Month: August 2016

The Rio Olympics, day four.

Americans can’t ask for more.

A Magnificent Five

Kept a gold streak alive

And Katie and Phelps slammed the door.

There once was a Donald named Trump.

He’s currently taking his lumps.

The GOP brass

Think that he’s just an ass

And his poll numbers are in a slump.

It occurred to me after my last post that Trump views economic life as a kind of endless version of Monopoly, with the winner finishing with the largest amount of “money.”  The difference, of course, is that Monopoly has rules, and Trump thinks that only fools and losers follow the rules.

Most of Trump’s Detroit speech was just traditional Republican tax cut and deregulation pablum; I will leave that to other commentators.  The more interesting part was the segment on trade agreements, which, notwithstanding his focus on Obama and the Clintons, was actually an assault on the establishments of both parties.

Trump’s views on trade are an outgrowth of his Social Darwinian attitudes regarding life and the world in general.  The syllogism works something like this:

1. Life is an unending series of negotiations in which the strong impose their will on others with the objective, not of reaching a mutually acceptable outcome, but of showing their superiority (i.e., “winning”).
2.  Foreign trade in particular is subject only to the law of the jungle.  Agreements, treaties, and business norms are just a veneer covering power relationships.
3.  For individual countries, “winning at trade” is measured by national surpluses or deficits.

While this line of reasoning is logically coherent, its purported “realism” bears no resemblance to the world as we know it.  Buying and selling is about satisfying the needs of both parties, not “winning.”  The world economy runs on confidence, agreements, and ethical norms, not just on power relationships. Finally, as I have stated before, in a democratic capitalist country, trade takes place on an entity to entity (not a nation to nation) basis, and both parties to every transaction view themselves as “winners.”

The Rio Olympics, day three.

Complaining about NBC.

Our guys in the gym

Knew their chances were slim

But our swimmers are a sight to see.

The Clinton campaign is attempting to persuade Republicans and independents that Trump is unfit to govern, while pushing a very progressive policy agenda for the benefit of the left.  These two themes are in no way logically inconsistent, but they present problems of emphasis and presentation that will have to be handled with great care; otherwise, both sides of the spectrum may come to doubt the sincerity of the message.

Before Dylan, brilliant songwriters who were indifferent singers either wrote for the stage or churned out hits for others.  Dylan persuaded a host of other singer/songwriters to go off on their own, and the stage suffered for fifty years.

Today, there is a renewed interest among established pop stars in writing musicals, which makes sense, for the following reasons:

1.  There is a tremendous amount of money to be made in writing a hit musical.  No elaboration necessary.

2.  Songs in great musicals have a longer shelf life than the average pop single.  Writing for the stage is both a tremendous challenge and a potential gateway to immortality.

3.  Some of the stage shows of our current pop singers look like Cirque de Soleil, anyway.  A Taylor Swift or Katy Perry show looks a lot more like a Broadway or Vegas production than Dylan singing in a coffeehouse.

The Rio Olympics, day two.

Phelps wins a gold–nothing new.

Simone Biles rocks.

Wouldn’t say that’s a shock.

The Joker leaves town feeling blue.

When Dick Cheney was VP, I used to say of him that he had only two interests in life:  making money and kicking butt.

Two after-the-fact observations:

1.  Doesn’t that sound like Trump, too?
2.  In spite of his differences with the Bush Administration, is it any wonder he is the GOP nominee?

As I predicted weeks ago, Trump’s disaster movie of a campaign has gone off the rails since the conventions, which leads to the following observations:

1. How can you plausibly claim to be a strong man when you can’t even run a decent campaign?
2.  There is a reason why our system contains so many checks and balances:  what do you do when your man on horseback doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground?

The analogy obviously isn’t perfect, but Trump reminds me in some respects of Bo Xilai:  a swaggering, tough-talking, self-styled crime fighter who succeeded in building a base of popular support outside of the usual Communist Party channels.  The Chinese oligarchy (correctly) viewed him as a threat, and crushed him.  The GOP establishment had no such luck with Trump, so the job of ruining his reputation and career will be left to the American electorate as a whole.

The lesson here is that politics in the two systems are not as completely different as we imagine.  The drama in the Chinese system, however, mostly takes place outside of the public eye.

Like all other Americans, I will be rooting for American competitors  at the Rio Games.  But is success in international athletic events evidence of the greatness of your country?

Of course not.  All those gold medals didn’t exactly hold the Soviet Union together, did they?

You can see the evidence of globalization in athletics everywhere:  from the sale of Kobe Bryant jerseys in China to the growing popularity of the EPL in the United States.  The creation of worldwide markets for athletic events has predictably resulted in hugely increased salaries for top performers and skyrocketing values for successful franchises.  In many cases, on the other hand, interest in inferior local products has withered away.

The Olympic Games are probably the ultimate in global athletics.  The entire world will be watching the games.  A few of the athletes will become international celebrities.  Most will be also-rans and will be forgotten quickly.

The difference between the Olympics and, say, textile manufacturing, is that no one feels sorry for unsuccessful athletes.  Donald Trump is not riding to their rescue.  Free trade and meritocracy prevail.

There is a lesson here for the politics of trade.

Putin, like another politician we all know and admire, clearly views successful athletes as an extension of himself and his regime, so the revelations regarding the Russian doping program, and their consequences, have to be a terrible blow to him.

Here’s the pathetic thing:  can’t you imagine a President Trump pushing for a similar American doping program to prove that he’s a “winner?”  Of course you can.  In Trump’s Social Darwinian jungle, everything is permitted except weakness, and nothing matters except his ego.

             What a Fool Believes

He was born somewhere back in black Africa.

Or maybe Indonesia.

Trying hard to convince us that he grew up in Hawaii.

But we’re not so dumb.

We keep the fire lit, and Fox News Channel on.

Never giving up in the face of the facts.

We don’t realize it never really was.

 

He won’t fight Muslims today.

He keeps refusing to say.

As he makes another apology

Everybody else must surely know

It’s time that he goes.

 

What a fool believes he sees

No wise man has the power to reason away.

What seems to be

Is always better than nothing.

Than nothing at all.

 

Parody of “What a Fool Believes” by Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins.  I didn’t touch the chorus–it was perfect as is.