Easy Sunday: The Trump Show is great TV drama

"Power resides where man believes it resides."
     Dialog from Game of Thrones

Don't let this era of Trump drive you batty. One way to stay calm is to drop out of the role of involved citizen. Instead, relax into the role of spectator. 

I received text messages last night from a reader who said she is coping just fine amid the whirlwind of news. She isn't biting her nails over each new twist in the dismantling of the old status quo in American government. She decided that the best way understand the news is to view it as unscripted reality TV, done with great production values.

It transforms how she sees the news, she told me by phone. Seen as drama -- a version of Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Succession, and Game of Thrones -- there are no good guys, only political gladiators. Stop cheering for one side. Instead, enjoy the game.

My correspondent has a job among people who take politics very seriously. They wouldn't appreciate her being entertained. They want her to be angry. She insisted that I not share her name.

[Note: I am still a concerned citizen, not a spectator. I care very much how this drama plays out. But I know there are others like this reader who find Trump a mesmerizing anti-hero.]

Guest Post by Anonymous

Your post Saturday quoted Thomas Hobbes and described everyone fighting everyone. Don't you see? You described Game of Thrones. There is White House intrigue, political violence, sudden plot twists, characters being fired or killed off, and new unexpected additions to the cast!

Reality is a great show. Sit back and enjoy the news. Don't miss the most exciting reality TV show in world history. I am so supercharged and excited to watch the news as we near the end of season one of the Trump Show reboot, Trump 47.  

I can't believe how upset my friends get over Trump, as if they could do something about him. You get one lame vote or make some lame campaign contribution, that's it, end of your involvement, unless you wanna wear a clown uniform at "No Kings" protests. I feel so sorry for my friends biting their nails over Trump, while they have absolutely zero power to do anything about it. They can't get themselves oriented to life as spectator of a fascinating reality TV show.  Too bad for them.

My reaction when a missile hit the Venezuela boat is not "Oh-my-God! What about the rule of law?" but instead to think how friggin' cool. I'm going to replay that. 

Or Trump wants to put Biden in jail. My response is "Oh man that would be SO amazing!"  

And then I think, yikes, I hope nobody assassinates Trump and ends all this edge-of-your-seat entertainment. 

I think how exciting it would be to have a Trump Resort Gaza Strip; and how exciting it would be if he tore down the White House completely; and I could only fantasize about him actually shooting somebody on Fifth Avenue. 

The whole series is based on brutal revenge, just like Game of Thrones.

As we approach the end of season one of this reboot  -- and what a bloody and vitriolic season it has been --  Trump intends to erase the last vestiges of Biden, invalidating hundreds of Autopen orders, and indicting Biden. He can indict for perjury when Biden denies the presidency was being run by a White House cabal. Trump learned this technique from E. Jean Carroll. All you have to do is goad your adversary into public statements of innocence, giving rise to a defamation claim for the denials. Biden will have no immunity if he denies he issued executive orders without reading them. Trump will drag him through hell.

I think the 2026 season two is going to be "you ain't seen nothing yet". And I don't wanna miss a minute of it. The best seats in the audience are reserved for people willing to open their mind to the reality that everyone is fighting dirty trying to win. Sit back and watch nihilistic history unfold.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.] 

The philosophy of Donald Trump

It is a Thomas Hobbes world: Everyone against everyone.

Donald Trump is an extraordinarily effective politician. He does not appear to be a deep thinker or be well versed in the philosophies of Western Civilization, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a coherent philosophy.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes presented Trump's thinking in his classic work Leviathan in 1651:

Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War; and such a war as is of every man against every man. . . . In such condition there is no place for Industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently . . .  no account of Time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Trump's world is a jungle of every living thing in a struggle for survival against everything else. The fit survive. The weak are crushed or eaten.

Trump is exceptional among American presidents in his open disregard for established process and constitutional norms. He doesn't respect that "common Power" of the state, unless he is the undisputed leader of it. The referee in any contest is just one more participant, to be coopted, made an ally, or to become.

Americans fetishize our Constitution and reflect with pride on the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Wise men met and debated ideas and policies. They created a government of rules, agreed upon first by convention delegates, then by states after hearing arguments printed in pamphlets and newspapers. 

Mao Zedong gave a different explanation of the origin of political power, an explanation more in line with Hobbes and Trump: 

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

State power is seized and maintained through the threat and exercise of violence, and armed forces are the primary mechanism to maintain state power. It is the threat of violence, up front or in the background, underlying all debate or negotiation.

We hear the word "transactional" repeatedly in discussion of Trump. He tests the relative power of each participant at any one moment. It is a market. It is a supply and demand curve. There are no set rules, only a continuing contest of relative power.

One of the participants in every match of power is the system in place by history and inertia. The referee. State power itself. Trump was able to stiff vendors in his real estate developments because the referees of contracts -- our legal system -- is full of delay points. Trump could game that system. Trump routinely stalled vendors who needed prompt payment, saying the vendor would go bankrupt long before a judge decided the vendor was right all along. The strong do as they will; the weak suffer as they must.

Trump is not shamed by assertions that he wants to be king or that he is flouting the Constitution. He does not care about being kind to recipients of U.S. foreign aid, or being fair to immigrants, or that he is flouting international law by bombing boats in the Caribbean. Fairness, kindness, and circumspect process are the gentlemanly civilizational veneer obscuring the real relationship between people. Mao Zedong said it: It is power, backed by armed forces.

The Supreme Court is justifiably afraid of Trump. He will obey their decisions only if it serves his purposes. They know that. They will be careful not to put Trump into a corner. They are bluffing. Trump is not. He has the armed forces.

There is only one power currently able to stop Trump: his health and mortality. His right leg drags. He writes increasingly unhinged tweets. Something is wrong. 

I suspect Trumpism will end with Trump. He fostered a personality cult, and there is only one Donald Trump. Americans elected a constitutional head of state who does not believe in a constitutional head of state.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.] 

Empty Nest by design: A guest post

Thanksgiving with friends. Not family.

Something big was happening in America around 1971, the year I graduated from college.

It wasn't an event. It wasn't in the news. It was an idea drifting out into the zeitgeist and changing lives. Women in my circle of friends were deciding that they would have great careers and exciting lives of significance. They decided they wouldn't bear children.

There was a combination of reasons for a shift in expectations about childbearing. Paul Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb laid out a moral argument for childlessness. America began having "Earth Days." Educational institutions changed; it switched from unusual to normal for women to enter the professions. Betty Friedan had written The Feminine Mystique describing women's frustrations with being a stay-at-home wife; my friends, male and female, had read it. Soon Gloria Steinem will be founding Ms. Magazine. The Vietnam War was underway and there was the thought that maybe it was cruel to bring children into such a messed-up world. Good contraception was available. The idea of sex between consenting adults disconnected from marriage and pregnancy.

Ideas in the zeitgeist translate into personal behavior  as preferences and expectations and self image. Who am I really? For many of my classmate friends in high school and college, it resulted in their not having children, or having very few and having them "late" by prior standards. That Norman Rockwell painting of grandparents hosting a Thanksgiving feast for a large family at a long table is nostalgia and cliché; not description.

College classmate Erich Almasy describes his journey. 

Erich Almasy and Cynthia Blanton on a trip to Nepal. Dole Foods was a client of their consulting firm.

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

A Life without Progeny

Peter asked me to expand upon the comment I made about children, and my lack thereof. A recent news article pointed out that over 75 percent of people over age 72 are white and that less than 50 percent under age 18 are. MAGA and white supremacy will go away as we Boomers die off and the races of color who have made the United States a true melting pot take their fair share. 

Children. Probably the most momentous decision any couple or even an individual makes. I met my life companion (so hard to come up with the proper expression) as I was leaving college to venture to Alaska and later, Egypt. Cynthia had taken a year off (now euphemistically called a gap year) to earn enough money to finish her senior year. She had broken up with her boyfriend of many years three days before we met and was on the rebound. Needless to say, I pounced, and since I had made clear that I was about to become a world traveler, she decided it was an easy one-night stand. How wrong she was. We spent a good part of the night talking, and came to common agreement on many things that seem to daunt couples of much longer duration. We agreed on religion (none), politics (liberal), and children (none).

The last perspective seems an odd one for people aged 21, so a little background may help. Cynthia was a child of separation. Her parents were not the best of friends and may have gotten married because Cynthia came along. This was not uncommon in the late forties and early fifties before birth control was readily available to women, and that makes such a difference! Her father led a pretty much independent life and her mother had a lot of trouble coping. My parents also had me prematurely. In fact, as I much later found out, they weren’t married until I was four months old. Theirs was a combative marriage. Both were well-educated, opinionated liberal individuals, my mother from northern Wisconsin and my father a Jewish refugee from Vienna, Austria. The latter was something I didn’t fully understand until his death in 2004.

Cynthia’s rejection of motherhood was understandable given her upbringing. Mine, less so, since I was a largely happy child whose parents spent time both educating and nurturing -- until the end of my freshman year in college, when my mother had a nervous breakdown and was diagnosed (poorly) with bipolar disorder. This amazing woman (a feminist before the word was coined) was suddenly gone from my life and I found myself drifting away from my father and younger sister. Living in Boston while they lived in Los Angeles made this distance easier. I seldom thought of family.

I eventually returned from my adventures, and Cynthia and I embarked on our POTOSLT (Persons of the Opposite Sex Living Together) relationship, which lasted 24 years. With no children plans, we didn’t need holy matrimony, and we married in 1995 only because the company I joined did not provide health insurance for unmarried couples. So romantic! 

We now live in Mexico and celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday with the families of two Mexican friends (brothers who married sisters) and their four adorable children. Thanksgiving is not a Mexican holiday, even though the turkey, sweet and white potatoes, green beans, cornbread, and even the pumpkin pie all originated here. In our almost 55 years together, have we missed the sound of little feet, growing into adults, followed by more little feet? No. We have worked together, traveled together, fought together, and enjoyed life and love together. She is my best friend, although her dog Max and my dog Tomás try to claim precedence. Over the years, many friends and acquaintances have questioned our decision, speculating that we would regret it. Some people just aren’t cut out to be parents. It’s not that we don’t have family. Cynthia is very close to her younger sister and I have finally become close to mine. In fact, my sister Lisa and I will be traveling to Vienna in August to discover more about the relatives we lost in the Holocaust.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.] 

Thanksgiving 2025: The vineyard is going dormant.

Skip this post: 

It is about the vineyard again.

We got our first frost on Friday, November 20.  

We got a second frost on Sunday, and it froze again this morning.  

My Pinot Noir grapes were the earliest to ripen, and the earliest for the leaves to turn color and drop. This is how they looked yesterday, next to rows of Cabernet Sauvignons.  Pinot Noir is on the right.

This is the third year after planting, so we expected either no harvest or a small one. We picked the Pinot Noir grapes on October 6, and expected to pick the slower-ripening Malbec's ten days later. I had such high hopes. It was a crop so heavy that we needed to drop half of it to the ground a month before the intended harvest. I was proud.

September 2 photo

But about three days before the day for picking, starlings found us and wiped out the Malbec crop. They ate them all. Pow!

Here they are yesterday in an oak tree next to the vineyard:

The photo doesn't tell the story. There are thousands -- maybe tens of thousands -- swooping around in murmurations. They swoop in, chatter a while, then swoop out. They are beautiful if they aren't destroying one's crop.

I will need to figure out some kind of netting to protect the two later varieties of grapes, the Cabernet Sauvignons and Malbecs. That is a problem for next year. Now I am trying to feel good about relaxing and letting nature take its course. I have drained the irrigation lines so they won't freeze. The weeds aren't growing. There are no herds of elk making trouble. I need to let go, chill out, and let the season do its work.

Plants have their own schedule. The Malbecs still have their leaves, but they have turned brown. The Cabernets are still green and growing. I took this photo yesterday:

Side by side, Cabernets on the left

In my youth it was common to get a first frost in late September or the first week of October. Frosts devastate a melon field. A September or early October frost takes a lush field of green and turns it black. Vines wither immediately. Melons are exposed. It would look eerily like a field of skulls. For about two days following the frost, I could pick and sell the melons that had gotten ripe, but melons get the sugar and flavor that makes them delicious from a healthy living vine, so a frost is the sudden death event for a commercial harvest. I didn't want to sell an OK melon. I wanted to sell great melons.

Maybe it is just "weather." Maybe it is "climate." But this year is beyond all my experience in getting a frost this late. I planted melons in early May. The field came ripe in mid-August. A frost did not end the season; the field died slowly, of old age. 

I am leaving the melon field untilled, at least for now. It is not an attractive field in this condition, but I did not see any interest in the crop by starlings, and the melons have seeds that other birds will like so I will leave them until I see starlings.

It is healthy for me to look up from politics from time to time. Long after I am gone, and long after Trump is gone, this land will be here, as will be the tilt of the earth, the trip around the sun, and the seasons. 

[Note: To receive this blog daily by email, go to: https://petersage.substack.com Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Thanksgiving 2025: No grandchildren

Empty nest:

I posted this for Thanksgiving 2024. The two sons will be joining us this year, too. Nothing changed, except that everyone is a year older. 

The same facts remain: Children are expensive. Housing is expensive. It takes two incomes to get by.

2024 Thanksgiving post:

 

"Over the river, and through the wood,
To Grandfather's house we go;
the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow."
     Lydia Maria Childs, "Over the River and Through the Woods," 1844

This Thanksgiving we have two sons in the house, ages 43 and age 33, both single. No grandchildren.

My wife and I are part of a Boomer phenomenon --  people in their seventies with children but not grandchildren.

The two sons home for Thanksgiving aren't unusual in being childless well into adulthood. About 25 percent of American men over 40 are childless. Women are delaying childbearing, choosing education or career as a first priority. An increasing number of women don't want children. At 1.66 children per woman, the U.S. is well below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman. Some women get around to it as their fertility clock runs low; some don't. At age 35-39, 22 percent of women are childless.

There are a lot of reasons for not having children. Children are expensive. They disrupt an education/career path. Household formation starts later, when people pair up and buy a home. Expectations and norms have changed, so childlessness is normalized. And contraception made childbearing a choice.

My grandmother is one of 10, the little girl toward the right, standing beside her mother holding the infant. There are eight children in the photo. Two more are still to come. Children were assets who could help with farm chores.  

Housing has gotten expensive relative to earnings. Since 1950 the general rate of inflation raised prices by a factor of 13. It takes $13.10 to buy what a dollar bought in 1950, at the height of the baby boom.

Housing inflated even more.

1950 housing advertisement 

Those 1950 houses would have been small -- about 1,000 square feet. One bath. No dishwasher. No air conditioning. No garage. They would not have been to current code on insulation. There would not have been a city requirement of curbs and gutters and capture of rain water into a storm drain system. But at the general inflation rate of 13.1, the larger of the two homes, plus some closing costs, would cost about $110,000 in today's dollars.

My parents had three children. In 1955 they moved from a small rental into a Medford subdivision. The subdivision consisted of homes of about 1,100 to 1,300 square feet. They had one or one-and-a-half bathrooms and a one-car garage. They were owned by families similar to mine: a husband, a wife, and two or three children. 

Google Maps photo

This house in the photo is similar to the house my parents bought: three bedrooms, one bath, and 1,183 square feet of space. It has a one-car garage. Zillow estimates a current price of $324,500. This price is three times the inflation-adjusted $110,000 current value of the houses in the ad.

No single factor explains the fertility rate, and therefore the paucity of grandchildren, but the cost of housing affects choices young adults make. They face a much higher hurdle for creating new households and the physical and psychological "nest" into which a new baby, or a second or third, fits.

Thanksgivings are smaller now. And grandchildren don't arrive by horse-drawn sled, if they arrive at all.

[Note: To receive this blog daily by email, go to: https://petersage.substack.com
Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Populism versus the swamp.

Marjorie Taylor Green is MAGA. Trump is not.

MTG and Zohran Mamdani have something in common. They are economic populists.

They are canaries in the coal mine.

In Russia, Marjorie Taylor Greene would have been thrown out of a window. In the USA, she is merely scorned and threatened. She was a nuisance and a threat. Now she is a message: Don't cross Trump. 

She was too MAGA for Trump and the GOP.  She was too much like Mamdani.

Donald Trump made the GOP a MAGA party. He taught Republican voters to like what he likes: a tone of resentment, a policy of lawfare retribution against Democratic villains, and a suite of populist policies featuring America First nativism, opposition to "woke" cultural values, and recentering White native born Americans as the default American. To make that work as a majority party Trump needed to add a dimension: anti-elitism. There are two realms for elitism, cultural and economic. The cultural portion was easy and popular with his base: attack universities, criticize the media written by smarty-pants, and turn the Kennedy Center into a showcase for country music. The hard part is the economic elites. At first, Trump sounded like Bernie Sanders, attacking economic elites. He said he didn't need them. He said he understood them well enough to disempower them. He said he would drain the swamp. He talked a good game to get elected in 2016.

He didn't follow through. And in this second term, he abandoned draining the swamp of economic elites. He stopped anti-trust activities. He made the government a shareholder in businesses. He allied with economic elites and then flagrantly sought their tribute. He celebrated their purchase of his meme crypto coin. He sent a powerful signal with tech billionaires on stage at his inauguration. He sent a stronger one in accepting their offers of gold tribute. He looked like a conquering warlord from ancient wars of conquest. His association with big business sends a muddled message to GOP voters. Yes, Trump was a winner. But Trump's triumph is personal to Trump. There isn't clear trickle-down benefit for taxpayers and consumers. Inflation is real. Those billionaires are in it for themselves, and they are throwing their weight around and Trump lets them do it.

Three events converged in time. It helps explain MTG's very public move. One was the shutdown over the issue of affordable health insurance for working families. The second was Trump's effort to protect himself and other wealthy men from whatever is in the Epstein files. The third was the shocking election of Zohran Mamdani despite every effort of the moneyed interests of New York City to stop him. Mamdani showed the power of economic populism, the power that MTG spoke of in the conclusion of her resignation announcement.

. . .  the Political Industrial Complex of both parties is ripping this country apart. . . and instead the reality is that they, common Americans, The People, possess the real power over Washington. . . . 

That is a message with appeal to both Democratic and Republican voters. It is the MAGA message, but it isn't the Trump message anymore, because Trump chose to ally with the business establishment. Those lobbyists and establishment donors and bankers and tech billionaires support Trump. They also support the federal and state officeholders who have Trump's back. They protect him from impeachment. They praise and defend him, even when he does things that are outrageous, blatantly illegal, or unpopular. Those business elites fund campaigns, either for you or against you. If you cross Trump you cross them.

Trump can keep a populist GOP together, notwithstanding being in the money swamp, by making culture issues the centerpiece of his message. But Mamdani is the canary in the coal mine. MTG noticed it and so did Trump, who hastened to make-nice with Mandami. The public wants more than cultural populism; it wants economic populism. 

Democrats backed away from economic populism when it was advanced by Bernie Sanders. His ideas were new and the country wasn't ready. Sanders was a trial balloon. Mamdani is a second trial balloon. His economic populist message was unstoppable this time. But there is room for caution. After all, this was New York City, not New York State or a battleground state like Pennsylvania. But the message is clear: Economic populism has appeal. There may be an opportunity for an economic populist to take over a party and win the White House.

We have history to examine. FDR did not get elected amid happy days and prosperity. That is the condition for caution and stability. FDR was elected amid a devastating financial crisis. Business interests lost credibility. They needed rescue. Rescue came at a cost for them. The public made new rules to shape the economy and the distribution of national income.

Both Democrats and Republicans have laid the groundwork for a populist reset of the American economy. It will take a crisis to light the fuse. America has them from time to time. Something triggers it, and there are ample triggers.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Marjorie Taylor Greene is the real MAGA deal

     "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
          William Congreve, The Mourning Bride, 1697

"I refuse to be a battered wife."
          Marjorie Taylor Greene, last Friday

Trump embracing MTG. She was his biggest fan. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene has been betrayed, and she is furious. Betrayed by Donald Trump. Betrayed by the House GOP. Betrayed by the fakers and grifters who hijacked the MAGA movement.

She is angry because she is sincere. She is a populist, a woman of the people, and a true believer.

She was dangerous to Trump. He needed to exile her. 

MTG's speech announcing her resignation from Congress on January 5 is an extraordinary political document. It lays out the MAGA world view, and does it far better and more consistently than does Trump. He has a fragile coalition to lead. The MAGA worldview is pragmatically useful and it folds a constituency into the Trump movement. Trump cannot break with those supporters, nor can he embrace the full MAGA suite of beliefs. After all, the Trump-shaped GOP includes the donors and lobbyists in the "Chamber of Commerce Republican" set, the pro-Israel Zionists, big banks, big pharma, big tech, defense hawks, and Republicans willing to defend Trump's interest in the Epstein matter. Trump needs to compromise and shade his language and behavior to keep his fragile coalition together. MTG does not need to compromise. She gets to be 100 percent herself, and as such she is the tip of the MAGA spear.

Here is MTG's spoken announcement, a 10 minute video.

https://youtu.be/ubU-J-p_8Gc

Here is a written transcript: Click.

She speaks of betrayal. She expects Democrats to be vile, godless, communist, abortion-loving, trans-enabling, legal and illegal immigrant-enabling, banker-loving, foreign-aid-supporting, public-broadcasting-funding globalists. In short, swamp dwellers. She is no ally of Democrats, but they didn't betray her. They were being their evil selves. The betrayal comes from Republicans. She thought they were different. But she learned that they, too, are part of the swamp. 

My only goal and desire has ever been to hold the Republican Party accountable for the promises it makes to the American people and put America First, and I have fought against Democrats' damaging policies like the Green New Deal, wide open deadly unsafe border policies, and the trans agenda on children and against women. . . . 

If I am cast aside by MAGA Inc and replaced by Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can't even relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well. 

There is no ‘plan to save the world’ or insane 4D chess game being played. 

When the common American people finally realize and understand that the Political Industrial Complex of both parties is ripping this country apart, that not one elected leader like me is able to stop Washington's machine from gradually destroying our country, and instead the reality is that they, common Americans, The People, possess the real power over Washington, then I'll be here by their side to rebuild it.

The Trump-MTG alliance floundered over two issues that came to a head this month. One, Republicans are allowing subsidies for health insurance exchanges to lapse. That will price her constituents out of health insurance. Two, Republicans were blocking release of the Epstein files. MTG identified with the young women, not the powerful men who preyed on them. 

MAGA-thinking is a majority inside the GOP. That is why Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and the GOP establishment needed to call her a kook without disagreeing with her.  She wasn't wrong. She was disloyal. A political movement needs a spokesperson and leader. She was emerging as the better, clearer voice for MAGA, and she was loyal to MAGA, not Trump. That made her dangerous to Trump. 

MTG is not wrong in complaining about the excessive power of elites. She is not wrong about the swamp. She isn't wrong about the military industrial complex. Some of her complaints sound like Bernie Sanders'. Right populism and left populism overlap. She would not be a third-party voice. She would be the voice of a reformed non-swampy GOP. That is a problem for Trump's GOP. He made peace with the swamp and is neck-deep in it.

She is free now to start a political movement that is the logical successor to Trump. She might fade away. She reports that her life has been threatened. But I expect she will stay in the arena. It is exhilarating to be the center of attention, and she appears to have all the narcissism that animates Trump. She also has principles and an agenda.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your email go to: https://petersage.substack.com and subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]