Prime Minister Carney Speaks: A Rupture, Not a Transition
Thanks to Susan, who called the speech profound and thought provoking. She is right. Every sentence is chock full of wisdom.
And Two More Things on the Greenland Gambit
In the last post, I speculated that today’s Greenland nonsense is a harebrained attempt by Trump to “demonstrate” to the Supreme Court that tariffs are wonderful things, and that he should continue to be able to play with his playthings.
Two more pieces of evidence point in that direction.
(1) In his speech, he “took military force off the table.” As if to “prove” that whatever success he achieves with his antics will be the result of tariff threats, not the threat of force.
(2) Around 3PM this afternoon, he let it be known that tariffs are no longer necessary because he has the “framework” of a deal on Greenland—a deal reached with someone who has no power to give Greenland away.
So, an artificial tariff-related crisis results on a non-deal deal that he can vaingloriously proclaim to be a famous victory.
So, THERE, Supreme Court! See how well those tariff threats work!
One more question, you ask: What about the fact that he thinks Greenland and Iceland are the same place? What does that have to do with anything?
Answer: it shows that the dementia is advancing.
Why Greenland? From Whence This Madness?
IMHO, George Will and Ross Douthat have some pretty good things to say this morning. Will sees a crisis caused by “a president’s fragile ego, as usual.” Douthat has two alternative explanations: “malignant narcissism flavored with insane Nobel Peace Prize-related self-pity” or “how Trump always negotiates.” There’s much truth in both op-eds, and you would probably do well to read them.
You would also do well to take a look at the online front page of the Wall Street Journal—a good source for the business/financial elites’ view of the world. Part of it is reproduced above.
The elites are worried. The thing they value most—maybe the only thing they value at all—is their money. Trump’s behavior is increasingly threatening their core values.
I’m posting right now because I have my own take on the Mad King’s current thought processes. It’s set forth in the next paragraph, which is all speculation—but reasonable speculation based on known facts, analyzed logically.
Trump has been told—probably by the Solicitor General, the unfortunately named Mr. Sauer—that he is going to lose the tariff case in the Supreme Court. Bigly. Faced with that grave forthcoming affront to his fee-fees, Orange Mussolini has devised an insane Hail Mary pass: use tariffs to force Europe to give him Greenland, thereby “demonstrating” to the Supreme Court the great “value” of his favorite play-pretty, his usurped power to bully other countries with tariffs and threats of tariffs.
There will be consequences.
I hope y’all have a lot of popcorn on hand.
Ed Luce Sums Up Our Present Situation
Ed Luce (Financial Times), America’s barbarians inside the gates: No ideological code can fully capture Trump’s actions:
Historical sensibility tells us it is the barbarians who storm the gates. In today’s America, it is the other way round. Inside the citadel, the hordes are incinerating America’s traditions of law, civility and restraint. The civic-minded cry in the wilderness. Measured by the old era’s conventions, US President Donald Trump’s bonfire is only a quarter of the way through. Like so much else — the US Institute of Peace, the Kennedy Center, the Versailles-style White House ballroom, other people’s Nobel Prizes — Trump is rebranding the US as his own. As America prepares to commemorate its 250th anniversary, the republic is flirting with its own funeral.
Exaggeration? Since Trump descended that escalator in 2015, loyalists have diagnosed critics as suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome”. In line with the president’s core trait, they project their own condition on to others. With Trump, accusation is confession. He calls his opponents corrupt, unpatriotic, dishonest and much cruder things besides. Trump’s apologists — a more numerous crowd than true believers — work round the clock to sane-wash his policies into something coherent. Alas, Trump’s caprice makes it impossible for his explainers to keep pace.
One day Trump is a restrainer paring back America’s role in the world. The next, he is a true nationalist asserting his country’s domain over all he surveys. Tomorrow, he could revert to libertarianism. Today he is a pragmatic statist taking bites out of the shiniest bits of the private sector. Some make heroic attempts to depict Trump as a 21st-century reincarnation of Ronald Reagan. They get an A for effort. Like the fable of the naked emperor, he is imagined in all sorts of finery. More’s the pity that he is not playing along.
Fate will decide what becomes of Trump. He could get to the point where he loses his grip over the 2028 succession. He could just as equally bury America’s constitutional order and claim a third term into his mid-eighties. Those who discount the latter should recall that Trump serially exceeds the worst forecasts of what he will do. The move-along-nothing-to-see-here crowd have never had it so bad. The only thing that stopped Trump from staging an auto-coup in 2020 was a display of rectitude from his formerly quiescent vice-president, Mike Pence. JD Vance, the current vice-president, was picked to prevent such insubordination from recurring.
The other improbable hero of 2020 was Bill Barr, the attorney-general who was an ultra-loyalist up to the point that Trump asked him to seize voting machines and investigate voter fraud. Barr resigned. Pam Bondi, Barr’s successor, can be relied on to carry out any such instruction. Sceptics of Bondi’s limits should consult the Jeffrey Epstein files. Congress passed a law last month mandating Bondi to release them, which she has largely ignored. The law apparently is dispensable when it clashes with the wishes of America’s greatest leader. Whatever fate decrees for Trump, his Greek chorus are lashed to his mast. There is no easy path back from unquestioning obedience to the whims of one man.
How should rational planners — American and foreign alike — respond to whatever Trump throws at them? They have little chance of success unless they see him for what he is. No ideological code can fully capture his actions. Calling him a fascist may offer emotional release but his autocratic impulses stem more from vanity and insecurity than a coherent belief system. Trumpism is whatever he chooses it to be even as he contradicts himself. The key thus lies in Trump’s psychology, which has never been a mystery. His character is hidden in plain sight.
For those belatedly ready to see today’s abyss for what it is, here once again is Trump’s worldview. Life is a battle in which one person wins and the other loses. Everyone else, including his henchmen and America’s allies, is the other person. A zero-sum world permits no room for sentiment or friends. Opponents earn respect. Loyalty is for fools. Rivals might win or lose, depending on their hand. China has been the biggest winner of Trump’s second term so far — and has earned his respect. Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro is an obvious loser. Greenland, and quite possibly Nato, could be next.
The lesson for America’s friends is clear. Flattering Trump will earn his contempt. The world should study the fate of Canada’s Mark Carney. Alone among allies so far, the Canadian prime minister is responding to the reality of America’s deranged turn. Standing up to Trump offers no guarantee of success. Submission, on the other hand, is certain to fail.
Negative 19
The latest from The Economist.
The United States Versus Europe
I thought the heavy hitters on Morning Joe today were hitting pretty heavily about Trump’s bully boy tactics to try to steal Greenland.
A military invasion might conceivably generate some adverse congressional response. Alternatively, Orange Mussolini can try emasculating NATO by withholding essential military parts, intelligence cooperation, etc. But, first, he will apparently try economic aggression and threats of aggression.
As a Daily Kos article (relying heavily on Le Monde) informs us, there are a host of way in which European countries, individually and collectively, can stick it to the United States.
A glance at the Wall Street Journal this afternoon shows that Big Finance is pissed, bigly. As of the 3PM hour, World Time, the Dow is down 800 points.
Isn’t it inspiring to see Daily Kos and the Wall Street Journal singing from the same hymnal?
The Eternal Truth of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Power of Responding to Violence with Non-Violence
Wrong Century, Dude!
“I Smell, On the Other Hand, a Stench of Desperation”
Today, Jamelle Bouie, N.Y. Times opinion columnist, compares the Trump occupation of Minneapolis to the British occupation of Boston in the 1770’s. His concluding observations resonate with me:
One way to read the occupation of Minnesota is as a flex — a demonstration of the government’s power and authority. That, perhaps, is how Miller and Kristi Noem see the situation. I smell, on the other hand, a stench of desperation, an attempt to do with force what they can’t accomplish through ordinary politics. Faced with an angry public but committed to a rigid agenda of nativist brutality, the president and his coterie of ideologues are playing the only move they seem to have: wanton violence and threats of further escalation. They think this will break their opposition.
But looking at the ironclad resolve of ordinary Minnesotans to protect their homes and defend their neighbors, I think the administration is more likely to break on their opposition and learn, as the British did in Boston, that Americans are quite jealous of their liberties.
Facing MAGA 