10/29/20: Here, in Cincinnati, it’s
raining steadily, as we catch the remnants of a tropical storm spawned by
Hurricane Zeta.
That Category 2 hurricane, which churned ashore Wednesday and battered Louisiana, was the third of the year to strike our unlucky sister state. Two million people across the South are without power. Homes have lost roofs and walls. Businesses have been flooded. Cars have been smashed by falling trees.
____________________
The hold of the
Trump cult is strong.
____________________
Climate scientists have said it again: We knew this
was coming. We warned that hurricanes would be more common, that they would be more
intense. That they would dump more rain as they passed.
President Trump has managed to convince the faithful in MAGA red
that climate change is a fiction.
*
MEANWHILE, the coronavirus kicks back up across the country and
Team Trump fights to save the president’s reelection. According to the president
we have “turned the corner” on COVID-19! People who deal in stocks, and
economic realities, are so excited to hear the news of a corner turned that
they send the Dow Jones down 943 points on Wednesday. This follows a “rally”
Tuesday when the Dow dropped 650 points, as
brokers sensed more Trump disease-fighting
magic was coming.
*
I’M SORRY to say this. But blogging about Trump, and fighting
with conservative friends and relatives on Facebook, I have come to understand that
the MAGA faithful will believe anything, no matter how absurd. It’s like
those poor souls who still support Keith Raniere, founder of NXIVM, the abusive
sex cult. Raniere was sentenced to spend the next 120 years in prison earlier
this week, whereas most Americans can only hope that Donald J. Trump will be
sentenced to live out his life as a “loser,” after he gets voted out of office on
November 3.
But the hold of any cult is strong. Many Trump fans will keep believing,
as their Orange God says, that new-fangled lightbulbs contain
“dangerous gasses.” That masks don’t really work against the virus. Yet, injecting
disinfectant does. They will keep believing Obama was born in Kenya because
their prophet said he was. Then he admitted that Obama wasn’t, but they never
noticed. They will believe NASA scientists lie about climate change, and health
experts lie about how deadly the coronavirus is, but that their prophet tells
the truth. Against all logic, in defiance of all math, they will argue that all
patriotic Americans should cast ballots for Trump, because the president has
been a mastermind when it comes to guiding the economy.
Let’s look at actual math and try not to cry.
Start by studying the “jobs boom” that predated the pandemic. What
follows are facts that are easily verified, assuming you’re not a lazy slob, intellectually,
like the president himself.
First, we know, because we can add on fingers and toes, that Trump
added fewer jobs in his first 37 months in office than Obama did in his
last 37.
Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Reports: Jobs Added or Lost
CHART OF JOBS ADDED…
Jobs added under Obama in his last 37 months:
2013: 69,000 (December)
2014: 3,004,000
2015: 2,720,000
2016: 2,345,000
Total: 8,138,000, divided by 37 = 219,946 jobs per month.
(For simplicity, we always skip January 2017, because that month was split between Obama and Trump.)
Jobs added under Trump in his first 37 months:
2017: 1,924,000
(February-December)
2018: 2,314,000
2019: 2,133,000
2020: 469,000 (January-February)
Total: 6,840,000, divided by 37 = 184,685 jobs per month.
That’s the math.
*
WE ALSO KNOW that the Orange God likes to brag about – and members of his cult like to believe – that the stock market has soared to
stratospheric heights since he was elected.
If we look at actual numbers, we see that at this point in Obama’s first term, after 45
months in office, the Dow Jones was up:
63.7 percent.
After 45 months of Trump “magic,” we find the Dow is up:
33.5 percent.
Again, for those of us not ensnared in the MAGA cult, those
numbers are what we call math.
The hold of the cult is powerful. The cult leader mesmerizes
fans. He tells them the markets will crash if Joe Biden and the Democrats take
charge. The people in MAGA robes throw up their hands and chant. “Oh, Orange God,
Lock him up! Lock them all up!!”
They chant. They don’t check. They don’t know that during
Obama’s two terms in office the Dow rose 148.3%. They don’t remember that under
Bill Clinton the stock market rose 228.9%.
If you told them that under the last Republican president,
George W. Bush, markets fell 26.5% – and then Obama inherited a mess – their eyes would glaze over. They would wave
their totems in your face. “Q,” they would mumble, “Q,” protect us from this
liberal math, this satanic curse.
*
PERHAPS, WITH PROFESSIONAL HELP, you could deprogram members of your family who belong to the Trump Cult. A skilled deprogrammer might point out that when Obama was in office, Candidate Trump, Republicans in Congress, and perhaps the member of the cult, him- or herself, all shouted that they despised federal red ink. They could be reminded that Trump promised, if elected, that he and the high GOP priests would lower taxes (on billionaires and themselves), but so manage the economy as to make the federal deficit disappear in eight years.
Poof!
The member of the cult, as part of his or her therapy, could be made to count by billions, and trillions, adding, “Trump added this,” after each billion, in hopes a breakthrough might result.
The deprogrammer could start with Fiscal Year 2018, since the Fiscal Year numbers for 2017 were mostly cooked into the books by the time the Orange God took charge. So, the cultist would chant, “One billion, Trump added this,” up to “779 billion, Trump added this,” for FY 2018.
The chanting would continue on up through, “Three trillion, one hundred million, Trump added this,” for FY 2020.
FY 2018: $779 billion
FY 2019: $984 billion
FY 2020: $3.1
trillion
FY
2021: $2.1 trillion (estimate)
The experts might also ask cult members to express their
feelings, to respond to certain prompts.
For example, “How did you feel, when in Mr. Obama’s final days
in office, the Orange God and his priest, Sean Hannity, insisted that
unemployment numbers were ‘rigged,’ and that there was no way unemployment was really
4.7 percent in January 2017?”
“How did you feel when Trump insisted that 93 million Americans were out of work?”
“And how did you feel when Hannity added a couple of million to
the gospel, and said that Obama’s ‘legacy’ would be 95 million Americans eliminated from the workforce
during his eight years in office?”
The deprogrammer could ask: “What did you think when a very
confused Orange God claimed, variously, that the unemployment rate when Obama
stepped down was 18% or 35% or 28% or even 42%, not 4.7%?”
Did they feel confused?
Or did they believe any numbers that spilled from Trump’s
lips?
Let them express their feelings – their rage – their love of
country – their fears – even their latent racism, if any.
Let them confront the truth.
Next, the deprogrammer should make them put pencil to paper and
figure out the math.
If, in March 2017, when the first jobs report under President
Trump came out, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed 188,000 jobs had
been added in February, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.6%, what
happened to those 93 or 95 million Americans, out of work under Obama?
Where did they go?
 |
Bureau of Labor Statistics - Jobs Added Monthly. |
Poof?
Don’t let the member of the cult dodge the facts. Insist they keep
doing the math with pencil and paper. If they resist, make them start counting
down on their fingers. If 188,000 jobs were added in February 2017, and the Bureau
said unemployment stood at 4.6%, how was that possible?
Did the Prophet and his priests lie?
Make the poor MAGA man or woman start at 93,000,000, and count
down, “One job added, 92,999,999 Americans out of work remain.” Make them keep repeating
the proper numbers until they reach, “188,000 jobs added, 92,812,000 Americans
out of work still remaining.”
If they lose track, make them start again.
If the cult member resists, the deprogrammer should try tactile experiments. The member of the
cult could be asked to take off his or her MAGA hat and fill it with grains of
rice. He or she should count them off, until they get to 6,840,000, the number
of jobs added to the U.S. economy in President Trump’s first 37 months.
Then, if they still think all 93 million unemployed Americans
are back at work, it might be necessary to force them to eat 86 million plus grains
of dried rice.
Frankly, these poor folks are deserving of sympathy. They are in
the grip of forces they do not comprehend and know not how to combat.
The pandemic hits. The Prophet tells them that coronavirus cases
are “headed for zero” soon.
And they believe.
Yet, the virus does not go away. It explodes. The economy has to
shut down to stop the spread. And in two months (March-April) 22,160,000 jobs
are temporarily lost. COVID-19 doesn’t go away.
It spreads.
The Orange God tells them not to worry. The economy will come back
like a “rocket ship.” May, June, July, August, and September – the Prophet’s “magic”
returns!!! A total of 11,417,000 jobs are “added” to the U.S. economy. On the
Fox News Business channel priests of the cult insist that Donald Trump is the
greatest jobs creator in American history. If he is not chosen to
lead the people in a second term, then socialists will block us from reaching
the Promised Land.
Antifa devil worshippers will run amok in our streets!
Again, the members of the cult must be required to check their Prophet’s
and priests’ math. These poor souls are going to be difficult to reach. The deprogrammer
may have to resort to bringing in the cult member’s first grade teacher, to go
over simple math. Worksheets with pictures might be beneficial. The cult member
should have to practice cursive and write his or her name at the top of the
paper. The first grade teacher can ask questions like, “Which number is larger,
the 22,160,000 jobs lost early this year, or the 11,417,000 jobs regained
since?”
The member of the MAGA cult should be forced to add the 6,840,000
jobs created in Trump’s first 37 months in office, and all the jobs added between
May and September, and then subtract the jobs blown to bits in March and April.
This is a harder question, so the answer can be multiple choice.
They might be asked, “Which statement is correct?”
A)
These
jobs numbers show that people who believe in math secretly hate America.
B)
The
Orange God has created 110 million jobs.
C)
The
Orange God has created twice as many jobs as his predecessor and in only four
years.
D)
Trump
is nearly 4,000,000 jobs in the hole and will end his first term in office having
created no jobs at all.
If the cultist gets the answer wrong, it may become necessary to
resort to shock therapy, to help.
Make Math Great Again!
