It is difficult for today’s youth to believe, but the snarky T-shirt is a relatively recent innovation. Though they are now everywhere, until the late 1990s one almost never saw another person wearing a shirt that read “Stop looking at my nuts” with a pair of the threaded metal hardware implements pictured, or perhaps one with a sports figure on it and “I just hope both teams have fun.” My personal favorite had the letters “FU” dressed up a bit to look like an abbreviation for a university, but really meant, ya know, “F you.”
One of the more popular (and clean) vintage snarky T-shirt options says “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” Nobody really knows where this slogan came from (there are rumors of a naval origin), but it kind of fits perfectly with the Trump administration’s overall philosophy in the current moment.
I don’t think I have to explain to my normal readers, but in case this gets picked up by a news aggregator, let’s be clear. “The beatings will continue until morale improves” is funny because you obviously can’t force a group of people to improve their spirits by inflicting violence on them. It will, in fact, have the opposite effect.
This exact counterproductive approach has become de rigueur across nearly every facet of the Trump administration’s policy portfolio. All those violent ICE raids full of masked agents with no accountability who are largely targeting nonviolent immigrants with no criminal records (that is, when they’re not pummeling journalists, protesters, priests, and innocent bystanders)? People hate them, and it has caused voters’ views of ICE in general to plummet.
So does the Trump administration walk them back, tone down the violence, or prosecute the worst ICE agents out there who are giving all of America a bad name? Nope. Donald Trump thinks there should be even more ICE raids, and that ICE agents should be even more violent.
There is no shortage of physical beatings rained down by agents of this administration, spurred by Trump’s personal directives. His rhetoric is no less sparing than the fists of his goons, like when he recently insinuated that several Democratic lawmakers should be executed for the grave crime of reminding service members not to commit actual crimes. Again, a huge majority of Americans at least claim to be concerned about this kind of extreme political rhetoric, which has not stopped Trump from doubling down on it.
Perhaps the economic cudgel is the largest in Trump’s arsenal. We know higher prices are among voters’ top priorities, and we also know with almost scientific precision what the federal government can do to address high prices: keep interest rates up and tear down trade barriers. Trump has, of course, sought the opposite of each of these (he did, begrudgingly, just roll back tariffs on a number of food items, all while he “insisted” as Reuters put it, or “lied” as I would put it, that the United States has “virtually no inflation”). This is all to say nothing of Trump’s repeated economic assaults on law firms, educational institutions, and even entire states that he feels have been critical of him.
Maybe Trump simply does not care. Perhaps he does not mind being reviled, or going down in history as the worst president. I think he does mind, though. Nobody works so hard to put on such a facade, slaps his name on so many things, or brags so relentlessly without harboring a compulsive concern about what other people think.
Trump has not learned, and seems incapable of learning, that he is not unpopular because he has failed to silence critics, he is unpopular (in part) because he tries so hard to silence his critics. If he put half the effort he puts into unsuccessful attempts to control the narrative into actually improving the lives of normal Americans, he might not have such problems.
“The beatings will continue until MAGA improves” appears to be the cold reality we will all be living under for the next three years. Can’t wait to see all the fun insubordination this leads to.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.
The post The (Economic, Rhetorical, And Physical) Beatings Will Continue Until The Presidential Approval Rating Improves! appeared first on Above the Law.
It is difficult for today’s youth to believe, but the snarky T-shirt is a relatively recent innovation. Though they are now everywhere, until the late 1990s one almost never saw another person wearing a shirt that read “Stop looking at my nuts” with a pair of the threaded metal hardware implements pictured, or perhaps one with a sports figure on it and “I just hope both teams have fun.” My personal favorite had the letters “FU” dressed up a bit to look like an abbreviation for a university, but really meant, ya know, “F you.”
One of the more popular (and clean) vintage snarky T-shirt options says “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” Nobody really knows where this slogan came from (there are rumors of a naval origin), but it kind of fits perfectly with the Trump administration’s overall philosophy in the current moment.
I don’t think I have to explain to my normal readers, but in case this gets picked up by a news aggregator, let’s be clear. “The beatings will continue until morale improves” is funny because you obviously can’t force a group of people to improve their spirits by inflicting violence on them. It will, in fact, have the opposite effect.
This exact counterproductive approach has become de rigueur across nearly every facet of the Trump administration’s policy portfolio. All those violent ICE raids full of masked agents with no accountability who are largely targeting nonviolent immigrants with no criminal records (that is, when they’re not pummeling journalists, protesters, priests, and innocent bystanders)? People hate them, and it has caused voters’ views of ICE in general to plummet.
So does the Trump administration walk them back, tone down the violence, or prosecute the worst ICE agents out there who are giving all of America a bad name? Nope. Donald Trump thinks there should be even more ICE raids, and that ICE agents should be even more violent.
There is no shortage of physical beatings rained down by agents of this administration, spurred by Trump’s personal directives. His rhetoric is no less sparing than the fists of his goons, like when he recently insinuated that several Democratic lawmakers should be executed for the grave crime of reminding service members not to commit actual crimes. Again, a huge majority of Americans at least claim to be concerned about this kind of extreme political rhetoric, which has not stopped Trump from doubling down on it.
Perhaps the economic cudgel is the largest in Trump’s arsenal. We know higher prices are among voters’ top priorities, and we also know with almost scientific precision what the federal government can do to address high prices: keep interest rates up and tear down trade barriers. Trump has, of course, sought the opposite of each of these (he did, begrudgingly, just roll back tariffs on a number of food items, all while he “insisted” as Reuters put it, or “lied” as I would put it, that the United States has “virtually no inflation”). This is all to say nothing of Trump’s repeated economic assaults on law firms, educational institutions, and even entire states that he feels have been critical of him.
Maybe Trump simply does not care. Perhaps he does not mind being reviled, or going down in history as the worst president. I think he does mind, though. Nobody works so hard to put on such a facade, slaps his name on so many things, or brags so relentlessly without harboring a compulsive concern about what other people think.
Trump has not learned, and seems incapable of learning, that he is not unpopular because he has failed to silence critics, he is unpopular (in part) because he tries so hard to silence his critics. If he put half the effort he puts into unsuccessful attempts to control the narrative into actually improving the lives of normal Americans, he might not have such problems.
“The beatings will continue until MAGA improves” appears to be the cold reality we will all be living under for the next three years. Can’t wait to see all the fun insubordination this leads to.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.
The post The (Economic, Rhetorical, And Physical) Beatings Will Continue Until The Presidential Approval Rating Improves! appeared first on Above the Law.
