The Great American Confidence Trick
Prof. Devi Sridhar put it perfectly: “Billionaires got richer, working people got poorer, and politicians will blame it on immigrants & foreigners. Textbook.”
This isn’t new. It’s the playbook. And Trump? He’s the last worn-out playing card in a very corrupt Republican deck.
There’s an old Irish saying that goes: “If you’re going to lie, make it a big one.” You might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
And Jaysus, hasn’t Donald J. Trump taken that to heart.
Not just a lie. But a whole lifestyle of a lie.
A tower of delusion built on bullshit, gold-plated in grievance and now rented out to a party that long ago sold its soul for a whisper of power and a seat at the table of the rich.
Because Trump isn’t the problem. He’s just the punchline.
His latest pay off? The proof he’s playing for the billionaire class? Just look at how the tariff wars have played out. Trump shouted about China, imposed dramatic tariffs, and rattled markets – while billionaires and hedge funds strategically shorted and timed investments to profit from the chaos.
It wasn’t about protecting American jobs. It was a smoke-and-mirrors show for the base while the elites cashed in, knowing exactly when to sell and when to double down.
And the Republican Party, once the respectable domain of grey men in grey suits clutching grey policies, is now a circus of grifters riding the last elephant out of town on the backs of the people they’ve betrayed the most: poor, white, under-educated Americans.
From Nixon’s Shame to Trump’s Grift
Once upon a time, the Republican Party had standards. Terrible standards, but standards nonetheless.
Nixon shattered them with Watergate. The base was disgusted. Corruption didn’t play well with the educated suburban conservatives.
So what did the party do when it lost the respectable middle?
They stopped courting educated voters and started mining a new vein: the under-educated, the angry, the disillusioned. They leaned into racial resentment. They hollowed out the Southern Strategy.
They began grooming a base that could be riled, not reasoned with.
And it worked. Too well.
By the 1990s, Republicans weren’t winning hearts – they were rigging maps, stoking fears and courting voters who didn’t know they were being conned.
Here’s what’s even harder to swallow: it worked because it wasn’t just a political pivot—it was a sleight of hand on democracy itself.
They changed the game without telling anyone.
The people in power stayed in power – and continue to stay in power – by learning how to perform democracy so convincingly we forgot to check if it was still real.
What we’ve been watching for decades isn’t governance. It’s theatre.
And behind the curtain? Billionaires, lobbyists, and legacy elites calling the shots while we argue over the actors.
The Southern Strategy saw racists, white evangelicals and disillusioned blue-collar workers – people the elite once dismissed as fringe – now repackaged as the “real America.”
And Donald Trump? The perfect messiah for this new gospel of grievance.
Low IQ, High Returns: The Weaponisation of Stupidity
Let’s be clear: Donald Trump doesn’t speak like a politician. He speaks like a man who’s spent too long yelling at the TV and not enough time reading anything longer than a menu.
Linguistically, he operates at what experts call a “conversational baseline”: short sentences, repetitive phrasing, simple nouns and verbs.
According to Dr. Jennifer Mercieca, political rhetoric scholar and author of Demagogue for President, Trump’s style is “authoritarian in tone and simplistic in structure, designed to be memorable and emotionally resonant rather than logical or informative.”
In psychological terms, his language mirrors what child development specialists refer to as “concrete operational thinking” – a stage typical of 7–11-year-olds where abstract reasoning is limited, and black-and-white thinking reigns.
Whether it’s deliberate or instinctual, the effect is the same: he strips down complexity and sells it back as certainty.
This is not accidental. It’s a calculated rejection of political elitism. For decades, voters have been alienated by jargon-heavy speeches, laced with “policy instruments,” “geostrategic realignments,” and “macroeconomic mechanisms.”
Trump ditched all that for, “We’re gonna win. Bigly. Believe me.”
And here’s the kicker. It works.
He’s not clever. He’s not curious. He’s not even functional, really. But he is familiar. And that’s dangerous.
Because if you’ve ever felt left behind, made to feel stupid by politics, lost in a sea of acronyms and empty promises – Trump is your man.
He speaks like you. He feels like he gets it. He’s angry. He’s loud. He’s simple.
And in an age of chaos, certainty beats coherence. Every. Single. Time.
That’s the grift. That’s the Trump Card.
He’s not there to empower. He’s there to pacify. A billionaire mascot for billionaires. A walking distraction for the working class. A gold-plated guard dog barking at immigrants while the elite loot your house.
Trump’s own IQ? Let’s just say if it were any lower, he’d be eligible for a MacNamara’s Moron draft card.
MacNamara’s Morons and the American Tradition of Disposable People
Back in the Vietnam War, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara cooked up a scheme to fill the ranks: draft men with IQs too low for combat.
Called “MacNamara’s Morons,” these soldiers were barely literate, poor, and disproportionately Black or rural white. They were sent to die while the sons of senators and CEOs got deferments and college.
Sound familiar? It should.
It’s the same playbook today. Keep the masses just educated enough to work the jobs, too broke to quit, and too distracted to rise. Defund public schools, vilify teachers, replace books with slogans, and call curiosity “elitism.”
The American education system hasn’t been gutted by accident. It’s been carved up, sold off, and dumbed down with surgical precision.
An uneducated voter is a loyal voter – for the guy who promises to make it all simple again.
Trump: The Richest Loser in History
Here’s the kicker. The man who screams about winning is statistically one of America’s greatest losers. He inherited over $400 million from his father and somehow managed to underperform the S&P 500. If he’d shoved that money in a sock drawer and gone golfing for 40 years, he’d be richer.
He’s not a self-made man. He’s a self-inflated brand. A shell corporation in a human suit. A frontman for a party that needed a new act.
Why This Matters IRL
What does any of this have to do with Ireland?
Everything.
Because the same tactics are creeping into our politics too. The same divide-and-rule, anti-intellectual, fear-driven garbage. They want you compliant. Too tired to care. Too broke to fight.
But here’s what they forget.
We are the descendants of rebels, famine survivors, mothers who carried nations on their backs. We know how to spot a bluffer. We know how to burn down a lie.
The ghost of MacNamara’s Morons, and the global creep of anti-intellectualism – it’s all still walking among us, whispering that ignorance is strength. But we see through it.
Don’t we?
Domesticky 
Leave a comment