Cliff’s Note:
Once upon a midnight dreary, we were promised cheaper groceries, a quick war, and plenty for all. You know how that went.
This week we handed it to Edgar Allan Poe. The free preview gets you the tariffs. Paid subscribers get the rest of the poem: the war, the gas pump, the measles, the machines, and the raven at the White House door with its one-word verdict.
Our sale ends at midnight on Election Day: 30 percent off, $42 a year — just 7 days left! That keeps independent media writing things like this, and calling the promises what they were.
—Cliff
Once upon a midnight dreary, while the nation, weak and weary,
Watched the prices climbing upward in the markets and the stores,
I sat brooding, nearly broken, over promises once spoken,
Over golden words and slogans that had thundered through our doors—
Promises of cheaper living, peace and plenty, prosperous shores—
Promises, and nothing more.
Ah, I clearly can remember how Trump roared that cold November,
How he vowed to make us richer than we’d ever been before.
Tariffs, he declared, would save us, foreign rivals would behave us,
And the factories would return to fill our land with endless more.
But the price tags climbed like ivy, creeping higher than before—
Higher still, and evermore.
And the people stood bewildered as their grocery bills grew gilded,
While the cash they earned each Friday seemed to vanish by the score.
Eggs and butter, cars and clothing, every household budget groaning,
As the cost of common living crept beneath each kitchen door.
“Who will pay for all these tariffs?” cried the shoppers at the store—
“Not the foreigners,” came the answer. “You will pay for evermore!”
