The Tipping Points, When Attitudes Begin to Change… Fast

  

Civil rights marches

1968 Democratic Convention

2025 Anti-DOGE/Trump Protests

The Tipping Points, When Attitudes Begin to Change… Fast

PETER ON THE WRITERS’ HANGOUT PODCAST!

I had to laugh when JD Vance stated that “we have to fight in this country” against the “totalitarian left.” Aside from the fact the his party controls both houses of Congress, the presidency and enjoys a conservative Supreme Court, aside from the unending, mostly unconstitutional flow of executive orders from Donald Trump and ignoring the indiscriminate firings of huge segments of federal agencies created and funded by Congress by an unelected and wildly unpopular rich dude, Vice President Vance was railing against the battle with a totalitarian left… here?! Seriously?! You who have all the power are threatened by the hapless party that controls no major federal agency or branch of government? In other words, you want all the power? Hmm, isn’t that the precise definition of totalitarianism?

In his Rose Garden speech on April 2nd, Trump rolled out the global unfairness of the world against the United States and his assertion – with a little help from an angry US autoworker from just north of Detroit – that we will begin by charging reciprocal tariffs and trade barriers as charged by other nation, skipping over the very real lower effective tariffs we face on our exports that really matter. Not only flat blanket tariffs do not work – why would we reciprocate against cocoa and banana exporters, when we don’t grow those here? – but I really would like to get my hands on Trump’s grades in economics at Wharton! We made out like bandits with We made out like bandits with cheap goods as our service sector and American knowhow pushed our earning power through the stratosphere.

In that April 2nd speech, Trump touted the Smoot-Hawley tariff introduced by Herbert Hoover in 1930 as a success? Not only did that tariff explode with reciprocal tariffs, but the American economy tanked even beyond the Great Depression that tariff was supposed to fix. There were more bank failures, more farm foreclosures, and those policies helped FDR shove Hoover right out the door. It took the New Deal and the manufacturing demand of WWII to undo the damage. I would guess Trump didn’t get good grades in history either. Isolationism had kept America down for decades, and the tariffs of the early part of the 20th century stifled growth everywhere. As European economies were failing in that era, as Germany was lumbering under the French-architected WWI reparations, economic turmoil gave way to autocracies (Mussolini and Hitler on the right, Stalin on the left) and ultimately war.

The Germans and Japanese claimed, for national security reasons, that they needed access to more resources (mostly oil and rubber) and “lebensraum” (room to grow and live); only autocracy seemed to be able to deliver those wishes… by force. Japan went for Korea and China (later Indonesia for oil and rubber), Italy went for neighboring countries and chunks of North Africa, Russia coveted the East European bloc and Germany lunged at the rest of Europe… later even Russia. See any parallels to the United States’ declaring it will retake Panama and annex Greenland “one way or the other” for essential national security reasons?

After WWII, with an over-abundance of electrical power (thank you New Deal projects) and virtually no war damage from which to rebuild, the United States exploded in a new world of free trade. That’s when our economy exploded. We were competitive, innovative, our universities were hurling new technologies out into the American job market, we prospered more than ever. But then we were competitive… not like the tariff-sucking weakling we appear to be today… a nation better at finding blame as opposed to simply getting the job done.

Here's a little reminder of history, recent enough to have occurred during Trump’s lifetime. Even in the 1950s: the “Negro” and “White’s Only” signs, the mandate that Blacks sit only in the back of the bus or trolly. The hanged young male black bodies accused of inappropriate conduct over white women. The Jim Crow laws that denied people of color the rights to vote. The bloody protests against integration were fierce. “Separate but Equal” wasn’t enough. There was a tipping point. It took federal troops and an act of Congress to end segregation … and years for people to get used to it. Hell, the South was willing to sacrifice the lives of its sons to keep slavery alive in the 19th century. Today, I think, there are a whole lot of anti-DEI believers who want to reinstate segregation, even slavery if they could get away with it. We are not going back. The point tipped!

And man, if you opposed the Vietnam War in the 1960s, you were a commie, an un-American traitor and deserved to be jailed for life. Radical activists, pinkoes paid by “outside agitators” were fomenting protests that turned to riots, from the Democratic Convention of 1968 to the roiling protests across college campuses everywhere. Soldiers shot students at Kent State. But as we sent American boys to Vietnam, and as they came back in increasing numbers in body bags, there was a tipping point. An unpopular war soon ended. The “communism will push nations to fall like dominoes” theory died. And America returned to being the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Years later, as the Tea Party transitioned to MAGA, Citizens United vs FEC allowed rich zealots to buy public opinion without restrictions, and Donald Trump became President. Twice even. The George Floyd Protests began sending a message that conservatives did not want to hear. But when Donald Trump’s second term began, with full MAGA, as thousands of federal employees lost their jobs, as erratic economic policies began to tank our economy, as we replaced allegiance to our allies with entreaties to our traditional and highly autocratic foe, Russia, there were protests. As fires burned and storms raged, we all really knew climate change was not a “hoax.” At town halls happened where Republicans did not show up to face angry constituents, as Musk’s showrooms were picketed and Teslas set on fire (“domestic terrorism” was the MAGA label), as crowds of fired federal employees were joined by angry Americans, many of them veterans, and as Donald Trump tried to sell America on seriously wrong-headed economic policies… all leading to his promise to billionaires for major tax cut… There was a tipping point!!!!

I’m Peter Dekom, and if this Trumpian debacle bothers you as much as it bothers me… DO SOMETHING, DO MORE OF THAT SOMETHING, TAKE A LEAD FROM SENATOR CORY BOOKER WHO STOOD BEFORE THE SENATE FOR OVER 25 HOURS TO IMPLORE THAT BODY TO STOP THE MADDNESS… NOW!