One thing Still-President Trump got absolutely right

There are many Americans [but surely not 50%! Ed.] who absolutely refuse to give Still-President Trump credit for a single thing that he did or tried to do to Make America Great Again. If he walked across the pool at his Florida estate they'd say he doesn't know how to swim! It's a pity that more Americans, especially the anti-Trumpers, didn't read The Expendables, by Jeff Rubin (PenguinRandomHouse 2020).

Ed. says that maybe the book didn't make a big splash in the Excited States of America because Jeff Rubin is a Canadian, and Americans just don't listen to Canadians. But Mr Rubin is not your typical Canuck milquetoast liberal. He is a world-leading expert on trade and energy, and former chief economist and chief strategist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce World Markets, and recently served as a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. 

So Mr Rubin knows a thing or three about economics, and about the adverse effects of globalism and globalization, as promoted by George Soros and all the other Volvo liberals behind the campaign to turf President Trump out of office. They think globalism is wonderful, and why wouldn't they... it made them rich! But Jeff Rubin begs to differ.

The subtitle of The Expendables says it all. It reads: How the middle class got screwed by globalization. Our Agent 17, a member of said middle class, complained to me years ago (BT) that "China is eating our lunch." He was right. And the liberals made that happen! 

Through the World Trade Organization and trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- all endorsed and promoted by the Prez and Mr and Mrs Clinton -- tariffs were lowered to the point of being non-existent, and millions of well-paying manufacturing jobs were off-shored to places like Mexico ("that great sucking sound"), Vietnam, Bangladesh and, of course, China.

What happened? The owners of multinational corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Walmart, etc etc, got rich beyond the dreams of avarice, while the American (and Canadian and OECD) middle class actually shrank. 

But, the liberals say, the poor people -- below middle class -- became better off. Not true, says Mr Rubin. More people than ever are working in McJobs and the gig economy, rather than steady well-paying jobs in industry. And because wages have been stagnant while profits grow, their standard of living has actually declined, as witness the growing numbers of those "experiencing homelessness" -- living in cars and RVs even in supposedly prosperous areas like Silicon Valley.  

What Donald Trump did right, but gets little or no credit for, was to put the brakes on globalization, by getting the US of A out of rotten trade deals like NAFTA and the Obama-sponsored TPP. He also lowered taxes to encourage the multinationals to bring their manufacturing plants back to America, while at the same time raising tariffs to make it less profitable to import cheap manufactured goods from countries which are America's enemies.

Is it any wonder that the business interests for whom Sleepy Joe Biden fronts wanted to put Mr Trump out of office? The President was throwing a monkey-wrench into the machinery of  globalization. He was upsetting the plan of  Soros & Co. to make America second-rate, economically as well as politically. He was trying to Make America Great Again! 

In closing let me quote one short passage from The Expendables. 

History warns us that when monopolistic control falls into the hands of the few (who make massive fortunes as a result), someone is getting scrwed.

Some commentators have suggested that the CEOs of today's tech giants -- Apple's Tim Cook, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon's Jeff Bezos, to name a few -- are the robber barons of our age. Their modern-day uniform of jeans and T-shirts may not scream "money" the way the three-piece suits and top hats of Rockefeller and his cohort did, but their enormous wealth dwarfs the riches of their nineteenth-century predecessors....

All of these CEOs are good at what they do. And what they do best is manipulate public governance in ways that the early twentieth-century global oil industry could only dream of. In the United States, where most of them are based, they have supported the establishment wing of the Democratic Party -- the same wing that was in power for eight years under President Obama [and Vice-President Biden. Walt] 

They've been outspoken on climate change, racial tolerance, gender equity, and all of the other hot button issues of American liberalism. But at the same time, the efforts to prove their liberal bona fides have helped protect this group from something they care far more deeply about: government regulation of the monopolies that have made them all multibillionaires.

"Gee, Walt," I hear some of you say, "Why didn't you tell us this before we voted?" Unfortunately I didn't start reading The Expendables until yesterday. But it's not like others weren't warning that the good works of the Trump presidency would be undone by the Democrats, once the likes of Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and the Squad get their hands on the levers of power.

Old Joe Biden himself promised that he would take care of the Obama administration's unfinished business, reverse the tax cuts, put America back in the Paris Accord and other globalist institutions, and generally turn back the clock to 2008. If you weren't paying attention and voted for him, you're about to learn, the hard way, why changing leaders and policies in the middle of an economic crisis was a baaaaad idea.

The real reasons millions of Americans are voting for Trump - Part II

On Mayday (Mayday! Mayday!) Walt passed along the opinion of Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders as to why Americans -- millions of them -- are voting for Donald Trump. Mr Saunders put it down to "racial nationalism", a nice turn of phrase which doesn't quite call Trumpeters "racists". But there are other reasons for supporting The Donald, as disclosed in a Public Religion Research Institute poll, the highlights of which you'll find in the same post.

Today I want to share the explanation given by Doug Casey, whose blog is called International Man. His take on the current crop of would-be presidents, and why he believes most Americans will vote for Mr Trump was originally posted on April 14th. Here's the conclusion of his analysis.

"America, which was much more a concept than a place, is long gone. What's left of the white middle class correctly feel they're losing what's left of the U.S. Their children are being both bankrupted and corrupted by politically correct schooling. To them, the society appears to have been captured by gender feminism, LGBT preferences, and racial quotas. And I'd say they're basically right.

"That's why, even if they won't admit it out loud, most Americans (hard-core Democrats excepted, of course), will vote for Trump."

Sounds right to me. In fact it sounds a lot like what Dr Hunter S. Thompson and Rick Perlstein predicted years and years ago.

Footnote about Doug Casey: Anyone who is an admirer of Ron Paul and quotes H.L. Mencken is OK in Walt's books!

Can America ever be united again?

The Glorious War of the Secession (aka the War Between the States or the Civil War) ended 151 years ago, at which time America was proclaimed once again to be the United States. Now, in the twilight of the Obama presidency, which was supposed to bring all Americans together at last, regardless of race, colour, etc etc, the people of America (if not the states) find themselves more disunited than at any time in the last century-and-a-half.

That is the theme of Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, recommended here on Sunday. Mr. Perlstein dates the present polarization American culture and politics from the hippy-dippy 60s, which saw the disintegration of the liberal consensus of the Kennedy-Johnson years and the division of the "United" States into two mutually antagonistic nations -- the Red Nation and the Blue Nation. That division is not just geographic. There are plenty of "Reds" (not the Communist variety) to be found in Massachusetts and California, and "Blues" in Kansas and -- dare I say it -- Texas.

Hellery Clinton claims that she is the one and only candidate for POTUS who can bring the country together again, and make the American states and people united. This is laughable. About the only thing that unites the Reds (and large numbers of Blues) is the belief that Ms Clinton is a phony and a crook. Even if Hellery were sincere and (God forbid) elected, the task of uniting the country is beyond the power of any more mortal. Here's what Mr. Perlstein says in the closing paragraphs of his book:

What Richard Nixon left behind was the very terms of our national self-image: a notion that there are two kinds of Americans. On the one side, that "Silent Majority", the "nonshouters". The middle-class, middle American, suburban, exurban, and rural coalition who call themselves, now, "values voters", "people of faith", "patriots", or even, simply, "Republicans" -- and who feel themselves condescended to by snobby opinion-making elites, and who rage about un-Americans, anti-Christians, amoralists, aliens.

On the other side are the "liberals", the "cosmopolitans", the "intellectuals", the "professionals" -- "Democrats". Who say they see shouting in opposition to injustice as a higher form of patriotism. Or say "live and let live." Who believe that to have "values" has more to do with a willingness to extend aid to the downtrodden than where, or if, you happen to worship -- but who look down on the first category as unwitting dupes of feckless elites who exploit sentimental pieties to aggrandize their wealth, start wars, ruin lives.

Both populations -- to speak in ideal types -- are equally, essentially, tragically American. And both have learned to consider the other not quite American at all. The argument over Richard Nixon, pro and con, gave us the language for this war.

Do Americans not hate each other enough to fantasize about killing one another, in cold blood, over political and cultural disagreements? It would be hard to argue that they do not. How did Nixonland end? It has not ended yet.

A reader has objected that Rick Perlstein wrote those words in 2008, before the election of Barack Hussein Obama, the first black (or African-American, whatever) President, the one who has healed America and brought all Americans together. Has the Prez himself not said that race relations in the USA are better now than at any time in history? Well yes, that's what he said, but the claim that the war of which Mr. Perlstein writes ended somewhere between 2008 and 2016 is nonsense. If anything, the cracks in the American body politic have widened, and the war has intensified.

The 2015 American Values Survey, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, is titled "Anxiety, Nostalgia, and Mistrust". It found that about three-quarters of Republicans believe that the federal government looks out for the interests of blacks, Hispanics, gays and women. But not quite half of Republicans think that the government looks out for Christians or middle-class people. Democrats, on the other hand, overwhelmingly think that the federal government looks out for the rich and big business.

Writing in the Economist this week, "Lexington" asserts that the distrust between groups exposed in the survey means that "it is not useful to say that most Americans support policy X or Y. The real question fo ask voters is: Do you think this policy helps or hurts 'people like you'? The query reliably exposes deep gulfs between different races, generations and parties." Which is just what Mr. Perlstein said, eight years ago.

Footnote and caveat: When I recommended Nixonland, I should have included a warning that Mr. Perlstein is badly in need of an editor/proofreader. [Does anyone, anywhere, employ proofreaders any more? What's wrong with Spiel-Chequer? Ed.] His book runs to 748 pages of fairly dense type, and that's not counting the endnotes. And where, I wonder, does the author get words like "inspirit" (for "inspire", I guess)? If you want to finish Nixonland before you vote, start now.

The Mexican maid

The United States Congressional Budget Office warned yesterday that the American middle class faces its "worst decade in modern history". CBO director Doug Elmendorf said that without action by Congress to avoid the "fiscal cliff", Americans should expect a "significant recession" and the loss of some two million jobs. Something to think about between now and November.

Meanwhile, courtesy of the seldom-seen Agent 1, here's something to turn your frown into a smile.

The Mexican maid asked for a pay increase. The wife was very upset about this and decided to talk to her about the raise. "Now Maria," she asked, "why do you want a pay increase?"
Maria: "Well, Señora, there are tree reasons why I wanna increaze. The first is that I iron better than you."

Wife: "Who said you iron better than me?"
Maria: "Jor huzban he say so."
Wife: "Oh yeah?"

Maria: "The second reason eez that I am a better cook than you."
Wife: "Nonsense, who said you were a better cook than me?"
Maria: "Jor hozban did."
Wife, increasingly agitated: "Oh he did, did he???"

Maria: "The third reason is that I am better at sex than you in the bed."
Wife, really boiling now and through gritted teeth: "And did my husband say that as well?"
Maria: "No Señora...... The gardener did."
Wife: "So... how much do you want?"