Cromwell

            Social Insecurity

Social insecurity

You want to quit your job.

But Ryan says it’s not time yet.

Don’t be a lazy slob.

 

Social insecurity

You woke up feeling ill.

Obamacare has come and gone.

You can’t afford your pills.

 

Social insecurity

Your food stamps help you eat.

It’s time to leave your hammock now

And stand on your two feet.

 

Social insecurity

Big changes lie ahead.

A safety net that’s full of holes

The menders have no thread.

 

Social insecurity

Don’t call me to complain.

You think you won, but when it’s done

You just got fooled again.

Who could it be but the peasant with a pitchfork?  All I can say is, be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.

Prime Minister Modi is another pro-business nationalist who would be expected to get along well with Trump but for India’s protectionism and trade surplus.  On the other hand, India has never been as dependent on the US for its security as, say, Japan, so Trump won’t have any reason to view Modi as a moocher.

Expect the slow improvement of relations to continue in response to increasing Chinese assertiveness in the area regardless of Trump’s mercantilism.

The most important book of 2016, in terms of its impact on American politics, was probably “Hillbilly Elegy,” by a man named J.D. Vance.  I haven’t read the book, but I’ve seen several reviews of it, and I’ve also read several of his op-ed columns in the NYT, so I’m reasonably confident that I understand his point.

By all accounts, Vance paints a fairly harrowing view of life in Appalachia after the exodus of mining jobs, including rampant drug and domestic abuse.  In spite of the odds, he managed to get out and thrive, but he empathizes with those who remain, and he anticipated Trump’s victory over the allegedly insensitive cosmopolitan elites.

At the risk of tooting my own horn, I’ve been writing on this subject since I started this blog in the middle of 2015.  The Republicans offer people in Appalachia genuine cultural respect and b.s. about getting their mining jobs back; the Democrats only propose government spending.  As I’ve said before, it is no surprise that the people prefer the GOP package; the issue that the Democrats are confronting now is how to win the votes of people like this without losing a greater number of minority supporters.

Three observations are pertinent:

1.  There really isn’t any hope here until the GOP discredits itself by failing to bring the old mining jobs back.   If and when (well, when) Trump’s faux populism doesn’t deliver the goods, the public should be more accepting of the real thing.
2. We know from the campaign that there are lots of establishment Republicans who view Vance’s hillbillies as losers:  period.  The Democratic Party actually wants to help them, but hasn’t figured out how to do it yet.
3.  There is plenty of room in the Democratic vision of a mosaic America for the white people in Appalachia.  For their own good and the good of the country, the Democrats need to make a genuine and sustained effort to show that they respect the culture of rural white Christian America.  What they cannot do, for both moral and electoral reasons, is accept the Palinesque notion that rural white Christian America is America,  and everyone else is, at best, an interloper. Vance’s hillbillies are going to have to get over that idea before progress is possible.

As I noted months ago, the GOP establishment was appalled by Trump, and, even worse, thought he would lose.  As a result, they treated him, not as a real Republican, but as a de facto third party candidate with whom they had a temporary tactical alliance.  In this way, they thought they could limit the damage to their brand after the inevitable Clinton landslide.

Today, of course, the shoe is on the other foot;  Trump is a free agent relative to the establishment.  Will he quietly renounce his idiosyncratic positions on trade, entitlement spending, and foreign policy and become a mainstream Republican, or will he make overtures to the Democrats on selected issues in order to maintain his freedom of action and keep his favorability ratings up?  I’m guessing the latter, and the Democrats will have to decide how to respond on an issue-by-issue basis.

A successful, intensely nationalistic, right-wing politician with an unconventional economic policy, Prime Minister Abe should be a role model of sorts for President Trump.  Unfortunately for Abe, his country is almost completely reliant on the US for defense and runs a large trade surplus.  In other words, Japan is precisely the kind of nation that Trump hates.

It was with good reason that Abe made the pilgrimage to Trump Tower within days of the election.  If the US won’t defend Japan, the Japanese have only two long-term choices:  remake their country so it can resist Chinese aggression without help, or enter into a dignified surrender on the best available terms.

Today is the day we give thanks.

For what?  You can fill in the blanks.

We know we’ve been blessed

But this year’s been a mess.

I’ll be glad when it’s gone, to be frank.

I can’t say I know how much of the EU will be left, or what it will look like, during the Trump Administration.  That will depend to some extent on the outcome of December’s Italian referendum, and more on the French election next year.

Assuming, for purposes of argument, that the EU soldiers on pretty much as before, its relations with the US are likely to be pretty frosty, because Trump will perceive it as a weak talking shop that preaches too much about human rights, does little to control terrorists, and runs a huge trade surplus with the US.  My guess is that Turkey will be the first flash point (Trump will support Erdogan’s crackdown, but the EU won’t), and things will just deteriorate from there.

The ultimate beneficiary of this, of course, will be Putin.

As the story goes, during the height of the French Revolution, the local revolutionaries were hopelessly split over what to do with the cathedral.  One faction wanted to desecrate it, while the other favored demolition.  A committee was set up to mediate the issue.  The arguments dragged on and on, until conditions changed and everybody moved on to other issues.  As a result, the cathedral stands proudly, undesecrated, today.

Something similar may be the best hope for Obamacare.  Can the GOP unite around a plan that doesn’t destroy the markets and doesn’t represent political suicide?  That remains to be seen.  One thing is for certain:  the Democrats struggled mightily to pass Obamacare with more votes in the Senate than the GOP has now, so this isn’t going to be easy.

Trump expressed far more moderate views in the interview than he did on the campaign trail.  Are you surprised?  I can pretty well guarantee you that he will say the exact opposite the next time he meets with a group of right-wing supporters.  That is partly due to his belief that being unpredictable is good tactics, partly to his desire to be admired by whomever is in the room at the time, and partly to the fact that he knows very little about policy, and cares even less. If the truth is a casualty in this process, well, truth is just power in a tuxedo.

The “Real Trump” truly believes that he can run the country the way he runs his businesses.  His mercantilist opinions are genuine;  he has held them for decades. He thinks that businessmen like himself know best, and will do whatever he can to unleash them.  He will react violently to affronts to American (or his own) self-esteem, and he has an intense belief in his own ability to negotiate.  Everything else will be on the table, and failure, or at least the perception of it, will not be tolerated, even if the law is on the other side.

The roller coaster starts running in 58 days.

A few thoughts on the “special relationship” under President Trump:

1.  Obviously, someone needs to explain to Trump that Theresa May speaks for the UK, not Nigel Farage.  You would think that would be a fairly simple concept for him to grasp, but apparently not.
2.  Trump’s property interests in the UK are going to be an ongoing problem.
3.  The British government is going to want to start discussing a trade agreement as soon as possible in order to create some leverage in its EU negotiations and to prove to skeptics that Brexit won’t be a disaster.  As I understand it, the Obama Administration takes the position that the Brexit negotiations have to be resolved first.  Given Trump’s feelings about trade, don’t expect that position to change.
4.  The UK doesn’t run a big trade surplus with the US, and it carries its share of the load within NATO.  That will help.
5.  Don’t be surprised if Trump reacts strongly if, as I anticipate, the British press has plenty of nasty things to say about him.

Expect the “special relationship” to stagger on, with some major hiccups along the road.

Only Donald Trump could come up with the idea that he could somehow direct the British government to appoint someone of his choosing as the new ambassador to the United States.   For his next trick, he will probably be telling the Scots not to approve any wind farms around his golf course–or else.

Being an American overseas is going to be very embarrassing, at best, for the next four years.

The Middle East man known as Sisi.

He and Trump will soon be kissy-kissy.

When the stuff hits the fan

Will the Don have a plan?

Don’t expect things to be quite so blissy.

His name notwithstanding, Sisi is Trump’s kind of guy:  a strong man terrorist fighter.  Of course, he has no idea how to run his country, and he has been far more successful at muzzling democratic dissenters than at killing terrorists, but for Trump, those are just details.

Down the road, the real question is, what happens when the Egyptians get sick of Sisi?  How does Trump react when masses of people start going out on the streets again?  Is he going to send American troops to shoot them down?  Will the US and Russia work together to suppress democratic forces throughout the Middle East on the grounds that ostensibly democratic movements inevitably lead to chaos and terrorism?

Don’t be surprised if it happens.

A few months ago, I posed this question:  is America a mosaic or a sheet of ruled paper?  We have our answer;  the election was decided by white people who have concluded that the system is stacked against them and in favor of minorities.  There are no data to support that, but one never wants to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

And so, it is true:  white is the new black, at least in American politics.