Il Duce was an appalling fascist, but he did make the trains run on time. Which is to say, like most demagogues, he realized that he had to not only deliver psychological benefits, but also tangible ones (to some people at least). From Tuesday’s Republican debate-like-thing, Il Trumpe (boldface mine):

We have spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that frankly if they were there and if we could have spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges and all of the other problems, our airports and all the other problems we have we would have been a lot better off I can tell you that right now. We have done a tremendous disservice not only to the Middle East but to humanity, the people that have been killed, the people that have been wiped away and for what? It’s not like we had victory. It’s a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized, a total and complete mess. I wish we had the $4 trillion or $5 trillion.

Yes, Trump is appealing to the white nationalist wing of the Republican Party–an essential part of its coalition–and is doing so en flagrante; he’s not really a dog whistle type of guy. But the unremarked part of his appeal is that there is also an inchoate rage at all of the broken shit. Let’s leave aside that Il Trumpe’s Brownshorts (typo intentional) probably were all gung ho about our Excellent Iraqi Adventure. Democrats–that is, Clinton–ignore this at their peril.

Put another way, if we leave aside the desperate need for an editor, who is more likely to have said the quoted paragraph: Trump or Clinton? Then ask yourself, who would have been more likely to have done so: Clinton or Sanders?

This could be a real problem–a political one, despite all the claims that Clinton is the ‘pragmatic’ choice.

Tangential aside: As a known Chartalist/MMR sympathizer, I realize that currency isn’t limiting. That said, our political system largely functions as if it does, so we did ‘waste’ the money in a zero-sum fashion.