This is a moment to be remembered but not feared, because this is a moment of madness. What do I mean by that? In politics, the body politic, like in individual human beings, there are times that can be described as fevers, political fevers, that burn through society and transform it, not for the better, but for the worse because these are fevers of madness born of anxiety, fear. The best fuel for any politician is fear because they understand that when people are in periods of fear, they literally are not able to think. They are clustered in a ball of human survival in their minds, and therefore, are open to the worst ideas ever uttered by men and women. Welcome to the Trump Era.
The politics is one thing. Guess what? The economy is another. We are flirting with economic disaster on the whims of one man who proclaims to be the smartest man in the room, when his history proves everything but that. The tariff is just another symptom of the fever of which I spoke. The tariffs are, and any real person who thinks economically knows this, the tariffs are another word for tax. And it has been said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. When you destroy the profits of companies, small businesses, families, communities, yes, and indeed nations, only social destruction can come from that, and we are about to see it with our own eyes.
This is not, I repeat, this is not a moment of hope, but that moment, I assure you, will come. But it may come at a great cost, because we’re in the midst of a fever, and it is burning like lava ripping mountains apart. It is destructive, and it will destroy, and it will create chaos like many of us have never seen before. Those are the costs of political ignorance and fear. With love, not fear, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
