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J.D. Tuccille: Americans have only bad choices in the midterms

COTTONWOOD, Arizona — The author and thinker Robert A. Heinlein once wrote, “the human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.” With midterm elections approaching, the problem for Americans is that our ossified two-party system increasingly delivers us a choice between flavors of control freaks: Donald Trump’s Republicans and Democrats led by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani. With few major-party candidates willing to consider leaving people alone, and alternative parties almost completely locked out of the political system, voters who want to run their own lives face almost entirely unpalatable choices.

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Trump’s Republicans have drifted far from their nominally market-oriented roots towards greater government control of the economy. At the end of July, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced “the signing of 7 letters of intent to provide $874 million in federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act” in return for “a minority, non-controlling equity stake in each company as a condition for receiving the funds.” The announcement came on top of earlier government acquisitions of stakes in Intel, USA Rare Earth, and other companies in fields the administration considers critical.

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