A Washington Post editorial that explains just how wrong Trump’s tariffs are was recently published, and as I have taken advantage of their discount to subscribe, I have had the opportunity to scroll through their recent editorials. Here is a quote from a piece about tariffs:
Unless Trump wants to retreat to a 1776-sized economy or relive the Great Depression (care of Smoot-Hawley) it’s best we not follow the outdated mercantilist philosophy that was supplanted fortunately by Adam Smith who deplored tariffs (“extraordinary restraints upon the importation of almost all sorts of goods from those countries with which the balance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous”). Unlike Trump, Smith knew that a balance of trade “deficit” is not disadvantage, let alone a debt to be repaid or money stolen from us:
Nothing … can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade, upon which, not only these restraints, but almost all the other regulations of commerce are founded.
When two places trade with one another, this doctrine supposes that, if the balance be even, neither of them either loses or gains; but if it leans in any degree to one side, that one of them loses and the other gains in proportion to its declension from the exact equilibrium. Both suppositions are false. A trade which is forced by means of bounties and monopolies may be and commonly is disadvantageous to the country in whose favour it is meant to be established, as I shall endeavour to show hereafter. But that trade which, without force or constraint, is naturally and regularly carried on between any two places is always advantageous, though not always equally so, to both.
Trump’s zero-sum economics is wrong, and as we see, harmful to America. (“From Wisconsin to South Carolina, small businesses are starting to lay off employees, and they’re citing Trump’s tariffs. Many firms have warned that the worst is yet to come.”)
So we have a president who is so wrong-headed that he chooses to undo all the economic progress since Adam Smith explained the wrongness of the “balance of trade” almost 250 years ago. We might as well try to rewrite the Constitution as to revisit Adam Smith’s reforms. Oh, wait, we’re going to rewrite the Constitution from scratch, aren’t we? (See the hidden push to convene a Constitutional Convention by right-wing radicals…)
(image courtesy of pixabay.com)
(this bit was supposed to have been published 8/20/2018 but was unaccountably held up.)
As we know, Donald Trump believes that his inaugural crowd was the biggest in history, much bigger than that of Barack Obama. Donald’s election victory over Hillary Clinton was also “a huge win”, not just in the Electoral College, but in the popular vote as well– when we count the number of illegal aliens (3-5 million) who voted. There are many other ways in which Donald’s reality differs from that of the common man, far too many to list in a brief blog post.
The difficulty we are having with Donald’s presidency is that we don’t understand Donald’s reality. In his version of the truth, trade wars are “good” and “easy to win”– they have no effect on the economy. Donald is blissfully unaware of the catastrophic effects that his tariffs and sanctions will have on the economies of Turkey and Iran, with knock-on effects all over Europe and the Mideast. Restrictions on trade due to tariffs may just be the trigger needed to prick our current economic “bubble” (which is not so much a bubble as as a sphere of expedited commerce due to minimizing barriers to international trade and a relative reduction in war) and plunge us into another recession. The downturn need not be enough to reach Great Recession levels in the United States, but there are many other national economies that are struggling, and some are already in free fall (Venezuela, for example). . . The downturn need only be enough to reach Donald’s 40% and convince them that they have made a mistake. Tariffs are very likely to be the only mechanism available to throw the Republicans out of office, because according to Donald’s version of reality, being the president, he can do no wrong.
There is an existential aspect to this November’s elections, in that if the Democratic party doesn’t get a majority in the House, there will be no impeachment vote, and reality as we (the liberal left, so to speak) know it will come to an end. If the Democratic party is successful in November, then the Democratic reality will triumph.
At this time, it is convenient to introduce terms that apply to the two most popular versions of reality presently existent, that will become obvious as the terms are introduced. The first version is the Republican or Trumpist type of reality, noted in the first sentence of my blog post. The second version is the Democratic or Sanders version, which can also be described as a weak version of physical reality; this will be explained below. You can see at once that there are two clear and opposing realities that are shared by significant percentages of the US population. Perhaps thirty to forty percent of adults believe in the Republican version, and roughly fifty percent believe in the Democratic version. The Democratic faction tends to lose elections because its voters don’t vote as faithfully and their factions have been gerrymandered into significant losses despite strong actual majorities. In some states, gerrymandering by Republican-majority state legislatures has loaded the dice against Democratic communities. The result: a minority Republican vote gets a majority of seats in the state legislature.
The Democratic version of reality: as I said, a weak version of physical reality. There is a superficial layer of calm rationality which can tolerate mild disagreements. However, reality is hindered by the presence of hallucinations, such as the one about five inter-racial teenagers who supposedly raped and beat a jogger in Central Park back in the crime-ridden New York Nineties. Donald Trump immediately got on the publicity junket of the time, a full-page ad in a newspaper, to call for dire penalties for the suspects, not waiting for a trial. As it happened, they were convicted but exonerated when another man, a multiple offender, confessed to committing the crime. Even after the confession, Donald insisted the five were guilty.
In the intersection between physical reality and Democratic reality, there is a shared region in which the Central Park Five were, if not completely innocent based on the evidence presented in their first trial, at least deserving of better justice than they received at their first trial (at which they were found guilty.)
In any case and to my great dismay, the objective or “hard” physical reality that excludes the Central Park Five from involvement in the brutalization of the young woman jogger also includes the presence of Donald Trump as President of the United States starting January 20, 2017.
So there are at least two viciously antipathetic parties with not only different world-views, but different realities. In our universe, left-wing people on Twitter have been attacked and threatened five times as much as right-wing people. In their universe, a right-wing university professor was threatened today; everything else is old and thus not newsworthy. In our universe, 2.9 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for Donald Trump. In their universe, seventy thousand people in the right states created a narrow Electoral College majority. Despite ancient precedent as to the role of the Electoral College (essentially an anti-democratic body which was charged with using its considered judgement as to whether an elected candidate was morally and mentally fit for the office– but which was never used in this fashion, fortunately for Mr. Trump.) the Electoral College victory stood and a minority-majority President was inaugurated. In our universe, he immediately began to violate the Emoluments clause of the Constitution. In Trump’s universe, he gave away the profits to worthy government departments, so it was perfectly all right. He had the contract for the hotel, which forbade government office holders from participation, rewritten so that it allowed a certain government office holder to act as an owner in this particular case. He announced that he was giving away the income from the hotel to worthy government departments.
In our universe, Trump accepted help from Russian parties, specifically to disseminate negative information about his opponent (Hillary) that he could use in his campaign that the Russians had to offer. Unfortunately, none of the people who gave testimony about the meeting mentioned the negative information– it was, unaccountably, all about adoption of Russian babies in the US. Perhaps word came from on high that asked the Russians to disseminate the information independently, under an anti-government imprint (Wikileaks, who was co-opted to spread the hacked emails that seemed salacious or suspicious), so the Republicans could say they had nothing to do with it.
In Trump’s universe, Natalya only came to whinge about American families not being able to adopt Russian babies and how this policy (applied in retaliation for the Magnitsky Act) could be reversed if certain people were freed from sanctions imposed by the act (originally applied because the individuals were accused of torturing imprisoned lawyer Magnitsky to death) simply by Trump writing an executive order. In Trump’s universe, and here is a place where the two universes intersect, Natalya was told “we’ll discuss that if and when Trump wins the election.”
I could go on with these alternate realities, but surely you understand that Trump promised more than he could deliver when he implied that he would write executive orders freeing Russians from sanctions– that has been politically impossible for some time. In this universe, the one where causes and effects coincide, Trump is not directly useful to Putin. He is only indirectly effective in the sense that he is diverting our attention away from normal operations and toward arguments over policy and personnel, almost literally tearing this country apart, regardless of whether the Democratic party wins the coming elections or not.. So if Donald expects any more help from Vladimir, he needs to have something to offer that Vlad can’t get anywhere else.
American attacks on Turkey, including a 50% tariff on steel and multiple economic sanctions, have resulted in dramatic falls in the value of the Turkey currency, the lira, against the dollar. This instability or weakness in the Turkish economy has already been present for some time, but it has been hidden by foreign assistance and loans. The autocratic government of Erdogan has further weakened the Turkish economy. Now Trump is lashing out against Erdogan (formerly his friend), ostensibly for his continued detention of an American evangelical (proselytizing) pastor on what the New York Times calls “trumped up” charges related to the attempted coup against Erdogan last year. Erdogan has his own complaints: the US refuses to extradite to him a key opposition figure, Fethullah Gulen, who has long been a resident (refugee?) in the US.
Weakness in the Turkish economy and the fall of the lira will spread like a contagion to the EU and soon there will be a worldwide depression from which the United States will not be spared. This conclusion is as simple as the observation that one falling domino will topple the next.
(figure courtesy of pixabay.com and PublicDomainPictures)
Mr. Rand Paul, hereditary senator from Kentucky, is a libertarian and appears to be the leading backer of Donald Trump in the libertarian party. He is also friendly with the Federation of Russia and may be in their thrall. He just today hand-delivered a letter from the American president to Vladimir Putin. What would be contained in a letter from the president that could not be transmitted equally effectively by tweet? A mystery to those of us who believe in transparent government. What information is so secret that it has to be entrusted to paper and pencil? Not susceptible to discovery by prying eyes, such as those of the National Security Agency… hmm?
(image courtesy of pixabay.com and Open ClipArt-Vectors)
From the LA Times today, in an article by two legal experts, Harry Litman and David Lieberman. Their opinion is that what is already known about the famous Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Natalya Veselnitskaya is enough to charge Donald Jr. with conspiracy to defraud the United States and to lay articles of impeachment for Donald Sr. The facts are plain: Donald Jr. welcomed a meeting with Veselnitskaya for the express purpose of conveying derogatory information about Clinton from the Russian government to help Donald Sr. get elected. What is worse, Donald Sr. publicly stated that he was about to give a speech regarding (the same) derogatory information… although he dropped that idea, probably when he realized that an illegal act had already been committed and it was necessary to cover up the connection between his campaign and the Russians.
(image courtesy of pixabay.com and gfkDSGN)
Morton Halperin on Trump: “He’s far worse than Nixon… certainly as a threat to the country.”
Morton Halperin was prominent on Nixon’s “enemies list” and has remained “one of Nixon’s proudest and most persistent enemies” according to Susan B. Glasser in the New Yorker on August 3, 2018.
(image courtesy of pixabay.com and gfkDSGN)
(The quote above is from the New York Times opinion piece by Bret Stephens on 8/3/18)
The underlying statements are nonsense intended to provoke an emotional reaction and partially made up on the spot — never reasonable assertions drawn from legitimate data or research. Most statements made during the speech given at a rally are extemporaneous in character and driven by impressions caught during the viewing of Fox News pieces.
Observers have been alarmed by the nonsensical character of the underlying statements– many describe the language as “gibberish.” Many have questioned his sanity or speculated that there is underlying progressive dementia. While this is an attractive possibility, it seems unlikely based on his long-term use of this meta-language. He is communicating with his base supporters, the population (between 30-40%) that believes every assertion, no matter how absurd, or else excuses the lies on the basis of the policies that have come out which align with their basic prejudices. In other words, they don’t care what he says as long as he continues to “dismantle the administrative state” or put laws in place that reflect their conservative prejudices.
The meta-language used is designed to provoke an emotional reaction; for example, the phrase “Crooked Hillary” is supposed to evoke an image of the former Secretary of State as a corrupt, lying schemer who was only in office due to rampant nepotism; there is no room in this image for the native brilliance, extensive education and training nor the long experience in government, only the suspicious use of a private server and the corruption attached to the Clinton Foundation. This triggering is so automatic that he need only mention “Crooked Hillary” and the rally crowd immediately begins to chant “Lock her up! Lock her up!”
By skillful and repetitive use of this meta-language, he can whip the crowd into a fine frenzy and draw in susceptible outsiders who soon are carried away by the raw emotion of his supporters. The truth or falsehood of any given statement is of no consequence to his supporters nor is it, at the end, of any importance to the speaker. Thus there is no response to complaints about inaccuracy– the catch-phrases have had their ineluctable effect already.
(image courtesy of pixabay.com and gfkDSGN)
In a piece titled “Donald Trump, the Boy President Who Cried Wolf”, Matt Lewis of the Daily Beast described a not-so-new phenomenon: Trump fatigue. People are tired of being scared by Trump tweets threatening nuclear war against North Korea and now, Iran. People are starting to ignore the threats and the fearful language. This is dangerous, not because we are suffering, but because we are not. Some day, Trump will feel that he is forced to back up his angry words with real action, and then maybe the shit will really hit the fan.
With a person who consistently lies about three-quarters of the time and who wields tremendous power (not for nothing is the President described as the most powerful man in the world, as the commander-in-chief of an army that outspends the next half-dozen largest armies in the world and who possesses sole discretion to launch over a thousand megaton-class nuclear ballistic missiles at a moment’s notice) it is difficult and yet essential to determine which statements are honest intentions with lasting effect, which are are mere bluster, and which are momentary caprices.
The example of Adolf Hitler is inescapable because, if one reads “Mein Kampf”, within it Hitler accurately describes the intentions and future policies of the Third Reich for everyone to see, twenty years before they actually took place. There is much that Trump has accurately described in his many speeches and seemingly off-the-cuff remarks, things that have been made policy and followed up by motivated adherents of the Trump philosophy (if indeed such a philosophy actually exists), things that seem unbelievably petty and vindictive, not to mention unlawful– yet they are the effective policy of the United States government because Trump has deemed it so.
Therefore, one must read and take seriously the seemingly off-the-wall and irregular statements that come from Trump’s Twitter account at all hours of the night and morning– no matter how outrageous, outlandish, and un-Constitutional those statements are. They might just come true.
So try to fight Trump fatigue– it is only a diversionary tactic meant to dull your sense of outrage and fray your compassion, and most importantly, hide the real truth of what Trump is doing to our country.
(comic image courtesy of pixabay.com and OpenClipart-Vectors)
(I would Photoshop Trump’s head in place of the girl but she’s just as funny herself.)
The only overlooked (primarily because of an absence of evidence) aspect of Vlad “the Impaler” Putin’s conversation with Don “the Con” Trump is the exact nature of the agreements that were made between the two autocrats. According to the LA Times,
Both leaders have said that their private, two-hour conversation yielded agreements in various policy areas, though by Thursday, the White House and State and Defense departments had been unable to provide details, with many officials professing to be in the dark themselves.
Even the director of national intelligence, former Sen. Dan Coats, acknowledged that he doesn’t know what took place between the two presidents, and said he opposed their meeting alone.
“That is the president’s prerogative,” Coats said in his televised interview Thursday. “If he had asked me how that ought to be conducted, I would have suggested a different way.”
Asked if Putin might have recorded the meeting, he said, “That risk is always there.”
The problem with secret agreements is the autocrat’s ability to obligate his country’s resources in the service of another country. For example, the Soviet Union sold vast quantities of raw materials to the Nazis up to the day the Germans invaded Russia in World War II– in exchange for much-needed hard currency to buy foreign-made war equipment. Was Stalin right to do this, or was he merely exercising his dictatorial power in the service of a whim?
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and klimkin)
Conrad Theodore Seitz 