Cromwell

Following a tour of the Capitol, President Trump announced that it would be demolished in the coming year. Trump explained that the existing building was too old, had too few working bathrooms, was too small, and lacked gold. As a monument to him, it was an embarrassment.

House Speaker Mike Johnson expressed his support for the project, as Trump was, as everyone knew, the greatest developer in the history of mankind. “Congress just gets in the way. We’re an obstacle to his greatness. Anyway, if he needs us for any reason, we can always meet in the new ballroom.”

Preliminary plans show the Capitol being replaced by a massive golden pyramid, to be a foot taller than the Washington Monument. Trump will be buried there with a few prized possessions and will continue to govern the country in perpetuity after his reincarnation.

Just as the cornerstone of the GOP is a bargain between the Reactionaries and the PBPs, the basis of government in Iran is a deal between the security forces, which get money and privileges, and the mullahs, who get protection from an angry public. Many commentators think the current theocracy has run its course and will be replaced at some point by a nationalist dictatorship run by the Revolutionary Guards. Is that inevitable?

No, because the theocracy provides a rationale for the Guards’ power and privileges. If they don’t come from either God or the public, why should they exist?

As many people noted during Trump 1.0, the cruelty was the point; the administration concluded that extreme measures were necessary to broadcast to the world that illegal immigrants were not welcome here. Is the same message being sent this time around?

No. the point of sending masked thugs to blue cities is to prove to the residents, whether citizens or not, that Trump is in charge, and that dissent will only be tolerated within strict limits. It is about authority, not deterrence.

It is even more obnoxious than before.

Trump has sent what he calls an “armada” to threaten Iran. Since the demonstrations have ended and our Arab friends are opposed to new attacks, what is the point?

Either Trump intends to use widespread disaffection with the regime for leverage in talks about Iranian weapons or he needs a distraction from his domestic problems. I can’t see any other reasons.

When asked about the Amritsar Massacre, General Dyer essentially said that it was necessary to send the message that the British were in charge. An element of racist, pro-imperialist public opinion supported him, but most of the nation was appalled. It was another step towards independence for India.

In the same vein, MAGA supports brutal behavior by ICE, but America as a whole finds it sickening. Trump will have to listen to that voice as long as we remain a liberal democracy. How long will that last? TBD.

Kevin Warsh is Trump’s choice for the Fed.

Independence is key, it is said.

He wants to cut rates

But inflation’s not great

And his colleagues aren’t easily led.

My wife and I went to a free musical event last night. The first song on the band’s set list was CSNY’s “Ohio.”

The band didn’t say why they played it, but no explanation was necessary. I knew what they meant, and so do you.

Here is the list, in order of importance:

1. Chinese economic and military might;
2. Russian nukes;
3. The markets;
4. The opinions of the base;
5. Opinion polls; and
6. Whatever lingering respect he has for law and the Constitution.

I can see it now. The nominee stands by smiling while Trump demands lower interest rates. The chosen one then confirms that he believes in radically lower interest rates while insisting that he won’t take direction from the president. He is, he will say, his own man, and he believes in an independent Fed.

Sure.

We have finally reached Trump 2.0. In just a year, Trump has demanded Greenland, attacked Venezuela, threatened Canada and Mexico, bailed out Argentina, imposed absurdly high tariffs on Brazil, and used El Salvador as a black jail. The Good Neighbor Policy, it isn’t.

The new approach to imperialism combines TR’s aggressive pursuit of short-term material interests with Trump’s signature emotional neediness. Can it work in the long run? History over the last century says no.

To him, the only meaningful political question was who/whom? Were you the subject or the object? The hammer or the nail? Could you work your will on the other or not?

Is it Trump or Lenin? Actually, in spite of their ideological differences, it is both.

FDR was reflexively anti-imperialist; in any event, he was too busy fighting the Great Depression and fascism to spend much time with Latin America. He opted for the Good Neighbor Policy, and the nature of our relationship with the rest of the hemisphere changed for good, at least until now.

Most of our actions that smacked of imperialism during the Cold War were done purely in the name of fighting communism; in other words, they were motivated by ideology, not material self-interest. Jimmy Carter even gave back the Panama Canal. After an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the regime in Cuba, we promised not to invade, and we kept our promise. We cemented our relationship with our immediate neighbors by signing the NAFTA agreement. A new era had begun.

Tom Petty tells us in “Echo in the Canyon” that California is the kind of place where you can dream of doing something different and special. To the right, however, it is the land of fruits and nuts; to turn a DeSantis quote on its head, it is the state where woke ideas are born. It needs to be brought under control.

As a result, the base would have approved if ICE started shooting protesters in LA or San Francisco. But Minneapolis? The land of friendly white people from Scandinavia? Did Trump ever have a chance of selling that to the American people?

No. The Somalis were a shiny object he couldn’t resist. I bet he’s sorry now.

Life in the time of Trump.

Street fighting in Iran.

The ayatollah mows them down

Just to prove that he still can.

But freedom’s just around the bend.

You can almost taste it now.

Intimidation doesn’t work.

The people won’t be cowed.

The decades on both sides of the turn of the twentieth century were the golden age of American imperialism, if such a thing can exist. The military supported a sugar planter coup in Hawaii, which was ultimately annexed. The Spanish-American war, which was initially fought to protect human rights in Cuba, became a raw exercise of imperialism; Puerto Rico and Guam became American possessions, our country claimed a right to intervene in the politics of nominally independent Cuba, and we fought a bloody guerrilla war to subdue rebels in the Philippines. TR engineered and supported a coup in what subsequently became Panama to expedite the construction of the canal. Woodrow Wilson shelled Veracruz for specious reasons and sent the US Army over the border after Pancho Villa. And those were only the famous episodes.

These were not mostly private-sector attempts at ethnic cleansing, as with the Native Americans; these events were primarily initiated by the US government for geopolitical and economic reasons. They were an embarrassment by the 1930s. A new era was about to begin.