Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Trump Era Page 10 of 13

Does Trump Get Impeached or Get Two Terms?

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On January 23, 2017

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One of the more interesting pieces of writing over the weekend was Robert Reich’s report on his meeting with a friend who had been a Republican Congressperson.

I had breakfast recently with a friend who’s a former Republican member of Congress. Here’s what he said:

Him: Trump is no Republican. He’s just a big fat ego.

Me: Then why didn’t you speak out against him during the campaign?

Him: You kidding? I was surrounded by Trump voters. I’d have been shot.

Me: So what now? What are your former Republican colleagues going to do?

Him (smirking): They’ll play along for a while.

Me: A while?

Him: They’ll get as much as they want – tax cuts galore, deregulation, military buildup, slash all those poverty programs, and then get to work on Social Security and Medicare – and blame him. And he’s such a fool he’ll want to take credit for everything.

Me: And then what?

Him (laughing): They like Pence.

Me: What do you mean?

Him: Pence is their guy. They all think Trump is out of his mind.

Me: So what?

Him: So the moment Trump does something really dumb – steps over the line – violates the law in a big stupid clumsy way … and you know he will …

Me: They impeach him?

Him: You bet. They pull the trigger.

Now, this lines up with what I’ve heard from other people, and the bit at the start with ” You kidding? I was surrounded by Trump voters. I’d have been shot.” also aligns with what I’ve said a few times to the derision of some liberals, who don’t really believe violence would happen.

My take is the same, but more succinct. Trump has a base. If he keeps that base happy, the Republicans won’t dare impeach him. Even if you don’t believe there would be violence (I think it’s quite possible), these are the sort of people who would make their congress members lives quite miserable and would definitely primary them, with a good chance of winning.

The problem here is that, for example, that some of the plans floated are insane, and will gut Trump’s support. He can get away with cutting taxes and even reducing mortgage subsidies (though it was stupid of him), but he can’t get away with cutting Medicare or Social Security. He said in the primary that he would never do so, or allow it. If he does, he’s toast, it’s that simple.

People will know if this happens in the sense that they will feel it in their lives. The same is true of the Obamacare repeal: People will know if they’re not getting health care they used to get. (Note I didn’t say insurance, but health care.) If Trump actually replaces Obamacare with something about as good or better, there’s no worries. If it’s repealed and placed with shitty health care savings plans or tax write-offs which don’t actually add up to as much care as even Obamacare offered, people will know.

Trump’s core promise is to make the lives of people who lost from the last 40 years of neoliberal politics better. (He didn’t use those words, but that’s what it amounts to, and that’s how his own base understands it, again, using other words).

If he makes the lives of those in his base better off, he’s golden, and the GOP will show their belly. If he doesn’t, they will turn on him and rip his belly out. It is about that simple.

Trump doesn’t need to be popular with everyone. It doesn’t matter that the women’s march produced more people than his inauguration, despite his squealing about it: It is irrelevant because those people couldn’t produce enough people in the right states to with the election AND, as with previous great protests, nothing appears to have been built on top of the protests. It’s nice they all showed up, but they aren’t being asked (or organized) to do things that matter in the future, for all the talk of “the resistance.” If you wanted power, you’d want to be able to get one-fifth that crowd to show up when needed to oppose specific bills and actions by Congress, for example.

All that Trump needs is to make the lives of the people who voted for him, and a few more, better. If he does, he doesn’t get impeached and gets re-elected, and his deranged screams about how reality is the way he wants it to be (biggest inauguration crowd) are irrelevant.

Trump gets this if he listens to the right people. The more he listens to what people like Pence and Priebus and Rand Paul want, the more likely he is to get impeached quicker. The more he listens to Bannon’s populism in particular, and allows people like Kushner and his daughter Ivana to mitigate the worst cruelty desired by Republicans, the more likely he is to get two terms.

This puts some of the opposition in the odd position of needing him to be maximally cruel and to not help ordinary Americans in the states he won. They need the worst people to win (Kushner, Bannon, and Ivanka are not even close to the worst people in DC).

Trump is immensely flawed. The need to be seen as the bestest, reality be damned, makes it hard for him to always make good decisions. This is not, again, to say he isn’t competent by any useful definition of the word (he shits on a gold toilet, had sex with some of the most beautiful women in the world and became President when almost no one thought he could), but it also doesn’t mean he doesn’t have issues. Not every man or woman who is capable of achieving great things is equal.

Those who want Trump to fail should be careful what they wish for, as well. Pence is a theocrat’s theocrat, and not amenable to influence in the way that Trump is. He’ll parse as a lot less crazy, but his policies won’t necessarily be better and for many, they will be worse.

But bottom line: Trump keeps his base happy or he gets impeached. He delivers a better enough life for people who voted for him or would consider voting for him, or he doesn’t get his second term.

It’s that simple.

Now we will know whether he’ll last within a couple months or sooner. We will be able to tell from his budget, his first series of actions, and whether he allows real cuts to Medicare and SS, and replaces Obamacare with something at least about as good.

All you have to do is evaluate how those things will feel, once they’ve played out. I predicted the shape of Obama’s economy the second I had two pieces of information: his economic team and his stimulus. I wrote in early February of 2009 that his economy would never recover for most Americans, and it pretty much never did (only in 2016 was there an increase in median wages, and employment as a percentage of population never recovered).

Because Trump is potentially changing so much, it will be a little harder to tell, but I still expect it to be entirely clear by the end of March, and quite possibly within a few weeks.

Everything after that will just be playing out what Trump and the Republican Congress have already decided on, and their inevitable effects.

So chill and watch, the future will its shape soon enough, and for quite a few years in advance.

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Transcript of Trump’s Inaugural Speech

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On January 20, 2017

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This is basically accurate (minus transferring power to the people), but Trump is making a lot of promises here, and I will judge him on them, especially since his cabinet picks are mostly abhorrent.

“Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans and people of the world, thank you.

We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people.

Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come. We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done.

Every four years we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power.

And we are grateful to President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition.

They have been magnificent.

Thank you.

Today’s ceremony, however, has a very special meaning because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people.

For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have bore the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered but the jobs left and the factories closed.

The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

That all changes starting right here and right now, because this moment is your moment.

It belongs to you.

It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America.

This is your day.

This is your celebration.

And this, the United States of America, is your country.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

January 20th, 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.

The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before.

At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families and good jobs for themselves.

These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public.

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists.

Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.

An education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.

And the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

We are one nation, and their pain is our pain.

Their dreams are our dreams, and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home and one glorious destiny.

The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.

For many decades we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military.

We’ve defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own. And we’ve spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon.

One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores with not even a thought about the millions and millions of American workers that were left behind.

The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world. But that is the past, and now we are looking only to the future.

We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.

From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our product, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.

Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body, and I will never ever let you down.

America will start winning again, winning like never before.

We will bring back our jobs.

We will bring back our borders.

We will bring back our wealth, and we will bring back our dreams.

We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation.

We will get our people off of welfare and back to work, rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.

We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and hire American.

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.

We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example.

We will shine for everyone to follow.

We will re-enforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth.

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.

When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

The Bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity. We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity. When America is united, America is totally unstoppable. There should be no fear. We are protected and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement. And most importantly, we will be protected by God.

Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger. In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving. We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining but never doing anything about it.

The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action.

Do not allow anyone to tell you that it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America. We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again.

We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.

A new national pride will stir ourselves, lift our sights and heal our divisions. It’s time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget, that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots.

We all enjoy the same glorious freedoms and we all salute the same great American flag.

And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty creator.

So to all Americans in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, from ocean to ocean, hear these words: You will never be ignored again. Your voice, your hopes and your dreams will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.

Together we will make America strong again, we will make America wealthy again, we will make America proud again, we will make America safe again.

And, yes, together we will make America great again.

Thank you.

God bless you.

And God bless America.”

Inauguration Open Thread

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On January 20, 2017

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It’s the big day. A lot of bad stuff starts, let us hope that some good comes with it. I will say that so far most of the bad stuff Trump has promised to do is what most of the Republican candidates would have done. Bear that in mind.  (That doesn’t make it any better, just some perspective.)

Trump on Health Insurance, NATO, and the EU

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On January 15, 2017

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Well, Trump keeps saying stuff, and people keep freaking out. He said a number of interesting things this weekend, let’s run through them.

The U.K. is smart to leave the bloc because the EU “is basically a means to an end for Germany.”

Yeah. Not so clear. BUT, there’s an element of truth here. Among the major European powers, Germany is the one who has benefited most from the EU, or rather the Euro (which England was not a part of). The Euro is not worth nearly as much as a German mark would be, making German exports far more affordable than they would be otherwise. Meanwhile, Germany has pushed hard for austerity policies, on the crazed moral point that countries which don’t run trade surpluses shouldn’t have good things. At this point, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece would clearly all be better off outside the Euro–at the very least. Germany has acted monstrously over the past eight years, no more so than to Greece, but not only to them. About the only thing I agree with Merkel about was when she opened up Germany to immigrants (something Trump slams).

  • Trump said Bayerische Motoren Werke AG would face a 35 percent import duty for foreign-built BMW cars sold in the U.S. BMW should scrap plans to open a new plant in Mexico and build the factory in the U.S. instead, he was quoted as saying. BMW plans to start building 3 Series sedans at San Luis Potosí in 2019.

I have exactly zero problem with this. This is how much of the world economy was run prior to the rise of neoliberalism. If you wanted access to a market, you were expected to locate much of the production in the country, with foreign content rules in place. Often it was expected that, say, 60 percent of work and materials would be produced in the country to which you were selling.

  • NATO, he said, “has problems.” “It’s obsolete, first because it was designed many, many years ago,” Trump was quoted as saying about the trans-Atlantic military alliance. “Secondly, countries aren’t paying what they should” and NATO “didn’t deal with terrorism.”

I have believed, since the fall of the USSR and the release of the Warsaw Pact countries, that NATO should be dissolved. I have not changed my mind because Trump is now saying it. Let us be clear, the EU’s population is 508 million. When the UK leaves, it will be 447 million.

Russia’s population is 143 million.

The EU minus Britain has a GDP of 18.1 trillion (purchasing power parity), Russia has an economy of 3.5 trillion (ppp). Germany alone has a GDP (ppp) of four trillion.

Yeah, Europe can afford to pay for its own defense. It has a larger economy and a larger population than Russia. It isn’t even close. If Europe refuses to defend itself, I don’t see how that’s America’s problem, the only thing Europe really needs from America is a nuclear shield, and that need could easily be fulfilled another way (and France has nukes).

NATO is the main reason that Russia is a problem. The Russians were promised that NATO wouldn’t expand into the Warsaw Pact countries. That promise was broken, and when it became possible that the Ukraine would join NATO, Russia acted, because Russian generals believe that it is impossible to defend Moscow if troops start from the Ukraine.

  • On Russia, he suggested he might use economic sanctions imposed for Vladimir Putin’s encroachment on Ukraine as leverage in nuclear-arms reduction talks

This isn’t a bad thing. Good relations with the other massively nuclear armed state in the world are good, and America has zero interests of importance in the Ukraine. As for Europe, see above: They can defend themselves, and if they can’t be bothered, so be it.

Now, to be frank, I don’t believe it will be good insurance (I’ll be happy to be wrong), and I note that it is not healthcare for all, but insurance for all–insurance many may not be able to use. I also doubt it will be universal. But then Obamacare was insurance that many people can’t afford to use, so that alone doesn’t make it a worse plan than Obamacare was.

Still, the actual promise has potential to be better than Obamacare, because Obamacare was not actually insurance for everyone: Nine percent of Americas still lack insurance (this is down from about 14 percent before Obamacare).

If it’s better than Obamacare I will laugh like a hyena.

My read on Trump’s future is as follows: He either gets two terms, or he gets impeached in his first term. Most GOP Congress members would rather have Pence than Trump. BUT Trump’s followers are very faithful and as long as he remains popular, Congress would not dare to impeach him. They have to live in districts where he is popular, and not only their seats, but much more would be at risk if they were labelled traitors by Trump. Bear in mind that there’s no way Trump goes peacefully, or doesn’t call them out, he would fight to the end.

So Trump has to deliver to his base, or he’s done. Also, Trump wants to be adored. It is his deepest psychological need, as best I can see.

The risks with Trump remain high (especially in regards to his China policy); his tax cuts are deranged, the supreme court is going to be a disaster, but that doesn’t mean that his administration may not be successful enough for the people it needs to deliver for to get him his second term.

More than that, Trump is saying the things that no one else in power would say. I mean, he called out pharma as protected and said that’s over. He’s mostly right about NATO. He said in this interview that Iraq was the biggest foreign policy disaster in American history (that’s overstating it, but it’s the biggest since Vietnam).

It’s going to be an interesting few years. Strap in.

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Trump Promises to Reduce Drug Prices

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On January 12, 2017

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So, there was a lot of hoopla over Trump’s press conference, most of it concentrating on the release of the oppo research file on him, containing not one proven assertion.

I decided, once again, to read the actual transcript.  And found out that there was little coverage of something which should matter more to most Americans: Trump’s promise to lower Pharma prices.

We’ve got to get our drug industry back. Our drug industry has been disastrous. They’re leaving left and right. They supply our drugs, but they don’t make them here, to a large extent. And the other thing we have to do is create new bidding procedures for the drug industry because they’re getting away with murder.

Pharma has a lot of lobbies and a lot of lobbyists and a lot of power and there’s very little bidding on drugs. We’re the largest buyer of drugs in the world and yet we don’t bid properly and we’re going to start bidding and we’re going to save billions of dollars over a period of time.

The business press seem to be taking this seriously.

It is also, AGAIN, something which should have been tackled long ago. Obama deliberately refused to allow price negotiation with pharma and so did Bush. In both cases, they gave into the lobby. Insane.

Nor, as some say, will this mean that pharma prices will have to rise overseas. Pharma is a profitable industry which spends more on marketing and advertising than on drug research, which researches mostly the wrong drugs, and so on.  They can just make less money–high profits to Pharma are mis-allocated resources.

Next Trump talked about the F-35 (for those who don’t keep track, it basically can’t fly and is vastly over cost.)

And we’re going to do that with a lot of other industries. I’m very much involved with the generals and admirals on the airplane, the F-35, you’ve been reading about it. And it’s way, way behind schedule and many, many billions of dollars over budget. I don’t like that. And the admirals have been fantastic, the generals have been fantastic. I’ve really gotten to know them well. And we’re going to do some big things on the F-35 program…

AGAIN something which should have already been dealt with.

Trump thinks like a deal-maker and a business man, and what he sees is that the government is vastly over-paying for services and products, and he doesn’t like that. And what he sees is that Americans are overpaying as well, because the government refuses to act on their behalf.

I’m sorry, I’m very sorry. Trump will certainly do bad things, but if he follows through on these two things (especially pharma), he’ll be doing very good things that people like Obama would not do.

This is of a piece with Trump killing the Trans Pacific Partnership, while reports have regularly indicated that getting it passed was Obama’s most important legislative priority, likely for his entire Presidency.

Understand clearly that this is the sort of stuff that Trump was elected to do, along with bringing jobs back, curtailing immigration, and so on.

The next thing to watch will be what replaces the ACA (Obamacare). I am not optimistic, because health care accounts are a terrible idea.  But let’s see. (Or, alternatively, call your Congress critters and insist the ACA not be repealed. You might win.)

But right now, as I score it, Trump is more or less on track to do what he said he would do. I think his tax cuts will be disastrous, especially in the long run. I don’t like Obamacare, but I expect him to replace it with something worse. However, in a lot of areas, he’s talking about doing things that should have been done long ago.

When the people too many liberals think are “good” (like Obama), won’t do what everyone knows what must be done, they will eventually be done by people liberals consider “bad,” in ways liberals might not like.

There’s a lesson there.

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The Latest Dossier on Trump

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On January 11, 2017

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Buzzfeed published it. They start with this:

A dossier, compiled by a person who has claimed to be a former British intelligence official, alleges Russia has compromising information on Trump. The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.

“We can’t confirm any of it, and we know some of it is wrong, but we went with it anyway.”

Sigh.

On the face of it, I’m inclined to agree with Glenn Greenwald that it seems possible the Deep State is taking a shot at Trump. Because Trump has plans to reorganize the intelligence agencies, that’s not surprising.

Perhaps unrelated: Trump will be keeping his private security, and not relying entirely on the Secret Service.

Greenwald’s point that when much or all of this is proved false, it will immunize Trump from any true revelations in the future, is also worth pondering.

I’m not sure what to say beyond that, except that reading this Twitter stream from Matt Stoller is important. It starts as follows.

Yeah. It’s just possible that Democrats lost not because of a super evil Russian conspiracy, but because they didn’t do the very basic job of government. All the bullshit lists that have come out miss the simple point that, measured in terms of jobs as a percentage of the population, the economy hasn’t recovered.

As for Obamacare, insurance coverage is not health care. If it was, the mortality rate wouldn’t be going up. The transmission is not applying power to the ground.

Democrats lost to an extremely unpopular, very flawed person, because they ran the country badly for a lot of people, and those people are upset.

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The Continued Collision Between Trump and the Fed

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On January 10, 2017

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As I noted before, the Fed and the Trump admin are on a collision course. More evidence:

The Fed’s argument is that the unemployment rate is low enough that it is at the natural rate of employment which doesn’t cause wage-push inflation. As of December, that was 4.7 percent. (There are tons of problems with this, but we’ll ignore most of them, what matters here is what the Fed thinks.)

I am old enough to remember when an unemployment rate of five percent was considered a scandal, but no matter.

The fact is that the people who elected Trump aren’t feeling good. To make them feel good, Trump is going to have get the official unemployment rate lower than it is now, at least under four percent, and hopefully to three percent or lower and hold it there for some time, at least two or three years.

This stuff takes time to ripple through the economy, and it takes time for a tight labor market to push employers to both raise wages and to hire people who they consider marginal.

If the Federal Reserve raises rates if/when Trump’s policies (“fiscal,” in the above) start to work, they will be making sure he can’t deliver to his constituency.

This is a direct collision course.

Now let me say something simple. The Federal Reserve, for over 30 years, has deliberately crushed wages. This was policy. Policy.

The idea that the Federal Reserve should be able to sandbag the policy (“fiscal”) of elected representatives has always been anti-democratic and bogus. They work fastidiously to make sure the rich get richer, to bail out banks, and ensure their profits. Despite “full employment” supposedly being part of their charter, they have defined full employment to mean “employment pressure which doesn’t lead to general increases in wages faster than inflation.”

That is, they have deliberately set out to create stagnation and decline of general wages, while deliberately also ensuring that the rich get richer.

That’s what the Federal Reserve does in practice, and has done since the early 80s.

And that’s why, as with many of Trump’s other targets, I have no intention of defending the Federal Reserve. Yes, Trump is bad, etc. But the Federal Reserve needs to be broken to the will of government, and thus to democracy.

Since none of the “non-bad” or “not so bad” presidents did it, it will fall to Trump to do it. This will probably be the worst way to do something necessary, but so be it; none of the so-called “reasonable” people will do it, so it will be done by someone unreasonable (if Trump does it, this is not a fait accompli.)

Along with breaking the intelligence community (which could lead the world into an even worse situation, but a task that also falls into “needs to be done” category), Trump may well wind up being the most transformative President since Reagan, or even FDR.

This is what happens when the necessary actions which are not taken by “reasonable” people. They wind up being done by unreasonable people, and those unreasonable people may not be “unreasonable” in the way you like.

Keep an eye on this: If the Fed doesn’t blink and Trump doesn’t break them, he’s probably a one-termer.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Rule of Men, Not Law

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On January 7, 2017

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Amidst all the screaming about Trump, there is a feeling that he is being unfair by singling out various companies for attack.

This is true.

It is also special pleading.

What Trump is doing, and what he will almost certainly do when he is in office, is pick out specific groups and individuals, and he will very likely use the weight of the state against them.

Oh dear. Oh dear.

This is rule by men, yes. It has also been going on for years. Anti-war protestors and environmentalists have been singled out for special attention on the positive side of the scale.

Meanwhile, on the negative end of the stick, let us compare two financial crises. In the eighties, there was a financial crisis too, filled with tons of fraud, called the Savings and Loan crisis. It happened under a Republican president.

Executives were charged, and they went to jail.

In 2007-2008, we had a financial crisis, and from 2009 on, Obama’s DOJ applied fines, not criminal charges. Those fines immunized the participants, and since they did not take money from those who had benefited (and were often less than the profits taken by the corporation, even) they did not dis-incentivize criminal acts. Instead, the DOJ said: “There is no real penalty, so make the money when you can, and we’ll immunize you for a token fee.”

There is no question in any reasonable person’s mind that many executives had engaged in fraud, negligence, and criminal conspiracy which could have been indicted under RICO.

But hey, they were let off. Meanwhile, people who applied for mortgage relief were deliberately given the run-around and fucked over, losing their houses (see David Dayen’s “Chain of Title” if you need the blow-by-blow.)  Robo-signing by financial institutions, post-financial crisis, was also mass fraud, attesting to facts the signers had no knowledge of.

America is already a nation of men, not laws. One can say, “It has always been thus,” and there is some truth to that, but it is more a lie than true: see the S&L crisis.

People have already been getting away with lawbreaking–depending on who they are–and not small numbers of people. And if you don’t think various firms haven’t been picked out for special, positive favors, you simply haven’t been paying attention.

2000’s Gore vs. Bush ruling was “men over laws.” It was such a bad ruling that the Supreme Court tried to say it couldn’t be used as a precedent. Meanwhile, the protections of law in general were gutted: the Patriot Act, the AUMF, the rise of the vast surveillance state with its clear industrial-scale violations of the Fourth Amendment. Most Americans live in a border zone, where they don’t have freedom from arbitrary search and seizure. As for the First Amendment, the existence of “First Amendment Zones” tells you all you need to know.

Trump’s behaviour is and will be the direct consequence of how many previous Presidents acted, including Obama (who notably killed an American citizen without any trial and claimed the right to do so).

To cry now, and especially to weep for large corporations who are bad actors, is hilariously hypocritical and intensely revealing. “Trump blackmailed them into keeping a few jobs in America, that tyrant!”

Oh, My, God, the funny. Now yes, Trump has also called out people for terrible reasons. Oh well. Yes, that’s a new bad thing (though not worse than killing a US citizen without trial, the right to face his accusers, or see the evidence presented against him), but I just find it hard to get very worked up over.

You already lost your rule of law. There are a few places one can date the loss to, but I put it in Obama’s mass-immunization of financial executives. You could argue for Bush vs. Gore or a number of other places.

But wherever you put it, it already happened.

You have the rule of men. For certain people, the law is interpreted and enforced differently.

This, folks, was at the heart of Trump’s attacks on Clinton for e-mail, which liberals laughed off.  But we all know that if some peon had done the exact same thing, they would have been ruined and probably gone to jail.

You already lost rule of laws, and had rule of men.

You have already paid a frightful price for this. The reason your economy is so bad is because bankers were immunized and bailed out, staying in charge of your economy when they are incompetent crooks and ordinary people were not bailed out.

Not coincidentally, minus not bailing out ordinary people, Trump does not win election in 2016.  (He also wouldn’t have won if Obamacare was not so flawed, but that’s another post.)

Trump is just the continued price for breaking your own laws and constitution, and your own unwritten norms.

As such he falls under “as you sow, so shall you reap”.

Until large numbers of Americans see it this way, including at least some faction of elites or would-be-elites, there can be no true fix for this situation, whatever happens with Trump.

Trump is the symptom, not the disease, and until you treat the disease, things like Trump (or the financial crisis and the lack of real recovery from that crisis) will continue to happen, and fools will continue to be bewildered by them, as if the very public actions of the people they elected had not led to them.

Machiavelli wrote, and America’s founders agreed, that good men could make bad laws work, and that good laws could not save bad men.

The founders’ equivalent was that eventually Americans would become so degraded that they could only be ruled by despots.

Americans have given many signs of being this degraded, and now it’s up to Americans to prove that they aren’t.

Don’t dare to say this is all on “deplorables” or Republicans, because Democrats have not just been complicit in all of this, they have spurred it on in deliberate ways–as with Obama on surveillance, drone murder, and whistleblowers.

It is on Americans.

Americans are reaping as they have sown. That all Americans are not bad or degraded is not the point. Enough of you are, and your elites are corrupt as a class, so much so that I would easily expect, in nine or ten years, to be fundamentally unethical and unsuited to public life. That includes, by the way, Bill Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Trump is what Americans have earned.

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