Beginning of the End of America or Just “Guilty”?

 

As MAGA pundits swear that the ”rigged” Trump trial verdict all but guarantees his victory in November, as Trump’s own website crashes on verdict day from the flood of donations (at least $34.8 million) and as every single federal criminal trial (and the Georgia trial) against Trump seems to be delayed until at least after the election, as Mike Johnson lays out the GOP day-one agenda with lots of tax cuts with massive benefit and administrative reductions/elimination with tons of intrusive and very personal governmental mandates… many are asking, “What just happened?”

Days before the GOP convention, Trump will be sentenced for his election manipulation in New York. Porn stars and sexual allegations underscored a man hellbent on crushing anyone who threatened his ascent. It’s hard to believe that this was not a fair trial, but many question even if any crimes were committed. Ever the consummate “victim,” from a man who sidestepped responsibility for questionable practices for decades using his connections to the fullest, Trump will appeal. But what will the July 11th sentencing hearing reflect? Probation and a fine? Add a prison (for the crime) and possibly jail (for contempt) sentence… to be served when and where? Suspended pending the outcome of an appeal, but Trump shows no remorse? Or any incarceration suspended to be reinstated if Trump commits further criminal acts? The trial court judge, Juan Merchan, is obviously aware of the violence that could follow implementation of an immediate jail/prison sentence.

Notwithstanding the flood of “news channel” experts and social media sanctimonious “predictors,” nobody really knows what will happen. Dems ask, “How can Americans vote for a convicted felon as our representative to the world?” As corporate donors ramped up their contributions to the Trump campaign – even after his website crashed from the volume of campaign contributions on the day of the verdict – all the stock markets were down the next day. Could Trump win in November? If the election were held today, I think the victim-expert wins. “I am a political prisoner,” Trump posted on his solicitation for contributions. I think that victim emotion necessarily fades with time as the electorate is already overloaded with polarized messaging.

Biden correctly stayed silent, but Trump-supporter Benjamin Netanyahu amped up his attacks on Rafah, openly defying Biden. Indeed, the current President is perceived to be an elderly and weak candidate who does not seem to be able to convince his traditional voters that he actually implemented inflation reduction, is addressing climate change, is creating jobs through his infrastructure legislation… but is globally blamed for supplying munitions to Israel that are being used to kill civilians. Trump’s base, with powerful religious reasons to see Israel in a major war, is completely on board with Trump’s “finish it” advice to Netanyahu.

Everybody wants to know now what is probably going to happen in November. There are two conventions scheduled this summer with lots of angry people ready to descend on them. There are more Supreme Court rulings that could impact the presidential election and the down-ballot candidates as well. Hunter Biden’s gun possession/tax evasion trial is about to start to the delight of the GOP. While Speaker Mike Johnson and the Heritage Foundation are planning for a November sweep – Trump as President and both houses of Congress in MAGA hands – in the end, there is no way to know. Here’s how The Morning news feed (New York Times, May 31st) puts it:

“Nobody knows. Political prognostication after unprecedented news is a recipe for regret. (The day after Richard Nixon resigned, a front-page story in this very newspaper said the resignation immediately made Gerald Ford the favorite to win the 1976 election; he lost.)

“But we understand that readers are hungry for analysis of this question because it may be the most important one. And we recommend this article by Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.

“Nate points out that Trump’s current polling lead relies on voters who have traditionally supported Democrats, including younger and nonwhite voters. Some of them have previously told pollsters that a conviction would make them less comfortable with supporting Trump. Nate also emphasizes — and this will sound familiar — that nobody yet knows what will happen.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and I do agree with exceptionally relevant words that Abraham Lincoln ? at the closing of the Republican convention in 1858: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

Anticipatory Misperception in Europe

“They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” 

old communist joke

The European Union lost a big chunk of viability on Brexit, although the UK seems now to understand the enormity of their mistake. It will take decades to undo the damage of that miscalculation. See also my recent After They Talked the Talk… Came the Walk the Walk with a Big Limp blog. But those sorts of miscalculations, misguided expectations, the “persistence of memory” (not Dali but for CIS nations that cannot seem to shake their autocratic past) and fear of the unfamiliar “other,” are creating incompatible wannabe expectations in countries anxious to join the EU, even as those in the EU want more heft. The unraveling is occurring even before the “raveling,” or as the May 16th Economist calls it, the “phoney enlargement”:

“On paper up to nine countries are making progress towards membership. Both in the capitals of the countries looking to join and in Brussels, officials say preparations are being made, reforms enacted, boxes ticked. But whether the mooted expansion will happen is still doubtful. A flush of enthusiasm in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has given way to the realisation that the journey from 27 to 36 will be long and uncertain. A target of 2030 used to be seen as aspirational. It now looks delusional.

“Events in recent days show why. A slew of countries that have applied to join the EU have demonstrated why they are not yet members. In Georgia a repressive ‘foreign agent’ law that mimics the manner Russia once cracked down on civil society was approved by parliament on May 14th despite vast protests. Georgians overwhelmingly want a European future but are governed by an oligarchic caste that favours rapprochement with the Kremlin, not Brussels. A few days earlier a new nationalist president took office in North Macedonia, one of six western Balkan aspirants to EU membership. Instead of reciting the usual platitudes in her inaugural speech, Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova referred to her country merely as ‘Macedonia’, thus knowingly blowing up a deal with Greece, which worries its neighbour’s use of the name will one day degenerate into territorial claims on its region of that name. This pact had been a prerequisite for it to become a candidate for EU accession. And on May 8th Serbia announced a ‘shared future’ with China as it greeted Xi Jinping with great pomp in Belgrade. It will soon enact a free-trade agreement with China that is completely incompatible with EU membership.

“Before 2022… the EU feigned interest in letting in new members, they purported to make the reforms needed to gain access. Both sides knew it was going nowhere; Croatia had been the last country to join the club, in 2013. War on the continent jolted the EU out of this enlargement fatigue. Not only did Ukraine and Moldova apply to become members, but dormant requests in the Balkans took on a new appeal (Turkey is technically a candidate for accession, but not in practice). The geopolitical imperative of snuffing out Russian influence meant the EU was willing—for a time—to look past the unpreparedness of the countries that had asked to join. Progress was made: Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia-Herzegovina were cleared to start formal accession talks.”

Indeed, the trend in recent years to admire the central-controlling and economic miracle China and lambast Trump-loving America as an unraveling economy seems to be on a time delay. China’s economy unraveled with exploding unemployment, collapsing real estate development and bank failures… when the failed “central-controlling” directives were outright wrong, and there were no alternative powerful enough to step in. As for the United States’ self-imposed unraveling, as the European model will attest, the survival of a democracy market economic model is not the problem; it’s a political desire for autocracy that may be America’s undoing.

While nations able to choose should avoid China “we always know what’s best” top-down autocratic message for economic direction, they are equally advised to cull American launched populism as their model for much of anything. That said, the EU’s long application timeline does not account well for changes during that tedious process. Change is disruptive, but inflexibility in original intentions in light of subsequent reality often creates too many people pursuing impossible and unachievable goals. As The Economist states, it ain’t happenin’ as planned:

“The challenge now is to keep the old fatigue at bay. The EU has been mindful that the reforms needed to join the club—more corruption-busting, better courts, reformed economies and so on—are painful for politicians. The rewards are far in the future, for their successors to enjoy. Now the EU wants the benefits to come alongside the pain. Many perks of joining the club, such as being part of its single market, could be offered before formal membership. A €6bn ($6.5bn) pot of loans and grants will soon be doled out to Balkan countries that can show they are making those painful reforms. The idea was that a new dynamic would overtake the cynical one of yesteryear.

“So far it has not worked, says Milena Mihajlovic of the European Policy Centre (CEP), a think-tank in Belgrade. ‘The belief enlargement will happen in the short term is not there,’ she says. Far from reforming their way to membership, countries in the Balkans have made at least half a step back for every step forward. A region ‘rich in history’ (diplomat-speak for they all hate each other) has found it hard to bury old enmities. Relations between Serbia and Kosovo, which split from Serbia in 2008, remain execrable. Albania has locked up the ethnic-Greek mayor of a small town, annoying its neighbour. Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine all have chunks of their territory controlled by Russia. Throughout the region, politics remain as messy as ever. Serbia has two ministers who are under American sanctions for their ties to Russia.” And maybe it ain’t happenin’ much as all. The imposition of uniform European rules may accelerate a beneficial economic union, but it sure makes adherence to local pride and nationalism well neigh impossible. While that might be a good thing for democracy, it also makes xenophobia a hard ride.

I’m Peter Dekom, and you have to ask yourself why individual rights and freedom are so damned hard to sell these days.

Sea Change – If a Massive Ocean Rise Were to Happen Quickly

   

If Hollywood were still making disaster movies, this could be a doozy. It all starts with what you don’t see, except some nerdy scientists waving their hands frantically, holding a folder with a sheaf of documents, calculations and photographs, warning us about a climatic apocalypse about to assault the Earth. Oh… we’ve seen that one… a while ago. Or maybe it’s a massive volcano shuddering with a growling furor, a Yellowstone level super-volcano capable of taking out a large chunk of the western United States. Oh, no well-armed green aliens with expansion and finding new food sources on their minds.

So, it would be even more boring if there were a giant under-ice river, way beneath the massive Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica (about the size of Florida, also known as the Doomsday Glacier), one you really cannot see because it is miles under that frigid continent. But what if some pretty credible scientists were telling you that this river of oceanic water… far, far below the surface of that glacier… was subjecting that massive body of ice to “vigorous melting”? And what if that “vigorous melting” – discovered only by use of some sophisticated radar data from space to perform an X-ray of the crucial glacier – was providing information that this Florida-sized piece of ice would, sooner rather than later, find its way into the ocean itself? If you don’t live in a coastal community, you might not care. If you’re Ron DeSantis, you should care but don’t.

Laura Paddison, writing for CNN News on May 22nd, dug a little deeper into this study released on May 20th by the Proceeding of the National Academy Sciences: “Thwaites, which already contributes 4% to global sea level rise, holds enough ice to raise sea levels by more than 2 feet. But because it also acts as a natural dam to the surrounding ice in West Antarctica, scientists have estimated its complete collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise — a catastrophe for the world’s coastal communities…

“Many studies have pointed to the immense vulnerabilities of Thwaites. Global warming, driven by humans burning fossil fuels, has left it hanging on ‘by its fingernails,’ according to a 2022 study… This latest research adds a new and alarming factor into projections of its fate.

“A team of glaciologists — led by scientists from the University of California, Irvine — used high resolution satellite radar data, collected between March and June last year, to create an X-ray of the glacier. This allowed them to build a picture of changes to Thwaites’ ‘grounding line,’ the point at which the glacier rises from the seabed and becomes a floating ice shelf. Grounding lines are vital to the stability of ice sheets, and a key point of vulnerability for Thwaites, but have been difficult to study.

“‘In the past, we had only sporadic data to look at this,’ said Eric Rignot, professor of Earth system science at the University of California at Irvine and a co-author on the study. ‘In this new data set, which is daily and over several months, we have solid observations of what is going on.’… They observed seawater pushing beneath the glacier over many miles, and then moving out again, following the daily rhythm of the tides. When the water flows in, it’s enough to ‘jack up’ the surface of the glacier by centimeters, Rignot told CNN… He suggested the term ‘grounding zone’ may be more apt than grounding line, as it can move nearly 4 miles over a 12-hour tidal cycle, according to their research.

“The speed of the seawater, which moves considerable distances over a short time period, increases glacier melt because as soon as the ice melts, freshwater is washed out and replaced with warmer seawater, Rignot said… ‘This process of widespread, enormous seawater intrusion will increase the projections of sea level rise from Antarctica,’ he added.” These “sea rises” are already here, and projections show serious impacts on a vast number of people, all over the world.

“With 600 million people living on coastlines less than 10 metres (32 ft) above sea level, even a steady rise in sea levels means leaving whole populations, homes, and infrastructure to the whims of the sea… Under the worst-case scenario examined in the study, some 287 million people - 4 percent of the world's population - could be impacted by coastal flooding.

“For those more inclined to think in dollars, this scenario threatens coastal assets worth roughly US$14 trillion, or 20 percent of the global GDP… Interestingly enough, most of that is from tide and storm events, which are creeping further inland and getting stirred up by climate change. Only 32 percent is projected from regional sea level rise specifically.

“‘Even though average sea levels rise relatively slowly, we found that these other flooding risks like high tides, storm surge and breaking waves will become much more frequent and more intense,’ infrastructure engineer Ebru Kirezci, also from the University of Melbourne, told The New York Times.” Carly Cassella for the July 31, 2020 ScienceAlert. But Ms Cassella’s numbers did not include the possible impact of the Thwaites Glacier. And that makes the 32% sea rise mentioned above woefully inadequate. Add to this assemblage of data the very real possibility of a sudden massive and sequential collapse of that Doomsday Glacier into the ocean and releasing pent up ice previously held back, and that disaster movie morphs into reality.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there are millions of Americans who believe battling climate change, if it even exists, is a colossal waste of money, a real job killing effort at a marginal risk, and intend to support leader who share that mishappen belief.

The Supremes?

   vs   

 

One set of pictures above is a set of an American icons, a symbol of American upward mobility, unique culture, the product of hard work, rising above the rest and sheer excellence. The other isn’t. The strange truth, regardless on which side of the political spectrum you may be, I do not have to tell you which is which. Indeed, you might welcome judges who enter the courthouse determined to use religious or highly divisive political beliefs as their reference point above all else, but that does require a dramatic abandonment of judicial neutrality. Add in the emoluments that some US Supreme Court justices enjoy, free from ethical rules that apply to every other federal judge in the United States, and you have ultimate confirmation that Donald Trump is correct: The American federal judicial system is rigged.

In mid-May, the “blame it on my wife, but that’s not me” excuse was used by US Supreme Court Associate Justice, Samuel Alito, when a recently released photograph outside Alito’s home taken in 2021 (see above) displayed the clearly intentional symbol of the MAGA right’s “stop the steal” upside-down American flag. When queried, Alito simply responded that his wife, Martha-Anne, was responding to a neighbor’s anti-Trump sign. The flag clearly did not distinguish precisely who put it up, but the message was unequivocal.

More Alito flags? How about outside his NY beach house last summer? This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was lofted by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6th. Known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, a religious “Stop the Steal” symbol, a cry to remake American government in Christian terms. Being a partisan judge legitimized.

This ethical lapse was in political messaging. Samuel Alito also had no trouble accepting a luxury vacation to Alaska (at an upscale fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day) provided by Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes. Alito just does not seem to be able to stop.

After an April 1, 2023, March Madness Bud Lite promotion with a trans influencer named Dylan Mulvaney (with more than 10 million followers on TikTok and nearly 2 million on Instagram), a conservative backlash caused their stock to drop. Once again, Alito could not help but make a political statement – unequivocally anti-trans – by openly selling his Anheuser-Busch stock and buying shares in competitor Molson Coors. Hard to keep him from publicizing the biases he uses to issue decisions. But wait, there’s so much more.

Days after the presidential election, Virginia “Ginny” Thomas (US Supreme Court Associate Justice, Clarence Thomas’s wife), began an at least 29 text-message exchange (the only texts which were released) between November 2020 and January 2021 with then White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, all to “stop the steal.” Texts like this one: "Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!! ... You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America's constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.” Justice Thomas invoked the “blame it on my wife, but that’s not me” excuse.

Clarence Thomas’ escapades and lucrative financial benefits (real estate/motorhome and “tuition” gifts for family hanky-panky) and years of super-luxury travel are no secret. “ProPublica is a nonprofit investigative journalism news outlet that first reported Thomas’s undisclosed gifts from American real-estate developer and Republican donor Harlan Crow in April [2023]. The extensive list of freebies from Crow includes vacations on his superyacht, flights on his private jet, frequent all-paid luxury trips, and regular visits to Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks.

“With few exceptions, federal laws require Supreme Court justices to disclose any gifts they or their immediate families receive that are worth more than $415 in annual filings. The aim is to promote transparency and trust in America’s highest court and prevent any individual or group from buying their influence on the court… However, there has been little to no enforcement of this rule. The Supreme Court lacks a binding code of ethics, unlike lower courts and the executive and legislative branches. But there was a tightening of standards in March [2023. Soon after, the details of Thomas and Crow’s connection came to light.

“Under the stricter rules, justices must disclose more of their activities, including free trips, air travel, and stays at commercial properties like hotels, resorts, or hunting lodges, the New York Times reported. How these changes will be overseen and enforced remains unclear.” Fortune Magazine, August 10, 2023. Indeed, there are several MAGA or not-MAGA cases wending their way to the Supreme Court, from the former-President’s quest for a very broad view of presidential immunity to the defendants (including Trump) in the January 6, 2021, insurrection accused of “corruptly obstructing Congress’s certification of the electoral count.” Despite the obvious and most blatant evidence of Justices Thomas’ and Alito’s likely judicial bias, which would make any other federal just recuse himself or herself from hearing such cases, these two Supreme Court Justices “blame” their wives and refuse to recuse themselves. It stinks.

Over the years, approval polls of the US Supreme Court have reached a high close to 60% as recently as 2020 to a historical low of 38% this year. With lifetime appointments and Congressional impeachment and conviction as the only constitutional or statutory basis for removal from the high court’s bench, corruption and bias seem to be baked into the system: our extreme polarization seems to tell us that this removal process is all but impossible. The Court needs reform, no matter which political affiliation is in power.

We are watching political appointments to the Court of individuals who are far younger than past practices, very much reinforcing the toxicity of lifetime appointments. We need term limits, enforceable ethics provisions that can remove a Supreme Court Justice for likely bias or corruption, and more Justices with staggered terms to support judicial integrity and neutrality. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and as any autocrat knows, democracy cannot survive a judiciary that lacks integrity and ironclad ethical guardrails.

SCOTUS: (Bible) minus (Constitution) = Deteriorating Healthcare

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, but for all the damage he inflicted during his trial monarchical run, he might as well be President today. After gutting regulatory agencies, slashing taxes for corporate America, adding $2 trillion and rising to the federal deficit, his judicial appointments have acted as mini legislatures repealing laws that have reinforced a contracting average US life expectancy, deteriorating healthcare for millions of Americans, thus shifting costs back to most of us while saving business America billions. To be accurate, some of this can be traced back to several administrations, where antitrust laws were largely ignored and anti-consumer protection was shoved aside to allow mergers and acquisitions that should never have been formed, creating de facto price-escalating cartels. Personal health and safety have also become sacrificial lambs.

In a Trumpian era where medical doctors and PhD scientists have fallen into disrespect and increasing irrelevancy – “out of touch elites” – Trump’s judicial appointments seem to have elevated the Bible over the Constitution and relegated our most trusted and trained experts as also-rans, easily questioned and reversed by evangelical-driven judges (selected by forum shopping plaintiffs), then supported by unethical but “God-fearing” appellate judges, all the way up to the US Supreme Court. This deforestation of expertise is well-explained by Amy Howe, writing for the January 17th SCOTUSblog.com:

“It has been nearly 40 years since the Supreme Court indicated in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council that courts should defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. After more than three-and-a-half hours of oral argument on Wednesday, it seemed unlikely that the rule outlined in that case, known as the Chevron doctrine, will survive in its current form. A majority of the justices seemed ready to jettison the doctrine or at the very least significantly limit it.

“The court’s ruling could have ripple effects across the federal government, where agencies frequently use highly trained experts to interpret and implement federal laws. Although the doctrine was relatively noncontroversial when it was first introduced in 1984, in recent years conservatives – including some members of the Supreme Court – have called for it to be overruled.

“The plea to overturn the Chevron doctrine came to the court in two cases challenging a rule, issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service, that requires the herring industry to bear the costs of observers on fishing boats. Applying Chevron, both the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit upheld the rule, finding it to be a reasonable interpretation of federal law.

“The fishing companies came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to weigh in on the rule itself but also to overrule Chevron. Roman Martinez, representing one group of fishing vessels, told the justices that the Chevron doctrine undermines the duty of courts to say what the law is and violates the federal law governing administrative agencies, which similarly requires courts to undertake a fresh review of legal questions. Under the Chevron doctrine, he observed, even if all nine Supreme Court justices agree that the fishing vessels’ interpretation of federal fishing law is better than the NMFS’s interpretation, they would still be required to defer to the agency’s interpretation as long as it was reasonable. Such a result, Martinez concluded, is ‘not consistent with the rule of law.’”

But it is consistent with the divine inspiration that stood/stands behind the reversal of Roe vs Wade (the Dobbs decision) and the challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-long approval of mifepristone, a commonly used pill taken as a medication abortion. The forum-shopped Texas federal judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, held that the FDA's 2000 approval and subsequent actions were likely unlawful. The case is now under consideration by the US Supreme Court, but after oral arguments in late March, experts are predicting a rejection or severe curtailing of the Chevron doctrine.

The Court is also facing challenges to the jurisdiction and scope of several federal agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, etc. But was there a ray of hope as a 7-2 Supreme Court ruling on May 18th actually reversed a lower court decision, thus supporting that rulemaking from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was not unconstitutional?

However, what we are seeing generally is exemplified by lax enforcement of federal antitrust laws, manifest throughout our economy, but the impact on the cost and quality of healthcare has been monumental. As recounted by Mike Cummings in the April 24th Yale News, discussing a faculty survey: “‘It is plainly clear that there has been underenforcement of antitrust laws in the hospital sector,’ said study co-author Zack Cooper, an associate professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health and of economics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences… We show that about 20% of hospital mergers from 2002 to 2020 could have been easily predicted to increase concentration, lessen competition, and raise prices… ‘Since 2000, hospital prices have grown faster than prices in any other sector of the economy,’ Cooper added. ‘The average price of an inpatient admission is now nearly $25,000. We need to be doing more to preserve competition in U.S. hospital markets.’”

Government agencies have protected us from massive dumping of chemical waste into our air and water, the use of chemicals (like DDT) that are severe toxins to a whole lot more than just insects, but Trump’s war on government agencies, his pledge for any future administration if he is elected, has degraded and will continue to degrade the health and safety of every American… while big fat corporate miscreants will become bigger, fatter corporate malefactors. Indeed, under the title Trump’s War on Government Will Take Public Health Back a Century, writing for the May 14th The New Republic, Abdullah Shihipar notes:

“At the heart of the conservative push to defang federal agencies is a belief that the government should not impede the ability of companies to make a profit, and that health and safety are an individual responsibility. But public health regulations exist for a painfully obvious reason: Environmental and societal factors are necessarily beyond an individual’s control, and they can lead to bad health outcomes. You can eat well and exercise but ultimately still develop cancer from living a few miles from a plastics factory. In fact, as Jessie Singer argues in There Are No Accidents, many of the major causes of death in the U.S.—car accidents, overdoses, and other things we consider tragedies or accidents—are the result of negligent policy. Regulatory agencies like the FDA are the ones we task to fix, improve, and maintain that policy.”

Indeed, personal reproductive care has so deteriorated after Dobbs that “more young adults seek sterilization [, and] Vasectomy and tubal ligation rates went up among those 30 and younger, study finds.” Associated Press, May 14th. For a party that claims to foster individual rights and freedom from “it’s nobody’s business” very personal choice, MAGA is the most intrusive party in personal freedom in recent history. Helpless and unrepresented, many young Americans have given up, no longer trusting the government… and resorting to unnecessary and drastic measures.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if MAGA world looks like an autocracy, smells like an autocracy, talks and acts like an autocracy… and if you do not care about delegating your most personal choices to an autocracy… then… prepare!

The Shadow Knows

On February 13, 2017, Kim Jong-nam, the older half-brother of the dictator of North Korea Kim Jong Un, was assassinated at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. He had been living abroad since his exile from North Korea in 2003. At approximately 9:00 a.m., two women splashed Kim Jong-nam with the VX nerve agent. He died about 15 to 20 minutes later while being transported to the hospital. Four North Korean suspects, later confirmed as spies, left the airport shortly after the assassination and reached Pyongyang without being arrested.

A group of American-born Koreans, known as Cheollima Civil Defense, has a history of helping North Koreans defect all over the world. To protect North Koreans assigned to that nation’s embassies around the world from retaliating against family or even the defectors themselves, Cheollima operatives have, for example, feigned a Madrid embassy kidnapping as a necessary ruse against North Koren retaliation. These US citizens face criminal charges. Spanish authorities only have proof of a failed kidnapping.

Among numerous other documented Russian extra-territorial assassinations, Alexander Litvinenko a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and its predecessor, the KGB, until he left the service and fled to the UK, where he criticized the Russian President Vladimir Putin. In exile, Litvinenko worked with British intelligence, sharing information about the Russian mafia in Europe and its connections with the Russian government. On November 1, 2006, Litvinenko was poisoned and later hospitalized in London. He died 3 weeks later, becoming the first known victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome.

In October of 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident journalist and US resident, was killed by agents of the Saudi government at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Khashoggi was ambushed and strangled by a 15-member squad of Saudi operatives. His body was dismembered and disposed of in some way that was never publicly revealed. All these reports can be found on Wikipedia if you want more details, but governmental, extra-territorial assassinations have been a way of life, death if you will, for millennia. And yes, the US hardly has clean hands.

What may be more recent, however, is the number of “branch offices” inside Western nations (including very much the United States and Canada) of very “unofficial” foreign governmental tracking, intimidation and assassination bureaus following their current and former citizens (no longer citizens or residents of their native country) with even dirtier hands. China, North Korea and Russia in particular. Hidden away in ethnic neighborhoods, these “offices” are often brazened in their efforts. Extraterritorial assassinations have ramped up considerably in recent years.

Extraterritorial efforts at punishing individuals who have deeply angered their countries of origin is bad enough, the tsunami of election manipulation (mis- and disinformation) deployed to create friendly Western leaders to step aside is terrifying to boot, but the extent of such operations is unprecedented. You may have read how Putin and his cronies have stated very clearly that NATO’s support of Ukraine is a de facto declaration of war against Russia. What you may not know is how Russia has begun to mount efforts to threaten and sabotage Western facilities, governmental and private, in retaliation. Could these skirmishes and attacks become the trigger for an all-out war?

The May 12th The Economist (“Russia is ramping up sabotage across Europe”) explains that Moscow believes it is already fighting a shadow war with NATO: “The fire that broke out in the Diehl Metall factory in the Lichterfelde suburb of Berlin on May 3rd was not in itself suspicious. The facility, a metals plant, stored sulphuric acid and copper cyanide, two chemicals that can combine dangerously when ignited. Accidents happen. What raised eyebrows was the fact that Diehl’s parent company makes the IRIS-T [a medium range infrared homing air-to-air missile] defence system which Ukraine is using to parry Russian missiles…

“In April alone a clutch of alleged pro-Russian saboteurs were detained across the continent. Germany arrested two German-Russian dual nationals on suspicion of plotting attacks on American military facilities and other targets on behalf of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency [updated version of the Soviet-era KGB, from which Putin himself graduated]. Poland arrested a man who was preparing to pass the GRU information on Rzeszow airport, the most important hub for military aid to Ukraine. Britain charged several men over an earlier arson attack in March on a Ukrainian-owned logistics firm in London whose Spanish depot was also targeted. The men are accused of aiding the Wagner Group, a mercenary group that has been active in Ukraine and is now under the GRU’s control. On May 8th Britain announced that in response to ‘malign activity’ it was, among other steps, expelling Russia’s defence attaché, an ‘undeclared’ GRU officer…

“A number of Baltic states have also accused Russian intelligence services of recruiting middlemen to attack property and deface monuments. In February Estonia said it had arrested ten people and broken up a plot to attack the cars of the country’s interior minister and the editor of a news website. Latvia’s security service said it had detained an Estonian-Russian citizen who had poured paint on a memorial to Latvian soldiers who fought the Red Army in the second world war. In March an ally of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in Russian custody in February, was attacked with a hammer in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius.

“None of this is new. In 2011 the GRU blew up an ammunition depot in Lovnidol in Bulgaria. It followed that up with two explosions at the Vrbetice arms depot in the Czech Republic in October and December 2014, where ammunition bound for Ukraine was being held. All these incidents were tied to members of Unit 29155, the GRU’s sabotage-and-assassination squad. Other unexplained explosions occurred at Bulgarian arms factories in 2015, 2020 and 2022. But European officials believe that the GRU has been given a fresh mandate and funding for what Russia calls ‘active measures’. On May 2nd NATO published a statement describing these incidents as ‘part of an intensifying campaign of activities’ including sabotage, acts of violence, cyber and electronic interference, disinformation campaigns, and other hybrid operations.

”Russian cyber operations have also grown bolder. A report published by Google’s Mandiant cybersecurity division in April noted that ‘hacktivist’ groups with loose ties to the GRU had made credible boasts of manipulating the control systems for water utilities in America and Poland, and what the hackers thought was a hydroelectric facility in France. The GRU had previously conducted sophisticated cyber-attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure both before and after the full-scale invasion of 2022. That it was willing to threaten—if not yet disrupt—the same infrastructure in Europe suggests a new level of recklessness.” As sitting members of Congress downplay such activities, even seeming to admire and support such malign regimes, I wonder what it means to be an American under a Constitution meant for the land of the free and the home of the brace.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in the words we all heard in the motion picture, Poltergeist, “they’re here…”

I’ll Promise My Peeps Anything They Want, Anything

   

Sometimes, I’m absolutely horrified at graduates from my treasured alma mater, Yale University. But when that graduate is hell-bent on measures that will accelerate misery, foment colossal destruction, trample truth, crush minority rights and rewrite history as pablum for rising generations, I get downright angry and ashamed. Especially when I know they know better. Particularly when they majored in history, having studied deeply failed autocracies and disastrous environmental and humane policies. They really do know better. Where did Yale go wrong? Harvard empowered his malevolent disregard of facts with a law degree. Where did Harvard go wrong. How can anyone explain or support Florida Governor Ron DeSantis? Just looking at his environment goals! His latest attempt to inflict devastation is nothing short of amazing!

In an article entitled “DeSantis, in ‘act of cognitive dissonance’ signs a new bill into law that ignores climate change threats,” the May 16th Associated Press notes that in its final iteration, “The word ‘climate’ was removed from the bill in 9 different places… Climate change will be a lesser priority in Florida and largely disappear from state statutes under legislation signed Wednesday, May 15 by Gov. DeSantis, which also bans power-generating wind turbines offshore or near the state’s lengthy coastlines.” Ask Floridian homeowners and office building managers how they like their new insurance rates?

With a headline reading “Florida tops US for home insurance rates’” USA Today’s Cheryl McCloud, April 1st, reports: “Brace yourself…. Home insurance rates are expected, on average, to increase 6 percent in 2024 but could jump as high as 23 percent in states with severe weather, according to a home insurance projection report from Insurify… That's making 30 percent of Americans nervous… With Florida property owners already paying more than four times the national average for home insurance, there is good reason to be nervous.

“Early forecasts for a hyperactive 2024 Atlantic hurricane season could bring even more rate increases in 2025, something no Florida residents wants to hear. AccuWeather is predicting an ‘explosive’ hurricane season that has the potential to break the all-time record of 30 named storms in a season… While home insurance rates increased 19.8% between 2021 and 2023, America's average rate of $2,377 was still far below the average rate of $10,996 paid by Florida homeowners.” AP. Indeed, 6 of the top 10 most expensive cities in the nation are in Florida. Insurify predicted costs will go up another 7% in 2024 to $11,759… and if you live in some parts of South Florida’s coastal regions, you may be shocked to learn that those average premium rates can reach $17,606 (Hialeah), $16,717 (Miami) and $15,584 (Fort Lauderdale). Facts, Ronnie, facts, that even your precious business magnates understand and have to pay through the nose for.

As DeSantis misinforms his voters, climate change is not merely a self-correcting cyclical pattern, it is truly only getting much, much worse, particularly for Floridians. That nasty and profoundly ignorant bill, which is clearly directly contrary to climate experts and the insurance companies who do business in Florida, “takes effect July 1 and would also boost expansion of natural gas, reduce regulation on gas pipelines in the state and increase protections against bans on gas appliances such as stoves, according to a news release from the governor’s office.” AP.

Try as he might, even with his MAGA rubber stamp state legislature, Ron DeSantis’ efforts to placate his climate change denying/marginalizing evangelical base are not going to make Florida a better place to do business, create more jobs or attract more homebuyers into the South Florida marketplace. They only make Florida increasingly dangerous and eventually prohibitively expensive. The above map, the result of a federally led science cooperative and published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shows us where Florida faces the greatest coastal funding reality over the foreseeable future.

Why, Ron, why? Who’s writing those campaign checks for you and your legislative sheep? “‘This purposeful act of cognitive dissonance is proof that the governor and state Legislature are not acting in the best interests of Floridians, but rather to protect profits for the fossil fuel industry,’ said Yoca Arditi-Rocha, executive director of the nonprofit Cleo Institute, which advocates for climate change education and engagement.

“The legislation also eliminates requirements that government agencies hold conferences and meetings in hotels certified by the state’s environmental agency as ‘green lodging’ and that government agencies make fuel efficiency the top priority in buying new vehicles. It also ends a requirement that Florida state agencies look at a list of ‘climate-friendly’ products before making purchases.” AP. And Ronnie believes the American people, as a whole, want this path? Seriously.

I’m Peter Dekom, and why should we worry about foreign terrorists, and malevolent foes like Iran, China, North Korea and Russia, when we have “much worse, right now” here in Florida alone?

After They Talked the Talk… Came the Walk the Walk with a Big Limp

         chart: the economist

After They Talked the Talk… Came the Walk the Walk with a Big Limp

Yet Another in a Long Line of Conservative Populist Economic Theories That Was Flat Wrong

You can almost always take populist economic “axioms” straight to the waste bin. Stuff like “don’t tax the job creators,” because a rising tide floats all boats. Rewrite: No one in his or her right mind goes out to hire workers just because they got a tax cut; a rising tide only floats all yachts. Tax cuts don’t make deficits, entitlements create deficits. Rewrite: Tax cuts, which almost never create jobs, truly do create deficits, and only benefit the rich, but the deficit carries interest that everybody pays… while most “entitlements” are earned or deserved. Financial, Medical and Environmental regulations foster an out-of-control bureaucracy, increase our deficit and kill jobs by strangling businesses in red tape and deep state agendas. Rewrite: But for these regulations, DDT would be in all our food, COVID would have killed another million Americans (just look at the mortality rates in red states that lifted basic protections), kids smoking cigarettes would have continued to rise, the Chicago River would still be on fire, cancer rates would have skyrocketed, consumer fraud and false advertising would be a rampant business plan across the land, etc.

But blind populist sentiments – almost always bolstered by “us vs them” conspiracy theories touted by rightwing corporate greed-meisters ready to pounce on the demographic blame cohort du jure (Jews, DEI minorities, immigrants, etc.) – gain traction fast, force political change that almost never works and feeds a growing xenophobia that continues to attempt to explain the resulting failed economic policies. Sooner or later, however, that failure moves from “it’s their fault” to “oh my, what have we done?” Welcome to the economic disaster that has plunged the United Kingdom into becoming Europe’s most underperforming economy: Brexit. As the above survey chart from the April 11th The Economist illustrates, most Brits regret that vote.

Indeed, that issues notes: “It is rare for voters to change their minds soon after referendums. Experience from Canada to Scotland, from Norway to Switzerland, suggests rather that opinions tend to move in favour of a referendum result more than they swing against it. But Brexit seems to be an exception. Since the 52-48% vote in favour of leaving the European Union in June 2016, the majority view among Britons has shifted, and especially so in the past two years, towards the conclusion that the decision was wrong…

“One way to take the temperature is to visit two English towns called Richmond which voted in very different ways in 2016. In Richmond-upon-Thames in London, which voted 69-31% to remain in the EU, opinion has hardened. Gareth Roberts, the Liberal Democrat council leader, notes that post-Brexit niggles such as longer border delays and more intrusive passport controls have helped to solidify local opposition. A Leave voter sitting by the river says he has not changed his mind, but that he is disappointed by the Tories’ failure to strike big trade deals outside the EU.

“The other Richmond, in north Yorkshire, voted 57-43% for Brexit. One Leaver in the market square echoes his southern counterpart by insisting that he still supports Brexit but he complains that it has not been properly done and that immigration has surged despite repeated Tory promises to reduce it. A local bartender says that she voted instinctively to leave but that, were the referendum re-run, she would work harder to understand what it would really mean. Stuart Parsons, a former mayor of Richmond, claims that several friends have changed their minds, especially small farmers who feel betrayed by the Conservatives and now fret about future lost public subsidies.

“Such anecdotes chime with polls across the country. Research by UK in a Changing Europe (UKice), a think-tank, finds that most voters have not in fact changed their minds since 2016. But because as many as 16-20% of those who voted to leave have switched sides, compared with only 6% of those who voted to remain, the balance has swung against Brexit. The passage of time is also having its inevitable effect: older voters were overwhelmingly keen to leave the EU and younger ones were fiercely opposed to the idea. Don’t-knows and those who did not vote in 2016 now tend to break strongly against Brexit.

“Explanations abound for the disillusionment. Sir John Curtice, a leading pollster who works with UKice, points especially to gloom about the economy since 2016, which he says matters more than irritation over immigration. Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park, reckons that outright dishonesty on the part of the Leave campaign is to blame. Peter Kellner, a political pundit and former president of YouGov, a polling group, suggests that many Brexit supporters had no idea what would happen if they actually won. That differs sharply from the run-up to most other constitutional referendums.

“Changes in the political background matter as well. The Conservatives under Rishi Sunak, who happens to be the MP for Richmond in Yorkshire and is a keen supporter of Brexit, are associated in voters’ minds with the decision to Leave. Party disunity and the chaos of four prime ministers in five years have helped to discredit something with which the Tories are strongly identified.

“Just as the Tories have helped tarnish views of Brexit, so Brexit is likely to hurt the Tories at the next election. A chunk of people who voted Leave in 2016 say there should still be long-term benefits from quitting the bloc but argue that too little has been done to realise them. This group now leans against the Tories and may even prefer the Reform Party, an insurgent right-wing party. In contrast, those who were against Brexit in 2016 think they were right to fear its economic impact; many who were Tory then now back Labour.”

At the core of such failed populist economic vectors is both a fear of being overwhelmed and governed by “outsiders” and the inane assumption that “we don’t need anyone else to make our economy soar.” Like or not, there are no economies on earth with any measure of economic success that are not profoundly linked to global trade. UK’s Parliament was consumed by copying and passing legislation that London has once relied on (a detail body of trans-European laws, dropping trade and travel barriers and creating regulatory uniformity across the EU).

Well and good, except that Britain lost all those benefits of open trading borders, now forced to deal with its former partners as outside parties that no longer shared common interests with the UK. Simply put, isolation does not work anymore, coordination with trading partners is essential and avoiding inevitable “trade wars, tariffs and barriers,” and there are increasing numbers of issues that can only be resolved on a broader scale. Are you looking MAGA voters? You really think isolationist Trump’s policies will improve your economic life? Welcome to another economic conspiracy policy that, if implemented, will take decades to reverse. Referenda based on facts actually can work… but referenda based on blind assumptions almost never do.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is a severe penalty to those who buy into conspiracy theories without looking at historical facts… and outsource their opinions to a demagog, who, by his own admission, tends not to read much or follow the opinions of established experts.

The Role of Courts in the Democracies Transitioning to Autocracy

The Role of Courts in the Democracies Transitioning to Autocracy

“Only I can fix it.”

In democracies, courts are the guardrails for institutional survivability. For autocracies, whether through some purported party or religious force usually topped by a “strongman,” courts are dictatorial implementation enablers but do not provide the “checks and balances” that ensure personal rights in the face of abuse of power. For nations that have never experienced a sustainable democracy, a brutal judicial system (evidenced by a police state) and a military force dictate judicial outcomes. In the People’s Republic of China, “communism” is the purported party guiding force, but is controlled by a rubber stamp legislature (not popularly elected but supposed to be the protector of the people – the Politburo) under the boot of a severe autocrat. Indictments and trials are subject to Party control. In Russia, there are lots of political parties, but they are all Putin-supporters who understand the penalty for non-compliance. Courts follow Putin’s dictates.

We’ve seen democracies rise and fall throughout modern history. After France attempted to mirror the American revolution in 1789, the guillotine-enhanced bloodbath was soon usurped by the ascension of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. In the pre-WWII Spanish Civil War, efforts toward popular governance were soon replaced by the brutal Franco regime. Germany had Hitler, taking advantage of the WWI reparations (championed by France) that destroyed daily life for that nation. Italy looked for easy answers with Mussolini. In 1979, a repressed Iranian state, under the American-supported Pahlavi monarchy, succumbed to a “Government by God” revolution, mirroring the “divine right of kings” that defined the Middle Ages. And so many more.

But the fascinating 21st century rise of democratically elected autocrats – from Turkey’s Recep Erdogan, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, etc. – and the rise of nationalist rightwing parties even in traditional European democracies (like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party formerly the National Front in France, PM Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, the Alternative for Germany rightwing Eurosceptic populist party that won the second-most seats in parliament, etc., etc.) threaten democracy itself.

Although structuring a constitution has been on the table in Israel for a long time, its courts have built a body of quasi-constitutional laws that seemed to fill the space. But PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his rightwing coalition (Israel’s parliament – the Knesset – is unicameral), even before the Gaza debacle, were attempting to subject its Supreme Court to being overruled by parliament; allowing Netanyahu to escape his corruption trial.

Today, democracies face rising challenges. Many nations looked to the economic miracle of centralized power in China as to why autocracy was a greater problem-solver and growth builder over a shorter time span than democracy. That China’s model is unraveling is only a recent development that will take decades to appreciate. This is why President Xi Jinping has resorted to saber rattling (with meaningful threats) to rally and distract his nation.

For those elected to power who evolve into dictators, that transition is not an unexpected result; it is what most of those who elected that autocrat wanted to happen. Whether it is simply outsourcing a voter’s opinion to an autocrat to deal with confusing complexity or desiring a radical new direction where those who are “deemed” the cause of contemporary “misery” (blame is essential) are eradicated, one way or the other, having a strongman “problem solver” is the goal.

Donald Trump’s proclivity toward megalomania combined with assembling a very vast following of Americans feeling disenfranchised, alienated and ignored… being passed by what they perceive is a wave of “others”… generated a message for and according a voice to these silent Americans who have been seething for years. Blame was clearly assigned to these “others” (primarily ethnic and racial minorities) and the “deep state” bureaucracy that let this happen. The Democrats lost their way in the era of globalization, where they sided with open trade and expanding international markets as many in the working class found their livelihoods slipping away.

Trump’s election in 2016 surprised everyone except the disenfranchised. A very corrupt President understood that his maximum survivable power happened to jibe with a rising religious fever – those with the strongest opinions in the land – and that the reality of powerful lifetime appointments to the federal bench was the key. His federal appointments have delivered, probably beyond his wildest dreams. Even a Supreme Court with rightwing justices slorping at the trough of “political gifting,” rewarded the religious right with the removal of Roe v Wade, white power brokers could revel in the repeal or limitation of voting rights and gun owners where able to compete with shock troops equipped with military grade assault weapons.

As forum shopping towards Trump-appointed judges, which Dems are trying to stop, accelerated, the expertise of federal agencies was disemboweled, powerful wealthy elites were able to challenge environmental and consumer protections under federal rules, efforts toward diversity were stopped, state classrooms were able to replace factual history with sanitized revisionist substitutes that favored rightwing dogma, and Donald Trump himself was accorded delays in his federal criminal trials (delays having been Trump’s patterns of “victory” for decades) so that the electorate would not be influenced by any proof of his criminal responsibility for the Capitol attack, the attempt to stop or reverse ballot results or his flagrant misuse of classified documents. Any consequences would have to wait until after the November election – which he already is suggesting is rigged against him (hinting at a massive violent “bloodbath” that would result if he lost) – at which time he believes he could eliminate those indictments… one way or the other.

Trump – openly wanting to be a “dictator for a day” – is backed by the ultra-right Heritage Foundation, having already vetted thousands of Trump-favoring populists for presidential appointments to federal agencies – that ensures a dramatic dismemberment of guardrails peppered throughout our government. For those who tell us that this may be our last free election, believing that would be enough to prevent Trump’s reelection, they do not understand that this is precisely what his immutable base wants. And if the history of autocracy and the necessary structures that come with that form of governance are any indication, reversing autocracy can take decades… or more.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while I may be too old to suffer most of the consequences of such a guardrail killing autocracy, I fear for my son, his wife and my granddaughter.

The Limits of a No Limits Relationship

The Limits of a No Limits Relationship

Hello, Little Brother

China is in a tight spot. After decades of economic growth, despite a mega-powerful modernized military (the People’s Liberation Army), China’s autocratic missteps, President’s Xi Jinping’s doubling down and slorping at the denial trough, has led to massive unemployment (especially among rising generations), humongous collapses in mega-real estate development and bank failures everywhere. Nations around the world looked to the Chinese “top-down” centralized control as the model for growth. What the world is learning now is that a top-down severe autocracy grows until it makes a serious of horrific mistakes… and there is no alternative to correct the expanding misdirection.

With sanctions, boycotts and tariffs encircling both Russia and China, much related to the Ukraine War – both nations have been seriously hampered by the global reliance on US-controlled interbank trading platforms (SWIFT-driven) and the pricing structures that still rely primarily on the US dollar – it was only natural for these two powers to generate workarounds into alternative platforms that, nevertheless, simply cannot compete with the long, well established Western alternatives. Last year, according to PRC figures, Russia exported $114.4 billion worth to China and imported $75.6 billion worth from China. For the US, it was $177 billion in exports, and $578 billion in imports. France $35.6 billion of exports, $45.5 billion in imports. Hungary and Serbia, too small to matter. Remember these numbers.

So, when Xi stopped off in France, Serbia and Hungary in early May, he was clearly trying to assert a wedge between the United States and European trading partners, but… er… it did not make much difference. As the May 6th New York Times reported: “Mr. Xi’s trip [came] at a time of tensions with many European countries over China’s support for Russia in the face of its war in Ukraine, its trade practices and its apparent espionage activities.”

Just looking at the numbers between the US and Europe, on the one hand, and Russia and her staunch allies on the other, Xi was forced to ride an unpopular Russian horse to pressure the United States and find a serious ally in his anticipated assault on Taiwan. Xi claims this small but strategic territory as a legacy possession of the PRC, even though the People’s Republic has never governed that island nation. In fact, Taiwan remains one of China’s major Asian trading partners. Now, Vladimir Putin has even more problems, as the body bags continue to be Ukraine’s greatest export to Russia, from an economy primarily based on resource extraction (mostly fossil fuels) and the sale of military hardware, to a seriously devalued currency and status as one of the planets major pariah nations. Russia, in finding the need to import “sophisticated” weapons from America-haters like North Korea and Iran, reflects an untenable inherent military weakness. A recent national parade in Moscow featured a single battle tank!

Last year, when Xi visited the Kremlin to announce a major new strategic alliance, Putin rolled out the red (what else) carpet in an elaborate show of pomp and circumstance. It was in the middle of Moscow’s troubled invasion of Ukraine as our allies poured billions into Kiev. The new Asian “partners” announced a mutually supportive treaty with “no limits,” to herald a new Sino-Russo era. It was to be combination able to implement financial workarounds to sidestep Western sanctions, guarantee Russia a significant buyer for its oil and gas and suggest to the world that “when” China moved to take Taiwan, Russia would be by her side. But look at those above numbers again. China cannot solve her economic doldrums without the massive trade with the West. So, the limits began to flow on the Sino-Russo pact. More than the TikTok battles or the new US tariffs on PRC EV products.

Laura King, writing for the May 16th Los Angeles Times, explains the double edge sword Xi now faces: “In many ways, the strategic relationship serves both Beijing and Moscow — and represents, in the view of many analysts, two autocrats’ unified challenge to the West… ‘China and Russia are forging a partnership increasingly reminiscent of a great power alliance,’ military intelligence analyst Chels Michta wrote in a commentary this week for the Center for European Policy Analysis.

“But while Xi and Putin share a disdain for a U.S.-led world order, their interests are not identical. And the Ukraine war is at times a complicating factor… China does not provide Russia with weaponry. But the Biden administration has prodded Xi’s government over its sale to Russia of so-called dual-use items — components such as machine tools, microelectronics and rocket propellant, which have civilian and military uses… That came up last month when U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken visited Beijing and chided China for ‘powering Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine.’

“Washington has also said it will take a harder line against Chinese-based financial institutions and firms that help Moscow circumvent wartime restrictions, warning of secondary sanctions against them… Even as China publicly professes neutrality on Ukraine, many observers believe Putin was emboldened in his war aims by a joint pact struck with Beijing days before the invasion, proclaiming a ‘no-limits’ partnership.

“In the course of the Ukraine war, however, some points of friction have emerged. China has been made uneasy by Putin’s occasional strident nuclear threats, the latest of which came this month when the Kremlin announced it would conduct exercises simulating the use of tactical — or battlefield — nuclear weapons near Ukraine.

“In a variety of international settings — most recently during a high-profile European tour last week — Xi has expressed hopes for peace in Ukraine, even as he has refused to condemn Russia’s ongoing attempt to batter its neighbor into submission… Ukraine has been careful not to publicly denigrate China’s peace proposals — a 12-point plan unveiled more than a year ago, followed by additional ‘principles’ set forth last month — but the government in Kyiv and its allies believe that if Beijing wanted to genuinely play the conciliator, it could use its influence to rein in Putin.”

Indeed, there is something incredibly third world about Russia, an extraction economy roughly the size of each of the US and Saudi oil and gas industries, with virtually nothing else to claim as a driving export. An updated banana republic without bananas. Russia may be a military power, but it wasted most of its efforts from the middle of the 20th century to present on expensive weapon systems, oil and gas, and almost nothing else. Without the slightest doubt, Putin has become Xi’s supplicant, betting heavily on China’s ability to crush US’ influence and economic strength. I suspect both Russia and China are counting on the unraveling polarization within the United States, doing what they are otherwise incapable of doing themselves.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I truly wonder if staunch Republicans like Ronald Reagan are spinning in their graves at the Beijing-Moscow-MAGA cartel that so many American soldiers died to prevent.