TDS Turns Out to Have Been Prophetic

The vindication of Trump Derangement Syndrome

“To introduce a tariff bill into congress or parliament is like throwing a banana into a cage of monkeys. No sooner is it proposed to protect one industry than all the industries that are capable of protection begin to screech and scramble for it.” — Henry George

“Global trade turmoil deepened on Wednesday as the European Union and Canada announced billions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports, hours after President Trump’s across-the-board levies on steel and aluminum imports took effect.

“Mr. Trump has appeared undeterred by the uncertainty and fear that his tariffs, targeted at friends and foes alike, have injected into the global economy, rattling markets around the globe. He has not ruled out the possibility that his policies could cause a recession in the United States.” — NYT

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TDS

Today seems like a good day to (once again) re-up something I wrote several years ago:

Near the end of the miniseries Band of Brothers, the guys from Easy Company are shown riding in a convoy of trucks past a bedraggled column of German prisoners, some of whom are riding in carts drawn by horses.

Private David Webster is appalled by the scene and shouts at them:

“Hey, you! That's right, you stupid Kraut bastards! That's right! Say hello to Ford, and General fuckin’ Motors! You stupid fascist pigs! Look at you! You have horses! What were you thinking? Dragging our asses halfway around the world, interrupting our lives. . . For what, you ignorant, servile scum! What the fuck are we doing here?”

I woke up this morning thinking about him.

Admittedly, the parallels are hardly exact, but as I’m looking over the clusterfuck of American conservatism, I feel a kinship with Webster.

What were you thinking? You cowardly, ignorant, servile scum?

It’s not like you were not warned. Again and again.

It’s not as if it wasn’t obvious from the very beginning who Donald Trump was. You had to know it would come to something like this.

Now look at you. You have Trump.

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As far back as August 2015, I wrote that Trump was “a cartoon version of every left-wing media stereotype of the reactionary, nativist, misogynist right.”

Back then there was still time to say no. Some of us desperately made the case that he was a disaster. In May 2016, on the last appearance I will ever make on Fox News, I said:

Donald Trump is a serial liar, a con man who mocks the disabled and women. He’s a narcissist and a bully, a man with no fixed principles who has the vocabulary of an emotionally insecure nine-year-old.

So no, I don’t want to give him control of the IRS, the FBI, and the nuclear codes. That’s just me.

We were, of course, dismissed; accused of suffering from TDS — Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Yes, we were told, he was crude and rude, but if you squint hard enough — and ignore the “mean tweets” — he looked like a more or less conventional conservative: he cut taxes and regulations; he came around to supporting NATO. Character was overrated, anyway. Our 401Ks were fat and happy.

So, one after another, Republicans fell back from one red line to another. Instead of taking one of the many off-ramps offered to them, they returned him to power. And have now transformed the GOP into a Trump rubber-stamp-cum-cult.

Trump, of course, is who he always was; except angrier, more bitter, and still unburdened by either principles or guardrails.

So, I have to ask what remains of the GOP:

You elected a convicted felon to the most powerful office in the world — broadly immune from accountability, and literally above the law in his official duties. WTF did you think would happen?

Now look at you, with the chaos bubbling all around you. On again, off again, pointless trade wars with our allies; endless graft; a slash and burn through the government that endangers everything from air travel to Social Security; pardons for rioters and crooked politicians; assaults on the rule of law and free speech; the abandonment of allies; and now a crumbling stock market.

What you called Trump Derangement Syndrome turns out to have been a warning — and a prophecy. And you ignored it, you cowardly, ignorant, servile scum.

**

So we got scenes like this from the White House: As Americans lost trillions of dollars in the markets, the president was hawking cars for the world’s richest man.

Photographers noted that Trump was carrying notes from a Tesla sales pitch. FFS.

Nota Bene

Bob Bauer in “Executive Functions”:

In describing how Donald Trump is remaking the presidency, analysts have come up with various monikers: autocracy, authoritarianism, competitive authoritarianism, clientelism, patrimonialism, patronage politics. The differences are sometimes significant, sometimes more nuanced, but in all cases, Donald Trump is at the center.

He is “personalizing the government to an extraordinary extent, making Donald Trump himself the focal point of federal power.” His style of governing is defined as at the core “replacing impersonal, formal lines of authority with personalized, informal ones” and removing, as Jack described it, “all internal executive branch legal constraints on presidential action.”

Throughout this analysis of the personal style of governing, the exploitation of government power for private gain is a consistent theme. Under the patrimonialist theory in particular, a presidency like Trump’s obliterates the line between what is public and private and “see[s] legal institutions as obstacles to personal enrichment.”

Buyer’s Remorse?

The anti-anti-Trump editors of National Review seem gobsmacked by what they have wrought:

Trump has had constantly shifting justifications for his threats against Canada. First, it was fentanyl and migration, which aren’t enormous problems on our northern border. Then, it was Canadian protection for its dairy, lumber, and banking sectors, long-running issues that don’t justify going to DEFCON 1 with Ottawa. On Tuesday, it was a Canadian having the temerity to punch back against a U.S. threatening to dunk his country into a steep recession.

Trump heightened the contradictions when, after exempting the auto sector from his currently delayed, across-the-board 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, he talked of making automakers collateral damage in his tiff with the premier of Ontario.

None of this is good for U.S. business, which is getting whipsawed back and forth almost every day by the president.

As for Canada as the 51st state, it now seems to be more than trolling. If Trump is serious, it is unfathomable that we are threatening the sovereignty of a fellow NATO country, a friend that has repeatedly fought and bled alongside us. If we indulge the hypothetical and Trump somehow impoverishes Canada into submission, it would create a restive, resentful region of the United States where there presumably wouldn’t be a lot of Trump voters.

Trump vs Free Speech

On Monday, I talked about the cognitive dissonance of a Trump Administration that claims to support Christianity but wages an unrelenting war on Christian values.

Trump's War Against Christianity

Today, let’s take a look at a regime that claims to support free speech and expression.

In his excellent newsletter, Don Moynihan tracks how far we have come in the last few months:

• The President has politicized the Department of Justice and threatens to unleash the power of the federal government on his political enemies. For example, he has promised to punish law firms that provide legal support for his opponents, Now, many are no longer willing to do so.

• Critics who once held security clearances or security details have them removed.

• Organizations fearful of threats from the President preemptively erase ideas, or silence dissenting voices.

• The President has suggested that critics are supporters of terrorism, using vague language that allows him to threaten nonprofits, or promise to deport protest leaders, including green card holders.

• Words and ideas are banned. Censors rifle their way through government documents and websites to remove them. Federal spaces, like schools on military bases, are purged of books that even mildly hint at the idea that diversity is a good thing. Executive orders that purge these ideas tend to be ambiguous, leading organizations to respond broadly and to self-censor.

• Funding of research ideas is being taken away from research experts and handed to political appointees who are defunding the ideas they dislike. Campus officials are trying to decide how to respond to government orders to remove ideas.

• The President has pardoned militant supporters who engaged in violence to try to reverse the outcome of a previous election, and demoted officials who investigated those supporters.

• The President and the richest man in the world routinely make wildly dishonest claims about the government they are running. Critics of the employees of the richest man in the world can expect to be threatened with prosecution from the federal government. The richest man in the world purges ideas or even methods of disseminating ideas from the platform he owns. Qualified and credible voices are afraid to publicly expose his failures. They are threatened with firing if they explain to the public about the damage being done, or fired even when it’s their job to do so….

• Individual journalists whose job it is to hold the President accountable know that they will face a torrent of abuse if they are critical. The richest man in the world might call for a journalist to be fired, falsely accuse media organizations of secretly being paid by shadowy pro-government forces, or sue them to drain resources. Their organization may be banned from press events if it is deemed insufficiently supportive of the President, replaced by partisan outlets who only provide uncritical propaganda.

• Some media companies find excuses to bribe the President on the flimsiest of pretexts, humoring his demands for massive financial compensation when faced with normal journalistic practice, because their corporate owners fear the President’s retribution. Corporations have become accustomed to making multi-million contributions to the President as a form of protection money for their businesses.

Read the rest here (and there’s a lot).

Wednesday dogs

Today is Auggie’s 8th birthday. There will be treats.

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Here’s how Eli woke me up this morning.