"A prescription for long-term disaster"

Today's guest post warns that I am dead wrong. 

Currently Trump dominates the message war. That can change. Voters know he is a blowhard.

I have written that Democrats will become a majority party when a media-savvy, self-confident leader emerges to command public attention by providing a credible counter-narrative to Trump's. That role won't be given to them by party leaders. Indeed, it must not be. I write that a spokesperson's credibility must be won amid open competition among other Democrats and against Trump. 

Herbert Rothschild disagrees. He sees a role for an interim party spokesperson while Democrats are the party out of power and before they identify their 2028 presidential candidate.

Rothschild left Harvard with a Ph.D. in 1966, shortly before I got there. He is a retired professor of English. His avocation was justice and peace work, beginning in the Civil Rights movement in Louisiana in the 1960s. He ran nonprofit organizations in Louisiana, New Jersey, Texas and Ashland, OR, some of which he founded. Since 2014, he has published a weekly column, first in the Daily Tidings, now in Ashland.news, which he started in 2021. The Bad Old Days is his memoir of the Civil Rights era.

Guest Post by Herbert Rothschild

In his blog on January 29 about still another of Trump’s egregious public lies, Peter bemoaned the current lack of an effective spokesperson from the Democratic Party to counter them. In the instance he cited, it was the California Department of Water Resources that issued a public statement setting the record straight, but obviously it commanded a small fraction of the attention Trump did. 

The problem is real, and it’s difficult to solve because, as Peter pointed out, there are no longer news sources that the majority of Americans who follow public affairs look to for reliable information. They exist, but the info universe is far more fragmented than it was when the three broadcast networks—CBS, NBC and ABC—dominated the news field along with responsible print journalism at the local level. Further, all too many media outlets are geared to specific and politically homogenous audiences. 

Anyone can now put out information on digital platforms, not just on niche ones but on those for the general reader such as X, Reddit and Instagram. So, there is enormous competition for our attention. 

As Tim Wu wrote in The Attention Merchants, “The business model of the internet is the seizure of attention.” The President of the United States has an enormous advantage in that competition. His pronouncements aren’t transmitted only by the siloed media that favor him; they are also transmitted by news outlets that still try to keep us abreast of what’s happening despite the personal politics of their owners, reporters and editors. How can the POTUS advantage be challenged by his/her political opponents? Specifically, how can Democrats rival Trump for attention? Peter looks to the emergence of an articulate and media-genic Democratic politician from somewhere out there who, on his/her own initiative, becomes the public face of the party whether other Democratic leaders like it or not. Even if someone emerges quickly enough to help us when we need it most, we need only remind ourselves that Trump became the public face of the Republican Party in exactly that way to realize the undesirability, if not the danger, of that solution. 

There is another solution. It’s for the Democratic Party to function more like the opposition party in a parliamentary system. In Great Britain, each party has a leader whether it is in or out of power. That leader speaks for the party, and if s/he deviates too much from the policy positions of the party, s/he is replaced. In that way, the party maintains a relatively stable identity and public presence. I know that our system is different. Also, I know that our two major parties no longer have the institutional apparatus they formerly had before nominees were chosen by popular vote in primaries rather than by party pros in convention. 

However, we have one precedent for both major parties to choose a national spokesperson. Beginning in 1966, when Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen and House Minority Leader Gerald Ford officially responded to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s State of the Union address, both parties have designated someone to respond on their behalf. The media that cover the address usually also cover the response. I see no reason why this practice couldn’t be extended to other occasions. 

I don’t want some charismatic leader to become the public face of the Democratic Party if there is no check by other party leaders on what s/he says. The Republican Party today is the Party of Trump. He has led it to temporary victories, but what will it be after 2028? Peter’s emphasis on personality rather than policy, style over substance, has important implications for campaign strategy—candidates would do well to heed much of his advice—but by itself it is a prescription for long-term disaster, not just for Democrats, but for our nation.

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Trump causes D.C. airline crash. Sixty-seven dead.

First major tragedy from Trump mismanagement. 

This was a totally preventable accident amid Trump-chaos at FAA and the Defense Department.

Blame Trump.

Yes. Blame Trump, and do it by name.

It is, after all, what Trump would do if Kamala Harris were president. 

Trump's goal was to create shock and awe in the minds of the American public and in the federal workforce. He is a wrecking ball. His MAGA base voters wanted that, and they are getting it. Federal employees witnessed day-one firings, demotions, and loss of security protections for people who got in Trump's way. Of course it was a distraction for them.

The day before yesterday, the Office of Personnel Management sent out notice to two million federal employees titled Fork in the Road. It warns of a substantial overhaul of the Civil Service, with policy alignments for senior employees and a new "streamlined" work force subjecting employees to "enhanced standards of suitability and conduct." It gives employees 10 days to resign or expect substantial changes in their work life including termination if one doesn't meet Trump's new, undefined expectations. This mirrors what Elon Musk did at Twitter when he fired 80 percent of the Twitter employees. House Speaker Mike Johnson said that "drastic times require drastic measures."

Turmoil in the federal ranks was not a bug. It was a feature. How else to get substantial turnover? This shake-up has consequences.

Yesterday, an American Airlines flight with 64 people aboard collided with a Black Hawk helicopter with three aboard. It occurred during a routine landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. It was a clear night and a standard approach, with no mechanical or other issues.

It was an entirely preventable accident, caused by human error. The new secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, admitted it, saying:

“We are going to wait for all the information to come in from this vantage point, but … what I’ve seen so far, do I think this was preventable? Absolutely.”

Trump set the stage for this accident. Hegseth was sworn in as defense secretary with an agenda that includes personnel change. His record on managing an operating bureaucracy was troubling. He was fired from two previous jobs that required those skills. But an operations bumbler was Trump's pick. Moreover, Trump fired the entire membership of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee as part of his demolition of the Department of Homeland Security.

The president golfed on the two days before the crash.

Democrats, who are accustomed to being the target of wild, unfair accusations by Trump, are not as reckless in casting blame. Isn't it a stretch for me or anyone to suggest that Trump is to blame? Here is my response: Was it a stretch to accuse Biden of failing to anticipate that a suicide bomber would hide and then explode a bomb next to 13 American servicemen amid the 170 Afghan civilians? That didn't stop Trump from blaming Biden.

And in this case, the line of causality is straight. Trump is the bull in a china shop, shaking up Civil Service and military personnel, both bragging about it and getting praised by MAGA for it. He created the context for human error and 67 people died because of it. Absolutely blame Trump.

Over the upcoming posts I will discuss the requirements of the next Democratic leader. The test has already begun. I want someone to step up and connect the dots. Which Democrat will meet with the grieving families in public? Which Democrat will demand an investigation of the people who ordered the helicopter to be on that path. Which Democrat will show up?

Of course, Republicans will say that such a Democrat would be "politicizing a tragedy." The right Democrat won't wimp out. He or she will say that Americans died a horrible death because Trump is a chaos agent and there are consequences for his malfeasance. He or she will point an accusing finger at Trump on the golf course. Golfing while Americans die because of people under his supervision.

Trump is on TV right now blaming Barack Obama and DEI in the military for the crash. He is naming names: blame Obama. The right Democrat  will reverse the polarity of blame. Trump caused the chaos in personnel under his leadership. That is real. Human error caused the accident. Therefore, blame Trump. He is, after all, the president and the Black Hawk people report to him.

Take charge of the narrative.

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Donald Trump did not send in the military to reverse gravity.

Donald Trump has a profound misunderstanding of geography. 

Or he is simply lying.

Or both.

Here is what he wrote:

No, he did not send in the U.S. military.

No, he did not turn on the water to L.A.

No, the water from the Pacific Northwest and beyond does not flow to Southern California.

No, there is no "Fake Environmental argument" valuing nature over the people that is denying Los Angeles water from the Pacific Northwest.

The staggering ignorance would be funny if people weren't taken in by him. People cheered the news on social media.

 ---"Figured out who is boss yet, Gavin Newsom?"

      --- "We voted for a leader and we got one MAGA!"

Elon Musk tweeted:

"Congratulations to the administration and DOI's Bureau of Reclamation for more than doubling the federally pumped water flowing toward Southern California in less than 72 hours." 

Trump's claim notwithstanding, Oregon and Washington rivers flow west into the Pacific Ocean. Even the Klamath River, which starts in Southern Oregon and then flows into California, flows mostly west, and enters the Pacific just south of the Oregon border, 700 miles from L.A.

The Rogue River from my farm, looking downriver. Downriver is west. The river's mouth is 750 miles from L.A.

Water is complicated in California, but put simply: Sacramento River water feeds Central Valley agriculture, not urban Los Angeles fire response. The fires in Los Angeles did not spread because there was a lack of Northern California water due to environmental concerns. The problem was the size and capacity of the urban infrastructure -- the capacity of the water mains and hydrants. The wind-whipped fire overwhelmed their system.

The California Department of Water Resources put out a statement 

"The military did not enter California. The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days. State water supplies in Southern California remain plentiful.

Trump is good at selling a narrative. He has the presidential microphone, he is energetic, and he tells a story that fits an existing mental template that explains the world as he presents it: An out-of-control fire in L.A. happened because woke crazy-progressive California loonies, with lesbian fire chiefs, were hobbled by environmental extremists who diverted water L.A. needed to fight fires to protect a tiny fish no one cares about.  But don't despair. Trump is the hero who rides in with the cavalry to carry out a rescue. Thank God for Trump.

 Trump has Fox, conservative talk radio, and Twitter/X to broadcast and amplify that simple, clear message. 

The water that flows into the San Francisco Bay and keeps the smelt alive also keeps salt water from entering and inundating some of the most productive agricultural land in the world, and the source of much of America's food. That reality needs a spokesperson as loud, vivid, and persuasive as Trump. 

Democrats need to wake up. There is no credible neutral truth-teller in the form of Walter Cronkite or newspaper reporters and editors to explain press releases and complicated realities. Those neutral "explainers" have lost their audiences and their nerves. Facebook, Instagram, Reels, and YouTube have given up content moderation. 

Biden -- even when he was president and a candidate -- was overwhelmed by Trump's louder, clearer voice. Biden's profound communication incapacity trained Americans, including the remaining news media, to go to Trump to hear from the newsmaker or to fellow citizens to hear what the latest rumor is. Trump tells preposterous, easily refuted lies, but they can be believable ones, and he tells them with bluster and apparent confidence. 

Dishonesty is not a requirement for a counterargument. The truth can be interesting and persuasive, and it has the advantage of being congruent with observable facts. This will be the political Era of Trump until a Democrat emerges who can tell a counter-story as well as Trump. The position is open and available. 

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This is where your strawberries come from

Strawberry pickers at work.

Take a minute: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT2FEtSCq/

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National ID card for Americans

     “I want to see two things in Los Angeles. Voter ID, so that the people have a chance to vote, and I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state.”
          Donald Trump to reporters in North Carolina

Statewide ID cards? How about national ID cards?

In the 20th century, the people most actively opposed to national identification cards were people with a libertarian bent. They worried that a national ID card would mark Americans as slaves in an oppressive tyranny. A national ID card is associated with a tattoos on the arm given to prisoners at Auschwitz.

Now it is Democrats who oppose identification documents, mostly focusing on voting and legal presence in the country. That opposition to photo identification feeds the MAGA assertion that Democrats intentionally allow non-citizens to vote and that Democrats tacitly support and enable illegal immigration. 

I put up an "extra" post yesterday, showing farmworkers. It reflects my respect for them and their work. They are probably -- who knows? -- here without documentation of legal status. Their current "underground" status is demeaning to them and a source of political opposition and discord. I am pro-immigration. I would prefer they be brought out of the shadows. Give them legal status of some kind and give them proof of that status.

College classmate Erich Almasy wonders what is so objectionable about a national ID card. He is an expat, living in Mexico, and has written guest posts about retirement in San Miguel de Allende. 

Almasy

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

Donald Trump says California must establish statewide ID cards if it wants disaster relief funds. Nearly all 192 countries have national ID cards; only about eleven, including the United States, do not. The cards are usually mandatory, and non-conforming people are fined. Increasingly, these cards are fully digital, allowing immediate database searches for identity.

Mexican Driver's License

In México, each citizen is registered with a digital ID card when they turn eighteen. The card entitles the holder to vote in elections and registers them for health care and social security. The registration includes retinal scans, fingerprints, and voice prints. There are penalties for not having and carrying one. While I am not a citizen, and my municipality/state issues my Mexican driver’s license, it is a national document that requires the same input. As you can see, you aren’t supposed to smile. 

If DJT is serious about ID cards, he should propose a nationwide digital ID card with multiple forms of identification --  including DNA.  After all, even President Clinton had to provide his DNA. (In contrast, Trump refused to provide his DNA in his E. Jean Carroll trial.) The problem for Trump is that his base of MAGA supporters would altogether reject any capability of the federal government to track them. Visions of confiscation of guns or the rounding up of right-wing activists would make such a program dead on arrival. 

Is a digital national ID card the ultimate manifestation of Big Brother as envisioned by George Orwell? Should Americans reject them as an infringement on their freedom despite the benefits of accurate censuses, verified elections, and enhanced criminal prosecution? I would favor their use, if only to end the ridiculous claims of conservative pundits about widespread fraud. 

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Farm work

Here is why you can afford carrots.

Stoop labor.

Pull, snap off green leaves, place in box pointed the same way, move box. Repeat.

Watch for a minute: 

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT2FY3cga/

and this:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT2F28M4S/

A secular Sermon on the Mount

The secular left has a stand-in for religion: social justice.

My post yesterday likened activist Democrats to the "good girl" sitting in the front row in high school. She is empathetic, considerate, and does her homework. Republicans are the rowdy boys at the back.

It was a mixed compliment for Democrats. A great many people perceive that "good girl" as a know-it-all and a punctilious scold, too quick to direct what virtuous thing classmates should do. In student body elections, the class might prefer the earthier boys who better reflect the class's honest emotions of restlessness, frustration, and horniness. The class doesn't want to be good. They want to be their honest selves.

John Coster has thoughts on yesterday's post. He supported Bernie Sanders and has a left orientation, but not the secular left that shapes Democratic policies. He identifies as an Evangelical Christian. Over his 40-year career, he owned and operated electrical contracting companies. That evolved into work overseeing the design and construction of multimillion-dollar projects for Amazon, Microsoft, and T-Mobile. 

Guest Post by John Coster

Sunday’s post got me thinking about the intersection of masculinity, virtue, and politics.

Over the past 50 years, technology has reduced or eliminated jobs that required physical "masculine" strength. When I was an electrician apprentice in 1976, I was required to carry 80-pound pieces of four-inch steel conduit up three or four sections of vertical scaffolding -- without safety tie-offs. You would never see that today, and that's a good thing because it was very unsafe. Advancing technology has allowed prefabrication from automated factories to eliminate many skilled "craftsman" jobs. Many commercial buildings are now assembled. Car mechanics are now called "technicians," who use computers to diagnose problems and replace the part. My EV is a computer on wheels. The old NPR show "Car Talk" would seem quaint and irrelevant to young people today.

Technology has democratized labor. It now rewards the "good girl" student who can figure out the problem and automate it. In fact, even the "knowledge-worker" jobs are dropping along with wages, as AI takes over many of those tasks. As physicality becomes increasingly irrelevant to the economy, men have experienced a loss of their social standing, sense of identity, and even attractiveness to women.

The challenge of the "shoulds," as Peter says, is that there isn't a common moral framework anymore. The Left uses biblical concepts of love, acceptance, kindness, compassion, and stewardship, but ignores or even has contempt for the very religion that brought those values. Tom Holland's book Dominion presents how the advent of Christianity grew over the centuries to become the most powerful cultural force ever known to humanity. He says, for example, that the very idea of human rights, that humans are sacred, did not exist as a social concept before Christianity. When you think about it, human sacredness is the common concept at the heart of the Pro-life/Pro-choice debate; the only difference is whose life is the most sacred?

The left goes further with its secularized "religion" to promote, normalize and force the celebration of ideas like gender theory (i.e., that biology and identity are separate), and shames those who disagree. People on the Right feel helpless, for example, when laws are passed like here in the State of Washington, that take away a parent's right to even be informed that their child is seeking gender-affirming care or help with gender dysphoria in school. Essentially, the Left claims its own moral authority. For conservatives who see their identity, purpose and values tied to more traditional (Christian, Muslim and Jewish) teaching, these Left-leaning agendas are seen a fundamental assault or existential threat, even if those on the Right are not particularly devout or literate about the theology of their faith. Those also tend to be the ones who embrace Christian nationalism.

The folks on the Right I talk to, see the acceptance of a deeply flawed leader as the only way to stop the erosion of their core beliefs.

The honeymoon of technology companies that want to own your mind and automate everything, with the hard-right political leadership (for now) that envisions a return to the past, is an interesting paradox. I predict it will be a troubled marriage. The technology titans will outlive Trump of course, so he is useful to them for now, but their loyalties will be as sticky as are his.

 

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Easy Sunday: Goody two shoes.

Democrats are the "civilized" party. We are seeing the backlash.

It is probably a stretch, but I think these three items are related:

1:

     "But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before."

        Huck Finn's final words in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

2: 

     “Masculine energy is good, and obviously, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it. I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.”
     Mark Zuckerberg, interviewed on Joe Rogan

3.

Lauren Sanchez, fiancé of Jeff Bezos, at the Inauguration:

Here's my quick "Easy Sunday" point: Democrats have become the party of "should." That caused a backlash. The rebellion against "should" is so strong that Americans chose a sociopathic, narcissistic, pussy-grabbing felon over a Democrat.

Democrats are the party that is earnest and conscientious about climate change. Democrats say America needs to "own" the ugly parts of our past. Democrats are the #MeToo-adjacent  party. Democrats recite land acknowledgements. They announce their preferred pronouns in their emails. Democrats want to be sure that the rights and sensibilities of everyone are respected, even if -- especially if -- those people are in a group of people who have suffered prejudice, including people who have committed crimes. 

Democrats are the "goody two shoes" party. Personally, I am pretty much okay with the values of Democrats. If we are going to have a free, multiethnic culture then those values need to be the norm. 

But Democrats have become preachy. They err by valuing equality more than individual differences and choices.  Democrats have become so open-minded and relative that they have disconnected from biology. From emotion. From tribalism. (Go Ducks!) Democrats got out ahead of the public. They wanted to be right more than they wanted to be understood and popular. 

Democrats can be characterized as the good girl, sitting near the front of the class, with her hand up with the answer because she did her homework. In this era of Trump, Republicans are the restless and disruptive bad boys in the back, who think the class is boring and the girl with her hand up is a prig.

I include the image of Lauren Sanchez, with her lace bustier front and center, to make the point that women are part of the backlash. She isn't letting her sex or age constrain her earthy sexuality. There was a tiny gender skew in the 2024 election -- far less than Democrats had hoped -- because a great many women -- including those in the cool tech crowd -- voted alongside the spitball throwers in the back. 

The right charismatic leader can get Democrats back in touch. It will require a new mindset for Democrats. Female energy need not be negative. It can be bold and disruptive. And popular.

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A swing-district Democrat votes "Yes"

U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum voted "Yes" on the Laken Riley Act.

So did 45 other House Democrats. 

It was a controversial vote for Democrats.

U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-OR)

I got a telephone call from Janelle Bynum yesterday afternoon. 

New members of Congress are advised that they need to start immediately raising campaign money for their next election, so I expected the phone call. I had contributed to her 2024 campaign. 

Her district is one of Oregon's swing districts, which is relevant to her vote on the Laken Riley Act. The district includes suburban Portland plus a rural area reaching out to the upscale city of Bend. A Republican won the district from a Democrat in 2022.  Bynum won it back in 2024.

Democrats controlled the congressional district boundary process but did not reach for maximum advantage in the six districts. They created four safe seats, one Republican and three Democratic, but made two seats near-tossups.

I thanked Bynum for the call and asked her how she voted on the Laken Riley Act. She said she voted for it.

I said "good."

The law had already allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest and detain people here illegally, but the Laken Riley Act requires ICE to detain any undocumented immigrant who is convicted of, arrested for, or even just charged with a theft offense. The law is described by Republicans as a way to require that violent criminals be locked up and deported. Only a crazy Democrat would vote to keep murderers on the street. It is a good campaign wedge issue. 

The reality is more complicated because detaining people lacking immigration status on the basis of mere accusations of minor crimes would dramatically increase deportations of people here illegally. And that is the point.

 Americans got impatient with the chaos on the southern border. The new law will put millions of people here without proper papers on edge and at risk. This increases the consequences of being picked up by the police if someone is living "under the radar." Fewer new people will come and take that risk. More people will self-deport.

Border state Democratic senators, including Arizona's Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly and Nevada's Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, voted yes. So did eight other senators, all representing swing states. Mark Kelly said his constituents "want more border patrol, they want more border investments and enforcement. . . and they also want immigration reform."

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) voted no, saying the law won't incarcerate and deport only dangerous people. Anyone who comes to the attention of police who is here illegally is subject to incarceration and deportation. She said:

If someone wants to point a finger and accuse someone of shoplifting, they will be rounded up and put into a private detention camp and sent out for deportation without a day in court.That is what is in this bill, a fundamental suspension of a core American value.

The other U.S. representative from a swing district in Oregon, Val Hoyle, ended up voting against the bill, saying:

This was a tough vote. No one is above the law, and anyone guilty of a crime should be held accountable. We can all agree on that, and I hate that Republicans want to create the appearance that that isn’t universally accepted. Unfortunately, the Senate didn’t make the changes to the bill I had hoped for, and I cannot support it in its final form.

The Laken Riley Act will be a mixed blessing for Republicans. It was intended to be a wedge issue, with Democrats in opposition looking like they are soft on murders by undocumented people. But the practical result is that the law will require mass incarceration of people who are here illegally. Voters think they want this, and they voted for it, including in majority-Hispanic areas. 

The reality will be expensive and chaotic. The American Immigration Council estimated it could cost $88 billion to deport one million people a year under current immigration law. The U.S. lacks the capacity to carry out the law. There is no space for the detention and the law will require ICE to process the easiest to find, not the most dangerous, people. And the public will discover that people who are being deported are family members, friends, and essential employees. That is what they voted for. They won't like it.

We have come to this because there is no consensus on comprehensive immigration policy. In its absence, Democrats let a problem at the southern border get out of hand and were slow to address it. Their "compassion" planted the seeds for this response. The long-unaddressed mess created a tidal wave of public frustration, and vulnerable Democrats are getting out of the way of it.

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Dry January.

I don't drink alcohol anymore.

I grow eight acres of wine grapes. I hope people buy the grapes and make excellent wine with it.

I have mixed feelings about alcohol. 

Today's blog post isn't about politics. 

Last July

Well, it is a little about politics because Donald Trump just pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization. The WHO advises that alcohol in any amount is unhealthy. "Any beverage containing alcohol, regardless of its price and quality, poses a risk of developing cancer."

Alcohol is a toxic, psychoactive, and dependence-producing substance and has been classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer decades ago – this is the highest risk group, which also includes asbestos, radiation and tobacco. Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer, including the most common cancer types, such as bowel cancer and female breast cancer. 

The U.S. Office of the Surgeon General began this year with a similar announcement.  Alcohol isn't, on net, good for you.

This advisory highlights alcohol use as a leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States, contributing to nearly 100,000 cancer cases and about 20,000 cancer deaths each year.

An idea floating in the American zeitgeist is that a little alcohol is good for you. At least red wine, and especially Pinot Noirs, are supposedly heart-healthy. Morley Safer, on the CBS show "60 Minutes," gave a huge boost to red wine sales beginning in 1991 when he described the "French Paradox." The French diet is rich with butterfat, yet heart disease is lower there than in the U.S.  Morley Safer suggested that it was due to drinking red wine. It contains antioxidants, including resveratrol. 

Most Americans don't perceive alcohol as particularly dangerous. After all, lots of people drink it and live long, healthy lives.  Americans figure that alcohol is enjoyable and worth the risk, if done in moderation. And maybe the cancer risk, if there is one, is counteracted by the heart benefit, if there is one. One can hope. 

The World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services say "No." Alcohol is bad for us. 

The surgeon general report addresses quantity of alcohol consumed:

Who drinks, and how much? The 80-20 rule is in operation, and it is heavily skewed to the top decile.

Washington Post: Who drinks how much.

I am not a scold or a preacher about alcohol. A person in that ninth decile, who drinks 15 drinks a week, two a day, may never be too impaired to drive, never show poor judgment, and never do clear damage to his or her health. But the vast majority of the alcohol drunk in America is by people in the tenth decile. They support the industry. People who down 10 drinks a day have a problem that goes beyond elevated cancer risk. 

With any luck the unique pumice soil at my farm will produce an especially good wine, one that will be sold in bottles so expensive that few people will drink it to excess day after day.  But as a future alcohol producer, I need to acknowledge that a small number of drinkers do most of the drinking, and they are drinking an unhealthy amount. 

And alcohol consumers in any amount need to acknowledge that alcohol almost certainly isn't health food.

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Canadians, too, heard Trump's inaugural speech.

Canadians heard threats, and trouble ahead.

No doubt some Americans felt pride and satisfaction when hearing Donald Trump's talk of our "Manifest Destiny" to expand our borders, his plan to impose tariffs on trading partners, and his assertion that the U.S. wasn't going to be pushed around by the likes of Canada, Mexico, Panama, Denmark and other pipsqueaks. 

The rest of the world heard the speech, too. 

College classmate Sandford Borins is Professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto. Much of his ongoing research and commentary is about politics in Canada, and therefore, inevitably, its southern neighbor. Sandy posts his observations about politics, management, and life at https://www.sandfordborins.com.

He is pictured here in his office. Below it is a photograph taken by his son Nathaniel this fall. He is standing under a maple tree wearing a shirt we received at our 50th college reunion.

Guest Post by Sandford Borins

Listening to Donald Trump’s inaugural address as a Canadian, indeed as one of the more than 95 percent of humanity who are not U.S. citizens, I was reminded of the iconic “Greed is good” speech in the movie Wall Street. To quote from its peroration “Greed works, greed is right. . . . and greed, mark my words – will save … that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.” What I heard last Monday is a man whose career has been the embodiment of greed, projecting greed on behalf of the country he now leads. As I’ll explain, the speech conveys three types of greed: imperialist greed, societal greed, and environmental greed.

This Time It’s Different

We’ve heard numerous inaugural and other speeches by American politicians claiming that their country is exceptional, the greatest country on Earth, and so on. It’s offensive, but we accept that it’s in their culture, so we ignore it.

What’s different this time is that we had an inaugural address delivered by a billionaire, who surrounded himself with billionaires, who stated that his country is the richest and most powerful in the world and, in the next breath, that his country is being exploited and ripped off by the rest of the world. His conclusion, therefore, is that the U.S. should take reprisals against the rest of the world. Hence the threat that “instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.” (I thought the U.S. taxes its citizens to provide public goods for them.) While signing executive orders that evening, Trump said that almost every other country is ripping off the U.S. and threatened to impose tariffs on the E.U. as well. Going beyond tariffs is the threat of “taking back” the Panama Canal and the reference to Manifest Destiny. The speech exemplifies the well-known imperialist credo: What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine too.

A Canadian Example

In a recent press conference, Trump was asked about the effect of tariffs on the internationally integrated automobile assembly industry. His response was “We don’t need [Canadian-made] cars, we’d rather make them in Detroit.” This answer conveniently ignores the history of the Canadian automobile industry. For decades U.S. manufacturers, induced to locate in Canada by Canadian tariffs, were making cars solely for the Canadian market (brands like the Pontiac Beaumont, Parisienne, and Laurentian). Due to short production runs, these cars were more expensive than those manufactured in the U.S. The Auto Agreement of 1965, a precursor of NAFTA, eliminated tariffs for cars and parts between Canada and the U.S. As a result, U.S. factories began producing cars for the Canadian market and vice versa. This benefited producers and consumers in both countries. Trump’s answer is an expression of greed, namely a desire to erase a longstanding mutually beneficial pattern of international cooperation to benefit the US alone.

Societal Greed

One of the factors leading to Trump’s election was support from lower-income Americans, the people who feel they are not sharing in the U.S.’s fabulous wealth. Seen from abroad, the life chances of so many lower- and even middle-income Americans are so limited because the U.S. has so deficient a social safety net. But Trump has no intention of fixing the social safety net or requiring any significant redistribution from the billionaires to the rest of Americans. Rather, his intention is to make the billionaires better off and to benefit lower-income Americans by taxing the rest of the world.

Environmental Greed

The inaugural address included a commitment to increase production of fossil fuels (“drill, baby, drill”) and withdraw support for clean energy and electric vehicles. The executive orders included the U.S. leaving the Paris Climate Accord. Like the first, the second Trump Administration does not recognize climate change as a global problem or the carrying capacity of our atmosphere as a global public good. It is eager to sacrifice the environment of future generations for the benefits of “liquid gold” right now.

A Declaration of War?

Perhaps the inaugural address is mere rhetoric, and Trump won’t quickly follow through on his threats. For example, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., Kirsten Hillman, describes the tariff threat as an attempt to “start a conversation” about the border. On the other hand, Trump may make good on his threats of economic and possibly military warfare. The U.S. has vast wealth and power, but it is not unlimited, and those who are attacked will find ways to make common cause and to fight back.

If the U.S. imposes 25-percent tariffs on all Canadian and Mexican imports, which essentially terminates the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement negotiated by the first Trump Administration, I’ll suggest two likely Canadian responses. The Canadian auto industry will not disappear. Rather it will restructure and seek partnerships with auto manufacturers in other countries, possibly including China. We may produce fewer automobiles for the U.S. market, but more for Canada and for other markets. The wholesalers for wine, beer, and spirits for the entire Canadian market are provincial marketing authorities. We won’t impose tariffs on American wine, beer, and spirits: the provincial authorities will stop buying them entirely and they will disappear from Canadian store shelves.

The imperialist ambitions Trump expressed in his second inaugural will be widely opposed and, if they make people in other countries worse off, they will also end up making Americans worse off. Not big wins for Americans, but big losses for everyone.

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