Trump May Have Inadvertently Kicked Off The Next American Revolution

And not in the way he thinks

“Donald Trump gave a major speech the first speech of his second presidency and ignored virtually every important issue facing the working families of this country how crazy is that? Our health care system is broken, is dysfunctional and it's widely expensive. Not one word from Trump about how he is going to address the health care crisis” - Bernie Sanders

Trump recently signed an executive order rescinding 78 of Biden’s presidential actions, including 3 executive orders aimed at lowering prescription costs and enabling access to affordable health coverage. This is clearly a very hot button issue for most Americans. When signed, the Biden order imposed a $35 monthly cap insulin, which normally costs $5,917 a year.

“Rug-pulling” The Working Class

The same people who voted for him, are reeling from his presidential decrees. And I don’t say that for rhetorical effect, rule-by-decree is his governance style, setting new records his first couple days in office. With a flurry of pens, Trump has undercut Biden’s semi-pro working class agenda. Repealing the $35 monthly insulin cap—a lifeline for millions of diabetics now forced back into the predatory free market of Big Pharma, where a single vial can cost upwards of $300.

This isn’t policymaking. It’s sabotage.

Trump’s base—working-class voters in rural towns and deindustrialized heartlands—overwhelmingly supported him in 2024, believing his rhetoric about “putting America first.” But whose America? The cruel irony is that the voters who handed Trump power are the first to feel the knife twist.

The “rug-pull” is both literal and ideological. Trump’s campaign railed against elites and “globalist cartels,” yet his first acts as president directly enriched the pharmaceutical and private insurance industries—the very titans responsible for inflating healthcare costs. The math is simple: repealing the insulin cap alone puts $5,900 back into the pockets of drugmakers annually per patient. Multiply that by 8.4 million Americans who rely on insulin, and you’ve got a $50 billion giveaway to corporations.

This is the Trump playbook: stoke rage at the system, then hand the system’s architects a blank check. His supporters are left clutching promises as hollow as the factories he vowed to reopen. Meanwhile, the working class is gaslit into blaming immigrants, “woke” corporations, or shadowy bureaucrats—anyone but the man signing the orders.

But the damage transcends symbolism. Rescinding Biden’s healthcare protections doesn’t just raise costs—it costs lives. Studies show that 1 in 4 diabetics already ration insulin due to price gouging. How many more will skip doses now? How many will wind up in emergency rooms, or worse? This isn’t a policy dispute. It’s triage by decree, with Trump playing surgeon to the very oligarchs he swore to oppose.

The rug isn’t just pulled out from under the working class. It’s being sold off—thread by thread—to the highest bidder.

Oligarchs and “Accelerationists”: Compounding The Problem

“We believe in accelerationism – the conscious and deliberate propulsion of technological development – to ensure the fulfillment of the Law of Accelerating Returns.” - Mark Andreessen

One of loudest members of a club of billionaire tech-influencers, Mark Andreesen, is positively giddy at the prospect of new tech investments accelerating his returns. What this means, in real terms, is investing in things that will ultimately replace workers, namely super intelligent AI. How convenient you might say, that Trump assumes office during a time of accelerated AI innovation? It is both a convenient and dangerous time to be a member of the super-elite.

What today’s elite seek, I wouldn’t call it rent-seeking. AI will undoubtedly increase productivity by a factor of at least 10 within our century. Innovating in things that increase productivity isn’t bad in and of itself. But productivity gains in the last 50 years have always flowed to the rich. If you own the S&P 500—and virtually all the wealthy own stocks—you’ve seen your portfolio swell while wages flatline. This isn’t rent-seeking or rent-extraction, but something entirely new: the privatization of progress itself.

Andreessen’s “accelerationism” is it’s blueprint. By pouring capital into AI tools designed to automate jobs rather than empower workers, the tech oligarchy isn’t just profiting from innovation—it’s engineering a future where human labor becomes obsolete, and with it, the bargaining power of the working class. The timing is no accident. Trump’s return to power—with his disdain for regulation and fetishization of corporate dominance—creates the perfect vacuum for this agenda to thrive. Deregulate AI? Slash taxes on capital gains? Ignore antitrust laws? It’s a billionaire’s fever dream.

The result is an economic paradox: AI could generate enough wealth to end poverty, shorten workweeks, and guarantee healthcare for all. Instead, it’s being weaponized to cement a neo-feudal order. Consider the numbers. Since 1980, corporate profits tied to automation and offshoring have risen 400%, while the average worker’s share of national income has plummeted. AI will supercharge this asymmetry. When a single algorithm can replace 10,000 jobs, who benefits? Not the nurses, teachers, or factory workers whose livelihoods evaporate—but the shareholders and CEOs who own the code.

This isn’t capitalism. It’s a coup.

What we’re witnessing is the birth of an automated oligarchy, where wealth isn’t merely extracted from labor but engineered out of human irrelevance. The elite no longer need to exploit workers—they can erase them. And with Trump’s complicity, they’re racing to do exactly that, all while dangling the lie of “innovation” as a justification. But make no mistake: when productivity gains flow only to those already at the top, progress isn’t a rising tide—it’s a boot on the neck of the many, polished by the few.

Courtesy: Bureau of Labor Statistics

The Revolution That Never Was, And How it Could Happen Today

America has faced a period of revolutionary angst in our recent history. In the 1930’s. The 1930’s was a time of profound economic suffering and setbacks. Out of this time of troubles emerged an incendiary figure named Huey Long—a firebrand Louisiana senator who channeled the fury of the impoverished masses into a movement that terrified America’s plutocracy.

Long’s “Share Our Wealth” program called for seizing fortunes from the Rockefellers and Carnegies, capping personal wealth at $50 million (roughly $1.2 billion today), and guaranteeing every family a basic income, free education, and pensions. He didn’t just critique inequality; he threatened to dismantle it. “There’s enough in this country for everybody to eat,” he roared, “but some people are getting all the gravy.” Though Long’s autocratic tactics drew condemnation, his message resonated because it acknowledged a truth today’s elites deny: crises lead to revolution, not tweaks. The New Deal itself was a compromise forged to stave off Long’s radical vision—proof that systemic change only happens when power fears the alternative.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal emerged not out of altruism, but from relentless pressure by organized labor, grassroots movements, and a public pushed to the brink. Today, we face a similar inflection point: a healthcare system that bankrupts families, an economy where productivity gains flow solely to shareholders, and a technological revolution poised to erase millions of jobs. Yet where is the New Deal for our time?

Trump’s rollback of Biden’s healthcare protections—like the $35 insulin cap—exposes a chilling truth: the working class is not just ignored but actively undermined. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley’s oligarchs, emboldened by accelerationist ideologies, pour billions into AI designed to displace workers, not uplift them. Andreessen’s vision of “accelerating returns” is a euphemism for accelerating inequality. When he and his peers speak of “progress,” they mean profit margins—not better wages, not universal healthcare, not a safety net for those whose jobs their algorithms will devour.

This is not mere neglect. It is a calculated dismantling of the social contract. Over the past 50 years, productivity has soared by over 250%, yet worker pay has stagnated. Why? Because the gains have been hijacked. The S&P 500’s climb to record highs isn’t a sign of broad prosperity—it’s proof of a rigged system. The top 1% now own as much the the bottom 90% combined, and AI’s rise threatens to turbocharge this divide.

But here’s the lesson from the 1930s: Crisis breeds possibility. The New Deal didn’t spring from Washington’s benevolence; it was wrested from power by strikes, sit-ins, and solidarity. Today’s movements—Medicare for All activists, unionizing Amazon workers, climate justice organizers—carry that same spark. The difference is scale. To confront oligarchic power, we need a mobilization that matches the enormity of the threat.

If the oligarchy knows what’s best for their long terms interests, it should not be radically undercutting our economic system or “accelerating” a system that only works for the top 1%. We can come to a kind of social compromise, a new social contract. If nothing is done, we could see civil unrest on a scale that would make 2020’s BLM protests and 2008’s occupy protests, look like children playing with firecrackers.

Trump’s silence on these issues is a loudspeaker for his priorities. But the louder message is: The working class built this nation. It’s time to rebuild it for everyone. The 1930s taught us that despair can be a catalyst. The question is, will we let this moment slip into complacency—or ignite it into transformation?

The revolution isn’t coming. It’s already here. The only thing missing is us.