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 

Я українець

kennedy youtube i am a berliner – Google Search

By this time, all who care have seen part or all of the bitter exchange that occurred in the White House Oval Office on February 28th between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.  To state what was blatantly obvious from the moment it was clear that Mr. Trump was reclaiming the presidency:  America is going to abandon Ukraine to Russia.  The minerals deal is equal parts transparent ruse and cruel prank.  In my lifetime, our nation has made foreign policy  blunders which have yielded terrible consequences, but as far as I am aware, each was undertaken by the given President, no matter how mistakenly, with the intent of protecting Americans’ freedom and that of others around the world.  What the Trump Administration is doing to Ukraine is akin to taking the side of a brutal rapist and demanding to be thanked by the victim. 

I don’t know Ukrainian, and thus am relying on Google to have translated accurately, that the Ukranian phrase I have cut and pasted here reflects my intent; but I am confident President John Kennedy wouldn’t mind my paraphrasing and embracing his imagery from over sixty years ago when I declare that all free people, wherever they may live, are citizens of Ukraine.  And therefore, as an American citizen living in America and as – at least, as yet — a free man, I take pride in entering here, “Я українець.”

DOGE and the Mark of Cain

“Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let us go out into the field.’  Now when they were in the field, Cain turned against his brother Abel and slew him. … And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? … [N]ow cursed are you in the soil which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. … [A] fugitive and a wanderer shall you be on the earth.’  Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is too great to bear. … I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.’  But the Lord said to him, ‘Not so!  Whoever kills Cain shall be punished sevenfold.’  So the LORD put a mark on Cain, lest anyone should kill him at sight.”

  • The Book of Genesis 4:8, 10, 12-15.

The Genesis verses cited above were read worldwide at yesterday’s Catholic Masses.

I expressed a deep regret yesterday in these pages for the federal employees whose careers are being mindlessly destroyed by President Donald Trump “and his acolytes” – i.e., Elon Musk and his minions.  The Scripture passage made me reflect on the potential consequences for another group that I had not previously considered. 

If numerous reports I have seen are accurate, Mr. Musk is doing a large share of his culling of federal workers through a force of elite college graduates in their 20s.  Those of us with a little more seasoning realize that when you’re in your early 20s, it doesn’t matter how academically bright you are or what school you went to; you don’t even know what you don’t know.  These youngsters probably think that these heady times are going to last forever. But if rational democratic forces do stage a return at some point in the future, and the ways of Messrs. Trump, Musk, and their MAGA lot are cast aside, it almost certainly won’t affect Mr. Trump personally; he’ll be insulated by his Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling and grateful benefactors who will ensure that he has a cushy existence to the end of his days.  It likewise won’t affect Mr. Musk personally; he’ll be insulated by his fortune and will be able to live wherever in splendor for the rest of his days. 

It is Mr. Musk’s young vigilantes who have long lives ahead, and who won’t be protected by court rulings, fortunes, or benefactors.  It is these youngsters who will ultimately face the wrath of their republic.

The priest who said yesterday’s Mass chose to characterize the Lord’s action as one of mercy toward Cain – that He could have destroyed Cain, or let others kill Cain, but instead chose to let Cain go forth to walk the earth.  (Let’s put aside the obvious question as to whom Cain feared would kill him – after all, his parents were the first people, and he and Abel were their first children.)  Although I have very high regard for this priest, I was not so sure I agreed with his interpretation of the Lord’s action; I wondered whether the Lord didn’t instead punish Cain by ensuring that he had to wander the earth for his sin – as a “fugitive,” presumably for decades – when death might have been the more merciful sentence.

If the MAGAs aren’t successful in establishing an American Apartheid and these young Musk minions haven’t broken any laws, they, like Cain, will be left to wander the earth.  Given the enmity that Messrs. Trump and Musk have now engendered among so many throughout the democratic world, where will they be able to go to fulfill the potential they had the day that Mr. Musk first laid eyes on them?

While of no consolation to those whose careers they are ravaging, these young vigilantes may find that “DOGE” is ultimately their Mark of Cain.  Some, as they grow older and wiser and no matter the fate of the MAGA crusade, will find that it is indelibly branded on their psyches; on their souls.

A Sucker’s Bet

My taste buds never grew up.  I like what the average two-year-old likes.  When left to my own devices, I will often opt for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (after all, it’s The Cheesiest  🙂 ) or Oscar Mayer baloney on bread (although these aren’t as good as those of my youth, since TLOML refuses to buy Wonder Bread, thus depriving me of the opportunity to build my body in 12 ways).  That said:  of all of the grotesque appointments consummated since Inauguration Day (a close friend noted to me recently that the only qualified person President Donald Trump has chosen seems to be Stormy Daniels), that which is perhaps the most aesthetically absurd although not the most important is Mr. Trump’s becoming Chairman of the Board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.  His election is akin to me being named Chairman of the Board of the American Culinary Federation.

We regularly see reports that Democrats are “struggling to find their footing” as to how to respond to Mr. Trump’s policy blitzkrieg.  This is enough to make one blink.  Democrats should emulate MAGAs and alt-right media and KEEP IT SIMPLE:  POUND INFLATION and ELON MUSK.  If the economists one reads have any competence at all – you can take that one – inflation is not abating and Mr. Trump’s current and proposed tariffs will make it worse.  Probably sooner than later, some DOGE initiative is going to cost a swath of Americans some benefit they rely on.  Mr. Musk is more inherently unlikeable than former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ever was, and look how Republicans were able to demonize her.  Democrats should strive to poison the general public perception of Mr. Musk – which will yield the side benefit of emasculating Mr. Trump.  (I was more than a little surprised to see last week that Mr. Trump – who is particularly attuned to television images – let Mr. Musk and Mr. Musk’s son in the Oval Office while Mr. Trump was meeting with reporters; it was not a good look for Mr. Trump, visually diminishing him while further elevating Mr. Musk’s profile.)  We’ll see whether the Dems — who since President Bill Clinton left office have seemed to believe that politics is, indeed, bean-bag — can actually mount an effective political counterattack.  (Of course, such efforts will only matter if Trump MAGAs permit free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028, which I doubt; a telling clue to their long term intent will be whether Republicans seek cuts in Social Security and Medicare – emotive programs for Trump supporters that could potentially adversely affect their fealty – in future budget negotiations.)

Mr. Trump’s pardoning of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers convicted for their actions in the January 6, 2021, insurrection has provided the President his own private Stermabteilung.

As the Trump Administration digs in, I am heartsick at the havoc being wrought by Mr. Trump and his acolytes on federal employees whose careers are being wantonly and indiscriminately ruined, on our citizens who had the sense to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris but will be engulfed in the commencing maelstrom, and on the compromised and the destitute lacking the bandwidth to even come to grips with what a Trump presidency portends for them.  At the same time, I am not nearly as distressed that the misperceptions of some Trump supporters will begin to rebound upon them.  Those technology oligarchs who have sought to curry favor with Mr. Trump in recent months (not Mr. Musk, who will be protected by his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin) haven’t studied the history of totalitarian regimes closely enough; ultimately, the Trump Administration will come for them and their organizations, and break them.  The admittedly more unfortunate cases will be those at the other end of the Trump spectrum. Although we will never know – the privacy of the voting booth being sacrosanct, at least up to now – if such could be determined, it would seem worthy of betting a dollar that each of the following will occur:  the impoverished mother, who voted for Mr. Trump because of the price of eggs, who loses her SNAP payments; the elderly farmer, who voted for Mr. Trump because he hates the Woke, who has a family member die because the hospital formerly nearest to him closed for lack of Medicaid revenue; the Latino male, who wouldn’t vote for a woman, who watches undocumented family members deported, never to be seen again; and the black male, who voted for Mr. Trump because he was so manly, who is gunned down somewhere by some police officer emboldened by Trump rhetoric.

I know.  You wouldn’t risk the dollar, even presuming the outcomes could be determined.  It’s a sucker’s bet.