Trump Republicans are a Front for Snake-Oil Salesmen
Republicans have always wanted to sell the country things it didn’t always need, but since the Deep South joined the Red State ranks, snake oil sales are at an All-Time high. Dems need not gloat however, since their over-sympathies make snake oil sales easy
I have long been wanting to write this article, about how Republicans insidiously conspire to sell us things that we don’t need, and/or are overpriced…a kind of patent-medicine “snake-oil” if you will. Much to my recent horror, Trump Republicans have dropped all pretense, and now actually ARE selling snake-oil, in the form of Hydroxychloroquine and Oleandrin (as Covid-19 “cures”). Originally, this was part of the Republicans thirst for a quick buck, but more recently they figured “if we can convince people that Trump is a savior, we can probably convince them to buy anything!”. Conveniently, what they are selling defies the “educated elites”, who support science and supposedly hate religion. This harkens back to the days of travelling medicine shows that travelled with religious revivals in rural America, and provided entertainment if not much else. Strangely complicit, the Democrat’s refrain that “everyone is victimized and needs help” fits nicely into this Republican scam.
Put simply, the game works like this. You are a Republican and you officially “love free enterprise” and “hate government programs”, while you “love self-help” and “hate victimization”. However, you secretly need government programs to run your scams, which take a cut of the money or services handed out by government. When you are not doing that, you are getting government subsidies for “conservative free enterprise” agriculture and oil, so all in all, you need government more than anyone, if for no other reason than as a platform from which to sell snake oil. Your snake oil sales are provided cover by a kind of religious revivalism (either Evangelicalism or Fox News) which sort of cries “Hallelujah!” to everything you do, so as to provide cover for your big scams. Here are some examples:
College education: The Democrats want everyone to have access to higher education, which on the face of it makes sense (although college is probably not for everyone). They make government funds available for private intermediaries (banks) to administer and lend money, which then allows colleges to raise their prices, while the banks jack up the interest rates (about 7% for most, in an age when car loans are about 3%). Republicans then seize upon the opportunity to create non-accredited “fake universities”, like Trump University. Never mind that many would be better served by free junior colleges or trade schools, the American thirst for quick success has created a big scam, while accredited universities are getting ever more expensive while selling out to foreign students.
Home ownership: Similarly, Barney Frank and other Democrats were eager to expand home ownership opportunities to the lower classes in the early 2000s. Government institutions such as Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac were set up to provide the money, while again private intermediaries took their cut to administer this money. The results are well-known, the 2008 financial melt-down that liquidated the equities of many first-time homebuyers (many investors got burned too, but they were in a better position to cover their losses). Once again, one wonders if so many people are qualified to own homes, since if they lack good spending habits and stability, they become prey to right-wing usurers (who are often Bible-thumpers). Seniors who have spent their lifetimes successfully building home equity can be scammed by under-regulated reverse-mortgages. If there is a confusing and lucrative home-ownership financial vehicle to be found (codeword: “snake-oil”), the righties will find it and defend it in Congress.
Transportation: The Democrats want everyone, everywhere to have a ride, which means government subsidized buses, trains, and roads everywhere. When government entities can’t sustain this expense, the “private market” takes over, which means buses, trains, and roads only for those who can afford to get soaked by the higher prices. Eventually, this might mean toll roads everywhere (that can eventually go belly-up) or service limited to lucrative urban milk-runs.
Medical and Pharmaceutical: Democrats want “free health care for all”, but ignorance of cost control (such as the expense of rural people going to emergency care for a check-up) causes higher expense. Republican private enterprise is only too happy to exploit these “emergency care” centers for high profit. Similarly, Dems want drugs for everyone on a free health care plan, so Repubs create a bunch of high priced drugs that barely work (snake oil). When anyone tries to create a rational system (like basic care available at Costco and Walmart), Repubs cry foul.
Social Security and Medicare: Don’t get me started. Republican scams are the pilot fish that accompany these big barrels of pork, as there is a whole industry waiting to fool people into paying for extra services that supposedly “enhance” Social Security and Medicare, but these help the elderly about as much as Ed McMahon’s “Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes” (and arrive about as often in the mail). Old people are better off hiding out in the hills, but the fraudulent mail is delivered to them anyway as a type of “free speech” that scamming Republicans are fond of using as an excuse for keeping it legal.
Utility Companies: God help us when public and quasi-public utilities such as energy, water, and communications companies are set upon us, with their often Byzantine phone systems and online services that hardly ever work, not to mention foreign call centers where Jamal speaks sort of good English but has no idea what kind of TV channels you are trying to secure and then cuts you off. This is horrible customer service (and higher profits) that purposefully swindles you in the name of a “regulated government franchise”, except the regulation body is filled with the former executives of the utility it oversees, so that they just laugh at you when you complain, and any person or politician who tries to bring the utility in line is accused of “government intervention”. Many have forgotten Enron, the Texas “energy consultant” that bilked State governments during a phony energy shortage.
Federal Lands: Haha, you thought that Federal Lands belonged to “We the People” and the conservatives are happy for you to keep believing this myth, but they really belong to the cattle ranchers, miners, and oil companies that exploit these lands, at little cost (as it is “public land”, and they are, wink wink, part of the public). Similar to historic notions of “freedom” that stole land from the Indians, corporations have been busy stealing yours and my public lands for ages. They keep a few National Parks intact to keep the “suspension of disbelief” alive for most people.
Defense Contractor Profiteering: The biggest welfare system in the world is that of National Defense, and this is the cherry on top of the “what on earth would private enterprise do without the government” scam (a close second might be the Section 8 landlord plundering of Welfare funds scam). There is little oversight, as no one wants to be “against National Defense”, except that we may someday have to borrow money from China in order to wage war against them.
Note that Democrats are not innocent in all of this, as the only reason they are not grifting too is that they are too busy working for the government. The dollars their big government programs don’t lose in bureaucracy are subsequently lost in Republican graft. Approximately 100 years ago, there was no income tax and a bunch of farmers and merchants who minded their own business in between relatively infrequent patent medicine and religious revival shows, which gave them chances to ingest alcohol, morphine, or coke (in medicine of course) while catching a hoochie coochie show and getting to hear dirty jokes (all part of the show). Now this is all a systematic part of television and internet (with Ronco Veg-o-matic and ambulance chasing ads in between).
All told, Republicans like to fancy that they are cool private enterprisers when they are sucking on the government tit almost as hard as those on food stamps. In fact, most everyone is very dependent on our government, as they alone seem to have the power to print money without repercussions. But the Republicans should at least admit it, or attempt to make an honorable living instead of biting the hand that feeds them, the sometimes unwitting hand of the taxpayer, who provides a figurative wagon and tent for the slick Republican snake oil salesman.
Like this Story? See more in Vern Scott’s new book “Survival Vanity and the Neo-Nutocracy”, available at Amazon.com
