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GELFAND’S WORLD - Bastille Day, July 14, celebrates one momentous moment in the French Revolution. In honor of that revolution, here is the Marseillaise in its most revelatory and dramatic rendition.
On this side of the Atlantic, we've gone through the first half year of the new presidency, or as one wag referred to it, "the first twenty years."
Yeah, that's how it feels. Donald Trump does have this one talent for doing outrageous -- seemingly thoughtless -- things on a weekly basis. It's physically and emotionally exhausting, including attacks on accepted American freedoms. “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Saturday. He added that O’Donnell, who moved to Ireland in January, should stay in Ireland “if they want her.”
Then there is the attack on the world economy in the form of the tariff threats. We've spent most of the past century developing freer trade and friendly relationships with countries we fought to the death a mere 80 years ago. It's worked well, so why throw it away?
Even more to the point, where is the conservative movement in this country which liked to talk about its devotion to free markets. Slapping punitive tariffs on countries willy-nilly does not support that ideal. In fact, Trump makes it clear that his intent is to go in quite the opposite direction.
There are two threads here that we ought to consider. The first is the increasingly irrational (but vengeful and angry) approach that the president is taking. One example, remarkable in its craziness, is the threat to put a 50% tariff on Brazil in retaliation for the way it is doing its internal criminal prosecution of a former president.
But that leads to a second consideration: Does anyone actually believe that the United States will enforce a 50% tariff on Brazil for any reason, whether it be internal politics or fruit prices? I don't think so. Everyone pretty much treats this as a gambit by Trump to help out a fellow autocrat, with the ultimate aim of getting the Brazilian authorities to back down on their prosecution. It is of course ignorant and contemptuous of international norms, but that is another Trump approach. He probably sees it as a strength.
But the world and most Americans see the Trump threat as just one more lie. Any person with a sense of reality would see it that way. The lies pile up and accumulate. Even when Trump leads off with a list of tariffs (the "Liberation Day" numbers) that even he admits are supposed to be the start of serious negotiations, everyone has learned to discount what Trump says.
The problem is this: At what point can anyone take anything he says seriously? We've referred here to Trump as the boy who cried wolf because more and more, the description fits.
The problem for this administration comes when it wants to tell the truth about something. Maybe Trump was telling the truth about the attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities. Maybe Kristi Noem is telling the truth when she claims that an ICE raid was based on information about some violent criminal. But who would know? In either case?
Kristi Noem is taking the brunt for Trump administration lying right now, merely because she is doing so much of it. She went on a national interview show on Sunday and denied that the government operators were off duty -- you know, the ones who were supposed to be taking calls about the Texas floods. She flat out called it fake news. While this has been going on, Noem and her department have been flooding the airwaves with attacks on immigrants that include undisguised political ads for Donald Trump.
Somebody should get indicted over this use of federal dollars for political ads, but the Department of Justice is even more corrupt under its new Attorney General.
And we're only half a year into this administration. What will happen between now and the end of the year? What new lies will they come up with?
There are so many lies available. Remember when Trump lost the 2020 election and spent the next 4 years claiming that he had won? We called it the Big Lie at the time. So what do we call the current deluge of lies? They include the claim that global warming is all a hoax, that Trump is innocent of all the charges that were previously made against him (including 34 convictions), and that Trump appointees are doing wonderfully well compared to the previous crowd.
Look, everybody with half a brain and a bit of integrity understands that Trump is a liar and conman. That's not the question. The issue is how far he intends to push any particular part of his sick agenda. We know that the tax cuts for the richest is an integral part of it, as he has shown in both presidencies. But the difference between Trump and previous Republicans is that he has pushed the cuts further and with less regard for fiscal sanity. Bush senior famously said, "Read my lips. No new taxes." Then, in response to reality, he allowed a modest tax increase. He knew he was going to pay a political price for it, and he did, but he at least had that little bit of integrity.
And how far is Trump going to push the ICE raids? For how long? Is it mainly meant as a distraction from the big stuff like the tax cuts, or is it serious on his part? At this stage of the proceedings, it's really hard to tell.
What really ought to be terrifying to those who are grounded in science and engineering is the rejection of the existence of global warming.
And then there is the war against trade, which is, effectively, an attempt to damage or destroy the world economy. Like it or not, that's what the tariffs will do. This evening, I saw two container ships exit the Port of Los Angeles -- I didn't see anything coming in, but that's the way it's been for a couple of months. The outgoing ships looked pretty ratty, in the sense that they seemed to be carrying containers of all different colors and markings, the sort of shipping one associates with second-hand boxes carrying scrap metal and low grade ore. Not at all like the once-usual incoming ships, filled to the brim with one company's containers, some of them green, some of them blue, and even one company that uses an off-pink. Apparently all those trade deals that Trump promised are yet to be inked.
Addendum: Why I don't respond to or donate to the Democrats at the moment
Today I got 8 emails from the Democratic Party and their candidates. Yesterday I got 7. Pretty much every day is like that except the days when there are even more. Every one is a request that I click something to give them money. I know that if I cooperate then I will get even more requests and they will ask for larger amounts. Sometimes I get an extra-special email -- or so they would have me believe -- in which I'm being honored as having been chosen to be one of the very few who have been invited to take some survey so that they will know how to focus their policy.
What's fun about this is that I am not a registered Democrat and have not been so since the '90s. That's the 1990s, a different century. It's not that I oppose Democrats. Actually, I vote for Democrats and haven't voted for even one Republican in a long time. But I know a little about the doings of party politics here in California, and I'm not super impressed with the way the insiders decide who to support. There's a lot of mediocrity and only a little real leadership. There is even less real courage. Perhaps when the party and its fundraisers stop spamming me for a while, I will be willing to read something they send me. Might I suggest limiting your appeals to one per month?
And while you're at it, let's talk about the way you spend all that money. There is a lot to be said.
One final thought: Here is the Marseillaise from Casablanca.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
