During his second inaugural speech, Donald J. Trump, he of the golden toilets, announced that he would lead America into a “Golden Age.” What does that mean? Well, based on his executive orders to date and his roadmap called Project 2025, it appears that he wants to return the U.S. to the Gilded Age of the late 1800s when our economy was controlled by a small group of ruthless men who eventually became labeled Robber Barons.
In other words, the Gilded Age was a time when all the nation’s wealth trickled upward to the likes of Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, Jim Fisk and others. Through a combination of inspiration, luck, and insatiable greed, these people created monopolies based on unfettered access to the continent’s natural resources. By 1890, one percent of American families controlled as much as 51 percent of the nation’s wealth. Most of the rest of the nation’s citizens, especially people of color and women, were relegated to a life of hardships and poverty.
That era only came to an end because of economic depression, exposure of corruption by courageous journalists, a populist movement that instituted regulations and antitrust laws, and the Second Industrial Age.
Trump’s so-called Golden Age promises to be worse.
To begin, in 2014 an extensive study determined that the United States could no longer be called a democracy, but an oligarchy – a government controlled by a few wealthy elites. And they have gained even more power under the new Trump administration. Indeed, his campaign was financed by billionaires such as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, all of whom were front and center at the inauguration.
Once in power, Trump appointed at least seven billionaires to powerful government positions. And who was the ally given the most power? Elon Musk, the world’s richest man with more than $400 billion in mostly government and Chinese money, who (coincidentally?) also donated the most to Trump’s campaign.
These unelected people are the ones who will benefit the most from Trump’s promise to cut taxes. These are the people who will reap the most rewards from a hollowed-out federal government that repeals regulations. These are the people who will benefit most from Project 2025’s planned attack on labor unions. These are the people who will remain unharmed by Trump’s trade war. And these people will almost certainly be among the very few who will benefit from the economic recession that almost certainly will result from Trump’s actions – actions that will lead to even more wealth disparity between billionaires and ordinary working people. (In 2023, the top one percent already controlled 30 percent of American wealth. And fifty percent of Americans controlled 97.5 percent of the wealth.)
Musk, aided and abetted by Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson and other congressional Republicans, is also the one given unparalleled power by the Felon-in-Chief to lead the ongoing coup against our government and the Constitution through the newly formed and unofficial agency called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk claims his agency should be pronounced “doej”, but it would be more aptly pronounced “douche”. And, without constitutional Article I authority, the lead douchebag has taken control of multiple agencies that are created and funded by Congress.
In just 14 days, Musk has taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and unconstitutionally shuttered the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He has also blocked communications between government agencies and the American citizenry – all without congressional approval.
Of course, there are precedents for these kinds of actions. We have seen them executed by dictators and fascists the world over. But they have never before been seen in the United States of America where we are now watching our once proud democracy circle down the drain of one of Trump’s golden toilets.