Ignorance is Bliss… Until It Isn’t

You can hear Trump’s base howling with laughter every time their hero tears at some politically correct icon, uses a word that is insulting to those minorities they believe should return to “their place” (which is often not the United States), decimates some federal agency or applies his bully-tactics and power assumptions to foreign countries decreasingly dependent on anything American. The system has not worked for them in years, and the vectors of change suggest that their way of life does not fit into a modern world. So screw that modern world and the government that grew up trying to fit into it! Go back to the past, put a wall around us so we can live the way we used to without global interference, and Make America Great Again (read: Like It Was).

Minor problem. That’s ain’t happenin’ no matter what any political constituency may want. Change knows no master. It happens. You can go with the flow, try and manage transitions – which we are doing very, very badly – or you can blow stuff up, tear it apart, so at least the rest of your national constituency gets to struggle with the uncertainty just like you. That the United States is slipping down the power and influence pole, that the world is not “following American orders” as they expected, and that their retro-wishes can never be achieved absent a North Korea-like dictatorship… who cares?

Hard to picture what life is like for a vast army of unemployed or under-employed white workers, made of stern stock that has worked hard generation after generation, whose skills are hopelessly dated and obsolete. History has watched the most destructive seeds of discontent planted in precisely this kind of fertile soil… repeatedly. It may take time, but these movements, which grow violent very quickly, never survive… and their adherents are swallowed whole by the change they so resisted. Meanwhile, their frustration grows, anger (often directed at minorities that their leaders have picked to blame) mounts, hope fades (across present and future generations), and escape often vies against aggression to placate the wounds. Opioids vs burning crosses. And while these efforts never work, a lot of innocents are always decimated in the process.

Very few Americans believe that their government is efficient and caters to the needs of the majority. Unlike Europe, where people mistrust business and prefer their government, in the United States the opposite is true. Donald Trump mobilized this core American distrust of government, manifest in the Constitution itself, to embrace a mixture of those white diehards along with so many other Americans who want something other than what Washington has become.

The Democrats are so associated with big inefficient government – from the traditionalist incumbent leadership down to the grassroots that have been rewarded for adhering to the same-old/same-old, dismissing progressives as having an impossible package to sell to Middle Americans – that the traditional vast majority of “work-for-a-living” Americans has fractured badly. The GOP and pseudo-populist Trump have identified a brand new constituency of white voters, once Democratic diehards, quite willing to vote against their own interests, ready to buy into elegantly worded mythology, who either want the United States to reflect their archaic vision or simply devolve into the chaos that we are already witnessing around us.

And because the United States does not sit in a part of the world where it is surrounded by lots of other countries, near other continents, foreign policy is simply not a core concern for most of us… unless we have to send our sons and daughters to war. Since WWI, the United States has slowly risen to dominate global politics, and sequentially our major foes have fallen – like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union – or morphed into countries that have dropped failed strategies and now look like successful capitalistic nations, like China.

The assumption of perpetual global ascent, of coasting on our past glories without investing in future necessities, is a reflection of our own accelerating demise. The sacrificial lambs? The trilogy of innovative priorities that made us powerful: education, research and infrastructure. Bringing the best and the brightest on the planet, welcoming them as the new Americans, and inhaling the growth they brought with them.

We’ll embrace a vastly bigger deficit to enhance the wealthiest in our nation, but not to educate the next generation, rebuild an economy-supporting infrastructure or fund an innovation-accelerating program of scientific research. We’ll spend money but we will not invest in ourselves. And don’t kid yourself about that stock market; it isn’t soaring because we are creating new jobs! Like drooling hyenas anticipating fresh kill, corporate America is soaring in anticipation of tax cuts.

Even forgetting about the doubling of accidents in coal mines since OSHA rules have relaxed, the degradation of the water we drink or the air we breathe as environmental regulations are tossed aside, the skyrocketing healthcare premiums as the GOP openly sabotages truly working programs aimed at people who could never afford health insurance before or the wave of pro-business rulings and regulations aimed at reducing consumer clout against corporate monoliths… the damage being done to some pretty critical governmental institutions borders on criminal.

If you ask a general for a solution to a powerful international challenge, you are pretty likely to get a military solution. If you ask a politician the same question, unless they have spent a lot of time studying and understanding the variables, they are likely to offer a solution with good sound bites for their core constituency. They really cannot advise on more than they know or think they know. That critical link between us and the rest of the world, the Department of State with its consulates and embassies all over the world, is being dismantled and marginalized. It is a symptom that is rapidly becoming a difficult-if-not-impossible-to-reverse reflection of the new and vastly weaker America.

I grew up in the Washington swamp. My parents, father, mother and step-father, all worked for the government. All I remember is how hard they worked, the long often unpredictable hours, the litany of languages they learned and the educational preparation they endured to get to where they could serve their country best. Those early visions, combined with an education in social systems, history and law from some of the best schools in the land… continuing through a lifetime of reading and studying those same subjects as my core “leisure time” activity, led me to writing this blog. And for those of you who are dedicated followers, you know how dedicated I am to keeping up with change at every level… keeping an eye on how we as Americans look at and a looked back by the rest of the world.

So a band of rather dramatically unqualified cabinet-level officers, led by a man who himself declares how much he hates to read and study (claiming that watching television is enough), tears apart an institution we need today more than ever, I have to write about it. We are getting some terrible and misinformed decisions in some of the most dangerous places on earth. Morale at the Department of State has never been lower in the entirety of American history. Writing an op-ed for the November 27th New York Times, Nicholas Burns, a former under-secretary of state and ambassador to NATO, who teaches diplomacy and international relations at Harvard and Ryan C. Crocker, a former ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, who is a lecturer at Princeton:

“President Trump’s draconian budget cuts for the State Department and his dismissive attitude toward our diplomats and diplomacy itself threaten to dismantle a great foreign service just when we need it most.

“The United States is facing an extraordinary set of national security challenges. While we count on our military ultimately to defend the country, our diplomats are with it on front lines and in dangerous places around the world. They are our lead negotiators as we work with our European allies in NATO to contain growing Russian power on the Continent. They are our lead negotiators seeking a peaceful end to the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Our diplomats are assembling the coalition of countries in East Asia to counter the irresponsible regime of the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un.

“Foreign Service officers in more than 280 embassies and consulates aid American citizens in trouble overseas, help American companies overcome unfair barriers to trade and investment, coordinate counterterrorism and narcotics programs and manage development and humanitarian aid to distressed countries.

“Diplomats negotiate the landing and basing arrangements for American troops overseas, such as at Central Command’s major Middle East base in Qatar. Our strongest and smartest presidents have known that integrating our diplomatic and military strategies is the most effective way to succeed in the world today.

“Both of us served overseas and in Washington for decades as career diplomats. We were ambassadors during both Republican and Democratic administrations. We are proud of the nonpartisan culture of our brethren at the State Department. President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson can count on them to work tirelessly, loyally and with great skill for our country.

“But we are concerned the Trump administration is weakening the Foreign Service by a series of misguided decisions since taking office. It has proposed a 31 percent budget reduction for the State Department that would cripple its global reach. It has failed to fill the majority of the most senior ambassadorial positions in Washington and overseas. It is on track to take the lowest number of new officers into the service in years.

“It has even nominated a former officer with a scant eight years of experience to be the director general of the Foreign Service, the chief of its personnel system. The nonpartisan American Academy of Diplomacy (of which we both are members) advised Congress that this would be ‘like making a former Army captain the chief of staff of the Army.’

“As a result, many of our most experienced diplomats are leaving the department. Along with the senior diplomats who were summarily fired by the Trump team early this year, we are witnessing the most significant departure of diplomatic talent in generations. The drop in morale among those who remain behind is obvious to both of us. The number of young Americans who applied to take the Foreign Service officer entry test declined by 33 percent in the past year. This is particularly discouraging and will weaken the service for years.” And even with his own appointees, Donald Trump’s tweet undercut even their genuine attempts at forming viable foreign policies. Trump always knows best… even when he know absolutely nothing. China and Russia are cackling with glee. They are taking our place as quickly as we abandon our bastions in the rest of the world.

I’m Peter Dekom, and that old “reap what you sow” maxim echoes so loudly in my brain that I seem to be living with a perpetual splitting headache as I watch my country unravel so dramatically at the hand of angry fools.