The conquest of Puerto Rico...?

A reader named Bill, who has contributed to this site before, offers the following theory. I'm not persuaded by it -- and to be fair, Bill himself does not seem entirely convinced by his own argument. But the idea is worth consideration. The words beneath the asterisks are his.

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I have come up with a disturbing theory. I can’t prove a shred of it. Nevertheless, my gut keeps telling me I’m on the right track.

But before I go into the details, I need to issue a quick disclaimer. I know next to nothing about how intricately convoluted, big-time, real-estate rip-offs are engineered. Actually, I know next to nothing about a whole lotta things. For instance, what I know about baking ginger snaps, you could put in your eye. But even so, I have no problem telling whether or not the cookies are burnt.

Alright, now on to the heart of darkness. Joe, once again I’ve sought you out, in order to share with you a most depressing idea. You’re one of the few people I know who is truly capable of appreciating a really good depressing idea. What I’ve dredged up is something so grim, so bleak, so emotionally devastating, that I hate myself for even thinking of it. It’s a real bringdown. Truthfully, I’d like nothing better than to discover that I’m drastically mistaken. But should this theory prove true, and sadly it’s looking more and more with each day, as though such is the case. If the truth comes out, the effect on the American public will be as soul-wrenching and mind-blowingly creepy as the murders of President Kennedy and Dr. King, combined.

Like many people, I have a built in Creep-O-Meter (CoM). No, it’s not one of those flakey gadgets made by Ronco. It’s something you’re born with. It’s a nerve ganglion, centered in the gut, a little north of the navel and works kinda like a Geiger counter. Only, instead of detecting nuclear-radiation, it detects the presence of creepiness. After more than sixty-five rough and tumble years, as an active member of the human race, I consider my creep-o-meter to be pretty finely tuned.

And let me tell ya, in the wake of hurricanes Irma and Maria, my CoM has been ringing like a broker’s phone on Black Tuesday. It keeps sending me warnings, that the Trump administration’s egregious failure to marshal emergency assistance to Puerto Rico, is not in any way due to incompetence. Whoa, hold it. Did I hear that right? NOT due to incompetence you say?

Precisely. According to my creep-o-meter, the humanitarian aid crisis in Puerto Rico, is actually a direct expression of Donald Trump’s expert competency, albeit a ruthless, monstrously cunning form of competence.

To wit, I fear President Trump is deliberately stalling, doing everything he can get away with, to make sure that Puerto Rico doesn’t recover. At least, not until conditions on the island have deteriorated to his liking. Despite his crocodile tears and melodramatic protestations of his affection for the island and its people, my suspicion is that Trump’s true intention is to employ every ploy and dirt trick he knows in order to sabotage Puerto Rico’s economy so thoroughly, that property values crash, utilities rust and rot to the point of being unsalvageable, farming and local industries fall into paralysis, wages plummet to third-world levels and the island’s beleaguered populace, who are struggling to survive under unspeakably wretched conditions, will be traumatized into passivity and indifference.

Confirmation of such a possibility, would be deeply troubling news for all but that sub-group of one-percenters, who cling to Trump and attempt to suckle from him, like baby rhesus-monkeys in a Harlow experiment. The notion that this president, or any president might do something so flagrantly diabolical, so cold-bloodely inhuman and floridly heinous is at once heartbreaking and enraging.

For some people however, what I’m proffering will be way too shocking to digest, at least not all at once. They’ll need time to come around. Let’s face it, if proven true, then it amounts to a national kick in the family jewels.

As always, it is inevitable there will be foot draggers, nervous folks who just want to blot out reality and escape having to experience pain and anguish, by sheltering in a dreamland of Panglossian denial. Among this group are the hair splitters, the fastidious sticklers who assume the role of amateur logicians. Weighers of pros and cons, brocade thinkers, who can sit at a lunch counter or a bar, stuck in a mental feedback loop, obsessively, trying to understand how in hell a slick New York City real-estate tycoon, with a lengthy history of slimy dealings, sleazy associations and a flock of humongous financial fiascos, how it could be that such a sharp guy like that, when handed the presidency on a golden platter, could turn around and totally violate the public trust.

Still others, excessively afraid of being duped by fake news, become so wary, so dubious of everything, they lose partial touch with empirical reality. They say,

“OK, maybe the guy is a racist fourteen-carat jerk, as well as a compulsive liar. I know of worse things. But even so, you tell me, why in the name of unwed-motherhood and frozen apple pie would such a nice dressed, patriotic gentleman, who cared enough about right and wrong, that he went to the trouble of taking time out of his busy schedule, to protect our National Anthem from those lousy kneelers. Trump used his own body to shield our National Anthem from a violent mob of kneelers, who were also spitting on the flag. What more proof than that do you needed of his intrinsic goodness? So, just explain to me why such a nicely dressed, patriotic guy, who wants to make America great again, racist jerk or not, would knowingly perpetrate such a brutally grotesque, anti-American crime. Why? Just gimme one decent reason why?”

My answer of necessity must be swift and blunt.

Greed! Virulent, rapacious, merciless and grandiose.

Keep in mind, that in Trump’s case we’re not dealing with normal, everyday, rig the roulette wheel, knock over an armored truck, swindle widows and orphans out of their lifesavings, type greed. That’s the ordinary kind of greed, we’re all familiar with. The kind of greed we encounter day in day out, all across the nation. We’re so accustomed to that type, we tend to take it for granted as just an unavoidable part of normal human venality.

Unfortunately, we’re not talking about that kind of greed, in the case of Donald Trump. He exhibits a less common, more sinister form, much darker and far more atavistic than its materialistic everyday cousin. The Donald’s greed is a creepy, kind of brooding, predatory, ego-maniacal greed, that hungers not so much for extreme wealth, as much as for the unbridled power extreme wealth bestows. His is a truly insatiable form of greed, seething with lust for tyrannical omnipotence, a fearsome craving for incontestable power, power like that of the Pharaohs, the power to command the construction of gigantic monuments to yourself. But also, it is the magisterial power to destroy people at whim, to pick out and crush a single, lone individual, or to buy and sell human-beings by the train-load. And spread over all of this like hot sauce on eggs-ranchero, is a ravenous aching need to be revered and showered with adulation by those over whom he would rule, by those he will use and then discard.

Getting the gist? After his sabotage job is completed, once the Puerto Rican economy is thoroughly wrecked and the island’s populace is exhausted and demoralize, it shouldn’t take a Wharton business school whiz-kid to figure out what comes next.

When he senses the crisis has ripened sufficiently, the Tweeter in Chief will then take to his bully pulpit, to whip up a furor of national outrage over Puerto Rico’s staggering and genuinely disgraceful debt load. In fact, he’s already begun doing just that.

This public disgust over Puerto Rico’s long and upsetting profligate financial history, will provide Trump with the economic justification, as well as the moral excuse he needs to obsessively focus on the debt-load, and use it as pry bar to leverage, bludgeon, wear-out and extort Puerto Rico’s leaders into agreeing to incredibly sweeping concessions. Once Trump has what he wants and is finished smacking these guys around, the capital of Puerto Rico will then in effect shift to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where Trump and his closest confederates will be in control of milking Puerto Rico’s recovery for every god damn thing they possibly can.

I predict that you’ll know the main feeding frenzy is about to commence, when it is announced very quietly, possibly as a faint whisper in the dead of night, that as a noble demonstration of Trump’s Orwellian compassion for the people of Puerto Rico, President Trump has magnanimously ordered that competitive bidding be suspended, out of a heartfelt, desire to expedite humanitarian aid to Puerto Rico’s population.

At that point, the Trump crime family and their cronies will hold an exclusive and commanding position from which they will conduct a land-office business dispensing largesse of all manner and doling out permits, sweetheart contracts, and who knows what else, like they were operating the hotdog concession at Yankee Stadium. Vladimir Putin will gnash his teeth with envy.

Just think of how many luxury hotels, high-rise apartment complexes, casinos and office-towers that require a steady dependable flow of tourist money and/or monthly rental payments. All those owners are hopelessly screwed. The number and extent of loan and mortgage defaults will be many orders of magnitude worse than the crash of ’08. All those “distressed” properties are going to be liquidated by creditors for mere pennies on the dollar. Piratical tycoons and corporate carpet-baggers, once they’ve agreed to give a little, to get a little, will be unclipped from their leashes and granted special preferential license to commence devouring distressed and devastated prime Puerto Rican real estate, at fire-sale prices.

The whole gluttonous, cannibalistic free-for-all, will be ballyhooed as a gleaming example of Donald Trump’s conscientious stewardship and hailed as an inspiring demonstration of a vigorous free-market economy, untrammeled by dumbass regulations, bettering life for all sectors of society.

In a very real sense, the Trumps and their compañeros, in the manner of latter-day conquistadors, will have triumphantly subjugated Puerto Rico all over again.

I pray all my predictions prove false. .