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:
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.
This morning, Presidents Trump and Putin announced the surprise signing of a new treaty designed to divide Europe into two spheres of influence. Former NATO countries will now become American colonies, while former Warsaw Pact nations will be owned by Russia.
Trump could not be reached directly for comment, but on his way back to the Trump White House, he tweeted “ANOTHER AMAZING DEAL! WE GET THE GOOD PARTS, AND PUTIN GETS THE LEFTOVERS! WELCOME TO TRUMP UNIVERSITY!”
Upon hearing that European reaction to the deal was strongly negative, Trump tweeted “MERKEL AND THE REST ARE SUCH LOSERS! WESTERN EUROPE WILL BE LUCKY TO HAVE ME AS ITS RULER!”
President Putin applauded the deal, saying “It’s always a pleasure doing business with a strong man like myself.”
The agreement will be implemented with new regulations similar to the 17th Century Navigation Acts to make sure that America always runs a surplus with its colonies and so “wins at trade”. When asked about European objections to the deal, Trump spokeswoman Sarah Palin responded “The Germans colonized us hundreds of years ago. Don’t you think they would do it again, if they could? You betcha!” When subsequently advised by reporters that the Germans had never owned any colonies in North America, she said that was a lie spread by the “lamestream media.”
Palin also indicated that she was looking forward to seeing the new Russian bloc from her house.
House Speaker Paul Ryan has been directed to find funds for a new, larger Trump monument commemorating the deal in his budget. Ryan angrily denied that he was “enabling” Trump by building monuments to him and pointed out that Trump was showing that he was “becoming a real Republican” by suggesting cuts to Medicaid to pay for the monument.
And now, we have the Rio Games.
They’ll make our election look tame.
The fans full of hope.
The Russians can’t dope.
For winners, great fortune and fame.
Historically, there have been four reasons to host the games:
1. Our national ideology rocks! Examples: Berlin 1936; Moscow 1980; Los Angeles 1984.
2. OK, we lost the war, but we’re back! Examples: Rome 1960; Tokyo 1964; Munich 1972.
3. We’ve graduated from the Third World! Examples: Mexico City 1968; Seoul 1988; Beijing 2008; Rio 2016.
4. Let’s have a party and attract some tourists and foreign investment! Examples: everyone else.
The problem is that the Olympics have become so expensive, #4 has become harder and harder to justify, and the other rationales can only work under very limited circumstances. As a result, unless the costs can be reduced or the profits distributed differently, you may start to see the Summer Games exclusively in authoritarian Third World countries with an image problem and lots of money to spend.
To be at all interesting, a scandal has to revolve around one (or more) of three motivations: money; power; and sex. The e-mail issue doesn’t implicate any of them. What is it about? Stupidity? Carelessness? Yawn.
Ronald Reagan got a substantial boost from the performance of the American athletes in the Los Angeles games in 1984. Given that the Democrats are making a concerted effort to appeal to American patriotism in the face of Trumpian gloom and doom, could the same thing happen in Rio?
Probably not, for the following reasons:
That said, if we don’t win the medal count, you can expect Trump to blame it on the “losers” Obama and Clinton.
Consider the following lyrics:
There’s colors on the street.
Red, white, and blue.
People shuffling their feet.
People sleeping in their shoes.
There’s a warning sign on the road ahead.
There’s a lot of people saying we’d be better off dead.
Don’t feel like Satan, but I am to them.
So I try to forget it any way I can.
Keep on rockin’ in the free world. . .
Those words were written in 1989. They might as well have been written yesterday.
David Brooks had it right: the best pop culture analogy to Trump’s convention speech is Bruce Wayne/Batman. Of course, America isn’t Gotham City, and Trump’s parents weren’t killed by criminals, but to Trump, those are just details.
Assume, for the purposes of argument, that crime in America really is as bad as he says. He still isn’t Batman, for the following reasons:
1. He’s a developer, not a crime fighter. At least Rudy Guiliani has some credibility on this issue.
2. He has no ideas on how to fight crime. Beating your chest and projecting strength is not a crime-fighting strategy.
3. Crime in our country is almost exclusively a state and local issue. What exactly can the President do–call out the military to police the streets of Chicago? That’s a third world “solution,” but, in all honesty, I can imagine a President Trump trying something like it in order to prove how tough he is.
It appears to me that there are two separate threads in the Bernie or Bust movement:
#2 has to have occurred to Bernie. Fortunately, if it did, he clearly didn’t give into it, because the dangers of a Trump presidency are just too great.