“Nations across Asia will come to the same conclusion the Europeans have already reached: America is a Judas.”
I reckon so far MAGA Trump is 0 for 10 on the “average Joe ratio” of rewards gained vs. devastation exacted. The shortest presidential “honeymoon” since Lincoln faced the Ft. Sumter attack is morphing into the horror show from hell, slashing and burning, oblivious to human suffering and legal consequences. In sum, high pain, no gain, no viable plan, no coherent blueprint, no miracle finish.
What blunderer cuts “fraud and waste” with a bunker-busting bomb blindly, maliciously dropped from a great height? The real and fabricated “Trump Slump” that batters America not only incites enormous domestic defiance but boosts foreign nations across the globe, friend and foe alike– all classic, unintended consequences of stupidity.
In two months, what visible Trumpian gains, social or economic, accrue to offset grievous blows to both function and trust in credible government? Sadly typical (like the pandemic), Trump obeys his lowest self, seizing the wrong tools to assess, let alone reduce fraud and waste. A shock and awe Musk chainsaw produces only the debris chips of chaos, not progress or direction. A roughshod saw that cuts tree trunks becomes a weapon of mass destruction when used against complex, even delicate human systems. When ever have so few, with so much contempt for what they don’t understand, done so much damage in such a short time? Retribution-soaked, scorched earth politics ends up with deserts or wastelands, shredding healthy landscapes that roughly served majority welfare, especially the sick, the old, the compromised and the impoverished.
In a zero sum world, any national calamity (self-generated or not) automatically delivers huge gains to rational, disciplined competitors who escape disaster. A self-inflicted, serial drought (whether in harvests, science, research, or governance) obliterates a culture, making it MORE vulnerable to covetous, less stressed imperial powers. Suicide is hardly painless when stretched over time. Right now, in Trump’s deranged (and ironic) quest to bully his name into posterity, he has strengthened, even unified, “friendly” targets of his mayhem, like Canada, Mexico or Europe, plus overt opponents like Russia or China. No surprise for this home outcome: falling Trump approval numbers and fierce hatred of both Musk and DOGE.
Trump’s fast track to blasting Trumpism
So, faster than 100 whoppers, Trump has corrupted defensible goals (greater self-reliance, more efficient government, more equitable tariffs and income) with the crudest, criminal acts that worsen nearly everything. Is Canada or Europe or Denmark quaking in their boots when assaulted with popguns – or reacting rationally with unified, countervailing forces? How many true conservatives defend arbitrary, punitive 50% (or higher) tariffs that will incite inflation and handcuff the global supply chain? Or indiscriminately deporting critical, low-wage workers? What madness to eviscerate core, professional medical research and disease tracking plus science and technology expertise? What happens to food security when farmers are capriciously not reimbursed for completed, contracted best practices (like erosion control and soil enhancement)? That punishes those who plowed through federal regulations.
In the meantime, major corporate monopolies (hardly MAGA favorites) are cheering when the DOJ drops litigation to stop bribing foreigners or fomenting environmental atrocities? Trumpism in a nutshell: batter average citizens to buttress concentrated crony capitalist power. Who thinks our overseas reputation, stricken by militarism and predatory blunders, won’t fall further when cost-effective, life-saving USAID funds are lawlessly denied where needs are extreme? Are Russia, China and India not needlessly elevated to global driver seats, taking over lost foreign aid? In sum, is America thanks to Trump not politically and economically decimated, whether tariff threats or assaults on democratic rights are real (and costly) or just MAGA theatrics?
When has any president so misread both his “mandate” and what the majority wants – better governance that serves general welfare? Trump’s shock and awe tactics boast one paramount goal – awarding himself heroic importance, but all Americans (except the few industries boosted by trade controls) will pay a huge financial and security price. What high costs now and in a decade for a Ukraine overrun byTrump’s totalitarian pal and puppet master Putin? In a globally-linked world, across health, pollution, business and communication, how does a compromised, defunded America First go it alone without facing permanent drubbings?
So much losing we won’t believe it
The devastation already is singular: no one has done so much for foreign interests at the expense of American stability and prosperity. Never has one crazed Yank made more foreigners doubt the good faith of US promises, contracts and commitments. Worse still, Trump’s barely half done with his barrage of self-inflicted wounds that will take far longer to repair than to pull off. Tariffs are partial tools but rarely final solutions; breaking faith indicts itself. Quicker and worse than the first, behold a failed Trump presidency.
Even this Never Trumper doubted that he’d so dumb so fast, so lacking in big picture awareness – even the simplistic notion that unjustified belligerence guarantees retaliation, especially by abused allies who, unlike MAGA types, are legitimately, furiously “aggrieved.” So again President Screw-up proves hands down the truth of Rick Wilson’s 2018 book title, Everything Trump Touches Dies. Does anyone doubt that the “bash-everything-that-offends-me” paranoia is not stronger now than in Trump 1.0? What Trump promised – on inflation, jobs, prosperity, Ukraine, American greatness, has been shredded by his own repeat, unfixable stupidity. In only months, DOGE will end up representing not positive, creative destruction, simply self-destructive destruction, rather like battling a roaring fire by first firing all your best fire fighters.
Take Greenland, towards which America never had a beef. Only 57K people live there, happily overseen by Denmark, neither of which before Trump once qualified as an American foe. As a prosperous NATO member and source for thousands of Americans, Denmark is renowned as an evolved country that spawned Danish pastries, bicycle culture, LEGO bricks, Hamlet, and status among the happiest countries on earth. Did they deserve to be blindsided by an ignorant, imperialist wannabe fomenting headlines? According to the NY Times’ moderate David Brooks, Trump is playing anything but four-dimensional chess, stumbling badly if trying
to pry Russia from its alliance with China. American foreign policy is now oriented to whatever gets Trump’s hormones surging. He has a lifelong thing for manly virility. In the MAGA mind, Vladimir Putin codes as hard; Western Europe codes as soft. Elon Musk codes as hard; U.S.A.I.D. codes as soft. WWE is hard; universities are soft. Struggles for dominance are hard; alliances are soft.
Further, as CNN’s Fareed Zakaria told Ezra Klein, “Besides exposing the U.S. to far greater threats, Trump’s foreign policy is likely to leave America’s adversaries relatively unscathed . . . We have more leverage with Canada than we have with Russia because Canada depends on us for security. Canada trades with us a lot. Its economy is intricately tied to the U.S. economy. So you can bully Canada. But you can’t really bully Russia that much because we don’t do much trade with them. You can’t bully China.”
As Brooks ends his essay, It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot:
In Canada and Mexico you now win popularity by treating America as your foe. Over the next few years, I predict, Trump will cut a deal with China, doing to Taiwan some version of what he has already done to Ukraine — betray the little guy to suck up to the big guy. Nations across Asia will come to the same conclusion the Europeans have already reached: America is a Judas.
The uncharacteristically sharp-tongued Brooks is not all doom and gloom, signaling that a substantial counter-reaction to Trump’s vengeful, erratic, hormone-driven reign of failures will trigger apt corrections:
When that happens people will be ready to hear the truth that Trump will never understand — that when you turn America into a vast extortion machine, you will get some short-term wins as weaker powers bend to your gangsterism, but you will burn the relationships, at home and abroad, that are actually the source of America’s long-term might.
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