Category: Uncategorized

The 45th President Trump.

He’s calling the White House a dump.

He says that’s a lie.

I’m not really sure why.

For the capital makes him a grump.

Published reports suggest that the Trump Administration is prepared to take some fairly drastic action to counter China’s failure to protect the intellectual property of American firms, as well as the protectionist elements of the “Made in China” program.  Is this a good idea?

I feel pretty strongly about free trade, but on this issue, Trump has a case.  China is not a true market economy;  the “Chinese dream” is about the Chinese state, not entrepreneurs;  like Trump, but with better reason, the Chinese government clearly sees the world in mercantilist terms; and many Chinese firms are, in fact, effectively arms of the state, not private entities.  This is a real problem, and if it isn’t addressed, it’s likely to get worse.

I have two big concerns about whatever Trump is cooking up, however.  First of all, starting a unilateral trade war with the Chinese is probably going to be a losing proposition for everyone involved.  If we’re going to try and coerce the Chinese, we would be in a much stronger position if we had the support of our traditional allies.  Trump, however, is more interested in offending them than in working with them, and they may believe at this point that the Chinese are better free traders than we are.  Second, the credibility of this effort is going to be compromised by Trump’s explicit willingness to trade economic chips for help with North Korea.  It is more likely than not that no one will take him seriously, because really, why should they?

I speculated that the Trump effect would be so toxic that the Democratic platform in 2020 would include a fairly strong rejection of protectionism in a post about a week ago.  That’s a few years and a few tariffs away, however;  the current Democratic position statement appears to be an effort to outbid Trump on trade issues.

Ugh!  Democratic protectionism isn’t any prettier than its Republican counterpart.  I don’t think it’s good politics, either;  the blue base is going to associate protectionism with bigotry, and really, who can out-Trump Trump?

The Catholic Church believes that a fertilized egg is a human being, and that the protection of life is an overriding public obligation.  As a result, the Church opposes the death penalty as well as abortion, and supports social programs which help the poor and the powerless.  You may well disagree with some or all of this, but you can’t reasonably say that it is logically inconsistent or hypocritical.

Individual CDs follow the Catholic line on being “pro-life” whether they are themselves Catholic or not.  Reactionaries, on the other hand, think their overriding objective is the deterrence of immoral extramarital sex.  The burdens of giving birth and supporting an unwanted child are, to them, an appropriate sanction for a sin.  In other words, being “pro-life” to them has nothing to do with life itself;  it is a just punishment for wayward women. Reactionaries consequently have no qualms about supporting the death penalty or cutting medical benefits for the poor.

The current conflict in the Catholic Church is between a leadership which clearly thinks that it is a mistake to place too much emphasis on preventing abortion, as opposed to protecting the interests of the born, and conservatives who view abortion as a sort of modern day holocaust, and who are willing to ally themselves politically with the Reactionaries even if it means accepting the rest of the odious Reactionary social agenda as a quid pro quo.

 

Regardless of what you think of the Bush family, there is no doubt they believe in noblesse oblige and the value of public service.  It is much to their credit.

Trump, on the other hand, has no concept of public service.  He doesn’t see himself as anyone’s servant.  To him, winning an election is an exercise in ego gratification, and the presidency is a prize, not a job.  As a result, he has no reason to care about the American people;  it’s all about him, not us.

If you wanted to put everything that is obnoxious about the Trump Administration in one nutshell, you could do worse than that.

It’s easy to understand why Trump has surrounded himself with military figures; like billionaire businessmen and successful athletes, they are “winners.”  They kick butt, like him.  Their swagger is the essence of the current version of the Republican Party.

Is this harmful to the country?  Is civilian control of the military under threat?

The military figures in Trump’s cabinet are, as a whole, probably more competent than the civilians.  I haven’t seen any evidence that they reject civilian control or the rule of law.  And yet, I have to admit that I feel more than a little uneasy about the growing connection between the military and the Republican Party.  There has always been a potential element of tension, given that our servicemen and women come disproportionately from red states, but Trump is making it worse.  What happens if we go a few steps beyond where we are now, and the military start to believe that blue states and liberal democratic values aren’t really a legitimate part of the country?  That’s a possibility that needs to be stopped before it gets started.

The CDs are, at the present time, a faction without a party.  As anyone who reads CD columnists knows, they despise Trump, as they logically should, given their moralistic approach to politics.  Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, two CD senators, are largely responsible for the demise of the Obamacare repeal efforts. On the other hand, they are separated from the Democrats by the very high hurdle of abortion rights.  Where are they to go?

In the short run, given the exigencies of the present situation, the Democrats should welcome them;  all hands are needed on deck to save the country from the worst of Trumpism.  In the long run, the political system will be healthier if they can regain the influence they had on the GOP prior to the failures of the Bush Administration; the lunacy of the Republican Party since 2008 is directly attributable to their decline.  It is difficult to see that happening now, but if Trump can discredit the Reactionaries, in the future, who knows?

Do you remember that scene in “The Shining” when it is revealed that the “book” the Jack Nicholson character has been working on consists of nothing except the line “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” typed over and over again? Well, it seems pretty clear that if the Republicans in Congress were presented with a bill entitled “Obamacare repeal” with that text, a large majority of them would vote for it.

It’s easy to get caught up in all of the drama and corruption and incompetence, but the real scandal in Washington is that the mainstream of the GOP simply doesn’t care what goes into an Obamacare repeal bill as long as it passes.  The welfare of the American people is of minimal concern compared to “winning” and satisfying the reactionary base.

Life in the time of Trump.

We’ve heard this song before.

We’ve four more years

Of lies and tears

Till we show that man the door.

Can’t say I know just where this ends.

How much must we endure?

A world in which we have no friends.

Will we end up dead or poor?

I suspect Bernie Sanders would agree with my conclusion that the Democratic Party needs to be more sensitive to red culture.  However, we would reach that conclusion from different lines of reasoning, and in this case, the journey is the destination.

Sanders’ program isn’t really socialist, but he sees the world in old-fashioned Marxist terms, and to him, what we call “identity politics” is really false consciousness driven by cunning and unscrupulous capitalists.  To me, American politics is primarily “identity politics,” and anyone who ignores that point is a fool.  Sanders himself implicitly conceded my point by changing his approach during the primaries because to do otherwise was to commit electoral suicide.

The world does not run on economic class alone.  People are more complex than that, and the wounds of the past can take a long, long time to heal.  And so, instead of blowing off cultural issues, I think the Democratic Party simply needs to embrace a form of diversity that clearly includes the values of white working people, as well as minorities.  There is plenty of room for white in the national mosaic; it just isn’t the whole story, or even the default.

On the new chief of staff known as Kelly.

His new job, I’m afraid’s, a bit smelly.

He’ll stand at the door.

But he can’t do much more.

For his boss gets his news from the telly.

To most of us, the events of the last week have only confirmed, yet again, that Trump is in way, way over his head.  To his base, however, his repeated failures are proof that the swamp is every bit as swampy as he said it was, and it includes Republicans as well as Democrats.  To them, he looks more like Don Quixote than Bozo the Clown.

If he ever succeeds in getting health care “reform” through the system, he will own the consequences, which won’t be pretty.  For now, however, he gets the benefit of good intentions without actually having to live with the ugly results.

Donald Trump needs a successful war–now.  To the rest of the world, he looks like a bumbling, bombastic, corrupt loser–a man on golf cart.  A successful war would change all that;  it would shut up his critics, give him leverage over Congress, and, most of all, make him look like the winner that he knows that he is.  He might even get a big parade with jet fighters and tanks out of it.

So a war it surely must be.  But where?  North Korea is the obvious choice, and still might happen, but it appears for now that the thought of hundreds of thousands of South Korean dead have deterred him.  The logical second option is Iran.

There are lots of advantages to fighting Iran.  The Sunni despot alliance and Israel would be delighted.  Crushing Iran would make dealing with Syria and Iraq much easier.  The American public hates the Iranians.  And, most importantly, Iran’s ability to retaliate is far less impressive than North Korea’s.

Sure, the price of oil would skyrocket, but American producers would be able to make up at least some of the difference, and it wouldn’t matter that much if the victory could be won quickly.  The question then is, what would the objective of the war be?  A few bombs and a parade?  Regime change?  The complete annihilation of the country?

The last question is the one I can’t answer.  It would be up to the man on golf cart.  Expect the worst.

 

         Another Bill Bites the Dust

Another bill bites the dust.

Another bill bites the dust.

And another one gone, and another one gone.

Another bill bites the dust.

 

Parody of “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen.

Bernie Sanders proposed legislation for a universal free public college entitlement during the 2016 campaign.  Hillary Clinton ultimately supported a watered-down version of it.  Will the issue raise its ugly head again in 2020?

Probably.  It won’t happen, because the GOP would resist it, and even if the legislation somehow passed, I can’t imagine that the red states that refused to participate in Medicaid expansion would permit the federal government to dictate how they operate their university systems.