Author: mccoysnoise

We’re Getting Closer

As all who care are aware, over the last couple of days federal agents of several types have clashed in Los Angeles with demonstrators protesting against the Administration’s immigration enforcement activities.  The New York Times has reported that these agents have used “flash-bang grenades” against protestors, and that the Trump administration’s top law enforcement official in Southern California has declared that the protests are “out of control.”   President Donald Trump has ordered 2,000 National Guard troops to the city to quell the protests.  They are expected to arrive today.

What I find at once the most predictable and disquieting about the current furor:

Mr. Trump has based his directive under a federal law which authorizes the President to deploy the National Guard if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” [Emphasis Added]

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has described demonstrations at Los Angeles’ federal building on social media as, “An insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States,” and later as “a violent insurrection.”  [Emphasis Added]

I understand that Mr. Trump has not claimed authority for his National Guard directive under what is technically considered “The Insurrection Act,” a law which the Brennan Center for Justice states “authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations,” but the section Mr. Trump is relying upon appears in the same Title 10 of the U.S. Code of Laws that contains the Insurrection Act.

Although I am completely confident that not all of the demonstrators are Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and that a number of those apprehended in the Administration raids — even if they have committed no other criminal acts — are indeed here illegally, I would venture that the Administration is welcoming the pretext to act more aggressively against those who oppose its vision for America.

In recent weeks, given the impending passage of Mr. Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” due to the craven acquiescence of MAGA Congressional representatives, I’ve been focusing on the federal deficit and debt, how we got to where we are over the last 40+ years, and commentaries regarding what steps we might be taking to avert a looming financial meltdown if we had rational federal executives and courageous legislators.

The events in Los Angeles have brought me back. 

We’re getting closer.

Reflections on a Constitutional Presidential Age Limit

“[Turning 73] feels like I live in a bad neighborhood and anything can happen.”

  • Actor Tony Danza.

As all are aware, it has been reported that former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has entered his bones.  During MSNBC’s May 19 Morning Joe, Dr. Ezekiel Emanual, an oncologist with ties to both the Obama and Biden Administrations, opined that given the reported advanced state of the former president’s condition, Mr. Biden has had prostate cancer for years.  I consider any pubic outrage regarding Mr. Biden’s failure to disclose his disease – assuming he knew – to be so much hot air.  This would hardly be the first time that a President was less than candid about his health:  see Grover Cleveland’s surgically-removed cancerous upper jaw (denied); Woodrow Wilson’s (undisclosed) debilitating stroke; Franklin Roosevelt’s (undisclosed) congestive heart failure; John Kennedy’s Addison’s Disease (dangerous, denied); the extremely critical (undisclosed) nature of Ronald Reagan’s condition after he was shot; Mr. Reagan’s seeming (but never admitted) mental degradation toward the end of his presidency; and the (hidden) significant severity of Donald Trump’s COVID condition.

That said, what has given me pause to reflect is how and when Mr. Biden responded when he learned of his condition.  If he knew he had prostate cancer – no matter how slow-growing it is — before he ran for the presidency, at his already-advanced years he shouldn’t have run.  If he learned of his condition at any time after taking office, he should have promptly indicated that he would not seek another term (even if he didn’t specify the cause).

Since I am not aware of any medical finding that establishes a link between mental acuity and prostate cancer, I am left with the same final estimation of Mr. Biden’s performance in office that I set forth here during the last week of his presidency:  that despite what I consider to be the strongest performance of any president of my lifetime during his first two years in office, my final rating placed him in about the middle, largely due to two factors:  that objectively, he had failed “to rid us of Donald Trump,” and that “… he should have recognized in late 2022 that he substantively simply didn’t have the strength to perform his office effectively for another six years, no matter whom the Republicans nominated.”

Which leads to the larger point.  I am the same age as Mr. Danza.  He, I, and all septuagenarians, no matter how healthy any of us may seem, all live in the same bad neighborhood.  We are a full decade younger than Mr. Biden, who lives in a yet more dangerous neighborhood – a neighborhood to which President Trump will soon be moving.  I’m willing to venture that if they are honest, the vast, vast, vast majority of septuagenarians – let alone octogenarians — will acknowledge that they are not nearly as sharp or energetic as they were in their primes or even in their sixties.  It is, as all fans of The Lion King are aware, simply part of the Circle of Life.  Even if Mr. Biden’s cancer didn’t affect his mental acuity, he either refused to admit his mental degradation, or – worse — he failed to recognize his condition.

Among the first list of topics I compiled when launching these pages – many of which I have never posted upon; Mr. Trump’s machinations have tended to crowd out other topics – was Constitutional amendments I would like to see enacted.  Here is one that I didn’t include in my list of proposed amendments, but one that I think if proposed could actually garner bipartisan support (since at this point I think Mr. Trump recognizes that even if he attempts to ignore a mere Constitutional prohibition, he doesn’t have the strength to continue in office after 2028):

Section 1 of Article II should be amended to insert the following bolded, italicized text (not the way I’d write it starting from scratch, but attempting to maintain the style of the original 😉 ):

“No person except a natural born citizen … shall be eligible to the Office of the President; neither shall any Person be eligible to or hold that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States, or who has attained the Age of seventy-five Years. …”

For history buffs considering aged politicians of note, under this proposed Constitutional presidential age limitation Mr. Reagan, born in February, 1911, could have served one full term starting in 1981, but would have been required to leave office in early 1986, even if he had won a second term in November 1984 (he obviously would not have run).  Mr. Biden, born in 1942, would have been ineligible to serve after his birthday in 2017.  Mr. Trump and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were respectively born in 1946 and 1947, so in 2016 they would have run knowing they could serve one full term, but – putting aside Mr. Trump’s autocratic inclinations – would not have been able to serve a second full term (each would have aged out before 2025).  U.S. VT Sen. Bernie Sanders would last have been able to serve a full presidential term ending in 2013, and U.S. MA Sen. Elizabeth Warren would have last been able to serve the full presidential term ending in 2021.  Given any presidential aspirant’s desire to serve two terms, from a practical standpoint a 75-year-old age limit would dissuade almost any prospective candidate older than 65 from seeking the presidency.

Too harsh a prescription, you say?  After all, Mses. Clinton and Warren and Mr. Sanders still all seem pretty sharp; Mr. Reagan’s 1986 Reykjavik Summit with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (when Mr. Reagan was 75) is now considered a turning point in the Cold War; and I have made clear my admiration for what Mr. Biden achieved between ages 78 and 80.  Even so, we have seen how the presidency has aged even relatively younger men like Presidents John Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, all elected in their 40s.  When you’re older, you wear down relatively faster – you live in the neighborhood where “anything can happen.”  President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack at age 64, during his first term.  Political inclinations aside, the presidency has clearly taken a relatively greater physical toll on Messrs. Biden and Trump than it did on Messrs. Clinton and Obama.  In a recent post I quoted President Abraham Lincoln to the effect that people are generally little willing to do something for future generations that doesn’t benefit them; in another, I noted TLOML’s observation, based upon her years providing therapy to seniors, that one’s less desirable characteristics do not soften with age, but instead that those of advanced years find it more difficult to temper their regrettable tendencies.  Advanced age undoubtedly makes some persons focus on the best for future generations, but it arguably makes others focus on the now, the immediate.  Mr. Biden, in addition to his personal warmth, is tough-minded.  He might have disregarded the indications of his own mental and physical diminishment in maintaining his 2024 presidential candidacy as long as he did because he had convinced himself that he had a better chance to beat Mr. Trump than any other Democratic Party alternative.  As this is posted, Mr. Trump is consumed with forcing a “big, beautiful” bill through the Congress, although credible economists seemingly agree that if passed, the bill – while a boon to Mr. Trump’s wealthy supporters – will provide relatively little tax relief to lower-income Americans – Trump supporters as well as adversaries – while limiting benefits that these lower-income Americans rely upon, and substantially adding to our already-unsustainable federal deficit. This will, in a vicious cycle, ultimately result in further reductions in benefits for lower-income Trump supporters and adversaries alike, while shackling the entire nation to a future debt load even more crippling than we already bear.  While some of Mr. Trump’s focus on the bill is arguably Mr. Trump being Mr. Trump at any age – i.e., selfish and short-sighted – one can reasonably suspect that Mr. Trump doesn’t care about our nation’s financial (or, another example, climate) future in part because he knows he’ll be dead before the chickens come home to roost.

We have 370 million Americans.  Presumably – speaking as one who under my proposal would age out of the presidency before the end of the current presidential term 😉 — we really should be able to find a sufficient number of suitable presidential candidates between the ages of 35 and 75.

Considering the First 100 Days … and the Next 200

Let’s join the chorus and take a look at President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office (I’m confident that you’ve been able to maintain a steady pulse despite my delay 😉 ).

Let’s start with foreign policy.

Since Mr. Trump returned to office, pundits have repeatedly intoned that Mr. Trump’s grotesquely destructive behavior on so many fronts is diminishing our allies’ confidence in America.  I beg to differ with these optimists:  Mr. Trump’s actions over his first one hundred days in office have destroyed our allies’ confidence in America.  I do not believe that America now holds nor for the rest of my Medicare-aged lifetime will hold the esteem of free peoples or the standing on the world stage that it has held for over a century.  While any student of foreign affairs is well aware that America has always – as it should – looked out for itself, there is likewise no question that this country has done more good for more people than any other nation in history.  Now, we’re just another country.  Mr. Trump made clear during the 2024 campaign what he intended to do if reelected (which our allies correctly understood to mean that he intended to turn his back on them).  (There will be no mention of Ukraine here, which I defer to a separate future note.)  For the remainder of my lifetime, our allies will set their own course.  (One need look no further for confirmation than the recent Canadian and Australian national election results, clear repudiations of Mr. Trump.)  I concede that if we ever regain our democratic footing, there may be advantages to this shift that a shrewd president might be able to exploit, but we will still be maneuvering in a literally new world.

One can make a credible argument that it is not Mr. Trump, but the majority of American voters who have turned their back on the world; after all, they elected him.  That said, I am reminded of an observation made to me by a colleague years ago:  “You value what you know.”  Citizens of the European democracies have lived with the threat of brutal aggression from the east – Germany, then the USSR, now Russia – for over a century.  The threat is engrained in the psyches of Western Europeans.  No matter how bad economic times get, a Western European knows that there are greater terrors.  Americans have never experienced brutal political subjugation, or felt it close at hand; the Western European’s visceral political fears are not part of our DNA.  These Americans naturally focus on the challenges that are real to them.  Those who feel that they have been deprived of their share of the American Dream are more interested in disrupting a system that they believe – in some cases, correctly; in other cases, perhaps not — hasn’t given them sufficient opportunity.  They seemingly don’t have much conception of what the overall consequences of that disruption might be, or that tyranny could be the result here or elsewhere; those fears don’t compute.  (Sadly, I suspect that such is now computing for some Latino Trump voters.)  While these Americans’ focus may be understandable, it is just as understandable that their priorities might be considered shallow by Western Europeans who recognize that Mr. Trump’s obvious autocratic sympathies literally endanger their freedom.

On to the home front.

Despite Mr. Trump’s and his MAGA zealots’ repeated claims that Mr. Trump received a “mandate” in the last election, I am confident that they recognize that only half the country supports him on his best day, and that given the American cultural dynamic, they are employing the Nazi model of the 1930s to quickly consolidate their control to reshape America to their vision – an American Apartheid – rather than follow the approach of gradually undermining democracy more recently adopted by Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Erdoğan in Turkey and Viktor Orbán in Hungary.  They have accordingly fashioned an Administration consisting almost entirely of previously-identified true believers.  They have moved aggressively to silence, intimidate and quell voices that oppose them and institutions that facilitate critical thought (e.g., the Smithsonian); they understand that the more Americans hear only MAGA propaganda, the greater the percentage of Americans who will come to believe it. 

Akin to my frustration with foreign policy commentators who imply that America has not already lost its unique standing in the world is my exasperation with legal commentators who are debating whether, given the Trump Administration’s actions, we are merely approaching a Constitutional crisis, or we have reached it.  Really?  We have passed it.  We need look no further than Kilmar Abrego Garcia.  It doesn’t matter whether he’s a choir boy.  An existing court order forbid his deportation to El Salvador; he was nonetheless deported to El Salvador by the Trump Administration; the United States Supreme Court has ordered the Trump Administration to “facilitate” his return; Mr. Trump has refused to do so.  It has always been blatantly obvious – even before Mr. Trump recently acknowledged it in an interview – that El Salvador would return Mr. Abrego Garcia if Mr. Trump asked.  Mr. Trump doesn’t care.  Mr. Abrego Garcia still sits in El Salvador.  The President clearly abides by no higher principle — and there is certainly no physical force — to make him do what he doesn’t want to do, or to prevent him from doing what he wants to do.  Look up the definition of the word, “dictatorship,” and compare it to the behavior we’ve seen in the last 100 days.  Ask yourself whether the fact that the Trump Administration hasn’t yet wielded its power against some of its perceived adversaries doesn’t mean it won’t, or doesn’t feel it can.

Let’s move on to tariffs, from a different perspective than expressed in a recent post.  TLOML spent most of her career in rehabilitation services, which often serve the needs of relatively-older individuals.  Years ago, she made an observation certainly proving true in my case:  that it is a myth that one’s less desirable characteristics soften as one ages; that in fact, as one ages, it becomes more difficult to temper one’s regrettable tendencies.  In her introduction to Fascism:  A Warning, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright noted, “[Mr. Trump] conceives of the world as a battlefield in which every country is intent on dominating every other; where nations compete like real estate developers to ruin rivals and squeeze every penny of profit out of deals.  Given his life experience, one can see how Trump might think that way ….”  Although I am reluctant to tread on the territory of two learned psychologists who read these notes, I will nonetheless venture that I think Mr. Trump is regressing to his core.  He will turn 79 this year.  He has believed in tariffs for the last 40 years, has focused on them throughout his public career, and has ignored all sound economic advice regarding their overall efficacy.  His recent comment about American children having to make do with “two dolls instead of thirty dolls” and that “maybe” the two dolls “will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally …” demonstrated an uncharacteristic political obliviousness; one of his political strengths has been a savviness about “ordinary” Americans’ sentiments.  As he redecorates the Oval Office in gold, he seems blithefully unconcerned that the voter segment that put him over the top in 2024 due to inflationary fears will desert him if tariffs either increase inflation or cause a recession.  It is obviously hard to judge the mental degradation of a figure who has acted so outrageously throughout his political career, but one can credibly wonder whether the President of the Unites States himself isn’t … losing it — a scary thought with over 1,300 days left in his term.  (For those that might feel glee at the possibility of Mr. Trump’s divestiture due to infirmity, I would caution:  Watch out what you wish for.  I actually consider the notion of Vice President J.D. Vance succeeding Mr. Trump an even more alarming prospect than Mr. Trump himself, with a rationale best expressed if at all in a separate post.)   

So what’s the 100 Day Scorecard?  That in such a short period of time, the amount of destruction that Mr. Trump has wreaked on the American way of life and the level of additional enmity he has reaped are both truly remarkable.  I would wager that if the presidential election was rerun tomorrow, Mr. Trump would lose the popular vote (if not the Electoral College) to former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Obviously, the election won’t be rerun tomorrow.  So what happens during the next 200 days, the period that will end about a year before the 2026 midterm elections? 

If Mr. Trump’s tariffs do indeed cause product shortages, increase inflation, and/or cause a recession, or the DOGE-driven federal layoffs adversely affect service levels for programs Americans rely upon (Elon Musk has proven to be as inept as he is dastardly), or the Republicans cut Medicaid or Veterans benefits (received by many Trump voters), there will be a ferocious response.  The resistance of those who have heretofore opposed MAGA aims will coalesce with the outrage of the pivotal segment of Trump voters who will feel betrayed.  Although Mr. Trump is already trying to blame any future economic woes on former President Joe Biden, polls indicate that all but the most gullible MAGAs will hold Mr. Trump responsible.  Anti-Administration rallies and demonstrations – already begun in at least our part of the country – will grow and intensify.  It seems likely that the next 200 days will heavily influence the 2026 midterms and it also seems probable,  given Republicans’ extremely thin margin in the House of Representatives and historical precedent, that Democrats will take control of the House if there are free and fair elections in 2026.  In normal times, this would largely strangle the last two years of the second Trump term. 

These aren’t normal times.  I’ve previously mentioned here a maxim I employed during my career:  when setting strategy, assume that the other side is at least as bright as you are, and knows at least as much as you do about the matters at hand.  If one applies that approach to this context, it seems reasonable to assume that Mr. Trump and his MAGAs understand that their ability to maintain an American Apartheid will depend upon their willingness to manipulate and exceed the boundaries of American law.  (This past weekend, the President indicated that he didn’t know if he had to enforce the Constitution.  Someone should tell him – not that he would care — that he has taken an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.”)  Although the Trump Administration currently appears to be primarily identifying those it considers undesirable by ethnicity and immigration status, at bottom Mr. Trump and MAGAs consider all who oppose them, regardless of ethnicity, sexual preference, religious persuasion, or citizenship status, to be undesirables.  One can anticipate that Republicans will seek to pass laws and Mr. Trump will issue Executive Orders which limit the participation of likely Democratic voters.  One can anticipate that ICE will make clear that it will be standing near polling places with heavy Latino populations, purportedly to ensure that no “illegals” vote, but in fact to intimidate American Latino citizens from voting, so as to avoid being “accidentally” swept up in an ICE raid.  One can anticipate that if anti-Administration rallies and demonstrations become sufficiently vocal and widespread – even if peaceful — the Administration will invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy armed federal troops against demonstrators.  One can anticipate that if the Trump Administration believes that Republicans are going to experience significant reversals in the midterms, Mr. Trump will at least consider declaring Martial Law and suspending elections, although no such presidential power is set forth in the Constitution.

So what do we do?  Since Mr. Trump took office I have at times reflected about my father, a decorated WWII Marine veteran of Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal who enlisted immediately after Pearl Harbor, willing to give his life to defend his country.  Aside from paying taxes – to which I’ve always considered it churlish to object, given the opportunities this nation provides — I’ve had to do virtually nothing to avail myself of the blessings of American citizenship.  I’ve recently been devoting significantly more time to meetings, rallies and demonstrations expressing opposition to what the Trump Administration is doing to our country.  (Since I don’t speak Spanish, I can’t exactly interpret about half of the chants at some rallies; but as I listen, I’m acutely aware – even if many Trump supporters appear to have forgotten – that at past points in our history, similar cries for freedom and peaceful opportunities were undoubtedly expressed in German, Italian, Polish, and a myriad of other languages; if alive then, as an Irish Papist I wouldn’t have known their words, but I would have understood them, too.)  I’m not sure whether these activities have any impact other than to show others participating that they’re not alone, but showing up has been something I can do.   

What you wish or are able to do — if anything — is up to you; everyone’s life circumstances are unique.  But if you’re feeling safe because you don’t fit the current profile of those being targeted by MAGAs, get over it, my friend.  If you’ve read this far, you’re probably not Mr. Trump’s biggest fan.  In this digital age, he knows it. If tomorrow the Trump Administration changes focus, authorities under the President’s command decide to pick you and me up, and they ultimately plunk us down in Alcatraz (which Mr. Trump wants to reopen as a prison 😉 ), who’s going to stop them?

We’ll see what happens.

NYT:  FBI Arrests Milwaukee Judge for Allegedly Enabling Immigrant to Avoid Detention

About an hour ago, the New York Times reported that the FBI has arrested Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly intentionally misdirecting federal authorities away from an immigrant they were pursuing.  The Times’ source was a social media post by Trump-Appointed FBI Director Kash Patel.  The arrest has been confirmed by a spokesman for the U.S. Marshalls.

The Times’ account states that the charges against Judge Dugan represent a “flashpoint” in a dispute between federal immigration officials attempting to arrest undocumented immigrants appearing in state court and local officials who believe that such efforts adversely affect overall public safety.

I had never heard of Judge Dugan before reading the Times’ story, and refuse to jump to any conclusions regarding the merits of the charges now pending against her.  I believe that the particulars of every case need to be considered on their unique merits if we are to have any continued faith in our justice system.  That said, there can be little doubt that no matter the ultimate outcome of the prosecution, the Trump Administration undoubtedly intends its action to frighten others who have been unwilling to wholeheartedly cooperate with its aggressive deportation efforts.  The intimidation is the point.

I had no intent to publish today.  I’d wish you a good weekend, but I can’t muster it up.

On the Trump Tariffs

One of the benefits of these pages is that it keeps us in closer contact with the friends that read the notes than might otherwise be the case.  Since a significant period of time has lapsed since the last post, some of these friends have recently very thoughtfully reached out to inquire whether we’re doing okay.  Except for being a little bit poorer than we were at the start of the year due to the financial markets’ gyrations – a condition that we share with a large swath of Americans 😉 — we’re doing fine.  The span between posts is attributable to both our need to attend to certain family matters and to the fact that having delivered several numbingly-long posts after the election, first describing what would happen when President Donald Trump returned to the White House and then decrying what has, completely predictably, transpired since he reassumed the presidency, I have seen little purpose to either boring you or further agitating you by telling you what you already know.

That said, although a post on the ways Mr. Trump is effecting his assault on our democratic republic and individual American liberties is in the offing, this note of impressions addresses perhaps the most benign of the manners (because they don’t, per se, affect our democratic processes or individual rights) in which Mr. Trump has wreaked havoc upon us since assuming the presidency:  the President’s tariff policies.  I have noted several times in these pages that Mr. Trump wants to take America back to the 1950s; a comment I heard from a pundit at some point in the last couple of months made me realize I’ve been wrong:  Mr. Trump actually wishes to take us back to the 1920s.  It is difficult to capture all of the ways in which the Trump tariff policies – to the extent they can be discerned – are ill-conceived; but here’s a try.

The Erraticism.  Businesspeople are like major league hitters:  they can adjust to a tight or wide strike zone (regulatory scheme); but they need the umpire to maintain a consistent strike zone.  Mr. Trump’s erratic policies – one day on, one day off; uncertain delays; willy-nilly exceptions; playing favorites; capricious, completely in his head – are exhausting.  They are causing American businesses across the board to reduce their projections for this year.  Mr. Trump may find that the recession he is inducing follows the well-known maxim about wars:  easy to start, hard to stop.  (An aside:  some financial pundits have expressed sympathy for U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s obvious discomfort at trying to rationalize Mr. Trump’s irrational tariff spasms.  Mr. Bessent was respected as a professionally competent, steady figure by U.S. markets when he assumed his post.  I have no sympathy for Mr. Bessent.  Any professionally competent, steady figure who watched Mr. Trump’s disregard of the advice of the professionally competent, steady figures who joined his first Administration, and nonetheless agreed to become part of the second Trump Administration, is a damn fool.)  

Faux Revenue Enhancement.  The Administration’s claims that tariffs will increase government revenues without appreciable inflation are being debunked by about every reputable economist I have heard comment.  Whatever the government receives in tariff revenues will be offset by a slowing economy that results in lower individual and business income tax revenues.  I don’t think any 2024 Trump voters angered by inflation who lose their jobs because their employers had to cut costs or their employers’ customers bought less of a higher-priced product will consider it a good trade even if a recession cools inflation – a cooling which those of us with longer memories are aware is by no means a certainty (see, “1970s stagflation”).

Preventing Illegal Drug Importation.  Let’s put Canada aside – the BBC recently reported that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data indicates that only about 0.2% of all seizures of fentanyl entering the U.S. are made at the Canadian border (there may be more fentanyl entering Canada from the U.S. than the other way around) — and focus on illegal importation of illegal drugs through our southern border.  While the stated objective is obviously vital and one to which America should devote its law enforcement resources, the cartels in the countries in which illegal drug manufacture and export are major industries can bring more pressure to bear on their governments than Mr. Trump can hope to apply through tariffs.  This Administration rationale is a makeweight.   

Reshoring American Manufacturing.  Again, while the stated goal sounds good – and is good, in certain strategic areas such as advanced chip production and medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing – anybody with an IQ of 2 should recognize that America cannot meaningfully reverse four decades of manufacturing offshoring in months, or even in a few years.  I would submit that those Americans who voted for Mr. Trump with visions of the golden pot of jobs at the end of the rainbow cannot help but be sorely disappointed.  Any meaningful transition of manufacturing back to America – assuming such ever occurs – will take longer than the working lives of many Trump voters; the workers ultimately needed to operate any such reestablished factories will require sophisticated training from an educational system that the Trump Administration is currently gutting; the returning factories might well be placed near educational and urban centers, where relatively fewer Trump voters reside; what such reshoring will provide Trump voters who have been ravaged by inflation are relatively higher-priced goods created by workers paid more than their international counterparts; and – the cruelest irony of all for those envisioning the pot of gold — these new factories are likely to be so automated that they will provide few employment opportunities for the relatively small segment of 2024 Trump voters who will still be young and educable enough to benefit from any concerted, decades-long reshoring effort.

The President’s Gross Misreading of the Political Leaders He Confronts.  I made this comment about Mr. Trump during his first term, and it obviously remains true today:  he thinks like a businessman, not a political leader.  Businesspeople think in terms of money – what is the best achievable financial deal.  If one contracting commercial party has greater leverage than the other, the weaker party will bend to make the best economic arrangement it can.  Political leaders think in terms of power and image.  (One cannot maintain power without projecting a certain image – what the Asians refer to as, “face.”)  The difference in perspective is crucial.  Mr. Trump believes that because he (America) is big and other countries are littler, he can dictate to these smaller nations in the way he shorted the tradespeople who worked on his New York buildings in the last century.  I don’t think he can.  Political leaders don’t think that way.  Take any number of the most formidable international leaders of the modern era – both American Roosevelts, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin, Mao Zedong, Xi Jinping; I would venture that required to make a stark choice between retaining their power and living in a cave, or ceding their power and living the remainder of their days in a luxurious palace, all would opt to retain the power and live in the cave.  Mr. Trump would choose the palace.  I don’t care how small one’s country is; one doesn’t become the leader of a nation – there are only 195 of them, out of a world population of over 8 billion people — without a significant amount of pride and chutzpah.  I would suggest that Mr. Trump has been so blatantly offensive in his approach that any political leader can take a stand against America’s tariffs and will be able to credibly claim to his/her people for at least a year that any hardship they’re suffering is America’s fault.

Of course, Mr. Xi is a special case.  One doesn’t become and remain the leader of the People’s Republic of China, the visceral heir to Chairman Mao and the most powerful autocrat in the world, by being a namby-pamby.  He is not going to buckle because Mr. Trump says boo; he can’t afford to look weak, lest he encourage ambitions in the minds of some of his less-supportive Politburo members.  Some have suggested that since America is the larger economy, it holds the upper hand in any trade war with China.  I’m not so sure.  I have seen reported that China’s top 2023 imports from the U.S. were oilseeds, grains, oil and gas — vital to the (relatively pro-Trump) energy and farming sectors of our economy, but available from other nations like Brazil and Russia.  As all who care are aware, China has recently responded to Mr. Trump’s tariffs by restricting its exports of rare earth minerals, which are integral in the manufacture of a raft of items from military equipment to semiconductor chips to smartphones, and cannot be acquired elsewhere.  Certainly, America has cards to play; at the same time, our relative economic size may not be that big an advantage when dealing with an autocratic government which can be less concerned about its people’s sentiment and can quell any unrest not only by force but by being able to justifiably blame America for the economic disruption that has caused their discomfort.

Political Ramifications.  If you believe – I don’t, but such is a point best elaborated upon in a subsequent post alluded to above – that the Trump Administration intends to allow free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028, Mr. Trump’s tariff policies are an egregiously stupid political blunder, as they are seemingly likely to cause a recession that will cost jobs, fuel inflation – arguably the issue that provided him his 1.5% margin over Vice President Kamala Harris last November – and invite devastating retaliation by our allies and enemies alike against American economic sectors heretofore very supportive of him.  I would submit that the Administration’s message, essentially, “Americans must absorb some short-term pain for long term gain,” won’t sell in an environment in which the American economy was humming when Mr. Trump took office, and there is no evident outside threat – such as Pearl Harbor, 9/11 or COVID – for which Americans have been traditionally willing to sacrifice.  Although Mr. Trump occasionally refers to Abraham Lincoln, he obviously has no idea what Mr. Lincoln actually said during his lifetime; if he did, he might do well to recall Mr. Lincoln’s remarks to the Washington Temperance Society of Springfield, Illinois, on February 22, 1842:

“Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity; and none will do it enthusiastically.  Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorise [sic] on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think, we are, at the same time, doing something for ourselves.  What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, to ask or expect a whole community to rise up and labor for the temporal happiness of others after themselves shall be consigned to the dust ….  Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are but little regarded, even in our own cases, much less in the cases of others. [Emphasis Mr. Lincoln’s].”

Losing the Forest for the Trees.  What I consider the most damning indictment of Mr. Trump’s tariff policies saved for last.  I have heard a number of competent experts opine that Mr. Trump is correct when he claims that other nations haven’t always been “fair” to us in their trade practices.  Through his tariff initiatives, Mr. Trump is seemingly seeking to “right” these perceived “wrongs.”  I would argue that at this point in history, his approach, on the whole, is absurd.  We have been the winners.  I completely agree that China, which has taken advantage of us for decades through trade and currency manipulation and stealing our intellectual property, is a geopolitical and economic rival that must be dealt with differently and more aggressively, particularly in areas affecting our national security.  I also agree that American Administrations in the last quarter of the last century should have been more cognizant of how manufacturing offshoring and our trade arrangements were going to adversely affect the American factory worker, and implemented tax incentives and development programs to counteract those effects.  That said, as of the day Mr. Trump reassumed the presidency, America had the largest and best economy in the world, the envy of every other nation.  Assuming that other countries have indeed technically taken trade advantage of us over the years, it was obviously of no account; it has been America that has grown ever economically stronger.  Here, I admit to being influenced by my own experience.  I recall the practices of the insurance company that I, and several of those who read these notes, served for decades; for most of our time there, our organization – contrary to the cliché – maintained a very generous claims approach toward the niche market it served.  When one joined the Company, one was puzzled why the Company frequently paid claims that it arguably could have legally denied or limited under regulator-approved policy language.  Then, as the years passed, one came to recognize – as the Company consistently grew – that its success was because its market rewarded it with loyalty, embraced new service offerings, and provided it a stream of ever-increasing revenue.  Other providers serving the same niche customers in other capacities that hewed to the terms of their agreements — limiting their obligations where they legally could — ultimately lost customer share and departed the marketplace.  We got bigger.  We got stronger.

Mr. Trump, consumed with petty vindictiveness, simply doesn’t get how America prospered, how it achieved the strength he seeks to exploit by focusing on the forest rather than the trees.  Such is beyond his compass.  Perhaps at some point, if faced with a slowing economy, he will suddenly make some transparently face-saving declaration that will be gobbled up by his willingly-gullible supporters, and – perhaps save tariffs on China – return to essentially where we were on his “Liberation Day.”  If such occurs, all that will have been achieved through his aberrant machinations – assuming a recession is avoided — is to have alienated an entire world.  We are where we are, and we will be where we will be.     

You’ve long since decided that you didn’t mind that period with less Noise 😉 .  Stay well.

“Can’t You Just Shoot Them?”

[Two introductory notes:

The first observations in this long post are blatantly obvious to anyone closely following our public affairs; I chose to keep them in because they weren’t that blatantly obvious when written – the Trump Administration moves faster than this old blogger can type — and for anyone who hasn’t had the life space to dwell on the wide range of the untoward acts of President Donald Trump and his acolytes.

Second, an insightful friend once remarked to me that I often try to end a post with some hint of optimism — and sometimes conclude on a happier note than I actually feel.  He was right.  Viewer Discretion Advised:  If you’ve already reached the limits of your emotional endurance at Mr. Trump’s and his minions’ destruction of the American way of life, click out NOW.  There is little reassurance in what follows.]

President Donald Trump recently declared to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, “You don’t have the cards right now.”  Putting the unfolding Ukrainian travesty aside, I would submit that right now, Americans who love true democracy don’t have a strong hand.  Although Mr. Trump has been in office only two months, I think we’ve already entered the final countdown.  Before contemplating where we may be headed, let’s consider the guardrails now tottering, tattered or demolished:

Through his aberrant behavior Mr. Trump has laid bare that the Founding Fathers, notwithstanding their attempt to design a constitutional system of checks and balances, were at bottom assuming that Americans would elect presidents who were, in the words of Alexander Hamilton writing as “Publius” in Federalist No. 68, to “an eminent degree endowed with … a different kind of merit, to establish … the esteem and confidence of the whole Union.”  In the past, we’ve unquestionably had some storied presidents who did what they thought was  necessary to protect the nation without fussing over the limits of their own Constitutional authority:  Franklin Roosevelt’s 1942 Executive Order was the basis for the forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans; Theodore Roosevelt made clear in his autobiography that when he felt it was necessary, he would take any action that he did not consider specifically prohibited to him under the Constitution; and Saint Abraham Lincoln arguably skated over the Constitutional line a few times during the Civil War.  In retrospect, these proactive presidents were sometimes misguided, sometimes clearly morally wrong.  Even so, what protected our republic overall in these instances was that these presidents were, although far from perfect, “endowed … with a different kind of merit.”  Mr. Trump’s own narcissistic insecure vindictive amorality has vitiated this guardrail.

Presidents have generally surrounded themselves with Cabinet and other advisors who were accomplished in their own right, respectful of the president they served without being sycophantic.  President George Washington appointed Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State and Mr. Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, each of whom advised the president loyally while having visions for the nation very different from each other and sometimes at variance from those of Mr. Washington himself.  Now, we have the likes of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  So much for that guardrail.

The Legislative Branch was not only supposed to be the co-equal of the Executive Branch in our government; the Founding Fathers arguably intended the Congress to be the preeminent Branch, which they established through the First Article of the Constitution.  The envisioned that Senators and Representatives would be estimable individuals who would zealously maintain their own Constitutional prerogatives.  Today, in addition to largely impotent Democrats wailing and gnashing their teeth, Congressional Republicans clearly don’t go to the bathroom without the approval of Mr. Trump and his co-President, Elon Musk.  Until they receive the okay, these legislators sit there and hold it.  This guardrail is not only gone; it’s vaporized.

As to the Judicial Branch:  while there are partisan MAGA hacks and toadies on the various levels of the federal bench such as Associate Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and US. District Court FLSD Judge Aileen Cannon, I maintain that the vast majority of federal judges administer the law fairly and accurately.  That said, we have already seen multiple instances of the Trump Administration’s willingness to skirt and perhaps outright defy judicial rulings.  Now we have the President of the United States calling for the impeachment of a federal circuit judge because he didn’t like the judge’s ruling – which won’t happen, but serves Mr. Trump’s larger purpose:  to discredit the judiciary in the eyes of his willingly gullible base.  What is a federal court going to be able to do if/when it’s clear that Trump officials are simply disregarding its ruling?  You can take this one:  Zip.  Zilcho.  Nada.  Guardrail down.

Let’s look next at the so-called “Fourth Branch of Government,” the free press (I still like the old-fashioned phrase 🙂 ).  Put aside the Fox News and alt-right propaganda machine and consider the broader picture.  The White House is now limiting access to Mr. Trump, punishing transgressors for coverage it doesn’t like.  CNN has reordered its lineup in a way that unseated an anchor, Jim Acosta, whom Mr. Trump detests.  MSNBC (which has also reorganized its lineup) is being spun off by NBCUniversal.  Other news organizations are seemingly altering their commentary.  From one perspective, one can sympathize with the challenge credible news organizations face; they have only so many minutes and column inches to address the avalanche of Administration machinations.  At the same time, I am increasingly angered with the modulated manner in which media is reporting the Trump Administration’s actions.  I believe that if Mr. Trump did shoot five people on 5th Avenue in New York tomorrow, some of the outlets we listen to would report it in subdued tones, and move on.  (I can hear the late Comedian George Carlin as The Weatherman, intoning, “A meteor is now crashing into the earth, so tomorrow it’ll be a bit cloudy.”)  We are not transitioning from chocolate to strawberry but from chocolate to strychnine.  They should say so.  Guardrail – if not destroyed, certainly no bastion.

One might have assumed that the views of the leaders of America’s business community might be a check on the President’s behavior, at least on economic issues such as tariffs.  Wrong.  These leaders are cowed.  Mr. Trump has proven that he will move unscrupulously to crush or cripple any interest that he perceives to disagree with him.  CEOs of crushed and crippled companies don’t get to stay CEOs, with their multi-million dollar salaries and corporate perks, for very long.  Big business won’t stay boo no matter what Mr. Trump does.  Guardrail – if this, indeed, ever amounted to one – gone.

The financial markets remain one intriguing guardrail for which Mr. Trump’s reaction cannot yet be assessed.  They are faceless, can’t be bullied, and reassuring them was a priority for Mr. Trump during his first term.  That said, while the Administration clearly was at first a bit unnerved when the stock market dropped 10% when Mr. Trump imposed his tariffs, it has since seemingly become more indifferent to the market’s concerns.  (It remains to be seen how Mr. Trump will react if the markets drop another 10% or more.)    

There was another guardrail that I thought might hold:  Mr. Trump’s own insecurity.  What seemingly hasn’t yet penetrated the consciousness of average MAGAs is that Mr. Trump doesn’t need their votes anymore.  (I suspect the President views his own undeniable physical degradation a greater impediment to a third term than a mere Constitutional prohibition.)  I have previously noted my belief that the speed at which the Trump Administration curtailed government benefits and services relied upon by Trump voters would be an indicator whether it intended to subject itself to free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028.  I thought the President’s continuing need for his supporters’ adulation might stay his hand from adversely impacting programs they valued, but if reports that the Administration is advising Congressional Republicans to avoid town hall meetings are accurate, it is a telling sign that the Trump Team no longer cares about its supporters’ concerns.  (Despite its protestations, the Administration is certainly aware that many irate attendees are Trump voters, not nonlocal crashers.)  At present, the sturdiness of this guardrail remains unclear.

The foregoing may have been as tedious as it was demoralizing, but perhaps served to highlight both how quickly we’ve advanced toward authoritarianism and that we’re going way too fast to expect the MAGA Administration to voluntarily apply any restraint.  As I said in a note about a month ago, the efforts of Messrs. Trump and Musk couldn’t suit Russian President Vladimir Putin’s purposes any better than if the Russian President had specified them himself.  That said, Americans who believe in democracy still have cards to play; how highly one values their hand depends upon how one thinks Mr. Trump will respond when it is played.

As the Trump Administration’s cuts to Medicaid, Veterans Benefits, the IRS, federal emergency services, state and municipal funding, farm aid, in the offing Social Security and Medicare, etc., etc., increasingly ripple through the economy, they will cost additional federal public sector jobs, further limit or withdraw federal services, cascade into state and local public sector jobs and services, affect the private sector, and diminish or eliminate benefits to which Trump supporters consider themselves entitled.  Watch a Wyoming farmer losing subsidies or a Mississippi senior citizen losing Medicaid.  Wait until Bird Flu or Measles outbreaks decimate less vaccinated (i.e., MAGA) areas.  Wait until a major hurricane hits the southern Atlantic or the Gulf (of Mexico 🙂 ) coasts and FEMA has no resources to help devastated citizens.  2024 Trump voters will no longer be distracted by inane diversions; a pivotal segment will feel betrayed.  They won’t be sad; they’ll be mad.  They will join the 49% of the citizenry who already bitterly opposes the Trump Administration.  It’s already starting. 

(An aside:  I completely agree with U.S. Senate Minority Leader U.S. NY Sen. Chuck Schumer’s tactical decision to capitulate to the Republicans’ one-sided Continuing Resolution to fund the government rather than shut the government down.  At that juncture it was too early to make a stand; the bulk of our citizens had not yet begun to experience the full consequences of Republicans’ initiatives.  Shutting the government down would have simply made it appear to many Americans that any ensuing loss of government services was the Democrats’ fault.  By acquiescing to the Republican bill, Democrats have ensured that Mr. Trump will own any pain voters hereafter feel due to Republican initiatives.  If democracy is saved, Mr. Schumer’s maneuver may in retrospect be seen to have played a significant part.)

As the effects of the Administration’s actions become ever more apparent – just as the weather warms – the number of demonstrations (which are already occurring) could well grow.  They could well be large, raucous, and widespread.  If Mr. Trump comes to confront a people in which over 60% bitterly and vociferously oppose him, he will have a challenge not faced by Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1930s or Putin in Russia in the 2000s.  Neither of these countries had deep democratic roots when Hitler and Putin respectively took power.  Their citizens, accustomed to centuries of autocracy, had no visceral belief that what they thought mattered.  On the contrary, after 250 years of democracy, Americans across the political spectrum inherently expect their leaders to listen to them.

[Another aside:  at this point in the Trump term, U.S. VT Sen. Bernie Sanders, currently conducting rallies across the country (sometimes accompanied by U.S. NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), is the perfect spearhead for the anti-Trump movement.  He has credibility across the political spectrum as an advocate for working people and the disadvantaged, while clearly being too old to still entertain presidential aspirations.  I am guessing that Mr. Sanders has determined that his last great service to America is to inspire the resistance to MAGA until the Democratic Party coalesces behind its next leader.]

Confronted by widespread discontent in their countries, the response would be simple for either Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping:  you send your military out, shoot some demonstrators, throw a thousand others in jail, and everybody else will get in line.

What will Mr. Trump do if the protests envisioned here do materialize?  I would suggest that the best result that Americans who love democracy can expect is that Mr. Trump will back off, at least to a certain extent (to the extent he can; I think a lot of what he has already broken can’t be easily reconstructed).  But how strong a hand is it?

I have seen it reported that Mark Esper, the last Secretary of Defense in the first Trump Administration, related in his memoir, A Sacred Oath, that when demonstrators protested in Washington, D.C., after the murder of George Floyd, Mr. Trump asked authorities, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

I leave it to you to decide how you think Mr. Trump will respond if he ever feels truly threatened by widespread rallies and demonstrations.  Although I am confident that today, U.S. ME Sen. Susan Collins would say, “President Trump would never deploy our armed forces against American citizens,” to any realist, concerted anti-MAGA activism will not be without risk.

Still, at this juncture, those who believe in the American way of life as it has existed for the last quarter of a millennium still have cards to play. 

(I guess I did end with a slight note of optimism, after all 😉 ).

We’ll see what happens.

BLACK LIVES MAT

As all who care are aware, a mural of the words, “BLACK LIVES MATTER,” which was placed on 16th Street in Washington, D.C., in 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, is being removed by the city, reportedly due to pressure being applied to city officials by Republican members of Congress.  I haven’t seen reports of widespread protest at the removal.

The irony of this note is that I don’t believe in identity politics.  I absolutely and viscerally believe in equality – the right of all of our people of every persuasion to be able to freely, fully, and peacefully use their gifts – but I am not convinced that we as a polity benefit from the artificial imposition of diversity.  You may correct me – I have not performed detailed research on the data – but it is my impression that although the affirmative action programs implemented since the 1960s have reaped great rewards in certain individual cases, they have not brought about the overall societal changes hoped for when they were initiated.  While I am not sure that I have ever been specifically aware of the BLM mural in Washington, D.C., one could not help but be aware of such memorials being created throughout the country after Mr. Floyd was killed, and I remember wondering at the time whether, despite the massive outrage all decent human beings felt at the brazen execution of Mr. Floyd, it was useful to single out the injustices done to any one group of our citizens so markedly.

So, I am surprised at the anger and foreboding I feel as the BLM mural is being removed in our nation’s capital.  Once the money had been spent to install it, it certainly wasn’t doing any harm, and its message was a positive one.  Removing it is incurring public expense that isn’t required from a structural standpoint.  One is merely stating the patently obvious when noting that these self-proclaimed Republican guardians of public coffers are baseless hypocrites who have no trouble wasting public funds when it suits their agenda.  However, the wasted expense is just as obviously but a drop in the ocean of the import of the issue.  Here, we don’t need to get bound up in a debate regarding the correct approach toward migrants who have admittedly crossed our border illegally.  Our government is Making America Great Again by deleting an expression of support for the wellbeing of a segment of our citizens.  Its concern for these citizens is literally being erased.

BLACK LIVES MATTER

BLACK LIVES MATTE

BLACK LIVES MATT

BLACK LIVES MAT

BLACK LIVES MA

BLACK LIVES M

BLACK LIVES

BLACK LIVE

BLACK LIV

BLACK LI

BLACK L

BLACK

BLAC

BLA

BL

B

Not that concerned? 

Who’s next? 

It could be me.

It could be you.

What Will Be, Will Be: Redux

Something you and I absolutely agree upon:  I’m not that smart.  However, this post is entered in shocked reaction to a comment by MSNBC’s Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough today, to the effect that legislators and financiers with whom Mr. Scarborough talks are stunned that President Donald Trump is actually doing … exactly what he said he was going to do during the campaign — now augmented by hints that Mr. Trump and Elon Musk are considering doing what Mr. Trump has always said he wouldn’t do:  tamper with Social Security and Medicare.  What follows are excerpts (all italics appeared in the original) from a post entitled, “What Will Be, Will Be,” entered in these pages six days after Mr. Trump’s election.  (If you care, scroll down to fill in the portions I’ve omitted here.)

“‘Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow?  Never!  All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?  I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us.  It cannot come from abroad.  If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher.  As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.’

  • Abraham Lincoln, January 27, 1838

…

I have always thought that the American presidency called for a fundamentally good person who was willing to take morally questionable actions to achieve a greater good.  It is clear that many Americans are willing to abide a man whom even a large share of his supporters concede is amoral in hopes that he will do good things.  [I am particularly struck by those Evangelicals who admit that they wouldn’t want Mr. Trump as a pastor but can abide him as president.  Granting that the Bible can be cited for just about anything anyone wants, one cannot help but pause at the seeming … let’s say, incongruity … that any such literalist Christians so readily disregarded Matthew 7: 17-18:  ‘Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears rotten fruit.  A good tree cannot bear rotten fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.’] It is what it is.

What comes next?

…

Over the next four years, I expect:  that Mr. Trump – already exhausted and mentally degrading – to become a figurehead for a radical reformation of our federal government by Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance, Donald Trump, Jr., and the MAGA zealots who have put together Project 2025; that all criminal charges now adjudged or pending against Mr. Trump will be dispensed with; that all of the convicted January 6th rioters will be pardoned; that many of Mr. Trump’s most prominent political and media critics will be prosecuted by the Trump Justice Department on trumped up (if you will 😉 ) charges … or otherwise pressured into submission; that MAGAs will pass measures that in fact if not in name will serve to disenfranchise Democratic-leaning constituencies; that many legal as well as illegal immigrants will be swept up in the Administration’s deportation initiatives; that MAGA-sympathetic generals will be appointed to lead the American military, and that at some point under their direction our armed forces will take action against peaceful American citizen demonstrators; that violence will increase against African Americans, legal immigrants of color, non-Christians, and Americans with untraditional gender and sexual preferences; that NATO will remain in name, but will have severely reduced effectiveness as America substantially limits its participation; that Russia will absorb at least Ukraine and possibly a number of NATO countries formerly members of the USSR; that Mr. Trump and his cohort will continue their approach of division and distraction; … and that — the bitterest irony of all — the gap between the American rich and those poor who consider Mr. Trump their Messiah will continue to widen.  (The cruelest joke will be that because of alt-right propaganda, most are likely not to even realize that Mr. Trump did nothing for them.)

…

If Mr. Trump and his minions actually effect the tariffs and tax cuts for which he’s advocated and bend securities laws to favor powerful oligarchs like Elon Musk, it doesn’t take an economics degree to predict that inflation, the deficit, and accordingly interest rates will soar and the stock market will drop; if they effect the mass deportations of illegal aliens he has promised, certain sectors of our economy dependent on illegal labor will crater, materially adversely affecting the entire economy; and that if they obtain the control over the Federal Reserve Mr. Trump seeks, global confidence in the dollar will plummet along with its value and hasten its abandonment as the world’s reserve currency.    

For clues as to whether the MAGA Administration will be willing, contrary to my deepest misgivings, to allow for a free and fair 2028 election, an early indication will be how the Administration approaches issues that do matter to Trump voters.  Ones coming to mind are the conservative shibboleths of a nationwide abortion ban, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts (there are a lot of Trump voters who benefit from Medicaid), and repeal of the now-popular Affordable Care Act without an essentially-like replacement.  In these areas, Mr. Trump, even in his obviously mentally and emotionally degraded state, is cannier than his doctrinaire followers.  If he or his MAGA cohort truly intend to subject their hold on power to the free will of all American citizens in 2028, they will abstain from any actions that they know will outrage their base.  A more ominous indicator of any anti-democratic intentions they may harbor will arise, if at all, after the 2026 mid-terms, if MAGA propaganda starts to stoke unfounded fears of civil unrest or insurrection.” 

I apologize for taking your time with an unplanned vent, particularly one which is little more than a repeat of what has already been entered here (although surrendering to such impulses is one of the perks of a site like this 😉 ). I am just having trouble grasping that the supposed sophisticates Mr. Scarborough referred to couldn’t see coming what was as plain as the noses on their faces.  I hope to post an entry in the not-too-distant future regarding the condition our traditional guardrails – those destroyed, and those remaining.  Keep your seatbelt on. 

On Lenten Fasting: Redux

[There is obviously much to address in our current state, but Ash Wednesday comes but once a year, and it is today.  I reenter a post from past Ash Wednesdays – and will very likely continue to reenter it on future Ash Wednesdays – because I find its teaching a more spiritual perspective than the traditional concept of Lenten denial.]

Today is Ash Wednesday:  in the Christian world, the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period of reflection and performance of penance for one’s sins in preparation for Jesus’ Passion and Death on Good Friday and Resurrection on Easter Sunday.  It is a time in which Christians have traditionally fasted – customarily understood to mean that one of faith will willingly bear the pang of hunger, or endure some other discomfort – so as to identify in a microscopic way with the Lord’s suffering.  Even so, I offer the following Scriptural description of another means of fasting by which one might embrace the spirit of Lent:

“Would that today you might fast so as to make your voice heard on high!

Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance:

That a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes?

Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:

Releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke;

Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke;

Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;

Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.

Then, your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed;

Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and He will say:

‘Here I am.’”

 Isaiah 58:  4-9