HERE’S A THOUGHT…

A universal rule of thumb I learned covering South American dictatorships in the nineteen-seventies and eighties: If a single person’s human and civil rights can be suspended, everyone’s rights are at risk.

***

A lot of people seem to think cutting out due process and just trusting the president, the attorney general or the secretary of state to randomly decide innocence or guilt is a great shortcut to getting dangerous criminals off the street and/or out of the country. Instead, it’s an ad hoc shortcut to making the Bill of Rights obsolete and allowing the government to arbitrarily accuse anybody it wants of anything it wants and to be the sole judge, jury and executioner, with no legal recourse to its decisions. (Case in point: The president is now talking about arbitrarily, and unconstitutionally, snatching American citizens off the street and sending them to a foreign gulag, where American justice is powerless). It's likely they will eventually be known as America's "disappeared".This is absolutism, of the sort prevalent in places like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, etc.

***

The arbitrary nature of the Department of Justice under the current administration is graphically on display when the attorney general obeys an order to try and find a way to jail and exile “homegrown terrorists” of Trump’s choosing, while justifying the president’s release from prison of fifteen hundred pro-Trump domestic terrorists convicted of attacking the Capitol in his name.

***

When you start dictating what both public and private universities can teach, suspending freedom of speech, punishing professors for exposing students to diverse ideas and teaching them to think for themselves, blackmailing authorities by threatening to withhold federal funds if they don’t align the syllabus with official government policy, you no longer have institutions of higher learning. You have “re-education centers” whose goal is to crush dissent, eliminate critical thinking, and create a uniform society in which everyone toes the official line.

***

There may well be some excellent reasons for private Ivy League schools with multi-billion-dollar endowments not to receive even more millions or billions in taxpayer money. But not agreeing to ideological and educational restrictions that a centralized federal government seeks to dictate isn’t one of them. Accepting political and intellectual strings-attached money from the government is tantamount to the prostitution of higher education, and yet another nail in the coffin of democracy.

***

If you're interested in how a leader might transition into dictatorial behavior based on historical examples, these tendencies nearly always involve undermining democratic institutions, centralizing power, restricting freedom of the press, limiting political opposition, and using the legal system to maintain control. So far, with Donald Trump, we’re batting a thousand.

***

When a president who has already once tried to overthrow the government and remain in power even after decisively losing an election manages to create a rubber-stamp majority in Congress, hires a politically compromised attorney general, talks about returning to power after the current term is over even though he won’t be eligible to serve again (in accordance with not one, but two constitutional provisions), violates due process misusing federal powers, defies the lower and appellate courts and considers the opinions of the Supreme Court optional, as well as flirting with the future possibility of imposing martial law, perhaps it’s time to stop asking ourselves if there’s a possibility that the US could become an authoritarian regime. News flash, folks: It already is.

 

 

 

AUTHORITARIANISM DEFINED

Film documentary cameraman Duane Empey posted this excerpt (see image) from a Washington Post report. I saw it during my regular morning social media perusal, and was struck by what a succinct description it is of the Trump-MAGA mindset. And I was even more struck by how evenly it matches my own experienced definition of authoritarianism.

Yes, in a nutshell, that's Trump, and that's authoritarianism. 

Basically, doing whatever you decide to do while having your morning bowel movement, then going with it until some other whim strikes your fancy, and just not giving a fuck if the whole world burns to the ground because of it.

Nobody's mentioning this anymore like they did during his first term, but it’s worth recalling that this is the same narcissistic, psychopathic felon who remains in possession of the nuclear codes. 

Think about it. 

BLATANT INDOCTRINATION

In his continuing rampage through American democracy, Donald Trump is now going after US cultural institutions. On Thursday he revealed his intention to force changes at the Smithsonian Institution through an executive order targeting funding for what he referred to as programs that promote “divisive narratives” and “anti-American ideology”.

Most people reading this probably have no idea how sweeping a move targeting the Smithsonian is. But a mere glance at what this institution controls brings the importance of the measure immediately to light.  The Smithsonian Institution is no less than the world’s largest museum, education and research complex. It consists of twenty-one museums and the National Zoo.

The bombastic title for the  executive order kicking off this latest far-right purge of liberal democratic  ideals  is “Restoring Truth and History to American History.” Vice President JD Vance has been tapped to head up the sweep.

This terminology is typically Orwellian—in other words, the exact opposite of what it claims to be. Trump’s in-house ideologues  posit that there has been a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite American history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” adding that it presents America's “founding principles in a negative light.” Long-time observers of the president have come to realize that whatever Trump says he is against is precisely what he is for—hence the comparison with bizarro-world dystopian novels like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

What has taken place, in fact, in the decades since the Civil Rights Era in the US, has been a gradual nationwide effort to remove ideology from the telling of America's story, and to honestly  own up to injustices that have plagued our history, despite the noble tenets of our liberal democratic Constitution. This has necessarily been a process of expurgating the influence of white supremacy from education, and of rightfully and honestly including the history of slavery and American minorities within the narrative of how the US has developed since its inception. In other words, the effort that the Trump administration is seeking to undermine is precisely the one that has sought a sincere, objective and self-aware telling of our history, instead of promoting the self-serving fairytale of American exceptionalism that the white supremacist  far-right has long sought to sell as truth.

So the entire purpose of this latest decree is, then, one hundred percent ideological, and is aimed precisely at indoctrination. Its purpose  is to bend the telling of American history to fit the far-right narrative that precludes critical thinking, voids objectivity, bans the discussion of minority rights and virtues, and assumes that any mind that cannot be bent to fit the far-right ideology is a subversive mind that requires ostracism and/or “re-education”.

Where is Congress and the Judiciary in all of this? And, in conclusion, if one man (as well as the ideologues working in the shadows behind him) is deciding how all Americans should think, which books can be read and which can't, how all universities must be run, what all American institutions should teach, what constitutes our cultural heritage, and what constitutes “proper ideology” over what is objectively debatable, then, how is this not already a dictatorship?

SERIAL CHAINSAW: 103K CUT DOWN AND COUNTING

Elon Musk, an unelected quasi-official and pseudo-department chief, who answers to no one but the president (if that), has now put 103,452 federal workers, many of them crucial—like VA doctors, nurses and administrators, as just one glaring example—out on the street, and is nowhere near done yet.

Let that sink in.

The most filthy-rich man on the planet is arbitrarily putting thousands of people a day—people with families, mortgages, rents, college loans, medical expenses and grocery bills—out on the street, and is answerable to nobody.

How is this legal? Where are the checks and balances? Where is democracy? 

And where the hell is Congress?

A VERITABLE ONE-MAN SHOW…PT BARNUM WOULD BE PROUD (REAGAN NOT SO MUCH)

 I don’t know if anybody has  noticed, but Donald “The Don” Trump is dilapidating eighty years of US leadership history in a matter of days.

I’ll get to the mobster-style ambush Vice President JD Vance laid with Trump for Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in a minute, but first, let’s talk about the right-wing propagandist who got himself a coveted White House press pass and used it, in his role as a fake-news promoter, to ask perhaps the most inane yet incendiary question ever formulated at a summit meeting venue. I’m talking about the idiot (there’s just no other word if we’re giving him the benefit of the doubt, and if we aren’t, then it makes that question malicious, and him a provocateur—although, perhaps, the adjective “useful” before “idiot” would be appropriate here) who, in the midst of a major discussion between two heads of state, broke in to ask President Zelensky why he didn’t wear a suit.

Such a moronic, taunting, disrespectful and mal-intentioned query could only have come from the quarters in which it originated: the so-called Right Side Broadcasting Network, best known for adoring live-stream coverage of Trump’s rallies, town halls, and public events. With the new rise of Trump to the presidency, the network, which relies heavily on YouTube and Rumble for its audience, currently has nearly two million largely MAGA subscribers. In other words, the “reporter” was a MAGA-fake-news plant.

Trump with MAGA minion Brian Glenn

As for the name of the moron who asked the question, it was none other than Brian Glenn, there for a far-right propaganda outfit called Real America’s Voice. That might not mean much to a lot of my readers, many of whom tend to seek out fact-based news outlets for their information. But if you’re one of many Americans who, unfortunately,  subscribe to wild conspiracy theories and Trumpian prevarication, then Glenn may be something of a minor god in your world (where Trump is the big-dog god) since he is a champion conspiracy-theory disseminator.

Oh, did I mention that, among other achievements, Glenn is also the high-flying MAGA celebrity-climber who has scaled Mount Marjorie? That’s right, Brian and Marjorie (Taylor Greene, a.k.a. “Moscow Marjorie”) have been going steady for some time now. So he clearly has direct access to a fecund source of conspiracy gossip and MAGA dogma. 

Brian and Margie, going steady

The question could not have been more crucially timed if it had been planned in advance—or was it? It served as the lit fuse that touched off the fiery shouting match between the Vance-Trump tag-team and the Ukrainian president. It seemed specifically aimed at infuriating President Zelensky, when he was already being badgered by Vance, who seemed thoroughly amused at that sort of question’s being put to a foreign dignitary. It was the sort of question that, had it been asked of Trump by—oh, I don’t know, say, The Associated Press—would have gotten that news medium banished from the White House press core. (Oh wait! The AP was banned for less, simply for refusing to add the fictitious name, Gulf of America, to its stylebook).

Suffice it to say that Glenn’s network  was selected to fill a “secondary TV” role in the White House press pool—CNN has been relegated to that same category, which didn’t exist before last week. Indeed, the White House granted that press pass to Glenn, even as Trump continued to block reporters from The AP, one of America’s most major sources of objective news coverage, from attending. This policy began last week, with the White House handpicking the reporters it permits to attend  presidential meetings held in reduced settings, such as the Oval Office.

Glenn’s query could not have been more impertinent or captious: “Why don’t you wear a suit?” asked Glenn. “You’re at the highest level in this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit.” And then, insultingly, he doubled down, asking, “Just want to see if—do you own a suit? A lot of Americans have problems with you not respecting the office.”

President Zelensky, a wartime leader

President Zelensky sought to keep his cool, answering eloquently in his second language, “I will wear costume after this war will finish." The word for “suit” translates into Ukrainian as  kostyum. But whether intentional or not, the word “costume” in English couldn’t have been more accurate, since the only participant in that room not masquerading as a gentleman, when they were far from it, was the Ukrainian head of state. He was the only one who dressed honestly for the occasion, wearing the combat fatigues of a leader defending his nation and Europe against a war of aggression perpetrated against it by Russia, a dictatorial imperialist power. A power that, until six weeks ago, US leadership still recognized as what it is, one of America’s two most threatening rivals, and, currently the number one  most imminent threat to international peace and security.

As if to lighten the shocking and uncomfortable moment Glenn had created, President Zelensky then quipped, “Maybe something like yours, yes. Maybe something better, I don't know,” sparking laughter in the room. Then he added,  “Maybe something cheaper.”

The Ukrainian leader’s skill as a former comedian could have defused a tense moment. But that wasn’t the game plan. Vice President J.D. Vance—an Ohioan, I’m ashamed to say, like myself—wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. He seized on Glenn’s “disrespect” comment to say, “For four years, the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin, and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is, maybe, engaging in diplomacy. We tried the pathway of Joe Biden, of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States’ words mattered more than the president of the United States’ actions. What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. That’s what President Trump is doing.”

Zelensky countered, “OK. So he (Putin) occupied it, our parts, big parts of Ukraine, parts of east and Crimea. So he occupied it in 2014. So during a lot of years—I’m not speaking about just Biden, but those times was (Barack) Obama, then President Obama, then President Trump, then President Biden, now President Trump. And, God bless, now, President Trump will stop him. But during 2014, nobody stopped him. He just occupied and took. He killed people…

Trump, who apparently has the attention span of a gnat, and was evidently not listening, said, “Oh, 2014? I was not here.”

And Vance, ever quick to repeat anything Trump says, added, “That’s exactly right.”

Again Zelensky countered, saying, “Yes, but during 2014 ‘til 2022, the situation is the same, that people have been dying on the contact line. Nobody stopped him (Putin). You know that we had conversations with him, a lot of conversations, my bilateral conversation. And we signed with him, me, like, you, President, in 2019, I signed with him the deal. I signed with him, (French President Emmanuel) Macron and (former German Chancellor Angela) Merkel. We signed ceasefire… But after that, he broke the ceasefire, he killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners. But he didn’t do it. What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about? What do you mean?”

Seeing that Zelensky was getting the upper hand in reminding the press that Russia was the aggressor, Vance quickly doubled down, and acting as if he were the head of state and not Trump, lectured Zelensky, saying,  “I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country. Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.”

Clearly, of course, litigating it in front of the American media had been exactly what Vance and Trump had been seeking to do. Usually, when there is a visiting head of state coming to negotiate a deal, the photo op will be short and nothing of consequence will be discussed publicly until negotiations have ended. But the Trump White House seems to have decided to use the presser simply as a means of humiliating President Zelensky, of showing him that the only ones that mattered in talks about Ukraine were the two major powers involved, the US and Russia, since Trump has also blithely ignored Europe completely as an intimately and strategically interested party. The clear purpose was to demonstrate to Zelensky (and to Trump’s base), in mob boss style,  that he didn’t matter. That Ukraine didn’t matter. That only Trump and Putin mattered.

Indeed, Trump would later tip his hand, saying as much when, after the blow-up, he crowed, “I think it’s good for the American people to see what’s going on. I think it’s very important. That’s why I kept this going so long.” Then, addressing Zelensky directly, “ You have to be thankful.”

Having tired of Vance’s impertinence, President Zelensky asked the VP, “Have you ever been to Ukraine that you say what problems we have?”

“I have been to –” Vance muttered, obviously caught off guard.

“Come once,” Zelensky suggested.

Then like a kid in grammar school who hadn’t done his homework, Vance said,  “I’ve actually watched and seen the stories, and I know that what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour, Mr. President. Do you disagree that you’ve had problems, bringing people into your military?”

“We have problems…”

“And do you think that is respectful, to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?”

“First of all,” said the Ukrainian president, “during the war, everybody has problems, even you. But you have nice ocean and don’t feel now. But you will feel it in the future. God bless –”

That’s when Trump blew up and talked to Zelensky in his best mobster style, telling him not to tell the US how it would feel. Talking down to him like the principal scolding a school kid,  saying “You don’t know that. You don’t know that… Because you’re in no position to dictate that.” He and Vance went on tag-teaming President Zelensky, and Trump’s lecture continued,  “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.”

Zelensky, appropriately, said,  “I’m not playing cards. I’m very serious, Mr. President. I’m very serious.”

“You’re playing cards,” said Trump. “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III.”

Vance returned to his sophomoric “magic words” argument, again asking, “Have you said thank you once?”

To which President Zelensky answered, “A lot of times. Even today.” Anyone who has ever listened to anything the Ukrainian president has ever said about US aid knew this was true. Perhaps no other recipient of American aid in history has been more expressive about his appreciation than President Zelensky.

But Vance doubled down: “No, in this entire meeting…” And then in a complete non sequitur, he added, “You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned for the opposition in October.”

To which President Zelensky said, “No.”

Vance continued to badger him, “Offer some words of appreciation for the United States of America and the president who’s trying to save your country.”

Overwhelmed by such a lack of manners and propriety, President Zelensky said,  “Please. You think that if you will speak very loudly about the war, you can…”

And was immediately interrupted by Trump, who blustered,  “He’s not speaking loudly. He’s not speaking loudly. Your country is in big trouble.”

 “Can I answer —” President Zelensky tried, to which Trump barked,  “No, no. You’ve done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble.”

It was an utterly vile display of disrespect and bullying, and it is difficult to believe that it wasn’t planned that way, since Trump ended the contentious meeting by saying, “This is going to be great television. I will say that.” And coming from a former reality show star, who does everything necessary to stay at the top of the daily news schedule, that says a lot.

Make Russia Great Again

But the tone is nothing new. Such displays of disrespect have come to typify how the Trump regime treats America’s natural allies. Meanwhile, his most fawning, laudatory, and embarrassingly acquiescent behavior has been reserved for America’s natural enemies, and for predators bent on preying on democratic nations.

Putin’s spokesman, Dimitry Peskov said it all. Obviously pleased beyond all expectations with  the blow-up and with the ignominious expulsion of President Zelensky from the White House, Peskov said,  “The new (US) administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations.  This largely aligns with our vision.”

He could not have stated it more accurately. Under Donald Trump, in just six weeks, the US has all but abandoned its Western allies and democracy, and embraced authoritarianism and the world’s most repressive and dangerous regime. He has, in a word, surrendered the US to our principal enemy, and turned his back on our friends.

 

RESIST!

 

THE CHAINSAW MASSACRES OF ARGENTINA AND THE US

Argentine President Javier Milei with signature chainsaw

 Many Argentines cringed in shame this past week as they watched their president make a clownish spectacle of himself by showing up in the US, to obsequiously and gratuitously pander to his personal heroes, Donald Trump and Elon Musk. This time, he made the pilgrimage to Washington—where he was also courting the IMF to see if he can land an eleven-billion-dollar credit to shore up his faltering economic program—to present Musk with the signature symbol of his own populist regime. Namely, a custom-designed chainsaw.

Musk, who is basically a filthy rich, unelected appointee, with no real political standing—a sort of high-end bureaucrat, if you will—magnanimously granted Javier “Baby Trump” Milei, a head of State, a forty-five-minute audience, in which the visibly excited Argentine president, giddy as a kid at Christmastime, presented Elonius Rex with the prize saw, a gleaming red and chrome machine with Milei’s favorite slogan emblazoned on the blade: ¡Viva la Libertad, carajo! (Which roughly translates as “Long live liberty, damn it!”).

Musk with his new saw, Milei with his bro-crush

It’s a motto with which the far-right libertarian ends even his most formal of speeches,  and which he utters in a guttural, if reedy growl. It is the Mileian equivalent of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again”. And, when it comes down to what both those phrases mean to those they are inflicted on, they are rendered Orwellian in terms of their consequences.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of making George Orwell’s acquaintance, an example of what I mean is that, for instance, in his dystopian novel 1984—which is far more relevant today than it was when it was written—the author’s fictitious country boasts four main ministries: the Ministry of Truth is ostensibly in charge of media, entertainment, education, and the arts, but is actually the creator and purveyor of political lies, propaganda and spin. The Ministry of Peace’s apparent mission is to broker and keep the peace, but it is actually devoted to sparking and incrementing violence. The Ministry of Love is supposedly charged with justice and order, and creating a pleasant climate for all, but its true main mission is torture, punishment and “re-education”. And the Ministry of Plenty is officially at the center of the regime’s allegedly plentiful economy, but is actually the entity in charge of supply rationing and distribution.

Similarly, while both Trump and Milei’s favorite slogans might sound inspiring and rosy, the actions behind them are having contrary effects for just about everyone but the rich and powerful. The actions Donald Trump took during his first term from 2016 to 2020, bolstered the power of the presidency and initiated a sharp decline in the influence of the other two branches of government. His economic policies provided tax breaks to the already vastly undertaxed wealthy, and put additional economic pressures on the middle and lower classes—as reflected in the estimated seven trillion dollars that his administration added to the deficit. He showed contempt for democratic institutions and disdain for the rule of law, but was, in the end, held in final check by the other two branches when he sought to, basically, overthrow democracy and remain in office after losing an election. His legacy was division and chaos, and now, after a four-year hiatus, he is back to finish the job, this time with the indispensable help of the richest man in the world. Fitting, since he was and is the president of the wealthy, who, in Orwellian style, bills himself as “the president of the people.”

Milei has made no bones about being an avid admirer of Donald Trump’s. But he had the initial disadvantage over Trump of following, not a highly popular and highly democratic administration like Barack Obama’s, but rather, the weak, corrupt presidency of Alberto Fernández, which was consumed with party infighting and crippling economic woes.

Like Trump, Milei is fond of puerile displays of showy bravado. Hence, his choice of the chainsaw during his campaign and beyond, as the symbol of his promise to “destroy the government from within”—which, without saying it in so many words, is what Trump and Musk (or Musk and Trump, depending on your point of view) are bent on doing as well.

Milei at one of his Trump-like rallies

The Argentine president is every bit as disdaining of anyone who opposes his most extreme measures, and of those he perceives as his political enemies, referring consistently and publicly to anyone left of the center right as “zurdos de mierda” (fucking leftists). And when numerous governors from Argentina’s twenty-three provinces opposed cuts in federal aid at the beginning of his term, he angrily vowed that he was going to “piss on the governors”.

He also suddenly turns on those who dare criticize him, very much in the dismissive style of Trump, who has dissed his former political allies that have failed to accompany him to some of the extremes to which he has taken his policies and personal misdeeds: Generals John Kelly, James Mattis and H.R. McMaster, as well as former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and former Vice President Mike Pence spring to mind, but there are countless other examples. In Milei’s case, for example, early on he expressed praise and admiration for former Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo, the architect of the late President Carlos Menem’s convertibility and privatization policies, which marked a ten-year neo-conservative era in Argentina. When he was first elected, Milei touted Cavallo as “the best Economy Minister in Argentine history.” Until just a few months ago, he was still referring to Cavallo as “a hero” and saying he hoped to emulate him.

But in his personal blog, Cavallo recently issued a warning to Milei about the dangers of a falsely appreciating peso. The Harvard-educated economist said that since Milei took office, a little more than a year ago, his economic policies had caused the peso to appreciate by twenty percent in real terms. Cavallo said that this was a similar trend to the one witnessed in the last three years of convertibility, leading to the crash of 2001 (the Corralito Crisis).

The former economy minister pointed out that real appreciation had led to “a very costly deflation, because it transformed the recession that had begun in 1998 into a true economic depression.” Cavallo counseled Milei to lift exchange rate restrictions within the next three months before the effects of a (falsely) “strong peso” started affecting domestic industries and discouraging export investment.

Echoing the sort of capricious flipflops Americans have come to expect from Trump, Milei suddenly referred to Cavallo as “a disgrace”, and as “unpresentable”. And in another Trumpesque move, within hours of reacting to Cavallo’s blog, the Argentine president fired the economist’s daughter, Sonia Cavallo, who, until then, had been posted as Argentina’s delegate to the Organization of American States. He justified the vengeance move by saying “Her father is constantly sabotaging the economic program, and you can’t have your cake and eat it. You’re either on one side or the other.”

The grotesque posturing of Milei and Musk on the far-right CPAC stage with a shiny new chainsaw this past week was chillingly symbolic. Tens of thousands of federal workers turned out into the street in Argentina, and thousands so far given the axe by Musk in just one month of the new Trump regime speaks to just how chilling. Milei is fond of crowing to his far-right supporters that the US “is taking its cue from Argentina.” And his presentation of the fashion-designer saw to Musk is an apparent attempt to underscore that exaggeration. But Trump’s first term precedes Milei, so it’s pretty clear who is taking his cue from whom.

The parallel he strikes, however, is worthy of consideration. What I mean by that is, if Americans want a preview of what the Musk-Trump duo’s policies will likely lead to, they need only look to the almost caricaturesque example of Argentina. For one thing, while Milei boasts about his policies reining in hyperinflation, peso inflation in his first year in office has still soared at 117 percent in 2024. But worse still, the consequences of his crawling peg exchange rate policy have also caused prices to explode in dollar terms.

When Milei came to office, it was, in part, on a promise to “dollarize” the economy, since he described the peso as a “shit” currency. But since taking office in December of 2023, he has only “dollarized” in the sense that Argentina has become the most expensive country in dollars in all of Latin America, while he has at the same time “revalued” the peso by removing a lot of local currency from the market, artificially driving its value upward.

No example could be better than my own experience, living here in Argentina’s Patagonian region, to illustrate the consequences to middle and lower class residents of these and other policies imposed under the Milei government. For instance, until December of 2023, my wife and I were paying about two hundred fifty dollars a month for excellent private health care—uphill for two retirees in Argentina, where the standard of living is nowhere near as high as in the US—but doable. Furthermore, it kept us independent from the pensioners’ health care plan paid for, in large part, by the State, since the amount paid into the health plan by pensioners is minimal.

One of the first things Milei did on taking office was completely deregulate private health insurance—and just about every other commercial activity in the country. The result was that, within his first three months in office, our health insurance costs had gone from two hundred fifty dollars a month to six hundred fifty-eight. It became impossible for us to continue to pay, and we ended up on the State retirement health care rolls.

Milei’s own brand of “moving fast and breaking things” also removed all restrictions on price gouging—an even more common practice here in Argentina—especially in remote Patagonia—than in the US, while de-subsidizing all services. Between the artificially bolstered peso and the removal of all restrictions, then, our grocery bills here in Argentina have doubled in dollars, going from between seventy and ninety dollars a week when he took office, to about one hundred fifty to one hundred eighty dollars after his first year in office. And the prices of just about everything else have risen accordingly, especially in areas like clothing, new car sales and electronics, in which local industry is heavily protected.

A noonday luncheon special in downtown Buenos Aires now runs an average of eighteen dollars—more than a minimum wage worker makes in a day—while in other major Latin American capitals, research shows a comparative average of seven dollars. A cup of coffee averages thirty percent more there than in São Paulo (Brazil) or Santiago (Chile) and more than twice as much as in Bogotá (Colombia). Meanwhile, Argentina’s minimum wage is higher than on Brazil’s depressed job market, but considerably lower than minimum wage levels for either Chile or Mexico.  Moreover, forty-five percent of Argentina’s workforce works off the books, with no minimum wage guarantees or benefits of any kind.  

As with the Trump administration, Milei’s regime is doing nothing to address these inequalities. On the contrary, he is, like the Musk-Trump duo, slashing social services wherever he can get away with it, and seeking to break the country’s once powerful Peronist labor unions. He is also, like Trump in his first term, jockeying to try and get himself a more malleable Supreme Court.  

Nor have vital services been spared: fuel prices rose one hundred eighteen percent in Milei’s first year in office, while de-subsidized natural gas services rose by more than five hundred percent. Water was up more than three hundred percent for the year, and electric power services increased more than two hundred sixty percent.

Milei, like Trump, promotes himself as a political outsider, bent on dismantling the “political caste”, which, according to him, has led to the country’s economic decline. Also like Trump, however, he is seeking to replace that “political caste” (i.e., elected representatives of the people), with a corporate elite, seeking a country where a place at the international business table is sought using the average Argentina’s impoverishment as a stepping stone.

While Trump and Milei’s ideologies strongly overlap—Milei was a guest at Trump’s latest victory celebration and got a shout-out from the then president-elect as “a true MAGA guy”—the political and economic contexts in which they govern differ substantially. The US economy under Trump was the world’s largest and still relatively stable, despite challenges, mostly of Trump’s own making. In Argentina, however, Milei came to office already struggling with high inflation, widespread poverty, and significant public debt. This fundamental difference in starting conditions means that while Trump’s policies could often be masked or justified by a booming economy, Milei faces the much more immediate consequences of severe economic disarray.

Both Trump and Milei’s governments have been criticized for their exacerbation of social polarization. Trump’s rise has been  marked by deep divisions within American society, particularly on issues of race, immigration, and cultural identity. His inflammatory rhetoric and policies have often targeted minority groups, including immigrants and African Americans. His current campaign to forcibly eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion by decree in the US is only deepening the divide.

Milei’s rise to power in Argentina has similarly highlighted the nation’s profound political divide. While he has framed himself as a defender of individual liberty and economic freedom, his rhetoric, like Trump’s, often smacks of authoritarianism, with frequent attacks on the media, the judiciary, and his political opponents. His presidency has already seen increased protests from various sectors of society, particularly labor unions and public sector workers who fear the consequences of his austerity measures. Milei’s confrontational approach to governance, much like Trump’s, risks further fracturing of the social fabric of Argentina, deepening divisions between those who support his vision and those who see his policies as an existential threat to their livelihoods.

While Milei has managed to get fairly good international press from business media and multi-lateral organizations such as the IMF and World Bank, none of these are known for being concerned about the social devastation wreaked by the kind of cruelly radical  neo-conservative programs being implemented by Milei and his Economy Minister Luis Caputo to wipe out a decades-long deficit overnight. All these sectors care about is hammering developing nations into good credit customers who pay their debts in timely fashion—unlike major economies like the US which, despite admonishing the developing world to be good citizens and keep their debts in check  if they want aid, are the world’s biggest debtors (as of last year the US had eight trillion dollars in foreign debt, or a little more than a fifth of the country’s entire federal debt).

Multiple studies have shown over the decades that IMF and World Bank ultra-conservative economic prescriptions in regions like Latin America have bolstered the international profiles of neo-conservative governments at the expense of the common people’s well-being. This was true of the military dictatorship that ruled the country with an iron fist and at the point of a gun from the mid-seventies through the early eighties, and that is certainly the current case of Milei’s Argentina.

Despite being the darling of the MAGA crowd in Washington, however, Milei may find his forward momentum stalled on his quest “to move fast and break things.” Back from his meetings with the IMF and Trump in Washington, and his clown show with Musk at the CPAC extravaganza, the Argentine president begins work Monday in the face of a scandal sparked—also not unlike Trump—by a blunder on social media that cost local investors big-time. It’s being called “Cryptogate”, and it promises to haunt the president’s government.

A week ago in his social media feed, Milei, a self-styled “anarcho-capitalist”, touted a cryptocurrency meme coin known as $LIBRA. Sharing information about its launching on his feed, the president wrote, “This private project will be dedicated to encouraging the growth of Argentina’s economy.” The local currency market reaction to the post was immediate, with the coin’s value surging to five dollars almost immediately, only to plummet by ninety percent two hours later.

The practical result of the meme coin fiasco was that Argentine investors lost approximately two hundred fifty million dollars in the blink of an eye.  Milei immediately took his post down and claimed he really hadn’t had all the details of the deal. Worse still, he tried to foist blame off on the investors who had followed his cue, saying that they knew the risks, just as they would if they went to a casino to gamble.

Investors aren’t buying it. Both at home and abroad, he is facing accusations of crypto-fraud, and lawsuits are being filed against him in both Argentina and the US. Opposition members of Congress, meanwhile, are calling for his impeachment, and although they don’t yet have the votes necessary, the fact that Milei has consistently referred to Congress as “a rat’s nest” is unlikely to garner a lot of sympathy.

At best, Milei will have to try and convince people that he was duped by some of his acquaintances involved in the scheme, in which case he will look like a guileless fool. At worst, he will face multiple legal actions, and the possibility of more opponents climbing onto the impeachment train.

Time will tell.