, environmental, and health research programs which have contributed to poor response times to natural disasters and a measles outbreak not seen in decades.
This is what happens when there are loyalist political hacks and Know Nothing fanatics in charge of departments (looking at you, Kristi Noem and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) that they have no business being entrusted with.
In an editorial for the New York Times, renowned columnist and author Tom Friedman, reacting to the economically suicidal and scientifically illiterate gutting of clean energy and manufacturing tax credits in the MAGA Reverse Robin Hood economic bill, wrote in the opening paragraphs of a recent editorial:
“Can you hear it — that roar coming from the East? It’s the sound of 1.4 billion Chinese laughing at us.
The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable. They have passed a giant bill that, among other craziness, deliberately undermines America’s ability to renewably generate and store electricity — through solar, wind and batteries, in particular…”
“…In sum, this dog’s breakfast of a bill — rushed through without a single congressional hearing with independent energy experts or even one scientist — is sure to put at risk billions of dollars of investments in renewable energy, mostly in Republican states, and potentially kill the jobs of tens of thousands of U.S. workers. By the way, the bill also bans for 10 years a first-ever fee on excess methane emissions from oil and gas production, a key driver of global warming.
So, in one fell swoop, this bill will make your home hotter, your air-conditioning bill higher, your clean energy job scarcer, America’s auto industry weaker and China happier. How does that make sense?”
In an interview with Blog for Arizona published today, (July 13,) Arizona Representative Yassamin Ansari commented on Trump’s gutting of clean energy incentives and war on science and knowledge:
“…Arizona benefited significantly from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the Inflation Reduction Act because of the jobs that were created, and we’re going to be created in Arizona. I received many calls from labor leaders in Phoenix over the last couple of weeks in particular and even from conservative labor unions, and labor leaders representing the electricians, for example, who could not fathom why any Republican would vote for such a job killer. As I mentioned in Arizona, 27,000 manufacturing and energy jobs will be eliminated as a result of the devastating cuts to clean energy tax credits. It’s a shameless giveaway to big oil and to billionaires. It dismantles clean energy, raises electricity bills, opens public lands to polluters, and guts environmental protection.”
“The cuts to federal science spending will cost every American in some way, shape, or form. The Trump Administration’s proposed federal budget for the coming year calls for deep cuts upwards of 50 percent in some cases to the federal agencies that fund the majority of science at America’s universities. Just today, there was a report that over 2000 senior staff are set to leave NASA under an agency push. 2145 employees are those in GS13 to GS15 positions…And then there’s other examples that we can look at. I mean, look at what is happening in Texas right now. It’s horrifying and the fact that the Trump Administration earlier this year decided to cut funding from critical agencies like NOAA, FEMA, and the National Weather Service certainly undermines our abilities to prepare for and respond to disasters, just as climate catastrophes are becoming more frequent and more severe. So, there’s a lot in terms of the war on science and knowledge that is taking place, especially under the leadership of RFK Junior as well. Another alarming recent development is that measles cases in the U.S are higher than ever.”
On social media, Representative Ansari posted:
The Arizona Representative also suggested that the “private sector states and cities fill the void, as they have done before. This is the time to double down on clean energy, create jobs, and lead where the federal government won’t.”
Senator and Astronaut Mark Kelly blasted Trump for his NASA cuts, posting on social media:
“Hey folks, I don’t know if you saw this in the news this week, but Trump’s planning to push over 2, 000, that’s 2, 000 senior staff out of NASA. Now, what do you think would have happened if we fired 2 000 NASA leaders right before we tried to land on the moon? Probably would not have been successful. We would have lost the space race to the to the Soviets, And If this happens, we could possibly lose The space race were currently in with the Chinese, You know, it’s. It’s sometimes feels like Donald Trump just wants to give up American leadership in space. I’m not going to stand for. I hope you won’t. I’m going to do everything I can and push back against this.”
It looks as though America’s adversaries like China are winning the war for the Twenty First Century and their people do not have to even break a sweat in doing it.
They have their Manchurian Candidate in the Oval Office doing their bidding either because of sheer science denying stupidity, him and his family receiving sweet financial benefits on top of or under the table, or both.
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Let’s stop pretending this is incompetence. Trump is doing exactly what he was installed to do: undermine American institutions, bury science, and tear democracy down brick by brick. You nailed it! He is the Manchurian Candidate with a MAGA hat, powered by a mob of misogynists, reality-deniers, and hateful faux-Christians who mistake cruelty for strength. If this is “great again,” count me out.