Immaterial—that’s what Vice President J.D. Vance called the cuts to Medicaid contained in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA). From his perspective, that’s what the welfare of America’s working-class is—immaterial. Trump’s gang of MAGA oligarchs are too preoccupied with looting the country to care about poor people’s suffering; for them it’s nothing but collateral damage. And the problem is much more serious than simply not caring about a sizeable portion of our citizenry, many of which are their own MAGA constituents. Despite decades of passionate opposition to the “nanny state,” it’s increasingly apparent that MAGA Republicans would like to see America’s working-class as obliterated as Iran’s nuclear program.
This humble spirit continues to believe the greatest problem facing this country is economic and social inequality. Unless we can begin to rectify this disease that’s destroying the American ideal, I fear that neither our society nor our democracy will survive. But instead of beginning to move us in that direction, Trump’s OBBBA does the opposite: it takes from the poor and gives to the rich. The middle class gets a small tax cut, but it’s pittance compared to what goes to the top 1% and corporations. Trump has once again proven that, whatever he is, he is no “populist.”
There’s no more glaring display of our country’s inequality than the disparities in our healthcare system, the difference between the care received by the rich versus the poor. Nothing has been shown to determine longevity more than access to quality healthcare, and for many working-class people Medicaid is the only access they have. Does anyone think it’s right that, according to the Health Inequality Project, the richest American men live 15 years longer than the poorest, while the richest American women live 10 years longer than their poorer counterparts? If we’re not careful we’ll return to the late 19th century, the gilded age of the robber barons (not surprisingly, President Trump’s favorite era), when it was simply accepted that factory workers and miners lived shorter, unhealthy, and generally squalid, miserable lives. During the second half of the 20th century, thanks to America’s phenomenal postwar prosperity, the life-circumstances of the rich and poor began to converge in a great middleclass, but no more.
President Trump is Taking America Back to the Squalid Conditions of the So-Called Gilded Age.
Elon Musk may have been purged from the Trump administration, but unfortunately his perverse worldview remains all too pervasive. Musk wants to save humanity and “western civilization” by colonizing Mars, but it’s clear that he’s only interested in saving wealthy white people. What Musk wants is a great decoupling, by which wealthy whites will be freed from what he and his high tech bros consider the unnecessary baggage of the poor and people of color. This is the ultimate segregation, the ultimate racist ideology, the science of eugenics on steroids. Indeed, if you are pursuing Musk’s dream, the suffering and early death of working-class people is immaterial; it’s not just collateral damage but the unsaid objective.
The passing of the rightfully unpopular OBBBA should result in significant gains for the Democrats come the 2026 midterms, but their leadership remains so hapless that its questionable whether they will be able to seize the opportunity. Hakeem Jeffries’s almost 9- hour, record-breaking speech on the House floor was admirable, but he should have targeted the OBBBA weeks earlier. Tellingly, he finished his speech by talking about civil rights icon John Lewis. John Lewis? How about Harriet Tubman’s great-grandmother? The fact is, many of the younger voters the Democrats need to win back don’t even know who John Lewis was. Lewis remains an American hero who deserves our respect, but it’s hard not to see the Democrat’s desire to return to the glory days of the Civil Rights Movement rather than tackle today’s challenges head on. Wacky Elon’s vision of the future is undoubtedly sick and racist, but the Democrats could benefit from their own version of America’s future.