In most governments, an economic crisis is a failure. In Trump’s case, it is a business model. The pain is not a malfunction of governance — it is the revenue stream. A stable public would neglect him; only a wounded one requires him. The crisis is not accidental. It is cultivated.

This observation is not speculation. Recent U.S. News polling shows Americans are now more anxious about their basic expenses because the policies Trump championed — especially tariffs — raised their costs by design. The hardship people report is not market turbulence or misfortune. It is inflicted precarity — engineered scarcity passing itself off as “toughness.”

The mythology Trump touts is that tariffs are a weapon pointed abroad, an act of defiance against foreign rivals. But their economic gravity falls inward. The blow does not land in Beijing. It lands in American checkout lines. A tariff is a tax staged as patriotism — an injury to the citizenry disguised as a strike against an enemy. The electorate is not the constituency. It is the pressure point.

This fracture is where the con becomes visible. Most Americans assume economic harm is a condition the government is supposed to repair. Trump treats it as the raw material of rule — a mechanism to keep the population unsettled enough to seek shelter in him. The wound is not a crisis to fix, but a resource to maintain.

This diversion is the decisive difference behind the line he likes to recycle from the 1990s. When James Carville said, “It’s the economy, stupid,” he meant the government must solve the pain. Trump invokes it to preserve it. He keeps the wound open — because the suffering is not a failure of his model, it is the fuel for it.

A frightened public clings to whatever promises relief. And if Trump instills fear, he becomes the only figure who can relieve it. Not because he offers solutions — but because he controls the spigot. Dependency is the outcome. The citizen is not meant to recover. Such recovery would mean independence.

The arsonist understands this architecture instinctively: instability is not an accident of his rule but the condition that sustains it. He does not misjudge the public — he measures it, the way a fire measures air. A population kept off balance is not a risk to his power but the fuel for it.

THE INSTRUMENT

Tariffs in Trump’s hands are not policy tools. They are enforcement mechanisms. They do not discipline foreign competitors — they discipline domestic households. Each escalation is a controlled detonation set off inside the monthly budget of the governed.

Economic anxiety is not a crisis in this model — it is infrastructure. An economically stable citizenry resists manipulation. A precarious one internalizes it. Debt and price shocks function like a collar: you cannot look outward to politics or upward to principle if you look downward at survival.

Precarity shrinks not just the wallet but the horizon. It contracts the space where dignity stands. Misery caused by Trump’s economic malfeasance is not a malfunction. It is management.

And so, relief is never granted — merely dangled. A solved economic crisis ends dependency. A perpetual one cements it. Where stability would liberate the public, instability keeps America’s citizenry kneeling at the edge of financial collapse, not rescue.

Trump’s economic policies do not free them; they are fulfilling his intent to keep the citizenry small enough to kneel.

They do not simply convert anxiety into political advantage; they turn it into profit. Corporations that cheered for the tariffs now treat patriotic rhetoric like a price-adding widget — “support the country” becomes a line on the register. Middlemen and importers rebrand a surcharge as valor; vendors hawk scarcity as authenticity; marketing teams lace patriotism into the markup. The result is a transfer of wealth that reads like policy fiction: a public hardship manufactured at scale and then merchandised for private gain.

What looks like incompetence from a distance reveals itself, up close, as extraction. The cruelty is not a byproduct but the yield. The wound is tended because the suffering is monetized — the public is not merely governed but farmed.

When price-hiking is sold as a virtue, concealment becomes necessary. The moment receipts and household budgets add up into a narrative the public can read, the regime’s advantage evaporates. So, the scoreboard is moved: data releases are delayed, metrics are reframed, and the inconvenient arithmetic of policy is quietly obfuscated. Meanwhile, the profits have already been taken.

After weeks of insisting the numbers were being misread, the administration discovered a more efficient solution: if the public can’t see the scoreboard, they can’t blame the score.

The administration can stall the inflation data until the following equinox if it likes, but the grocery store’s already publishing the truth — every checkout is a tariff report, line item by line item.

This is not incidental collateral; it is the operating logic of the performance state: manufacture the pain, privatize the proceeds, and keep the public blind to both the bill and beneficiary’s identity. That is the price — not an accident but the design.

THE MONARCHY OF MISERY

Kneeling is not an economic posture. It is a civic one.

A republic collapses wherever citizens are too burdened to remember they are sovereign. The public need not be stripped of the vote; it needs to be stripped of the bandwidth to exercise agency. Grinding people down is not a side effect of this politics — it is its precondition.

Prosperity enlarges the citizen.

Precarity miniaturizes them.

A confident electorate governs.

An anxious one obeys.

Trump does not fear losing power to a rival. He fears becoming unnecessary to a population that no longer feels imperiled. His relevance depends on pain remaining ambient, permanent, and ambiently renewed. The wound caused by his economic misdirection must remain open because the open wound is the tether.

THE SOVEREIGN TURN

When Trump’s economic improprieties are seen clearly, the spell breaks; his grievance politics will stop being read as validation and start being read as bait. The “rescuer” will be unmasked as the proprietor of the fire.

A citizenry standing at full height does not need a savior. Only a subject one does.

That is why Trump’s economic model demands insecurity: sovereignty of the citizenry cannot reside in a people who are not permitted the dignity of stability.

When the pain is recognized as engineered rather than endured, the dependency collapses — with it, the counterfeit throne Trump claims he is entitled to because economic fear is not the price of citizenship.

It is evidence of its theft.

~ Dunneagin

In most governments, an economic crisis is a failure. In Trump’s case, it is a business model. The pain is not a malfunction of governance — it is the revenue stream. A stable public would neglect him; only a wounded one requires him. The crisis is not accidental. It is cultivated.

This observation is not speculation. Recent U.S. News polling shows Americans are now more anxious about their basic expenses because the policies Trump championed — especially tariffs — raised their costs by design. The hardship people report is not market turbulence or misfortune. It is inflicted precarity — engineered scarcity passing itself off as “toughness.”

The mythology Trump touts is that tariffs are a weapon pointed abroad, an act of defiance against foreign rivals. But their economic gravity falls inward. The blow does not land in Beijing. It lands in American checkout lines. A tariff is a tax staged as patriotism — an injury to the citizenry disguised as a strike against an enemy. The electorate is not the constituency. It is the pressure point.

This fracture is where the con becomes visible. Most Americans assume economic harm is a condition the government is supposed to repair. Trump treats it as the raw material of rule — a mechanism to keep the population unsettled enough to seek shelter in him. The wound is not a crisis to fix, but a resource to maintain.

This diversion is the decisive difference behind the line he likes to recycle from the 1990s. When James Carville said, “It’s the economy, stupid,” he meant the government must solve the pain. Trump invokes it to preserve it. He keeps the wound open — because the suffering is not a failure of his model, it is the fuel for it.

A frightened public clings to whatever promises relief. And if Trump instills fear, he becomes the only figure who can relieve it. Not because he offers solutions — but because he controls the spigot. Dependency is the outcome. The citizen is not meant to recover. Such recovery would mean independence.

The arsonist understands this architecture instinctively: instability is not an accident of his rule but the condition that sustains it. He does not misjudge the public — he measures it, the way a fire measures air. A population kept off balance is not a risk to his power but the fuel for it.

THE INSTRUMENT

Tariffs in Trump’s hands are not policy tools. They are enforcement mechanisms. They do not discipline foreign competitors — they discipline domestic households. Each escalation is a controlled detonation set off inside the monthly budget of the governed.

Economic anxiety is not a crisis in this model — it is infrastructure. An economically stable citizenry resists manipulation. A precarious one internalizes it. Debt and price shocks function like a collar: you cannot look outward to politics or upward to principle if you look downward at survival.

Precarity shrinks not just the wallet but the horizon. It contracts the space where dignity stands. Misery caused by Trump’s economic malfeasance is not a malfunction. It is management.

And so, relief is never granted — merely dangled. A solved economic crisis ends dependency. A perpetual one cements it. Where stability would liberate the public, instability keeps America’s citizenry kneeling at the edge of financial collapse, not rescue.

Trump’s economic policies do not free them; they are fulfilling his intent to keep the citizenry small enough to kneel.

They do not simply convert anxiety into political advantage; they turn it into profit. Corporations that cheered for the tariffs now treat patriotic rhetoric like a price-adding widget — “support the country” becomes a line on the register. Middlemen and importers rebrand a surcharge as valor; vendors hawk scarcity as authenticity; marketing teams lace patriotism into the markup. The result is a transfer of wealth that reads like policy fiction: a public hardship manufactured at scale and then merchandised for private gain.

What looks like incompetence from a distance reveals itself, up close, as extraction. The cruelty is not a byproduct but the yield. The wound is tended because the suffering is monetized — the public is not merely governed but farmed.

When price-hiking is sold as a virtue, concealment becomes necessary. The moment receipts and household budgets add up into a narrative the public can read, the regime’s advantage evaporates. So, the scoreboard is moved: data releases are delayed, metrics are reframed, and the inconvenient arithmetic of policy is quietly obfuscated. Meanwhile, the profits have already been taken.

After weeks of insisting the numbers were being misread, the administration discovered a more efficient solution: if the public can’t see the scoreboard, they can’t blame the score.

The administration can stall the inflation data until the following equinox if it likes, but the grocery store’s already publishing the truth — every checkout is a tariff report, line item by line item.

This is not incidental collateral; it is the operating logic of the performance state: manufacture the pain, privatize the proceeds, and keep the public blind to both the bill and beneficiary’s identity. That is the price — not an accident but the design.

THE MONARCHY OF MISERY

Kneeling is not an economic posture. It is a civic one.

A republic collapses wherever citizens are too burdened to remember they are sovereign. The public need not be stripped of the vote; it needs to be stripped of the bandwidth to exercise agency. Grinding people down is not a side effect of this politics — it is its precondition.

Prosperity enlarges the citizen.

Precarity miniaturizes them.

A confident electorate governs.

An anxious one obeys.

Trump does not fear losing power to a rival. He fears becoming unnecessary to a population that no longer feels imperiled. His relevance depends on pain remaining ambient, permanent, and ambiently renewed. The wound caused by his economic misdirection must remain open because the open wound is the tether.

THE SOVEREIGN TURN

When Trump’s economic improprieties are seen clearly, the spell breaks; his grievance politics will stop being read as validation and start being read as bait. The “rescuer” will be unmasked as the proprietor of the fire.

A citizenry standing at full height does not need a savior. Only a subject one does.

That is why Trump’s economic model demands insecurity: sovereignty of the citizenry cannot reside in a people who are not permitted the dignity of stability.

When the pain is recognized as engineered rather than endured, the dependency collapses — with it, the counterfeit throne Trump claims he is entitled to because economic fear is not the price of citizenship.

It is evidence of its theft.

~ Dunneagin