Trump is changing a century of American policy.
He can do it because enough Americans are OK with the new direction.
The grief comes later.
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| Reason Magazine |
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| Council on Foreign Relations |
Trump is openly changing our economy to a form of state socialism. Left-socialism scares too many people to catch on in America. It looks like redistribution from the haves to have-nots, and people who have something -- a little -- fear losing what they have to undeserving people poorer than themselves. It is a perpetual unfulfilled temptation for the left.
Trump is doing something different: right-socialism. It looks like partnership and gain, not loss, and so far it has not generated an uproar of opposition. Trump demanded 10 percent of Intel. He takes 15 percent of the revenue from our most successful companies (Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices) most important product. He demanded a "golden share" of U.S. Steel, which gives the government a veto on their policies. This week Trump used our military to decapitate Venezuela's government to seize oil, while guaranteeing security for American oil companies that redevelop their oil fields. The invasion wasn't about drugs or democracy; the U.S. has reconfirmed the power of the prior regime by endorsing the regime's vice president and rejecting the opposition leaders who had won the election that Maduro and his vice president claimed. It was about demonstrating hemispheric hegemony and taking resources. "We're going to keep the oil," Trump said.
There is a word for this: socialism. Conservative pundits see it for what it is, socialism in the form of a mafia don's "piece of the action," demanded under compulsion. It is only "free enterprise" as long as the government likes the policies the companies implement.
The usual voices against socialism -- The Wall Street Journal, the Cato Institute, the Claremont Institute, and the Heritage Foundation -- grumble but quietly. They get what they really want, low marginal tax rates, and they don't want to upset the GOP electorate that is compliant with the new socialism and provides the votes to keep this socialism in place.
Trump's is able to tell his story. Right-socialism does not need to own a portion of the national media. National media companies need government approvals to broadcast, to buy and sell assets, or to get the mail delivered. Trump threatens each of these. Trump's innovation is to use government power openly to bring media companies to heel. They are businesses, seeking opportunity and profit, with first priority to stockholders not citizens.
Trump changed American foreign policy. Trump ended the era of a rules-based order. There was pretense and hypocrisy embedded in the notion of the U.S. as a "good citizen" to the world, that shining "beacon on a hill" that President Reagan spoke of. But we positioned ourselves in ideological opposition to undemocratic tyrannies and to aggression across borders.
The pretense is gone. No more hypocrisy. Big countries dominate small countries in their region. It is the way of the world. Steve Miller said it bluntly to CNN's Jake Tapper this weekend:
“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”An independent, Denmark-controlled Greenland now exists only because the U.S. hasn't claimed what is ours to claim. “Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller said. What drew guffaws a year ago -- talk of taking Greenland -- is a fait accomplis now. Greenland is ours in all but the name.
There is a new world order. In this order, the U.S. has its hemisphere. Russia can have as much of Europe and central Asia as it can take. Let European NATO figure out what countries are "West" and what is Russian. Not our problem. China has decades to work out what it wants with the countries in the Western Pacific. Black Africa is no concern to us, filled as it is with "shithole countries." White South Africans are welcome to escape to the U.S. The Middle East isn't figured out yet.
Trump redefined "America First." Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, understood the situation before America's pundit class did. MAGA's notion of America First was not isolation, where we address the problems of America first before we meddle elsewhere. That was her notion of MAGA and America First, and Trump ran on that and sold the idea. She was deceived. She realized that Trump's notion of America First means America-on-top, winner-take-all, and an America that is great because it is a nation that conquers and controls its neighbors.
Tomorrow, part two: Trump expands executive power. Congress isn't a co-equal branch of government.
To come: Democrats don't know what they want and they don't dare offer changes that would deal with the very issue of "affordability" that they raise.
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6 comments:
Wouldn’t right-socialism still be anti-capitalist? If it’s label time, this (to me) smacks of fascistic crony corporatism.
What scares me is that he has 3 more years to do this stuff. Can Congress control him? All they can control is the money to fund his adventures. Someone has to step up and say “no”. Who has the guts to do that?
I think he watches the polls and that will influence what exactly he does.
Also being a lawless person and president I his contribution to change.
A fundamental problem in our politics is the primary system that the idiot Democrats introduced in 1972, and the idiot Republicans followed them into. Primary voters are a small minority of the most extreme voters in a party, and they are the ones who pick the candidates.
Until we fix this, I have no idea how we can get out of the current polarization. I also have no idea how to fix this. I hope someone smart smarter than me about politics does…
It’s like an avalanche. The longer it goes, the bigger it gets and pity anything in its path. But it will eventually end of course, after leaving a trail of incalculable carnage that last for generations.
I’ve thought about some glorified leaders of the past and their humiliating ends: Julius Caesar was murdered; Alexander the Great was likely poisoned at a banquet; Josef Stalin had Parkinson’s; and the even mighty Ghengis Khan just fell off a horse
The list goes on…but the bottom line is they were all mortal but immortalized by great many people who never suffered and died under them.
Nothing has changed. So Trump is making his mark on history as many suffer and worse from his claim of temporal glory. But he’s done something more. He’s refashioned morality back to darker times in human history. His Bully Pulpit has a kind of spiritual force that promotes the “seven deadly sins” as “good”. And “good” people are sucked in. And as recent book title suggests, “Someday we will have all been against this”
Sad.
It’s like an avalanche. The longer it goes, the bigger it gets and pity anything in its path. But it will eventually end of course, after leaving a trail of incalculable carnage.
I’ve thought about some glorified leaders of the past and their humiliating ends: Julius Caesar was murdered; Alexander the Great was likely poisoned at a banquet; Josef Stalin had Parkinson’s; and the even mighty Ghengis Khan just fell off a horse
The list goes on…but the bottom line is they were all mortal and only immortalized by great many people who never suffered and died under them.
Nothing has changed. So Trump is making his mark on history as many suffer and worse from his claim of temporal glory. But he’s done something more. He’s refashioned morality back to darker times in human history. His Bully Pulpit has a kind of spiritual force that promotes the “seven deadly sins” as “good”. And “good” people are all in.
And as a recent book title says “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”
Sad.
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