Greenland? What About Alaska?

Czarist Russia was desperate for cash; they approached the United States. Wanna buy Alaska? It was an obsession by then-U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward, started during the James Buchanan administration, implemented during the Andrew Johnson presidency, passing the Senate by a single vote. “Seward’s Folly.” “Seward’s Icebox.” But on April 9, 1867, for the paltry sum of $7 million, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia; the transfer occurred six months later. The laughter subsided when gold, lots of it, was discovered in 1868. Alaska’s natural resources have provided enormous benefits for the lower 48 from inception.

I am reasonably confident that Donald Trump is dramatically unaware of how Alaska became part of the United States. The idea emanated from the seller, a monarchy facing severe economic problems. When the Soviets took Russia in 1917, they disavowed the Czar’s right to have sold precious Russian land, which they stated belonged to the people. Even to this day, there are significant Russian interests that believe that Alaska still belongs to Russia, reinforced by Russian forays and claims to Arctic lands, their construction of a strong nuclear ice breaker force designed to dominate the Northwest Passage as it thaws.

Trump’s off-handed suggestion that the United States should consider buying the largest island on earth is filled with ironies and evoked waves of derision from both Greenlanders and their parent country, Denmark. “Crazy” was oft repeated. One Danish parliamentarian suggested that perhaps Denmark might consider buying California, a political question that might yield a strong positive local vote if it came down to choosing between Denmark and living within Donald Trump’s vision of America.

Like Alaska, Greenland is a vast storage ground of natural resources, increasingly accessible as global warming melts tundra and glaciers at alarming speed. China has also been interested in opening vast tracts of Greenland to resource exploitation contracts. The United States maintains it northern-most air base (Thule), 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle and 947 miles south of the North Pole. The above map illustrates how U.S. surveillance patrols routinely watch naval and other military developments in Russia from that base.

What is particularly ironic, however, is how some of the worst damage to the rest of the world has been born in these northern territories. Melting tundra releases trapped organically generated methane, a greenhouse gas that is over 23 times denser and more damaging than carbon dioxide. Melting polar ice, from glaciers to surface ice and snow, are steadily adding massive ocean water, adding most significantly to rising tides and eroding coastlines. Alaska just happens to be a red state that is particularly aware that climate change is not a Chinese hoax. The symptoms are hardly subtle, making Greenlanders mockingly aware that Donald Trump may be the most inappropriate world leader to offer to “buy” land that most clearly reflects these mega-warming realities.

Welcome to reality, Alaska-style (reflective of parallel occurrences in Greenland): “July was Alaska’s warmest month ever, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration… Sea ice melted. Bering Sea fish swam in above-normal temperatures. So did children in the coastal town of Nome. Wildfire season started early and stayed late. Thousands of walruses thronged to shore.

“Unusual weather events like this could become more common with climate warming, said Brian Brettschneider, an associate climate researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ International Arctic Research Center. Alaska has seen ‘multiple decades-long increases’ in temperature, he said… ‘It becomes easier to have these unusual sets of conditions that now lead to records,’ Brettschneider said.

“Alaska’s average temperature in July was 58.1 degrees. That’s 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) above average and 0.8 degrees (0.4 Celsius) higher than the previous warmest month of July 2004, NOAA said.

“The effects were felt from the Arctic Ocean to the world’s largest temperate rainforest on Alaska’s Panhandle… Anchorage, the state’s largest city, hit 90 degrees on July 4 for the first time, 5 degrees higher than the city’s previous recorded high of 85… Sea ice off Alaska’s north and northwest shore and other Arctic regions retreated to the lowest level ever recorded for July, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“Arctic sea ice for July set a record low of 2.9 million square miles. That was a South Carolina-size loss of 30,900 square miles beyond the previous record low July in 2012… Sea ice is the main habitat for polar bears and a resting platform for female walruses and their young. Several thousand walruses came to shore July 30, the first time they’ve been spotted in such large numbers before August.” Los Angeles Times, August 18^th.

In the end, Trump’s suggestion is very much in line with his dramatic ignorance of history and global politics, a complete lack of understanding of even the most basic economic principles, a willingness to ignore hard facts to placate a base that prefer their own “interpretations” of the New Testament instead and his fundamental to self-aggrandizing irresponsibility. For those who believe that this is an essential tenet of evangelicalism, those of Trump’s evangelical supporters who deny man-induced climate change only represent a very small segment of the global evangelical movement that accept the predominant view of climate change.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s hard to navigate by applying common sense to a government that is so mired in mythology and unsupported doctrinaire beliefs that reality is simply not relevant.

It Just Doesn’t Work That Way

It is amazing how President Trump labels his failures as “success;” his base revels as his statements are repeated on Fox News as truth, and the rest of the world simply rolls its eyes in judgmental acknowledgment of reality. The debacle of the President’s recent attempted visit to recovering shooting victims was obvious in the recent murderous assaults – one from an angry Bernie Sanders-supporting leftist (Dayton) and another from a Trump-inspired hate-filled right-winger (El Paso) – where they simply wanted nothing to do with him. His statement that his clearly divisive rhetoric was “unifying the nation” was ludicrous in and of itself. Only white supremacists understood that the unifying message was simply that they were now the focus of that purported “unification” to the exclusion of virtually anyone else.

The denuclearization of North Korea has gone nowhere fast. Laced with photo ops (above at the DMZ) but no substantive progress, that détente continues to be touted as success. “President Trump says he received yet another ‘very beautiful’ letter from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un on Thursday [8/8], adding that he thinks there will be another meeting between the two…  Mr. Trump teased reporters on the White House South Lawn Friday [8/9] by saying he would love to show them the three-page letter but won't, though he later said he might release the ‘results of the letter.’” CBSNews.com, August 9^th. That’s the story Donald Trump wants the world to believe.

But just as that letter was hand-delivered to the White House, “North Korea said Wednesday [8/7] leader Kim Jong Un supervised a live-fire demonstration of newly developed, short-range ballistic missiles intended to send a warning to the United States and South Korea over their joint military exercises… The official Korean Central News Agency said two missiles launched from a western airfield flew across the country and over the area surrounding the capital, Pyongyang, before accurately hitting an island target off its eastern coast.” Bloomberg.com, August 7^th. Reality. Kim calls the shots. Trump must follow.

How about Trump’s immigration plan? It was just reflected in a raid on several poultry processing plants in Mississippi leading to the detention of approximately 700 purportedly undocumented immigrants (with more than a few U.S. citizens), which resulted in a yet-uncalculated number of children, many of who were indeed U.S. citizens, coming home after the first day of school only to find their parents missing. Despite global opprobrium and court orders mandating an end to the separation of children, in the wake of an El Paso shooter who openly admitted he had targeted an “invasion” of ethnic Hispanics, Donald Trump watched the progress of the raids on television and glowed at how these most recent raids sent a powerful message of deterrence to aspiring border-crossers. Little children crying made no difference.

The economy? Using metrics based on “averages” – where high earners and the rising wealth of the one-percenters makes the overall numbers look good even as most of us have seen little or no economic improvement – Donald Trump loves to brag about “his” economic success, a recovery that clearly began with the prior administration. Some credit to Trump policies, the growth of consumer demand (laced with growing credit card debt), has to be accepted, but tax reform act… truly marginal. That cornerstone of his touted economic success, the massive GOP corporate tax cut that seriously exploded our federal deficit, simply failed to produce the desired economic result.

“The Trump administration’s tax cuts have had little direct impact on business investment decisions, according to an analysis by the International Monetary Fund, which runs contrary to the White House’s portrayal of lower corporate rates as a boon for capital spending.

“Almost all growth in business investment since 2017 can be attributed to private-sector expectations that strong sales growth will continue — in part because of the personal income tax cuts that boosted demand — rather than the tax incentive for companies, IMF economists Emanuel Kopp, Daniel Leigh and Suchanan Tambunlertchai said in a blog post Thursday [8/8]… They cited the findings of their recent study, which was also incorporated into the institution’s latest report on the U.S. economy in June.

“The tax reductions may also be having a smaller effect on investment than expected because of the decades-long rise of corporate concentration in industries including airlines, pharmaceuticals and technology, the authors said. They said that because such companies already hold market power, they aren’t necessarily re-investing their earnings in production and other business areas.” Bloomberg.com, August 10^th. The tax cuts generated dividends and stock buybacks but had little benefit for most Americans.

Trump’s abysmal failure in bringing China to heel via a trade war will cost American farmers billions (or more) well into the future. Their recent currency devaluation only increased their global competitive edge despite Trump’s tariff increases. China has readjusted their supply chain to replace American agricultural products, rather permanently, with produce from other nations, notably Brazil. The plight of American soybean farmers is a major case in point. While China accounted for roughly a third of our soybean exports prior to the trade war, that market is unlikely ever to rise to even half of former levels.

Even with Trump’s socialized payments to impacted farmers, destined to end in the immediate future, American farmers will be slammed for a long time to come. Soybeans at that level of bulk will not find new buyers of sufficient volume to replace former Chinese demand. For those who tell those agricultural sellers to replant their fields with alternative crops, they seem to forget that soybean farmers invested billions in specialized equipment and will have to spend billions more to retool. Waste. Time to adjust. Expense.

“The U.S. trade tensions with China and other nations are further curbing investment growth. ‘Policy makers can support further growth in business investment by reducing economic policy uncertainty, including by resolving trade-related tensions,’ the IMF post said.” Bloomberg. Trump seems to need the Federal Reserve to drop interest rates to offset his economic failures, or the resultant dip in US economic metrics could cost him vital support for his 2020 reelection bid. Losing seems to be becoming the new American pastime. We just cannot afford to let that continue and expect to hold together as a nation.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and this level of constant failure, some of it undoable, should tell American voters that the United States may well be unable to survive if Trump is reelected.

International Apologies

Saying “I’m sorry” with sincerity is hard enough for an individual. We’re watching candidates with long political records have to own up for policy mistakes in the past. Not fun, and those “bad acts” will form meat in the attacks they face. It’s not just mouthing the words, making an apology, that counts. It’s feeling it, owning it and paying the consequences. The United States has lots to be apologetic for – from out-and-out slavery or dragging the Cherokee nation in a death march across the United States that began in the 1830s (others from the “Five Civilized Tribes” were ripped from their lands too) to the carpet-bombing, napalm and massacres in the Vietnam War – but today’s blog is a study in contrasts: two Axis powers who surrendered in WWII – Germany and Japan – in accepting wartime and pre-war atrocities committed against “genetically inferior” peoples.

One, having tortured, enslaved and murdered 13 million human beings (part of Hitler’s “Final Solution of the Jewish Problem” that took gypsies along for that final ride) – Germany… and the other – Japan – having invaded (at least) two other fellow Asian nations (notably Korea and China), while attempting to annihilate and entire Korean language and culture, taking “comfort women” at random as forced military prostitutes and later, in China, raping, killing and looting, taking slaves for horrific medical experiments. Both maintained prison labor camps, some to house prisoners of war, but most subjecting the ethnic inmates to barbarism, torture, medical experimentation, slavery, starvation and murder.

When WWII ended, Germans generally believed that they were suckered into the war, that is was part of an allied conspiracy to contain Germany’s attempt to escape from the super-repressive WWI war reparations extracted by the victorious allies. They generally thought that the stories of German atrocities and concentration camps, particularly against those “hateful and conspiratorial Jews,” were either apocryphal or the product of a few rotten applies in an otherwise barrel of fine German produce. They argued that the bombing of their cities, particularly the decimation of Dresden, were war crimes against Germans and that it was the allies who should have been on trial at Nuremberg, where only 200 Nazis were actually tried. The Nuremberg trials were mostly about the high-ranking military leaders, those who had not committed suicide, and not the bulk of good German soldiers and bureaucrats during their Motherland proud.

It was not until a decade later, when a Jewish lawyer, Fritz Bauer who had fled to Scandinavia in 1935, was brought back to Germany as a war crimes prosecutor. He drilled down, from top to bottom, against those who commanded concentration camps to the enlisted soldiers who carried out the torture/extermination of “Jews and other inferior undesirables.” We were just loyal soldiers “just following orders” was the repetitious mantra of the accused.

Many were not convicted, but what the German people read and saw was the extent of the genocide and torture and that fact that it was implemented by so many “ordinary” people and junior officers and enlisted soldiers. A shudder of shame crossed the country. By the late 1960s, German youth turned on their parents, most of whom could not respond to their children’s inquiries about “why did you let that happen? Where were you?” Student protests and a rise of left-wing politics, militants (like the Baader-Meinhof gang) declared that the entire German culture to be corrupt and must fall, including the capitalist system behind the German machine; German youth took to the streets.

In 1970, German Chancellor Willy Brandt visited a Polish ghetto, where Jews had been shot or taken to Nazi concentration camps. In an extraordinary act of contrition, Brandt knelt down and asked for forgiveness for all of Germany. That moment is captured in the photo above. The reaction of Germans and Germany to the pandemic of Germans’ following Hitler’s agenda, the death and horrific mistreatment of Jews and other unpopular minorities… became revulsion. Germany paid reparations. Acknowledged guilt and began structuring a “never again” government.

To my friends who point out the rise of a small alt-right movement in Germany today, I remind them that that the largest political party in Germany today are the Greens. German textbooks are rife with the hideous description of Nazi death camps, and virtually all German children are required to visit the rather gruesome concentration camps where the horrors are openly presented.

When I was in Munich in late July, I was very aware of the difference between Germany and the United States. There was a calm notion of togetherness, biracial couples walking arm in arm, hijab-wearing Muslim women sipping tea with their non-Muslim friends… a sense that Germany was now a nation where diversity and tolerance replaced one of the worst periods in modern history. Commonality of spirit and the absence of that political tension that marks the United States was so clear.

And then there’s Japan. It never really accepted culpability for invading (1905) and annexing (1910) Korea, trying to replace their language with Japanese, recruiting innocent women into forced prostitution, indiscriminately torturing and killing locals who believed in their independence. Japan also invaded China in 1931, seeking cheap workers and raw materials for its expanding war machine. The most egregious carnage occurred over six weeks starting in December 1937. Japanese soldiers bayonetted, shot, blew up half the population of Nanking China – 300,000 civilians were slaughtered. Just about every female was raped, many then shot. The scar runs deep.

Japanese textbooks gloss over these horrors, pretending as if they never occurred. The evil Americans unnecessarily dropped nuclear bombs on an innocent Japan that was forced into war because it was denied essential natural resources. Japanese atrocities are nowhere to be found.

The few apologies issued by Japanese leaders for Japan’s egregious pre-WWII and war conduct have been perfunctory, anything but heartfelt, and almost always qualified. For example, in the summer of 2015, Japanese Prime Minister “Shinzo Abe of Japan reiterated his support for past official apologies for the country’s imperial expansionism and said Japan ‘did inflict immeasurable damage and suffering’ on ‘innocent people.’… But he added, ‘We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.’” New York Times, August 14, 2015.

Korea and China have never forgotten. They are acutely aware of Japan’s half-hearted and insincere formal apologies, never remotely admitting the details of the extreme and barbarous cruelty that Japan inflicted on its hapless Asian neighbors. There is always an undercurrent of resentment against Japan from the many Asian nations that felt Tokyo’s spiked boot in the first half of the twentieth century.

It doesn’t take much to bring that simmering hatred to the surface. “In July, Japan tightened rules on the export of materials crucial for South Korean tech manufacturers… Those restrictions, on products needed to make display panels and memory chips, have worried Seoul over the risks to its already slowing economy… Both countries have accused each other of inadequate export controls.

“Japan will now be placed in a new category of countries that have not run their export control systems in line with international principles… A senior South Korean trade ministry official, Park Tae-sung, accused Japan of inappropriate trade practices, but gave no data…

“South Korea has said it will take Japan off its favoured trade partners' list… The move is a tit-for-tat response to Japan's decision earlier this month to do the same to South Korea… Industry Minister Sung Yun-mo said Japan would be placed on a newly created restrictive trade list instead.

“Long-running bilateral tensions were inflamed last year by South Korean court rulings ordering Japanese firms to pay compensation to Koreans over forced labour during World War Two… The legal decisions drew condemnation from Japan, which argues the dispute was settled in 1965 when diplomatic ties were normalised between the neighbouring countries… The two nations share a complicated history that includes Japanese colonial rule of Korea from 1910 until the defeat of Japan in 1945.” BBC.com, August 12^th.

The lessons of history can be brutal, but a brutal nation seeking to move on after its own unacceptable and often unspeakable behavior without owning the egregious conduct, paying for it and taking steps never to allow such horribles ever to happen again… cannot really recover. Sooner or later…

              I’m Peter Dekom, and when I see Americans condoning cruelty, embracing racism and provoking hatred, I wonder exactly what eventual price we will have to pay for such mindless and unforgivable conduct… and there is always a very, very expensive price.

When Two Neighboring Nuclear Power Escalate Mutual Hatred

It’s a distant land – Jammu and Kashmir – astride the Pakistani-Indian border. A beautiful land of cool mountain air, a massive lake (Dal) filled with magical and legendary houseboats (pictured above), where nature has bestowed an air of tranquility and a link with nature. When India was formed in 1947, Kashmir had a choice: India or Pakistan. Mostly Muslim, the only such state in India, politicians promised relative autonomy with their own local constitution. Based on these pledges, Kashmir voted to stay with the larger nation to the south. Today, that peaceful tranquility is a lie. Islamist separatists, violent bands of hateful youth, have mounted terrorist attacks against India and Indian nationals. India has struck back with a crushing hand.

Why? Because India has tried to reverse Kashmiri autonomy. Land in Kashmir could only be bought by locals… to keep India from diluting the local political constituency. Indian forces are planted everywhere and govern with an iron fist. The Indian ruling BJP Party, a pronounced pro-Hindu political force, has looked at Kashmir as a rogue state that must be brought to heel. Locals in Jammu and Kashmir have felt betrayed for years, wanting either to unit with their fellow Muslim state – Pakistan – or at least to be granted independence from a dramatically anti-Muslim BJP mandate. The original grant of relative autonomy has become a cruel joke. The violent tension in Kashmir has continuously escalated since 1989.

With a Trump-like “double down,” in early August, the Indian government did what PM Modi pledged to do in his catering to his base by repealing the region’s statehood and special status, including the right to its own constitution. The last vestiges of autonomy were vaporized. Indians could now officially buy property in Kashmir, and the BJP Party hoped that such land purchases would finally and slowly dilute Muslim control; Jammu and Kashmir would just become an ordinary political unit in a Hindu-dominated, anti-Muslim nation.

“The political crisis over the disputed territory of Kashmir escalated Wednesday [8/7] when Pakistan said it would downgrade its diplomatic ties with India, expel the Indian ambassador and suspend trade with its regional rival… A security lockdown by Indian troops continued for a third day in Muslim-majority Kashmir… Hundreds of migrant workers began the long trek back to their villages in northern and eastern India…

“The Indian government has shut off most communications, including internet, cellphone and landline networks, with Kashmir. Thousands of additional troops were sent to the already heavily militarized region out of fear the government’s steps could spark unrest.

“In response to India’s action, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told parliament that it would expel the Indian ambassador, and the Foreign Ministry later said India had been instructed to withdraw the envoy. The decision came at a meeting of Pakistan’s National Security Committee led by Prime Minister Imran Khan and attended by the heads of the armed forces and senior government officials.

“Khan said at the meeting that his administration would use all diplomatic channels ‘to expose the brutal Indian racist regime’ and human rights violations in Kashmir, according to a government statement… Khan also directed Pakistan’s armed forces to remain on maximum alert.

“Islamabad also said it would review other aspects of its relations with India. It said it would ask the U.N. to pressure India to reverse its decision to downgrade Kashmir from a state to two territories. The region also lost its right to fly its own flag and make many of its own decisions.

“Pakistan said it would continue extending diplomatic, political and moral support for people living in Kashmir and their ‘right of self-determination.’ Pakistan has long called for people in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir to be allowed to vote on whether they want to sever ties with India.” Los Angeles Times, August 8^th.

In addition to many military skirmishes, India and Pakistan have fought full-on wars with each other in 1947, 1966, 1971 and 1999. India did what it could to destabilized Pakistan, so when East Pakistan – now Bangladesh – fought successfully to break away from their larger component to the west, India was delighted. “Pakistan's nuclear weapons development was in response to the loss of East Pakistan in 1971's Bangladesh Liberation War. [President Benazir Ali] Bhutto called a meeting of senior scientists and engineers on 20 January 1972, in Multan, which came to known as ‘Multan meeting.’ Bhutto was the main architect of this programme, and it was here that Bhutto orchestrated the nuclear weapons programme and rallied Pakistan's academic scientists to build an atomic bomb in three years for national survival.” Wikipedia.

While India was able to test a primitive nuclear device by 1974, the two nations didn’t get into serious nuclear testing for two decades. Today, they are thoroughly capable nuclear powers, staring menacingly at each other across a malevolent border. Tensions are escalating. Where this goes could easily become the first full-on nuclear war on earth. Think about it. Seriously.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and as unstable as the world already is, an unfortunate and unanticipated event can alter the course of history everywhere.

Far Right, Totally White, You Got That Right

More than 35,000 Ku Klux Klan members marched down

Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C August 8, 1925

  “Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger, not the gun.” Donald Trump, August 5^th.

As President Trump decries bigotry, racism and hatred, blaming mental illness for the spate of mass shootings that have so accelerated since his ascension to power, his administration seems to be well aware of one hard fact: racists, white supremacists and bigots are a substantial core of his political, must-have base. A little rhetoric – emphasizing mental illness – is tolerable… as long as nothing changes. Promises of change, background checks instantly recanted (and back again?), are acceptable as long as they are not kept. Divide and conquer is the new GOP path to grow or at least sustain political power. The last moderates in the GOP are retiring from Congress. It is all Trump now.

You only have to look at the policies of his Department of Homeland Security to understand how unconcern our elected government is about containing domestic hate groups that we euphemistically call “domestic terrorists” – remembering that any segment of society that rises up is always labeled “terrorists” by the incumbent power. What Britain called our Revolutionary War fighters. But what we have in the United States today is hardly noble, hardly freedom fighters, just Ku Klux Klan’ers without the hoods. Maybe that’s why Trump never uses that “domestic terrorist” label to describe these mass killers.

If you want the truth about where our government stands, follow the dollars our government spends to see the priorities. “Last year, every extremist killing in the United States involved a follower of far-right hate groups or ideology. (Andres Leighton Associated Press) UNDER President Trump, 85% of the ‘countering violent extremism’ grants awarded by Homeland Security targeted Muslims and other minority groups. (Lola Gomez Austin American-Statesman).” Los Angeles Times, August 6^th.

Gun laws are never going to change in any material sense in a Republican administration. Trump is hardly going to back a massive expenditure of federal funds to rein in people in his main constituency. He’s hardly going to allocate meaningful federal funds to stem the rising tide of Russian interference, already targeting African-American and other minorities telling that their votes don’t count so why bother voting.

“In the aftermath of mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, President Trump vowed Monday to give federal law enforcement ‘whatever they need to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism.

“But the Department of Homeland Security, which is charged with identifying threats and preventing domestic terrorism, has sought to redirect resources away from countering anti-government, far-right and white supremacist groups.

“The shift has come despite evidence of a growing danger. Last year, every extremist killing in the United States involved a follower of far-right hate groups or ideology, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. The FBI has noted a sharp increase in domestic terrorism cases involving white supremacists…

“Under President Obama, the office had about 40 full-time staff and a $24-million annual budget, according to Nate Snyder, an Obama administration counterterrorism official. The office now has fewer than 10 full-time employees and a budget below $3 million… ‘You have some very dedicated government employees still at the office dealing with terrorism prevention and just trying to keep the lights on,’ Snyder said.

“After Trump’s election, members of his transition team told Homeland Security officials they wanted to reorient programs meant to combat violent extremism to focus more on the threat posed by radical Islamic terrorism… But right-wing and anti-government groups have carried out more domestic attacks, and killed more Americans, than foreign terrorist groups since 2001, data show.” LA Times.

It is their time. White Supremacists feel it in the air. Outliers are massing on social media, abetted by their President, his television news outlet and his supporters. But make no mistake, terror is indeed escalating… from the inside.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and the most unfortunate patterns of history are repeating themselves within our republic… and very little is being done to stop them.

The Questions No One Seems to be Asking

Today

 

In 10 years?

The United States has a terrible record of acting first, thinking second and discovering horrific unintended consequences of bad decisions, sometimes years and years after the initial misstep. Vietnam… or…. Like when we armed the Mujahidin against the USSR who were battling in Afghanistan in the 1980s. After the Soviets pulled out and the communist empire unraveled, those same Mujahidin (well-armed and trained by our CIA) turned their weapons and training on The Great Satan: the United States. Under the protective umbrella of the local governing Taliban, these Mujahidin began a new effort, calling themselves al Qaeda, mounted a brazen attack against the Twin Towers in NYC and the Pentagon in Virginia. 9/11/01. We called it “blow-back.”

When we toppled Sunni dictator, Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s 60% majority Shiite population promptly affiliated with the 90%+ Shiite majority in Iran… and as we tried to ignore this new configuration and pretend with our ally, Iraq clearly supported the Iranian Shiite theocracy in its anti-US policies. Abandoned Sunnis, finding no representation in either Shiite-led Damascus or Baghdad, turned to a new voice to fight for their interests: the ultra-right-wing Sunni extremists who called themselves ISIS. We know what happened there. We face similar issues as we supply Saudi Arabia with the means to bomb innocents in Yemen or Israel with weapons and satellite intelligence against Palestinians. Why do terrorists obsess about killing Americans? Take a wild guess. We should call that “blow-back” too.

Our perpetual obsession, particularly from 1950 through the 1980s, to defeat “communism” resulted in some rather strong continuing waves of simmer anti-Americanism, particularly in Central and South America. Don’t think that the failing governments in Venezuela or Bolivia, for example, have forgotten the covert and less-than-covert CIA and US military efforts to topple left-leaning governments.  Strong anti-Americanism still forms the backbone of policies that get politicians elected all over Latin America. All those efforts at détente pushed by the Clinton and Obama administrations, even by George W Bush, have spun back to negative under our current efforts.

I ask what we have actually gained, other than photo ops and aggrandizing a brutal North Korean tyrant, from shutting Cuba back down, pulling out of the Iran nuclear containment accord and watching a US president step into North Korean territory for the first time. But I ask a much bigger question, right here in our own back yard, when I look at the sardine-packed children detainees, separated from their parents, sleeping on dirt or concrete floors, lacking clean running water, sanitary toilets, hot meals and even toothbrushes. Those aluminum “blankets” seem to say it all.

Healthcare officials have made no secret of the longer-term damage, physical and psychological, done to these young lives. We can feel sorry for them, we can appropriate funds to give them a better experience within their total incarceration, but it may be too late to undo everything from their version of post-traumatic stress disorder, embellished by developmental issues inherent in a parentless environment, to a growing seething anger of what has happened to them… and wondering if they will ever see their parents again. Pass me the bologna sandwich please.

Do we really believe that the scars were are searing into their minds and bodies will heal and just go away? Or are we witnessing the birth of future violent antisocial behavior, a belief that “someday I will make them pay” vengeance, or perhaps down and dirty terrorism against the United States and American targets. Are we watching future sicarios (cartel assassins), dealers and gangsters in their earliest training grounds? 

We might be making children with nascent anti-social indicia such as hyper-aggression worse, but we also just may be interfering with allowing otherwise “normal” imprisoned children to develop, to acquire more cognitive, linguistic, and regulatory skills, which would enable them to cope with developmental challenges and outgrow many normal problem behaviors. Will they ever be able to find productive lives? At least they are learning English… but… how will they use that language skill against those inflicting such pain on their young lives?

Exactly why is this good for the United States? What’s in it for most of us? What benefits do we derive by incenting thousands of young minds to hate us and carry an unwavering hatred of the United States as a core value into adulthood? Children who grow up with deep anger and nothing left to lose? How many of “us” will be killed, injured, our livelihoods decimated, homes and buildings lost, addicts created, cartels fueled with new hated-filled, super-angry soldiers, armed with guns easily bought inside a gun-crazy America? We certainly need to call that “blow-back.” 

              I’m Peter Dekom, and I am watching insane and brutal, deeply unamerican cruelty towards even children burn hatred into their minds… a hatred that will someday soon come back to haunt us all… with retaliatory violence.

 

Trump-economics: The Law of Unintended Consequences

This current economic boom began under the fiscal and monetary policies of the Obama administration, although Mr. Trump takes credit for it all. His shoveling of trillions of dollars of unnecessary tax cuts to corporate America tanked the deficit by trillions of interest-bearing dollars, resulted mostly in stock buybacks and dividends benefitting the richest in the land but produced almost no new investment capital. Put more money into a corporation, even if it is not generated by running a profitable business, and of course the stock price will soar, especially when you keep interest rates low. It has little to do with productivity.

Jobs? Unemployment numbers? If you do not peel back the surface numbers, the numbers are indeed impressive. But for 70% of working Americans, the rising costs fomented by truly ill-thought out economic policies, the net result is no result. Buying power is stagnant, and we have never had so many working-years-adults simply give up looking for work. Lots of work in the gig and part-time economy, with no benefits or job security, and lots of folks having to hold down two (or more) jobs just to make ends meet.

But what really brings home the failure of Trump’s economic policies, where multinational trade agreements are replaced by one-on-one trade negotiations and simply ignoring the most basic laws of supply and demand, are the industries that Trump has pledged to turn around to Make America Great Again. Not only has the global aversion to coal-fired power generation continued to escalate – resulting in the closure of even more U.S. coal mines and the reduction of that work force – but where Trump has imposed high tariffs to “create more jobs in the U.S.,” the blowback has produced very much the opposite result.

Some companies have been forced to shift their global manufacturing outside the United States to avoid being caught up in the retaliation from other nations against U.S. tariffs against their goods. Look at General Motors’ closing traditional plants in Ohio and opening up new manufacturing centers in Mexico. Where manufacturing “reshoring” has returned to the United States, it has not resulted in massive numbers of high-pay manufacturing jobs being recreated; robots do that work now, and the companies that own that automation now earn the money that once was paid to workers.

As climate change flooding – against the “climate change, what climate change?” policies of the Trump administration – has slammed Midwest farmers, his “national security” driven tariff wars have changed international buying patterns, allowed new agricultural competitors to replace what used to be American agricultural exports and taken a big bite out of U.S. farming income (even with his federal handouts). And as Trump proselytizes gasoline-powered vehicles with lower emissions standards, the global marketplace simply is turning it back on that business plan. 

We truly understand why Trump was a subpar student at Wharton. Understanding the complexities of economics wasn’t really his thing. Tariffs, which have historically failed to deliver as most economists will tell you, just don’t work. Simple and make for great slogans. They just don’t work. When Trump announced massive tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, he presented American metal workers with a vision of endless high-paying jobs. They would no longer have to compete with cheap foreign steel and aluminum, and America would bring those jobs back.

Construction took the first hit, but that was quickly followed by a realization that any sector of the U.S. economy that relied on these materials, from construction and car-making to manufacturing appliances, was going to have to raise prices (or reduce profits) for their end products. Another motivation for American manufacturers to move overseas. There was a moment, however brief, when a few aluminum and steelworkers got a boost, but that did not last long. Without massive new investment, the overall U.S. steel industry just is not competitive at any level.

Matt Townsend and Joe Deaux, writing for the July 9^th Los Angeles Times, drill down on the blowback in the steel industry as a good example: “President Trump’s tariffs on foreign steel have sped the decline of some of the U.S. mills he vowed to help.

“Exuberance over the levies dramatically boosted U.S. output just as the global economy was cooling, undercutting demand. That dropped prices, creating a stark divide between companies such as Nucor Corp., which uses cheaper-to-run electric-arc furnaces [pictured above] to recycle scrap into steel products, and those including U.S. Steel Corp., with more costly legacy blast furnaces.

“Since Trump announced the tariffs 16 months ago, U.S. Steel has lost almost 70% of its market value, or $5.5 billion, and idled two furnaces in mid-June that couldn’t be run profitably at the lowest prices since 2016. Meanwhile, Nucor, down about 20%, has touted $2.5 billion in expansion projects.

“The president’s actions probably ‘sped up’ an unavoidable ‘evolution,’ Nucor Chief Executive John Ferriola said in an interview last month. ‘Are some companies going to suffer? Absolutely. We’ll see some capacity go away, I’m sure of it.’

“Last July, Trump stood on a makeshift stage at a U.S. Steel mill in Granite City, Ill., and beamed as workers cheered the tariffs. At that point, the company had already restarted one of two blast furnaces at Granite City, and vowed the second would soon be brought online… ‘Workers are back on the job, and we’re once again pouring new American steel into the spine of our country,’ Trump said during the hourlong program. ‘U.S. Steel is back.’

“Since then, though, there’s been a somewhat different outcome… With the stronger steelmakers aggressively boosting capacity to grab market share, a dip in demand has left older, more costly blast furnaces at U.S. Steel and AK Steel Holding Corp. struggling to compete, even with foreign steel nudged out of the equation.

“‘Be careful what you wish for,’ said Timna Tanners, an analyst at Bank of America who has dubbed the industry’s push to add capacity without enough demand ‘Steelmageddon.’ She called it ‘ironic’ that the tariffs are ‘punishing some steel companies.’…

“A spokeswoman at U.S. Steel declined to comment. AK Steel said its products have little overlap with electric-arc furnaces, or EAFs, and that the additional capacity will further pressure imports… As expected, the tariffs reduced steel imports, creating more demand in 2018 and boosting profits. With that cash in hand, added money from Trump’s corporate tax cut and confidence that protectionism is here to stay, domestic producers began adding more capacity than they would have otherwise.

“The problem: This year, with the global economy cooling, demand — and prices — has fallen. That’s given an added incentive to EAF companies with superior profit margins and balance sheets to aggressively grab a bigger share of the market.” Trying to force massive changes in the marketplace with market-distorting and ill-conceived polices generally does not work… and Trump’s economic policies have been particularly ineffective. Consumers pay more, foreign competitors step in to replace what the United States used to export, and we make enemies with companies and nations the world over. Think they will forget anytime soon?

              I’m Peter Dekom, and if The Art of the Deal is constantly getting slammed by the law of unintended consequences, then Donald Trump is indeed the unrivaled master of that universe.