The Platform of the MAGA GOP: Isolationism and Retribution

The Platform of the MAGA GOP: Isolationism and Retribution

Repealing Democracy, Fast and Furious

Unlike Europe, the United States is a large nation where most people live far from an international border. We’ve never been very good at foreign policy, often having been forced into global wars by extrinsic events. Pearl Harbor put a quick stop to the rise of Nazi sympathizers and isolationists and pulled us into WWII. The fear of being surrounded by anti-American communist countries, evidenced by Castro’s takeover of Cuba and the missile crisis of 1962, directly led to our involvement in Vietnam… where communism was next in line to rule. Threats to the precious supply of oil – where any oil field catastrophe can explode the cost of petroleum products everywhere – pulled us into the Gulf War as Iraq invaded Kuwait. It took a direct terrorist attack on 9/11/2001 against the Pentagon and the Twin Towers in NYC to mire us in our nation’s longest military conflict.

While we protected oil reserves in the Middle East (other than Iran), after WWII, the United States has not won a single major war since. Despite being a nation of immigrants, America’s land mass isolation, noted above, has allowed large constituents of voters to believe that “we don’t need anybody else; we can do everything on our own.” The notion of fighting and protecting nations far from our shores has led many Americans to believe that we could and should be an island of self-sufficiency. Even our educational system, where many states have elevated religious indoctrination above secular historical reality, science, mathematics and economics, only serves to enhance our ignorance of the world as it really is… and how we fit into it.

When foreign realities create cost-price squeezes on American consumers, the blame often goes to “immigrants,” foreign terrorists and “radical democrats” even at there is a direct and very measurable villain of another sort: overseas malign enemies hell-bent on our destruction and marginalization. They hate that our currency is still the major reserve currency on earth (the denomination of most international trade pricing), that our SWIFT/BIC codes are the mainstay of interbank transfers and currency exchanges, that our Navy has pledged to maintain free shipping lanes (which governs everything from the export of soybeans and commercial aircraft to our import of bananas and well-priced consumer goods), and that our military umbrellas – from NATO to individual treaties with nations like Japan, South Korea and the Philippines – give those nations reasons to support Americans wherever they are.

But America’s ability to protect our industries, our safety and our prosperity, by maintaining our traditional economic and military treaties, is now challenged by an autocrat who measures success by loyalty to him and commercial balance sheets, has no love for representative democracy, where non-white Christian nationalists must be excluded from any possibility of constitutional majority, and feels safer in a world of dictators. He tells us that the mutual defense pledge under NATO’s Article 5, the alliance's backbone, is no longer a mandate if his perception of the balance sheet – which he calls a one-way burden mostly on us. Yet Article 5 has only been invoked once, after the September 11 attacks, which led the alliance into Afghanistan.

The United States has been the only NATO nation ever to be directly benefited by a call on Article 5! While the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not an Article 5 action, it does represent a unified commitment by NATO to contain those powers who believe they can usurp our military and economic supremacy and redefine global values to favor and prioritize their desired hegemony over the entire planet. For us, fighting a war far from our shores to protect our domestic advantage is an opportunity, not a burden.

Isolationism creates military and domestic weakness; retribution leads to internal violence, even civil war. We will pay more for just about everything, reduce our revenues from exports dramatically, if Russia, China, North Korea and Iran continue to build military capacity well beyond that of the United States and its allies and are able successfully to back rebels who are on their side. They are smiling ear-to-ear not only as the United States sits on the sidelines but as internal pollical polarization strikes at the very heart of America’s ability to continue as a superpower with a super economy. As Michael Gordon, writing for the February 25th Wall Street Journal points out, we are unraveling ourselves and enhancing the power of those who wish to accelerate our demise:

“At a NATO summit in July 2023 in Lithuania, Biden vowed that the U.S. military support would continue ‘for as long as it takes.’… But with House Republicans digging in their heels on additional Ukraine assistance, Biden used a different phrase to describe the American commitment when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House five months later. The U.S., Biden said, would supply Ukraine with vital military aid ‘as long as we can.’

“Looking back, some security analysts say that Biden should have moved more quickly to supply critical weapons systems to Kyiv, before the Russian military had time to adapt and to ensure that the arms were in Ukraine’s hands before the patience of U.S. lawmakers began to run thin… A modest number of ATACMS surface to surface missiles, for example, weren’t provided to Ukraine until October 2023, well after the Ukrainian counteroffensive began to falter. And the weapons U.S. sent were the shorter-range variant, which has a range of about 100 miles, and not the longer-range model that has the capability to strike targets more than 180 miles away, including in Crimea.

“‘This was a policy that was carried out in a very incremental way due to escalatory concerns and concerns about Ukrainians’ not being able to use the kit,’ said Alina Polyakova, president and chief executive officer of the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington-based think tank that supports Ukraine. ‘If we had moved faster and weren’t as worried about Russian reaction, I think this conflict could have ended in the first year before the Russians adapted.’… A senior Biden administration official said that, in making weapons decisions, the White House needed to take into account the Ukrainian military’s ability to absorb new equipment as well as Putin’s proclivity for rattling the nuclear saber…

“The broader question is whether the resistance of some House Republicans to continued military support for Ukraine and the popular support for Trump’s America First policy reflect a seismic shift away from the alliance policies in Europe that Biden has long embraced… ‘The point isn’t we want to abandon Europe,’ Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio), a staunch Trump supporter, told a security conference in Munich earlier this month. ‘The point is we need to focus as a country on East Asia, and we need our European allies to step up in Europe.’

“Some European equipment has been crucial for Ukraine’s military effort, including Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missile and Germany’s Iris T missile-defense system. There are more German tanks in Ukraine than U.S. ones, and European self-propelled howitzers have been important for the battle… But the continent, which is still struggling to overcome weaknesses in its defense industrial base, wouldn’t be able to cover the shortfall if the U.S. supply of artillery shells, air defense interceptors and other key weapon systems isn’t quickly resumed, a deficiency Western analysts say Russia would move to exploit.” Ukraine is as important as East Asia!

America is becoming a paper tiger, unwilling to honor its commitments made over decades of Democratic and Republican administrations, if MAGA voices rise to control this nation. If you think life is expensive now, if you wish we had countered climate change earlier and more aggressively, life under a MAGA-platform of governance will bring levels of political and economic misery reminiscent of the Great Depression and our Civil War… with added doses of increasingly intense and destructive climate change disasters.

I’m Peter Dekom, and self-aggrandizing autocracy governed by ignorance and conspiracy theories is the major threat to each and every American’s quality of life.

Ever Wonder if Your Hotel Room is Bugged?

 

I remember staying in a hotel in Bangkok as a boy and walking by a room under a staircase. The door was ajar, and I saw several uniformed officers with headsets and tape recorders, obviously recording guests’ rooms and perhaps telephone conversations. When I visited the Soviet Union during Perestroika as Gorbachev was instituting reforms, I was put up at a state hotel; I was sure I was being recorded. But those bugs did not bother me as much as a hotel in Hartford, Connecticut a decade ago. Those bugs were awful, leaving little red marks on my wife and me… and then following me home in my luggage where they invaded my abode. Bed bugs. Tiny little blood suckers who don’t carry any dangerous diseases, but they are thoroughly disgusting. They know how to hide… and they can live up to a year without feeding.

It cost us $1200 for a pest control company to get rid of them, cheap it turned out, as they heated our home to 140 degrees Fahrenheit (120 minimum), and you have to get rid of all kinds of stuff – like the plastic covers dry cleaners put on clothes. A big mess. But when we first flipped the mattress, we were totally grossed out. And no, the bugs spray cans you can buy at the local hardware store do not work. If you aren’t able to get rid of 100% of those tiny critters, they will return.

According to a report issued in January by Orkin, a major American pest control company, here are their top ten bed bug hotel infested cities in the United States, in order: Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland-Akron (Ohio), Los Angeles, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Indianapolis, Charlotte and Champaign (Illinois). I suspect that Las Vegas must have been jealous being left off that top 10 list; with all those new major league sports teams and shiny new stadia, they are competitive. Well, Las Vegans, do not fret. You are on your way.

As Nathan Solis writes in the February 22nd Los Angeles Times: “What happens in Las Vegas doesn’t always stay in Las Vegas. That applies to bedbugs that may hitch a ride with you back to your home… At least four guests staying in popular hotels on the Las Vegas Strip encountered the pests in their rooms between September and January, according to Las Vegas-based KLAS-TV, which cited reports from the local health department.

“Health inspectors from the Southern Nevada Health District confirmed bedbug sightings at the Encore, Venetian, Excalibur Hotel & Casino and Mirage. A bedbug-sniffing dog deployed by the Encore found a live bedbug on Dec. 5 after a guest complained, according to the news station. The hotel closed that room for service…” But if they get into one room, chances are pretty good they are spreading fast. Vegas accommodated about 450 thousand visitors for the recent Super Bowl. And frankly, those little critters are so small and know how to hide so well, who knows how many visitors do not know they have permanent roommates.

In India, where the Jain Hindus do not kill anything that moves as a basic part of their faith, there is a nasty practice of having an impoverished member of a lower class lie in bed before sleep time to feed the bugs before the master and family bed down for the night. Ugh! Vegas tells the world that bed bugs are a rarity in Sin City, but who knows? Vegas is very good at marketing. Orkin tells us: “Known for rapid population growth, female bed bugs can deposit one to five eggs a day and may lay 200 to 500 eggs in their lifetime. They can survive for several months while waiting for their next blood meal, so they’re likely to emerge the moment a food source, e.g., humans or animals, becomes available.” Bed bugs must love Jains! And Vegas is so tempting.

But Vegas hates bad PR; tourism is their main industry. “The Southern Nevada Health District said it provided inspection reports to the station in response to a public records request over ‘bed complaints for public accommodations’ over a six-month period… ‘We understand that people find the topic of interest, and bedbugs are a nuisance; however, we are not conducting any ongoing investigations,’ communications officer Jennifer Sizemore of the Southern Nevada Health District wrote in an email.

“The Nevada Resort Assn., a gaming and resort advocacy group, said the health and safety of guests is the highest priority for the resort industry… ‘The minute number of incidents reflects the comprehensive and proactive health and safety measures and pest-control procedures Las Vegas resorts have in place to prevent and address issues.’.. The association added that when hotels encounter bedbugs, guests are relocated and exterminators are called, in accordance with health and safety guidelines. But the association cautions that bedbugs can be transported just about anywhere in luggage or on clothing.” LAT.

Major hotels the world over have a big issue as well. Paris is notorious, and the CBC (October 23rd) noted: “Bedbug infestations found in Paris during Fashion Week have prompted fears of travellers spreading the insects around, but exterminators in Canada say they're already enough of a problem here that people bringing them home from France isn't a concern.” Vancouver and Toronto lead the pack.

If you live in a searingly hot city, put your suitcases in the car and leave it in the sun for a full day. Take your travel clothes off in your shower stall and clean them immediately. You can also isolate your luggage in your tub, opened partially, and watch for the microdot pests. Ask your hardware store what might work in that situation. Hey, once you’ve got them, it is mess. And if you live in an apartment building and your neighbors have an issue…

I’m Peter Dekom, and with so much going wrong all over the world, at least there is one small problem (unless you have it) you actually can do something effective to combat.

Corporations and Electric Cars vs Climate Change

We are so far behind the curve in implementing the desperate measures we need to stop letting nature destroy us under here cruel and immutable rules of physics. We’ve just experienced our first year at an average global temperature rise at that symbolic 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) level. As I write this blog, yet another atmospheric river, in El Niño hell amplified to new levels in climate change’s warmest Pacific water, is drenching California. Houses are sliding off cliffs as mud builds and landslides are everywhere. States to the east know they are next for flooding. Yet, people who want to cooperate and get EV cars are increasingly disappointed in driving them for “road trip” distances.

There just aren’t enough charging stations. And for even those that are accessible, the money allocated for new charging stations did not include the maintenance cost that they most certainly required. Charging times are prohibitively long unless you can rely on your home system. I even got a recall notice on my portable charger-plug for my hybrid: too many available inexpensive charging stations are developing dangerous levels of heat. Often, to use a charging station, you have to go online and prebuy a minimum amount of electricity… even if you are unlikely to go back to that station ever again. It’s not like going to a ubiquitous gas station where you can use a credit/debit card or just pay cash.

China is selling its EV cars like hotcakes, and they are making charging stations work in their major cities. Despite its excessive reliance on demon coal, China is accelerating its use of alternative energy. As EV cars in much of the Western world are losing popularity because of the charging issue, China’s EV business is flourishing. European, Japanese and American EV sales are down, just as China is barely able to keep up with demand for their EV cars. Automotive experts are predicting that current trends just might push China to be the major carmaker on earth as a result of their focus on charging stations. It’s one of the few bright spots in a decimated PRC economy.

Our do-nothing Congress, driven by the hopelessly gridlocked MAGA-controlled House, wants to repeal as many budget allocations to climate change infrastructure as they can and refocus on more oil and gas drilling. They want to repeal environmental rules, defund administrative agencies, all just to keep taxes for the richest 5% of Americans low. The main reason we even have a budget deficit is our unwillingness to tax wealth… so that staggering interest on our national debt becomes a burden for us all. Acknowledging that the net negative impact on US EV vehicle sales is slowing our national response to contain climate change, even Biden has been forced to relax some of his fossil fuel restriction targets.

And that recent gung-ho response to fossil fuel responsibility found in many US corporations is also fading. Many because supporting EV vehicles is “woke” and contrary to MAGA doctrine… and there is increasing fear that Trump just might ascend to the presidency and unleash his massive prescreened cadre of Heritage Foundation MAGA government destroyers, ready to fill political appointments from top to bottom, to take down regulatory agencies and “woke” policies. And as David Gellers, writing for the February 19th New York Times, tells us: “Many of the world’s biggest financial firms spent the past several years burnishing their environmental images by pledging to use their financial muscle to fight climate change.

“Now, Wall Street has flip-flopped… In recent days, giants of the financial world including JPMorgan, State Street and Pimco all pulled out of a group called Climate Action 100+, an international coalition of money managers that was pushing big companies to address climate issues… [In] the past few weeks, things accelerated significantly. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, scaled back its involvement in the group. Bank of America reneged on a commitment to stop financing new coal mines, coal-burning power plants and Arctic drilling projects. And Republican politicians, sensing momentum, called on other firms to follow suit.

“The reasons behind the burst of activity reveal how difficult it is proving to be for the business world to make good on its promises to become more environmentally responsible. While many companies say they are committed to combating climate change, the devil is in the details… ‘This was always cosmetic,’ said Shivaram Rajgopal, a professor at Columbia Business School. ‘If signing a piece of paper was getting these companies into trouble, it’s no surprise they’re getting the hell out.’

“American asset managers have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of their clients, and the financial firms were worried that a new strategy by Climate Action 100+ could expose them to legal risks… Embracing E.S.G. principles and speaking up on climate issues has become commonplace across corporate America in recent years. Chief executives warned about the dangers of climate change. Banks and asset managers formed alliances to phase out fossil fuels. Trillions of dollars were allocated for sustainable investing.

“At the same time, a backlash grew, with Republicans claiming that banks and asset mangers were supporting progressive politics with their climate commitments… The fracturing of Climate Action 100+ was a victory for Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, who has led a campaign against companies pursuing E.S.G. goals, shorthand for environmental, social and governance factors… Some states, including Texas and West Virginia, banned banks from doing business with the state if the firms were distancing themselves from fossil fuel companies. And late in 2022, Mr. Jordan began an antitrust investigation into the group, calling it a ‘climate-obsessed corporate ‘cartel.’… On Thursday [2/15], he said in on a post on X that the news represented ‘big wins for freedom and the American economy, and we hope more financial institutions follow suit in abandoning collusive ESG actions.’”

While the numbers tell us that today, only 15-16% of Americans believe climate change to be a hoax, heavily weighted with GOP voters, there is so much resistance to government spending that climate change commitments have increasingly fallen between the cracks. Yet wildfires, floods, coastal erosion and violent storms are accelerating… as if dealing with the massive damage from those events is a tolerable cost… but turning climate change around is not.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless we either deal with reality or repeal the laws of physics, life among these “natural disasters” just might accelerate, making life move from intermittent nastiness to always miserable to intolerable… all in the immediate future.

Scoffing at Sanctions, Livin’ the Good Life

   Grab My Burger at Uncle Vanya’s

 No More Italian Beaches, but…

Russia’s Tornado-S

Russia is a strange mix of a resource extraction driven economy laced with Western style consumerism. There are an awful lot of millionaires and billionaires in Russia still, and while the average worker in that country makes about $200/week – sorry Tucker Carlson, that’s why basic commodities are so cheap there – Russia is a nation that has learned to survive under the harshest of times. The Nazis tried to crush her and starve her people out in WWII, only to see the tables turned on Hitler’s forces as winter and Marshall Zhukov’s “burn all the farms and retreat” decimated the attackers. Today, as an OPEC+ oil and gas producer (on par with Saudi Arabia), Russia has also learned how to nullify the harshest aspects of Western retribution: sanctions.

“The United States and the European Union are piling new sanctions on Russia on the eve of the second anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine and in retaliation for the death of noted Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny last week in an Arctic penal colony… The U.S. Treasury, State and Commerce departments plan to impose roughly 600 new sanctions on Russia and its military apparatus in the largest single tranche of penalties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. They come on the heels of a series of new arrests and indictments announced by the Justice Department on Thursday [2/22] that target Russian businessmen, including the head of Russia’s second-largest bank, and their middlemen in five separate federal cases.

“The European Union announced Friday [2/23] that it is imposing sanctions on several foreign companies over allegations that they have exported dual-use goods to Russia that could be used in its war against Ukraine. The 27-nation bloc also said that it was targeting scores of Russian officials, including ‘members of the judiciary, local politicians and people responsible for the illegal deportation and military re-education of Ukrainian children.’” Associated Press, February 24th. But unless you are fighting on the Ukrainian front, life for Russians today is still very good.

When Western companies were forced to leave Russia as part of post-Ukraine invasion sanctions – happy second anniversary of that effort – Russia seemed to shrug a massive “whatever” and found ways to continue simply by taking over those companies and relabeling them. Leisurely vacations on the French or Italian Riviera were replaced by beachin’ it up at fellow OPECer’s, Dubai’s, pristine shores. Certainly, most rich Russians were only mildly inconvenienced.

But what really hit Russia hard at first were the sanctions that limited her oil and gas exports and denied her access to the banking and currency exchanges, marked by SWIFT/BIC code interbank transactions, which literally controlled global trade. Which, from Russia’s perspective, were US dominated financial structures. So, Russia, with a lot of help from her new anti-US coalition superpower buddy, China, figured out how to export her oil and gas and continue international trade with a set of SWIFT/BIC code-Western boycott alternative workarounds. The February 24th Wall Street Journal tells us how:

“After Russia’s trade with Europe cratered, China became Russia’s economic lifeline. Trade turnover between the two countries hit a record $240 billion last year. Moscow sold China its oil that used to go to Germany and France. It massively stepped up purchases of Chinese goods for consumers and parts that go into weaponry…

“Russia’s use of the Chinese yuan has overtaken the U.S. dollar in its exports. For years Moscow had tried to de-dollarize its economy, without much success because most global commodity trade runs on the U.S. dollar. But Western sanctions and booming Russian energy exports to China have added to the yuan’s appeal. Payments in Chinese yuan for Russian exports have jumped to around one-third of the total. Meanwhile, Russian companies are increasingly borrowing in yuan while households are stashing savings in it…

“Before the war, Russian oil and gas powered Europe’s factories and heated its homes, and provided much of Moscow’s budget proceeds. The European Union’s ban on most Russian oil and Moscow’s decision to halt the bulk of its gas exports to the bloc have rearranged the global energy map.

“Half of Russia’s oil and petroleum exports in 2023 went to China, Moscow has said. India has also emerged as a big buyer as Russia has been forced to offer its oil at a discount to global prices because of a G-7 price cap. Moscow has used a network of tankers not owned by Western countries or insured by Western companies to bypass sanctions, with analysts estimating that more than half of Russia’s seaborne oil is now transported with this shadow fleet…

“Despite Western sanctions, Moscow has acquired a third of its foreign-sourced battlefield components from companies based in the U.S., Europe or their allies, according to an analysis by the Kyiv School of Economics. Most of the components found in Russian weaponry then end up being of Western origin, according to the analysis.

“Russian companies have used an intricate supply chain through which computer chips and other dual-use items are designed in the West, manufactured in places such as China and the Philippines, sold via Hong Kong and shipped to Russia… Such items then end up on Ukrainian battlefields in Russian weaponry such as the Tornado-S, a multiple-launch rocket launcher, as well the Kinzhal, a Russian hypersonic air-launched ballistic missile.”

It is a sad commentary how our pattern of sanctions work for smaller nations and even superpowers… just for a while… but those superpowers with their massive trade capacity have always known how to create financial alternatives that ultimately circumvent those sanctions and create new trade structures that permanently dilute the traditional power of US/Western global financial institutions… and even threaten the ability of the United States to maintain the US dollar as the most significant reserve currency.

That Sino-Russian cabal is not the only beneficiary of these workarounds; North Korea, Iran and Syria are lapping up these alternatives. Not to mention that many significant non-aligned nations operate in both the dollar-based and yuan-based financing structures. And that is a major threat to the stability of the US economy, although the MAGA GOP is already instituting an internal Great American Unraveling on its own.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I guess that relegates two national security and financial stability alternatives as our best choices to contain Russia and China: military support for both Ukraine and Taiwan.

Is House Speaker Mike Johnson the New Manchurian Candidate?

Is House Speaker Mike Johnson the New Manchurian Candidate?

Or Could that Even be Donald Trump?

Ever since WWII, Russia, in one of its many autocratic governmental configurations, has been one of America’s greatest enemies… with only a brief post-Berlin-Wall take down that began in the 1990s. Russia blockaded Berlin shortly after that war. Her pilots flew MIG-15s against UN/US jets in the Korean War. Her ships unloaded ballistic missiles in Cuba in 1962. After Vladimir Putin ascended to leadership in 1999, he slowly unveiled his ambition to reassemble the former Soviet Republics, which had spun off into independent states, into as much of the old USSR as he could. Conflicts in Chechnya and Georgia, his support of autocracy in Belarus (under the unpopular Alexander Lukashenko) and his general saber-rattling were clear statements to the region that he was exercising traditional Russian and Soviet hegemony over the region… and he was totally against anything that America wanted anywhere. Especially NATO.

Bolstered by rising oil revenues (OPEC added Russia to form what is known as OPEC+), Putin abrogated treaties – notably a treaty with Ukraine that this now independent state would surrender its nuclear arsenal to Moscow in exchange for a Russian pledge to guarantee Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty – and supported our enemies and policies wherever he could. He single-handedly kept the brutal Assad regime in power in Syria against a popular insurrection (which began in 2011) and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. His political opponents were serially exterminated (most recently Alexei Navalny), even as many fled Russia. Iran, our Middle Eastern nemesis, is supplying Moscow with weapons these days. Money has continually flowed into Putin’s offshore coffers and to his favored oligarchs. Some say corruption has made Putin the richest man on earth.

A sleepy NATO awoke. The mutual military defense organization realized that it would have to reinstate its Soviet era policy of containment against this toxic and brutal Putin regime. NATO reignited its military preparedness and offered American hope that its allies would aid in countering this obvious Russian threat. But Putin’s blank check of “whatever I need to do” to control my nation drew the envious attraction of then President Donald Trump. Perhaps this level of autocracy without limits is at the basis of Trump absurd claim of absolute and perpetual immunity from criminal prosecution was inspired by Putin’s power. His admiration for Putin continues unabated; his statement to his NATO allies that unless they paid 2% of the GDP into NATO, the United States should ignore its mutual treaty pledges, and that Putin could do “whatever the hell he wants” with those nations terrified our European allies. Was this just his view that a balance sheet was more import than obvious strategic benefits to us. Or part of his worship of Putin’s autocratic powers.

And so aid to Ukraine, which most believe is the least expensive deterrent to Russian expansionism, is now on the MAGA GOP chopping block. Countering Russian aggression and global ambitions has been at the top of every Republican and Democratic presidential priority list since WWII. Until Donald Trump. As rightwing white supremacists feel that representative democracy is diluting their traditional power, Trump’s constituency has adopted serious voting restrictions to marginalize non-white traditional voters, with a clear realization that maintaining white power would not happen unless democracy itself were repealed. Russia offers a form of repressive governance that, if adopted in the United States, would reinforce incumbent white power as the primary controllers of our nation.

It is interesting to note the excuses some Republicans in Congress, uncomfortable as the Party unseating Reagan’s efforts to contain Russian autocrats: “About 2 a.m. Feb. 13, Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin stood on the Senate floor and explained why he opposed sending more aid to help Ukraine fend off the invasion launched in 2022 by Russian President Vladimir Putin. ‘I don’t like this reality,’ Johnson said. ‘Vladimir Putin is an evil war criminal.’ But he quickly added: ‘Vladimir Putin will not lose this war.’… That argument — that the Russian president cannot be stopped so there’s no point in using American taxpayer dollars against him — marks a new stage in the Republican Party’s growing acceptance of Russian expansionism in the age of Donald Trump.” Nicholas Riccardi writing for the February 20th Associated Press.

Is Trump’s vision of the United States Putin’s greatest enabler? Are Trump’s “whatever you want” minions coconspirators in Trump’s vision of an autocratic America, and eventual ally of Russia? “Now the GOP’s ambivalence on Russia has stalled additional aid to Ukraine at a pivotal time in the war… The Senate last week passed a foreign aid package that included $61 billion for Ukraine on a 70-29 vote, but Johnson was one of a majority of the Republicans to vote against the bill after their late-night stand to block it. In the Republican-controlled House, Speaker Mike Johnson said his chamber will not be ‘rushed’ to pass the measure, even as Ukraine’s military warns of dire shortages of ammunition and artillery.

“Many Republicans are openly frustrated that their colleagues don’t see the benefits of helping Ukraine. Putin and his allies have banked on democracies wearying of aiding Kyiv, and Putin’s GOP critics warn that NATO countries in Eastern Europe could become targets of an emboldened Russia that believes the U.S. won’t counter it… The divide within the party was on stark display Friday with the prison death of Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption advocate Alexei Navalny, which President Biden and other world leaders blamed on Putin. Trump notably stood aside from that chorus Monday.

“Offering no sympathy or attempt to affix blame, Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social that the ‘sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country. It is a slow, steady progression, with CROOKED, Radical Left Politicians, Prosecutors, and Judges leading us down a path to destruction.’” AP. It would be one thing if the MAGA crowd were just pushing issues; but it is quite something else where their ambitions are to install a new form of autocracy to replace our existing form of governance. We seem to have installed our own Manchurian Candidate within our own political system. Some Republicans are squirming at what Trump/Johnson want Congress to do. We need more than squirming!

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless Americans wake up to what is happening and fight back, there may be no way to fight back after the upcoming election.

Grumpy Old Men (And Women)

As they say, getting old is not for the faint of heart. As we witness an increasing number of Americans hitting the century mark and beyond, as the aging floors of pension plans and Social Security/Medicare seem to be falling away, the added medical issues of worn body parts, arthritis, cataracts and type 2 diabetes make the struggle that much harder. As I watched a very entertaining return of John Stewart to the Daily Show, he excoriated a nation that, in the last two elections, the two major US parties have nominated or are likely to nominate the oldest candidates in our nation’s history. He pointed out that he considered himself old at 61, but that was about two decades younger than Biden and Trump.

Looking at the media’s depiction of Joe Biden, he does seem to bear the brunt of unflattering ageist description. His use of the wrong names, his halting style of speech (forgetting he overcame stuttering), his shuffling walk, using of anachronistic words (and that’s no malarkey) overwhelm ageist descriptions of Donald Trump. The former president makes naming mistakes, which are noted, but we seldom hear about his obvious swollen mid-section at the edge of being morbidly obese. As pundits wonder if Biden could make it through vigorous second terms, there is seldom mention of the litany of life ending ailments that are triggered by people who are as seriously overweight as Donald Trump. If mental issues are relevant, I would submit that angry Donald Trump has more of those DSM psychological mental impairments than Biden.

Under US law, unjustified age discrimination in employment is actionably illegal. Not if you are over 70, people forget. I note that at one major university’s gerontology course, students are dressed in heavily weighted sumo wrestling costumes and face a day with a body that just doesn’t work the way they expect. Life is harder as you age, and younger people are often uncomfortable in the presence of senior citizens. While older minds do deteriorate, for most older adults, the loss is undetectable. Yet, we hear the use of “senior moment” hovering around “mentally losing it” for lapses that could apply to someone in their 20s.

We do make life increasingly and unjustifiably difficult when we easily apply the pejorative ageist stereotyping to older people. Writing for the February 15th Los Angeles Times, UCSF Assistant Professor of Sociology, Stacy Torres, responds to the torrent of recent media reports generating massive flows of these descriptive terms. The trigger for her piece was the choice of words in Trump-era-appointed Special Counsel Robert K Hur’s quote in his determining that prosecuting Joe Biden for mishandling security documents was not merited:

“Among the ageist stereotypes in Hur’s characterization of Biden as ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,’ the word “elderly” leaps out as most cringe-worthy in its power to conjure images of frailty and helplessness… Many of us who study aging avoid ‘senior citizen’ and ‘elderly,’ which can reinforce negative stereotypes that isolate old people as a different and separate social group.

“Sociologist Arlie Hochschild calls the seemingly respectable “senior citizen” an “unfortunate phrase suggesting a large boy scout with a gold watch.” But just because “elderly” is so ubiquitous doesn’t make it appropriate or innocuous.

“Ageism remains a widely accepted prejudice. I love late-night talk shows, yet a sampling of hosts’ recent monologues reveals rampant jokes targeted toward old people (yes, I’m looking at you, Stephen Colbert). Ageism defies political persuasion, as one can see in Nikki Haley’s ‘grumpy old men’ campaign, which takes cheap shots at Biden’s and Donald Trump’s ages. Picking on older people doesn’t seem to stir the same type of outrage as insults about other social identities such as race, ethnicity and gender.”

While age and the accompanying wisdom is cherished in some cultures (e.g., Japan, and Native American tribes), there is an undercurrent of perceived challenges to older people being able to compete and lead in a rapidly changing, technologically based society. “Digital natives” are perceived as able to make better decisions than those who are not. The media are rife with stories of grandparents unable to communicate with their grandchildren on digital platforms, but there is little talk about these younger technically savvy cohorts making mistakes that stem from a disdain of studying the past or deferring to wisdom that only comes with experience.

But even in countries where age is considered basis for respect, as average population age declines, leaders hint at how they regard their own ages. For example, have you ever seen a major member of China’s senior members of the Politburo with gray hair? Torres suggests that we choose our vocabulary addressing people above a certain age with more care: “Culture change is hard and progresses at a glacial pace. But as our older adult population swells, the rest of us must catch up with choosing age-inclusive language. Content producers can take the lead in mitigating ageist portrayals, but everyone should scrutinize the language we use.

“Recent revisions to the Associated Press style guide, drawing on guidance from the American Geriatrics Society, offer a good start to writing about older people with greater specificity, accuracy and respect. In addition to retiring ‘elderly’ and ‘senior citizen,’ the AP suggests using ‘older adults’ or ‘older person/people’ in general phrases and employing more precise age ranges when it’s possible, such as ‘new housing for people 65 and over.’

“I’ve wrestled with decisions around language to describe the older adults I write about in my forthcoming book. I don’t use ‘elderly’ but I’ve come to use ‘elder,’ inspired by geriatrician Louise Aronson’s reclaiming of the word to connote respect for people over age 65. I also don’t treat ‘old’ like a dirty word to avoid. As someone who lost my mother to an early death from cancer at age 53, I hope to live long enough to grow ‘old.’” As medical science extends life expectancy, we really need to deal with a very significant cohort of our society with genuine sensitivity, increasingly with dignity and respect.

I’m ye olde Peter Dekom, and I am happy to go intellectually toe-to-toe with anyone at any age… and I just might surprise more than a few… or not!

Diamonds – Forever or Unsustainable?

 

It’s no secret that diamonds are among the most expensive jewels on earth. True, diamond dust and low-quality stones also have their place as industrial necessities; their supreme hardness makes them ideal to cut glass and grind metals for innumerable purposes. Their function as a supreme jeweler’s stone has also been around for centuries. These brilliant stones are simply carbon compressed over millions of years, which are today valued in terms of size (carats) as well as for cut, clarity, and color. Coal under extreme pressure, you might say. Very old coal.

Brilliant.com traces their history: The earliest diamonds were found in India in 4th century BC, although the youngest of these deposits were formed 900 million years ago. A majority of these early stones were transported along the network of trade routes that connected India and China, commonly known as the Silk Road… Diamonds were worn as adornments, used as cutting tools, served as a talisman to ward off evil, and were believed to provide protection in battle…

Until the 18th century, India was thought to be the only source of diamonds. When the Indian diamond mines were depleted, the quest for alternate sources began. Although a small deposit was found in Brazil in 1725, the supply was not enough to meet world demands… In 1866, 15-year-old Erasmus Jacobs was exploring the banks of the Orange River [in South Africa] when he came across what he thought was an ordinary pebble but turned out to be a 21.25-carat diamond. In 1871, a colossal 83.50-carat deposit was unearthed on a shallow hill called Colesberg Kopje. These findings sparked a rush of thousands of diamond prospectors to the region and led to the opening of the first large-scale mining operation which came to be known as the Kimberly Mine…

The use of rings as a symbol of commitment dates back to ancient history, specifically to the betrothal (truth) rings of the Romans… The history of the engagement ring began in 1215, when Pope Innocent III, one of the most powerful popes of the Middle Ages, declared a waiting period between a betrothal and the marriage ceremony. The rings were used to signify the couple’s commitment in the interim… The first recorded presentation of a diamond engagement ring was in 1477, when Archduke Maximilian of Austria proposed marriage to Mary of Burgundy. Although engagement rings were common at this time, diamonds were a rarity and were reserved for royalty and the upper elite class…

In 1947, DeBeers [a company formed in 1880 to control the diamond trade] commissioned the services of leading advertising agency N.W. Ayer, and the slogan ‘A diamond is forever’ was coined. The premise of this large-scale marketing campaign was the suggestion that diamonds should be the only choice for engagement rings. The DeBeers advertising campaign was wildly successful, and was a contributing factor to today’s widespread embracing of the tradition of diamond engagement rings. In today’s fine jewelry market, more than 78% of engagement rings sold contain diamonds.

While younger generations are less obsessed with diamonds as a token of love, commitment and marriage, the value of diamonds continues to skyrocket. But there’s a new kid in town: the manufactured diamond. In the 1950s, scientists were beginning to experiment with high-pressure hydraulic machines that could turn ordinary coal into diamonds. They needed massive amounts of energy, and most of the earliest products were relegated to industrial uses.

In the last few years, “lab-grown” (from coal) diamonds have been created with amazing color and clarity, using one of two processes: High pressure high temperature (HPHT – left above) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD – right above). They are much less expensive than natural stones, but: “Social media posts show millennials and Gen Zs proudly explaining the purchase of their lab-grown diamonds for sustainability and ethical reasons. But how sustainable they are is questionable, since making a diamond requires an enormous amount of energy and many major manufacturers are not transparent about their operations…

“In the United States, one company, VRAI, whose parent company is Diamond Foundry, operates what it says is a zero-emissions foundry in Wenatchee, Washington, running on hydropower from the Columbia River. Martin Roscheisen, founder and CEO of Diamond Foundry, said via email the power VRAI uses to grow a diamond is ‘about one-tenth of the energy required for mining.’” Associated Press, February 13th.

Most of these “synthetic” diamonds are made in India, and while the ads for the finished products tout words like “sustainable” and “environmentally friendly,” virtually all of the Indian stones are manufactured using massive amounts of coal-fired electricity. The same is true of manufactured diamonds from China. While there are changes to some plants – such as India’s Greenlab Diamonds that use solar renewables in their manufacturing processes – most manufactured diamonds are monster users of electricity. Some of these machines keep the relevant coal-in-transition in the machines for weeks at a time, continuously using electricity.

Needless to say, dealers in traditional stones are fighting back before the entire diamond industry devolves into a commoditized world of cheap stones (which usually bear a microscopic label disclosing their manufactured heritage). Experts can distinguish between the natural and manufactured stones, using lasers to pinpoint telltale signs in atomic structure. “With lower prices for lab-grown and young people increasingly preferring them, the new diamonds have cut into the market share for natural stones. Globally, lab-grown diamonds are now 5% to 6% of the market, and the traditional industry is not taking it sitting down. The marketing battle is on.

“The mined diamond industry and some analysts warn lab-grown diamonds won’t hold value over time… ‘Five to 10 years into the future, I think there’s going to be very few customers that are willing to spend thousands of dollars for a lab diamond. I think almost all of it’s going to sell in the $100 price point or even below,’ said [diamond expert Paul] Zimnisky. He predicts that natural diamonds will continue to sell in the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars for engagement rings… Paying thousands of dollars for something that drops most of its value in just a few years can leave the buyer feeling cheated, which [industry analyst Edahn] Golan said is an element that is currently working against the lab-grown sector.” AP But who can actually tell the difference… except experts with their special tools? Investment or cosmetic glory? You choose.

I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps this little “out of left field” blog just might save you a few thousand dollars someday.

College – Opportunity, Burden or Disappointment

 

Russia is hurling hypersonic missiles into Ukraine. China’s building new military capacity almost as fast as her economy is sinking. The Middle East is a chaotic fireball. And the United States is turning even more dramatically against itself. Upward mobility in the US is eroded beyond recognition, and education is caught between disdain and necessity. Oddly, as we need more specialized, educated minds than ever, our “throw the baby out with the bathwater” approach to immigration – in a nation in which the number of live births per couple has fallen well-below replacement value – we’ve made it exceptionally difficult for new potential citizens to move here. Not just at our swarming southern border, but for highly educated STEM experts as well through more traditional passageways. There are hundreds of thousands of STEM jobs we cannot fill with local graduates.

Just as a US citizen can travel to Germany for an excellent college degree, where tons of degrees and courses are taught in English, for less than $1,000 in annual fees, that same US citizen can stay here and borrow themselves into debtor’s hell (over $40K for average undergraduate degrees and up to serious six figure for professional/graduate degrees) for the same degree. We desperately need more doctors, but while a few universities (like NYU) charge no tuition for MD candidates, most young doctors are in that six-figure category.

The college and university headlines that dominate the United States are either about athletic competition or scandals. Should we have college admissions tests? Why are Pac 12 universities moving to expand the Big 10? Which rich folks used wealth to get their privileged children into top schools, and which were convicted in the process. But as UCLA Education Professors, Stephen Handel and Eileen Strempel, tell us, writing for the February 13th Los Angeles Times state, these realities are nothing more than distractions “from higher ed’s real problems…

“It is not that testing battles and elite admissions have no importance. Rather it is the fact that higher education has a much bigger set of challenges, including degree completion, affordability and a rapidly sinking reputation.

“Nationally, only about 6 in 10 students who enter college ever earn a credential or a degree in six years, and far fewer graduate on time (four years), the National Student Clearinghouse found. According to the University of California public dashboards, 72.9% of UC students graduate in four years; Cal State’s dashboards show a rate of just 35.5%. Completion rates for students from low-income, historically underrepresented or rural backgrounds are even lower.

“Those students who leave frequently carry with them a trifecta of dismay: some college experience, loan debt and no degree. The result? We now have more than 40 million Americans with some college and no degree to show for it.

“Higher education’s struggles have not gone unnoticed. The percentage of Americans expressing confidence in our colleges and universities has sunk to a new low of 36%, down from 57% about a decade ago. According to a recent survey, at least half of currently enrolled high school students — the traditional cohort entering colleges and universities — are less interested than ever in taking the time or paying the money to earn a college degree.

“And those who do enter college face threats to their basic needs that undermine their ability to complete a degree. A 2023 California Student Aid Commission Report revealed that an appalling 53% of respondents identified as housing insecure, while 66% were food insecure.

“At the same time, many studies, including a 2024 report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, affirm the substantial economic value of earning a postsecondary degree. This is in addition to other benefits including better health, higher levels of voter participation and volunteering, greater job satisfaction and greater social mobility.

“So how do we give more Americans access to those benefits? Not by obsessing over big-name institutions’ use of the SAT or ACT. These schools and their testing (or lack thereof) appear to entrance the media. But the extremely competitive Harvards and Stanfords of the world account for just about 4% of U.S. college students. For financial and other reasons, the majority of Americans will not pursue an elite college education.” Yet elite colleges are probably more generous in scholarships than most higher-ed institutions.

Families are borrowed to the hilt these days, as the aggregate of student loan debt as of the close of 2023 was $1.6 trillion compared with $1.079 trillion in aggregate credit card debt. What will seriously further complicate this set of problems is the advent of artificial intelligence, a technology that is rapidly replacing not just manufacturing jobs with robots but skilled professional jobs from finance to design to medicine. While some degrees might not seem relevant – like English or philosophy – surprisingly they do teach young minds how to think and write. Yet an undergraduate degree in basic business or marketing, with rare exception, does not accelerate a needed expertise.

While there is a political movement for both public (even California) and private employers to drop college education requirements unless truly required, there is little evidence that this tact is taking root. “A push by some companies—including IBM, General Motors, Google and Walmart—to eliminate degree requirements aims to expand the pool of potential employees. Yet the share of jobs that went to nongraduates barely budged after the requirement was lifted, according to a new analysis. The data suggest there is a large gap between discarding requirements and offering jobs to applicants who not long ago wouldn’t have gotten a second look…” Lauren Webber in the February 16th The Wall Street Journal.

Yet we are looking at a MAGA backlash against science and medicine. Increasingly, legislatures and courts are determining which medicines are safe, which health restrictions make scientific sense and which scientific “facts” can be relied on. Overruling PhDs in specialized administrative agencies. Some folks even continue to challenge evolution itself. We seem to be sliding back to the famous 1925 Scopes trial. Imagine what would happen if colleges and universities were free to qualified students. What would that look like? Oh, we sort of did that with the post-WWII GI Bill that send hundreds of thousands of Americans to college… which preceded the period of greatest growth in American history.

I’m Peter Dekom, and of late, we seem to have developed an uncanny ability to shoot ourselves in the foot… and points north.

The Hidden Housing Unaffordability Factor: Insurance

“They just don’t offer rental insurance in this area anymore, mostly because of fires… We’ve never had flooding up here before. It just wasn’t even something anyone thought about.”

Los Angeles Renter in the San Fernando Valley

As termed out Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis was galivanting around the country proving to the entire nation why he would make a terrible president, choosing to fight “woke” vs “me” culture wars and alienating large local corporations as well as minority voters, his hapless constituents were facing escalating renters’ and homeowners’ insurance cost increases, even complete loss of any available commercial insurance.

Among severe tropical rainstorms, including recent massive hurricanes, the rising proliferation of sinkholes, coastal erosion and seawater rising inside south Florida’s massive and very porous limestone subsurface that no longer adequately supported buildings above, commercial insurers were hell-bent on extracting vastly higher premiums… or simply withdrawing from the market. Yet DeSantis continues to decry federal efforts to contain climate change and prioritize alternative energy projects as succumbing to “radical leftist woke” propaganda. Florida residential renters and owners were increasingly left with a huge cost, or even bigger risk, from the ravages of climate change.

On the other side of the country, DeSantis’ “woke” nemesis, California Governor Gavin Newsom was also facing parallel failures in disaster coverage, underscored by recent atmospheric rivers inundating inland properties far from lakes, rivers or the ocean. Added to the spate of mega-wildfires, California’s perpetual earthquake peril and coastal erosion, most Californians faced the same soaring renters’ and homeowner’s insurance costs, amid some of the most expensive real estate to repair and rebuild. Commercial insurers were leaving the West Coast too.

“What’s been called the ‘disaster insurance gap’ has become an increasingly dire concern in recent years. Even those who have insurance but live in imperiled places are often unable to secure policies sufficient to protect their residences and belongings…. Rates of homeowners and renters with flood insurance policies have lagged as more of Southern California has become subject to extreme weather patterns spurred on by climate change. In the eight Southern California counties that were under a state of emergency during the recent storm, only 52,820 homes and businesses were covered by flood policies, according to the National Flood Insurance Program.

“Homeowners, renters and insurance providers have been slow to catch up to the changing climate, leaving families across the Southland with little financial protection against the wind and water at their doors.” Conner Sheets for the February 13th Los Angeles Times. At least California and its leaders recognized the reality of rising global temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions. “[Renters insurance] probably would not have covered [most flood losses], as most standard renters policies don’t cover damage from flooding… It’s the same for most homeowners. For those in certain high-risk flood zones who have mortgages, flood insurance is required.

“For people whose homes are in thousands of federally designated flood zones across the country, the U.S. government offers policies via the National Flood Insurance Program. But payouts under the program are capped at $250,000 for the structure of a typical home and $100,000 for its contents. Beyond that, policyholders are on their own… Nationwide, about one-fifth of insurance claims for flood losses are made outside the designated flood zones, according to Janet Ruiz, a spokesperson for the Insurance Information Institute, a national industry group. In other words, areas not typically known for flooding can still be at risk of sustaining major damage.” LA Times.

So, I guess we are supposed to feel bad for all those giant insurance companies who miscalculated their risk, right? Insurers’ threats to pull out of many at risk market seem to have worked. Like most of corporate America in the last five years, particularly during the pandemic, insurance companies are making higher profits than ever! “The pain for home- and auto-insurance customers is quickly becoming investors’ gain. Insurance giants’ shares and profits are hitting records, thanks in part to steep rate hikes.

“Shares of Travelers …, a bellwether for the property and casualty sector, closed at an all-time high earlier [in late January], up 35% from their lows last fall. The jump came after the company reported a record profit for its fourth quarter, boosted by double-digit rate increases in its business and personal insurance units… Progressive… said [on January 24th] that its quarterly profit more than doubled from a year earlier. Its stock rose, pushing the company’s market capitalization past $100 billion for the first time. Shares of Allstate … also reached new heights this [in late January], up more than 50% from their lows last summer.

“After suffering some of the worst years in their history, insurers say they now see a path to profitability for home and auto policies. Big rate increases are driving up revenue, while the inflationary pressures that pushed up repair and replacement costs appear to be easing. Losses from extreme weather tied to climate change remain a wild card, but the short-term outlook for insurers appears more favorable… ‘We’ve started seeing the potential for light at the end of the tunnel,’ said Josh Esterov, an insurance analyst at CreditSights…

“One factor in the run-up in insurance stocks: the recent willingness of regulators to allow large rate increases, even in states traditionally seen as tough on the industry. Last month, Allstate won approval for auto-insurance rate increases of 30% in California, 17% in New Jersey and 15% in New York. The company had threatened to stop renewing policies in those states after suffering losses. ‘Wall Street assumes that insurers will continue to face little regulatory resistance to rate hikes,’ said Heller of the Consumer Federation of America.” Jean Eaglesham writing for the January 25th The Wall Street Journal. Another kick in the teeth for so many Americans struggling with price increases! And Republicans want to cut both federal disaster relief and reduce corporate regulation.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you think Congress represents most of us by deregulating, cutting taxes for the rich and balancing their budget deficit by cutting benefits to average citizens… think again, particularly in the land of MAGA mythology.

Fear and the Rise of Global "Conservative" Nationalism/Populism

 

Fear of cultural dilution. Fear of being left behind. Fear of loss of assumed identity. Fear of losing assumed privilege. Fear of change. Fear of “they’re different from us.” And almost always, there needs to be a clearly demographically identified cultural threat. Jews. Muslims. Catholics. Darker skinned people. Immigrants. “Radicals” (anyone who holds contrary views). Etc. Etc. Those blamed must be demonized and attacking them somehow justified by the autocrat in power. Facts are irrelevant, mythology and conspiracy reign supreme. Disagreement is not tolerated.

These are the consistent patterns that are growing around the world. Add the ability to distort on a mass basis, from traditional to contemporary social media… and in the United States, the feeling of power many now have by just holding a gun. Individuals are able to filter out from their sensory input any notions that disagree with their perspective. Given the complexity of the world today, many have simply outsourced their opinions to a loud-voiced cult leader. Democracy simply cannot survive in this rising toxic environment.

The new vector: The notion that one singular point of view is the only correct perspective (e.g., “right thinking” vs “woke” ideology or worse, “Whatever I say!”), and the complete annihilation of divergent opinions, actions or thoughts. Correct people vs demon others. This hardly an American phenomenon as the above photographs of “correct thinking” autocrats illustrates. A recent election in Indonesia placed Prabowo Subianto, a rightwing functionary with a checked past of brutality as a military commander, first in the presidential race. Even France is bristling with prospects of a rightwing takeover by ultra-rightist, Marine LePen. This has become a global trend, motivated for a long time by the seeming economic miracle of autocratic China (the “model for economic success”)… a nation whose economy is now plunging. Oddly in their eyes, today, that the United States is leading in comparative global prosperity is simply not reported.

Beginning with piece in the February 15th issue, UK’s The Economist addressed this spreading phenomenon: “In the 1980s Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher built a new conservatism around markets and freedom. Today Donald Trump, Viktor Orban and a motley crew of Western politicians have demolished that orthodoxy, constructing in its place a statist, “anti-woke” conservatism that puts national sovereignty before the individual. These national conservatives are increasingly part of a global movement with its own networks of thinkers and leaders bound by a common ideology. They sense that they own conservatism now—and they may be right.

“Despite its name, national conservatism could not be more different from the ideas of Reagan and Thatcher. Rather than being sceptical of big government, national conservatives think ordinary people are beset by impersonal global forces and that the state is their saviour. Unlike Reagan and Thatcher, they hate pooling sovereignty in multilateral organisations, they suspect free markets of being rigged by the elites and they are hostile to migration. They despise pluralism, especially the multicultural sort. National conservatives are obsessed with dismantling institutions they think are tainted by wokeness and globalism.

“Instead of a sunny belief in progress, national conservatives are seized by declinism. William Buckley, a thinker of the old school, once quipped that ‘A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling stop.’ By comparison, national conservatives are revolutionaries. They do not see the West as the shining city on the hill, but as Rome before the fall—decadent, depraved and about to collapse amid a barbarian invasion. Not content with resisting progress, they also want to destroy classical liberalism.

“Some people expect all this to blow over. National conservatives are too incoherent to pose a threat, they say. Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, supports Ukraine; Mr Orban has a soft spot for Russia. The Polish Law and Justice party (PIS) is anti-gay; in France Marine Le Pen is permissive. Besides, the obsession with national sovereignty would make people worse off, as trade collapses, economic growth stalls and civil rights are curtailed. Voters would surely choose to restore the world liberalism made.

“That view is unforgivably complacent. National conservatism is the politics of grievance: if policies lead to bad outcomes, its leaders will shift the blame onto globalists and immigrants and claim this only proves how much is wrong with the world. For all their contradictions, national conservatives have been able to unite around their hostility towards common enemies, including migrants (especially Muslims), globalists and all their supposed abettors. Nine months before America’s election, Mr Trump is already undermining NATO.” Trump, embracing Russia, skipped over the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in an isolated Siberian prison, far from any watchful eyes. Biden decried the obvious brutality of the Putin regime.

These growing trends lead to ungovernable nations or the very real prospect of the installation, perhaps by force, of a brutal autocrat even in the most democratic countries. As the removal of caps on campaign contributions under Citizens United vs FEC (US Supreme Court 2010) produced a significant shift, pushing extremism and extremist candidates mostly from the right, into elective office. They simply adopted the extremist views of mega-billionaires, now unleashed from spending caps, and money flowed to elect these abundantly unqualified candidates.

Want proof? The GOP-controlled US House of Representatives, currently dominated by an ultra-rightwing minority of Republicans who, with the help of a retribution-oriented Donald Trump, have pushed Congress to pass 90% fewer bills in this session that the average number of bills passed by immediately preceding generations of Congress. We are quite willing to dwell on age, forgetting that it is Republicans who approved and then changed their minds under directions from Trump, a legislative package that would have gone a long way to solve our immigration problems at our southern border. Reason: it might be interpreted as a Biden success.

I’m Peter Dekom, and for those who say that Americans will get the president they deserve, I question how valid an election can be when so many voters are basing their decision on truly fabricated facts… and feel terribly for the rest of us.