Day 79: The Gilded Age and the Gullible

I was too lazy today to use AI to generate an image, so here is an apropos editorial cartoon I found on Musk's dumpster fire. God bless editorial cartoonists, some of whom have resigned from their jobs because of censorship in this dark age of ignorance and intolerance. Mark Twain, back in 1873, published a book for these times. It was called The Gilded Age and dealt with the political corruption and materialism of Feurer Trump's favorite American period, the late 19th Century. Twain's legendary wit is on display from the title itself - a "gilded age" being a fraudulent substitute for an authentic golden age. As Trump is so fond of repeating, the late 19th Century was a time when the US government was funded by tariffs on international trade. It wasn't until the early 20th Century that America switched to a progressive income tax to fund the government with the ratification of the 16th Amendment. But why the switch? Simply, tariffs are a tax on...