As I’m writing, the markets are falling in reaction to the biggest sales tax increase of our lifetimes, otherwise known as the Trump tariffs. At 9:45 this morning, Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal said, “this is now the worst three-day performance for the S&P 500 since October 1987.”

Donald Trump appears unfazed. The AP said he’s “not backing down.” The president told reporters Sunday “he didn’t want global markets to fall, but also that he wasn’t concerned about the massive sell-off either, adding, ‘sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.’”

No one seems to be challenging this false claim, but for now, let’s set it aside. The more global markets are falling, the more people are asking whether the Congress is going to get involved. After all, it has the constitutional authority over taxation, not the president. (Trump is abusing authority given to him under an emergency powers act.) The prevailing view seems to be that when tariffs seriously hurt the base, the Republicans who control the House and the Senate will step in.

Don’t count on it. First, because the base is not going to budge. They might cry and pule a little about their retirements going up in smoke, but it’s not like they’re going to vote for Democrats. Indeed, the more they suffer, the more bonded they will be to Trump, as their suffering will be taken as a sign of loyalty, while complaints a sign of disloyalty.

The second reason the congressional Republicans won’t step in is more important. However painful they may be, tariffs pave the way for achieving a decades’ long goal of theirs: pushing taxation downward and away from the very obscenely rich, so that the cost of running the country is on the shoulders of people who have to work for a living. 

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Then consider two other things. One is legislation that’s currently circulating among Republicans in the Congress that would cut taxes on the very obscenely rich by trillions of dollars over a decade. The other is the Trump regime’s dismantling of the government. It is doing away with things that serve everyone equally, like weather forecasting systems, science and medical research, and the arts and humanities.

Put it all together and you can see that the Republicans are very close to seeing their dream come true – the restoration of the kind of pre-New Deal government that existed before the stock market crash of 1929 and the start of the Great Depression, which is to say, a kind of top-heavy government that’s too weak to stop the very obscenely rich and too immiserated to empower citizens to stand in the way of the very obscenely rich, all while forcing everyone else to foot the bill.

It’s here I want to recommend a concept: plantation mentality.

I first came across it years ago when I was an arts reporter in Georgia. A source recalled for me his experience arbitrating contract negotiations between a local orchestra’s musicians and management. He gave up, he told me, because there was no reasoning with the orchestra’s aristocratic donors. They expected the musicians to work for pennies. When they used their lawful rights to demand more, donors saw the move as tantamount to armed robbery. Years later, they shut the whole organization down as punishment for the injustice.

They had a plantation mentality. 

Keep this concept in mind whenever someone says with confidence that any minute now, all the billionaires and corporate leaders in America are going to tell the president to knock it off with the tariffs. Keep this in mind whenever you are tempted to believe that they are motivated by profit alone and that we can all trust that motivation. 

They have more money than their children’s children’s children could ever spend. There’s so much there can’t possibly be any appreciable difference in the feeling of being worth $10 billion or $100 billion.

More important than money is power, particularly the constraints that are placed on that power by democratic politics and the rule of law. When you are born believing the ability to control the minds and bodies of others is a God-given right, the law becomes a crime. Reducing lesser mortals to the level of serfdom is an act of liberation. 

Tariffs might hurt the very obscenely rich, but self-interest alone won’t compel them to stop Trump, because they know something else: tariffs are going to hurt you, me and everyone we know more. Tariffs, with tax cuts for the .01 percent and the dismantling of the government, have the potential to create an America in which the very obscenely rich can commit whatever crimes they want against whomever they want, because their victims won’t have the strength to fight back.

Heads they win, tails you lose. 

Plantation mentality.

Commentary on tariffs tends to give the GOP and corporate leaders too much benefit of the doubt. We’re told congressional Republicans are scared to challenge Trump. They might turn if the base turns, but the base isn’t turning, so they won’t either. As for the CEOs, we’re told they’re scared, too. The regime has whacked some law firms into submission. If the CEOs complain, they might also face retaliation.

I don’t know what compels some commentators to presume so much good faith when talking about the greediest, most selfish and most arrogant people in human history. Given who they are, it’s likely they see themselves benefiting from Trump’s tariff racket. The Republicans get even more social control while the CEOs are liberated from the constraints of the law by bribing the president for the right to break it.

Donald Trump is consolidating power, forcing his party and business leaders to come to him. They might not like his chaotic methods, but they like his goals, because they share the same plantation mentality. That there can be only one in the fight for domination, and that they may get burned in the end, doesn’t minimize their role in it all.

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