Author: Robert I. Grundfest

I am a teacher, writer, voice-over artist and rationally opinionated observer of American and international society. While my job is to entertain and engage, my purpose is always to start a conversation.

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Featured

Alien and Sedition Acts Redux

When you really think about it, conservatives have wanted to take this country back to the beginning of the republic ever since Reagan was elected in 1980. After all, Antonin Scalia and the Originalists (which is a great name for a rock band, yes?) made their political and philosophical careers on interpreting the constitution according to what they believed to be the framer’s intent. And as long as Scalia and Thomas and the far right were on the fringe, it looked like the country might avoid the embarrassment of living in the 1790s.

That’s all changed, hasn’t it?

If the first month of the Trump administration was a bit of an organizational mess, the second month is proving to be a full court press on the nation’s values and mission. What was once a pair of bedrock beliefs–that anyone who could make a contribution to society was welcome here, and that a free press was the major check on executive and congressional power–seem to be under assault by the president (shudder) and his minions in the White House. They are now committed to actually breeding hatred, suspicion, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-intellectualism and undermining news organizations and journalists who dare to cover them critically.

Gone are the days, if they ever existed, where Americans could take some solace in the idea that Donald Trump was more moderate than his campaign words and that he would try to unify the country around change that would benefit the working and middle class. His screed in front of the Conservative Political Action Conference was a call to arms against fellow Americans who understand that fear and suspicion are the enemies of representative democracy, and Sean Spicer’s press wall against those news organizations that the administration blames for negative coverage is a dangerous admission that the Trump White House has little regard for facts or interpretation.

It makes sense, then, to think that we might be on the verge of new Alien and Sedition Acts (and reading the first paragraph of this entry made me laugh. The Soviet Union is gone, so just substitute Trump’s America). Far-fetched, you say? Banning immigrants is on the check list. Muzzling the press and making it illegal to criticize the president? Former, yes, the latter, not out of the realm of the possible. These laws were terrible enough in the 1790s, but they would be a catastrophe today. The president and Steve Bannon seem to be in agreement on challenging every mainstream media organization and demonizing their reporters and executives. They champion their own press that has, shall we say, a spotty record when it comes to reporting actual facts. They want to plug press leaks too. Anybody seen G. Gordon Liddy around?

Of course, this is all a great big Hypocrisy Woodstock love-in. When the press was using Russian leaks about Hillary Clinton, Trump encouraged more. When James Comey bombshelled the election 10 days before the vote, Trump was exultant. Now he’s blaming the FBI for being against him. And there will be more verbal attacks on other agencies as they inevitably will need to come into conflict with the White House, because it’s clear that Trump cannot be wrong. But don’t worry; he’ll tweet what’s correct.

None of this is normal. None of this has a precedent. None of this conforms to any notion of responsible presidential behavior. None of it. We are moving in reverse. Time to dig our heels in.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Domestic Policies

Make America Great? Promote the Arts and Culture.

Had enough yet? Of course not. And it’s still February.

If the press conference wasn’t proof enough that the president still doesn’t have a handle on his facts, then let’s move on to those things that do not lie: the numbers.

Yes, it’s almost time for the president to issue a budget for the upcoming fiscal year, that starts in October, and word is that it’s going to include the GOP’s greatest hits. That means that social programs will of course be on the chopping or reforming block, such as Medicare and Medicaid, programs that actually do a great deal of great for their intended beneficiaries, while we are in for a massive infusion of money to the military because, well, we need a huge amount of new weapons to fight, well, ISIS? Russia? China? I’m not quite sure. I guess maybe after being at war for 16 years, many of our weapons have been used and we need new ones? We’ll come back to that one.

Some of the other cuts on the Republican wish list are oldies but goodies from the 1980s Reagan Revolution.  They include drug treatment programs and the Export-Import Bank, but the program cuts that really show where the right’s priorities are will fall on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. That these programs account for maybe a few hundred million dollars in a $4 trillion dollar budget doesn’t seem to matter. They will be on the chopping block no matter what that says about the ruling party’s priorities.

The CPB, the NEA and the NEH, quite simply, bring a certain level of calm, thoughtfulness, pragmatism, knowledge, intelligence and, yes, democracy, to the country. So naturally you can see why the right would want to get rid of them. Chaos and unpredictability are in. Sober-minded analysis is definitely out. But ever since Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano and “Tales of the City” made their way into the consciousness of the party of morality, they have tried to demonize publicly funded culture as elitist and leftist, arguing that if television programs and art exhibits can’t pay their own way, then they should be thrown onto the bonfire of the inanities.

A country that loses its culture is in more trouble than one that loses a war. And some culture will always need public support. Artists cannot always get exhibition space on their own and some television programs are worth seeing even if they can’t attract sponsors. The public benefits from programming and exhibits that supports new and vibrant artistic voices in areas of the country that might want or need to see different perspectives. This is what makes our country great. Democratizing culture serves everyone. And if you don’t like it, turn it off.

Even more damaging would be cuts to or elimination of the National Endowment for the Humanities. This is where the United States shows its commitment to learning, academic research, and school programs that encourage people to read poetry and great literature, and to involve themselves in timeless and timely ideas that might not see the light of day without this support.

The NEH sponsors educational institutes for school and college teachers in areas that allow for significant pedagogical growth across the education establishment. Thousands of teachers, including me, have spent wonderful summers researching, studying, arguing, observing and learning something that they never would have learned without these programs. The NEH provides a lifeline to teachers and students and makes our schools richer in every way. Why would anyone want to cut that?

It would be terrible for this country to lose its creative could in order to save a pittance. We can’t afford not no have these programs. And once they’re gone, they’re gone for good.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Elections Featured

Hey You! Wanna be Governor of NJ? We Need One

Chris Christie will go down in New Jersey history as one of the most unpopular, least effective, self-serving governors this state has ever had. And given our history, that’s saying a lot. But for someone with the political skills he has and the ability to connect with everyday people, having a 17% approval rating is shocking. He spent all of his political capital on Hurricane Sandy and thought that he would be the big mouth with the righteous anger in 2016, but that didn’t work out either.

And now he seems to have disappeared. OK, not entirely. He is spending his last few months highlighting the problems of drug addiction and is stumping for more money for treatment programs, but otherwise, he doesn’t have much else. His school spending plan is pretty much dead on arrival and Trump has taken all of the available space and oxygen in the politician realm. Christie was passed over for a cabinet position, but I can see him taking over after one of Trump’s originals flames out, which will happen sooner rather than later. Heck, if Christie can hang on, he could become VP if Trump does something high-crimish or misdemeanorlike in the next two years, which is also looking somewhat possible given that he can’t stand criticism and thinks that everything that goes against his family is unfair.

Even Christie’s Lieutenant Governor, Kim Guagdano, is fleeing Trenton and is running to succeed her boss. It will be interesting to see how she’s going to separate herself from him since we didn’t see much of her leadership style for, well, eight years. And that includes the time when the state got smacked with a blizzard when Christie was on vacation and Guagdano was the acting Governor. Not a peep. And the state ground to a halt. Talk about laissez-faire.

The Democrats are in much better shape in this state than nationally, but they are still going to have to round up votes in the traditionally Democratic urban and suburban areas. Right now Phil Murphy is the front-runner and has already been endorsed by party bigwigs and some unions. John Wisniewski is also running and he actually has state-level governing experience as a member of the State Assembly for the past 20 years. He’s trying to run as an outsider, but if Trump is any guide to how an outsider runs a government, Wisniewski might want to run as the trusted, sure hand who can actually govern.

But this is all for the future as we’re in the money-grubbing phase of the election until springtime, and the primaries aren’t until June. Another election. Fun.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Education

Readin’, Writin’ and ‘Ridiculous

There’s a certain perverse pride public educators should feel due to the fact that Betsy DeVos, the nominee for Secretary of Education, is, of all the Trump cabinet picks, the object of the most phone calls and other communications objecting to her confirmation. She’s also the only nominee that some Republican Senators will oppose. At last, education is at the top of the priority list. Feel better?

The corporatization of public education has been gaining strength since A Nation at Risk was released in 1983, warning the United States that students were not learning the content and skills they needed in order for our country to compete in the economic and political world. Despite efforts to reform the curriculum, incorporate technology, and change teaching practice to include cooperative learning, Back to Basics learning and the upside down classroom, schools are being shortchanged in state budgets and students are being tested over the course of multiple days which could be used for more quality instruction.

The solution? Betsy DeVos.

Yes, what this country needs is a Secretary of Education with no public school…anything. Not attendance, not school board, not having children attend public school, and not any knowledge of laws that govern the public schools. She is the perfect manifestation of the ideology that puts money, competition and strict, top-down management above all else. She represents the conservative view that, really, anyone can be in education because, well, teaching is easy and the schedule is cake and, honestly, if you were so smart, you would have gone into a field where you were respected and could earn piles of cash.

Stupid teachers.

But just public school teachers. Conservative ideology says that private school teachers are just fine because they understand the private nature of capitalism and that skimming the best students off the top is the American way. And Charter School teachers? You are even better because you are directly challenging the public schools and those nasty unions in your districts. Cynical? You bet. True? No.

But that seems to be where Betsy Devos is on the educational continuum. She is highly unqualified,  regal in her detachment from all things public school, blithely ignorant of what she doesn’t know, and dismissive of what really works in education. She is also a reflection of the president’s (shudder) own uncaring attitude towards anything that requires thoughtfulness and academic rigor. What do you expect from someone who doesn’t read books?

The silver lining is that conservatives don’t want a federal presence in education, preferring to keep the major issues at the state level. The problem is that DeVos will champion vouchers and the growth of non-public schools. How much of an impact she’ll have will depend on how much power she can carve out of the department.

The responsibility of all public school educators is to oppose her at every turn and to do what’s right for our students.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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Featured

It’s Chauncey Gardiner On Crystal Meth

Something is telling me that this immigration ban isn’t working out the way the president (shudder) thought it would. He probably thought that since he’s, you know, Donald Trump and that, you know, Steve Bannon told him that Muslims are terrible, and that, you know, his rabid fan base voted for this craziness, that he could just, you know, do this immigration ban thing. Never mind that zero terrorists have come from the countries we’re banning people from. And make sure that we don’t include countries where Trump has businesses. Appearances matter, you know.

This is a nightmare. And it’s only been 10 days. All I can say is thank heavens for the Federal court system and the judges who understand the Constitution and our way of life, because clearly Donald Trump is the biggest Know-Nothing this country, or at least a minority of voters, has ever elected president. And it’s up to the majority who oppose him, a majority that’s getting more major every day, to stop him.

Consider what else we’ve learned since January 20.

We have a president who doesn’t read. He only likes to watch television and and then regurgitweet what he’s seen and heard.  Using the same language as the news shows.

He engages in conspiracy theories about illegal immigrants, 3.5 million strong, who came out to vote in November for Hillary Clinton. They didn’t vote for anybody else–not Senate, not House, not Dog Catcher–only for Hillary. And she got almost every one of their votes. That’s amazing.

And that’s why its a conspiracy theory. Because to an average, thinking, reading, analyzing, overworked, underpaid, patriotic American, it makes no sense. But to the leader of the free world? A perfect explanation for why he simply couldn’t, ever, lose the popular vote.

I shudder to think of what Trump would have done had he lost the election and made good on his promise to not concede. Here he won the election and he still can’t let go of the fact that he’s not more popular than he’s convinced himself that he is.

And all of this has nothing to do with actual policy. Remember the fuss the GOP made about Obama’s use of Executive Orders? That’s all Trump has used since his inauguration and not a peep out of the purring, moist right wing. What about the deficit, you say? Hey, $20 billion on a superfluous, irrelevant, showy wall is a fine use of taxpayers pesos, I mean, dollars. We might not get Mitch McConnell to go along with funds for highways, bridges, roads, hospitals, airports, water systems and other extras that we really don’t need, but a wall that will immediately become cover for tunnels? I can see him sidling up to Paul Ryan, with a handful of bills and in a low, conspiratorial voice say, “Don’t tell your father I gave you this.”

The Trump administration is making good on its campaign promises, and now we are seeing why more people voted against them. They are creating chaos, uncertainty and unnecessary hardship for many Americans, and they contradict this country’s values of tolerance and equality before the law.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Donald Trump

Oppose and Replace

Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump speaks during the Fox Business Network Republican presidential debate at the North Charleston Coliseum, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016, in North Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

I completely understand how you felt Friday at around 12:20, after President Donald Trump (shudder) delivered the last of his vapid, sloganeering, frighteningly insipid and angry remarks after he was sworn in. You don’t recognize the country or its values or the office of the presidency or how the constitution fits into his plans and you wonder how anybody who calls themselves a patriotic, thinking American can vote for…that. Perhaps the best we can say is that James Buchanan, William Henry Harrison and Richard Nixon no longer occupy the bottom spot on any of the presidential rankings. It’s Trump’s spot all alone. And he owns it.

But it’s vitally important to understand that reasoned arguments, references to facts, visits and links to mainstream news sites or paper-based articles dogeared, cut out or copied for relatives will not do any good to win arguments in the political present and the near future. Statistics mean nothing. The fight will be won on emotion and righteousness, patience and repetition, repetition, repetition.

The Women’s Marches on Saturday were an excellent start. More people showed up to the one in Washington than attended the inauguration. Add in the number of marchers in other cities in the United States and around the world and you have a supermajority of people who will not stand to go backwards on civil rights for all people. We will need more of these types of mobilizations and actions to show the Republican administration and Congress that they must pay attention to the words and tone they use, and the laws they attempt to pass.

The rest of this is going to be up to our use of language and messaging. As much as Trump is described as unpredictable, he really won’t be. We already know that he’s concerned with winning every battle. He hates to be criticized. He has no coherent policies. The press needs to ask questions repeatedly and not let Trump or Sean Spicer off the hook. Yes, their antics might play well in precincts where Trump won, but even there, the people want action and they want details about what he’s going to do.  In short, question and oppose everything and let Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan complain about obstruction. Do not apologize. Do not outwardly cooperate. It seems to be the only strategy that works, but with our country at stake, it’s what we need to do.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Barack Obama

On the Transition, There is No Comparison

It is inevitable that United States Presidents are compared not only to who served before them, but to those who came after them. If these past few weeks are any guide to the next four years – if Trump can avoid impeachment and conviction – then we can start making room for Barack Obama on Mount Rushmore.

It’s not just the sheer grace, intelligence, humanity, empathy, joy and focus that Obama brought to the office. It’s the way he conducted himself and the way he presented the image of the United States to visitors, other heads of state, and anyone else who still believed that this country can be, and must be, a force for good in the world.

Yes, there were times when I wanted President Obama to be full of righteous anger and to show it. To get a little sweaty under the collar. To yell a little more. To get carried away, But at the end of a speech or press conference, I would usually marvel at how he could make a point forcefully without resorting to histrionics or contrived media moments. And there were no scandals, personal or otherwise, and no need to follow the money or worry about a wiretap. He served as a president we could be proud to have lived under. Anyone who is turning 20 this year can honestly say that they lived their formative years under a president who was a political, moral, and family role model.

And compared to what’s next in our future, Obama will go down in history as one of the great ones. Perhaps he will be remembered as the last of the presidential presidents, who understood that the Commander-In-Chief and head of the Executive Branch had a responsibility to act like a role model and to be aware that others were watching him, and not just as someone commanding a media audience. He might also be remembered as the last president to actually have a plan as to how to run the country, rather than repealing first and worrying about what happens later. Or who used social media to further a positive agenda, not to denigrate, bully, lie, obfuscate or brag.

I will miss Barack Obama as President of the United States. He broke a major barrier and made this country greater. I hope that we can hold on to that greatness in the face of someone who doesn’t recognize that we are great, and have been great for a very long time.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Donald Trump Donald Trump election hacking

Post Hack, Ergo Propter Hack

News that the Russians, which means Vladimir Putin, wanted Donald Trump to win the election shouldn’t surprise anyone. They’ve clearly sized him up and see him as the friend that he will turn out to be. They also are taking him seriously when he says that he will support torture and doesn’t care much for getting the United States involved in other country’s affairs. That Trump will help the Russians in Syria is merely icing on the babka. Trump hasn’t a clue as to how to conduct foreign policy and Putin knows that.

But I’m not willing to follow others who say that the Russian effort turned the election. After all, if the point was to get more people to vote for Trump, then the Russians failed miserably, as Hillary Clinton’s 2.7 million vote majority will attest. And it would be a real stretch to conclude that the Russian hackers focused on blue-collar, high-school-educated, former Obama voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania because that’s where Trump won the election. Were those voters especially susceptible to fake news? Perhaps some of them went into the last week of the election and weighed the candidate’s positions on jobs and, with the Comey letter, concluded that Hillary was not the person to solve the problem. Let’s not forget that Clinton ran a bad campaign, taking Michigan for granted in the final weeks when the lesson of Bernie Sanders’ shocking performance (or maybe not really shocking) in the primaries should have alerted her team to the potential for an upset.

The real problem with the hacking is that Donald Trump encouraged it as a candidate, and then dismissed it and the professionals who will be advising him once it threatened his fragile hold on his self-esteem. We are now going to be led for the next four years by a classic bully, one who is unsure of himself so he couches his responses in anger, dismissal, disparagement and unthinking emotional outbursts rather than reason and analysis. He’s already shown that when he’s attacked, he goes into survival mode and lives on twitter. As someone who lived through Chris Christie for eight years, I can tell you that this isn’t going to end well.

This strategy has worked to a limited degree when Trump goes after companies that make plans to build plants in Mexico, but it failed miserably with the hacking issue, and it probably won’t serve him as well as he thinks once he takes office (shudder). Eventually, Trump is going to realize that Americans want their president to act a certain way, and tweeting your fears every morning won’t substitute for policy.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
ObamaCare

Happy New Year

The new year always begins with so much hope and this year is no different. I hope that my friends will be healthy and happy. I hope that we can solve some of the country’s big problems and more of the little ones. I hope that we can come together as a nation and a world and finally realize that we’re all in this together and that the deaths and atrocities are a stain on the human race. I hope that I can be a better person, a better friend, a better spouse, a better parent, and a better teacher.

But hope can only get you so far. At some point, you have to fight for what you believe in and for what you want done. On that point, this will be a year of fighting. Fighting for justice. For the right of everyone to have a healthy body, a healthy mind, and a full stomach. For the right to exercise the vote. For the right to free speech. For a free, quality education. For economic growth that begins to close the gap between wealth and not-so-wealthy. For clean air and water. For facts.

There will be challenges as soon as this week because Congress will begin moving towards legislation that will ultimately strip 20 million people of their health insurance. The assaults on Medicare and Social Security are sure to follow as will the foreign policy meanderings that will be endemic to an administration that only sees raw power as worthy of respect.

The good news? That we will turn our attention and energies to fighting for what we believe in.  That’s what this year will be about. More people voted against the agenda than for it. Never forget that.

And have a healthy, happy, prosperous New Year.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Donald Trump Politics

We Are the Majority. Shout It.

I think what’s sustaining me, and alternatively giving me strength, is the knowledge that the United States is not going to become a second-rate nation and that our form of government is not being irrevocably damaged by the Russians, Wikileaks, right wing white nationalists or Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations. No, we cannot let these entities knock us off center or dissuade us from our message as a nation. We alone can lend legitimacy and commitment to democratic republicanism throughout the world, and we alone can fix our internal problems. If anything, the election and its aftermath must make those of us in the majority of voters who rejected the hateful, negative, xenophobic, blame-filled rhetoric of the Trump campaign more committed to the good fight, more convinced that we have history on our side, and more vocal in the coming years to speak truth to power.

OK, we can put our gloved fists down now. On second thought, keep them up.

The right wing ideologues who will run our government come January 20 will certainly do some damage to the environment, to the middle class, to those who need society’s protection from the ravages of a less caring government, and to our commitment to freedom and equality. But it is incumbent upon those of us who see the country’s mission as different to make our wishes known, to take to the streets if necessary and to monitor every move, covert and otherwise, that the new administration makes. And that includes filibusters, lawsuits, social media and nonviolent protests whenever we deem it necessary.

Remember that Donald Trump ran a terrible campaign, has no clue as to how to be a competent president, and that he has nominated people who don’t like government to, well, run the government. There will be some shockingly embarrassing moments in the next year alone, much less the next four, and we need to exploit them at every turn. Do not be hesitant. Do not be silent. Do not do the Democratic, left-wing thing where we say that we don’t want to be strident or uncompromising because that’s what Republicans do. Be difficult. Call out the perpetrators whenever possible. Take charge.

That’s the only way to fight against a group that has no shame when it comes to power grabs, fake news, and outrageously false accusations. We are the majority and we have to act like one.

Have a great holiday season. I’ll be back in 2017.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Donald Trump Donald Trump

The Military-Government Complex

Just in case you thought you’d get an early political holiday present in the form of Donald Trump actually being more moderate than his campaign promises, it’s time to start planning for that wrapped lump of coal to show up via Amazon drone. Which might be good news for the coal miners and executives waiting for a rebound (not going to happen), but is terrible for the majority of the country that voted for a science-based, constitution-respecting, human rights-defending, livable wage-proposing administration that will now be delayed for at least four years, much to the shame and detriment of the United States.

No, what we are seeing is the flowering of an idea that I suspect most Americans have forgotten about after cramming it for their high school history final exam questions and assuming it was nothing they needed to remember. That’s right, folks, I’m talking about good old Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about the emergence and power of the Military-Industrial Complex. And Ike didn’t just warn us about how the complex would corrupt democracy. He also presciently said that we can’t continue to take our natural resources for granted:

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Eisenhower is a terrific role model for us today because he was a military man who understood the danger of too much military influence in what is supposed to be a civilian-run government. He respected that the constitution gave him the power to be commander-in-chief, but that power must be wielded responsibly, pragmatically, and in conjunction with the people. Ike used it well, especially when you consider that the 1950s saw a significant increase in the number and power of nuclear weapons, the Suez Crisis, attempted uprisings in Hungary and Poland, and attacks on our ally Israel.

This is why Trump’s infatuation with the military, and the fact that he’s appointed generals to a significant number of cabinet and government posts, is so disturbing. He is using his power to surround himself with other people who see power differently than civilians with no military experience. And he seems to continue to believe that the military has the answers to many of our policy questions.

As for the industrial part of the equation, nominating a Labor Secretary who’s against a livable minimum wage, an Education Secretary who bashes public schools, a true know-nothing for Housing, an anti-science guy at the EPA, and what looks like the mother of all oil executives as Secretary of State proves pretty conclusively that this is going to be a government-by-testosterone with little to no moderating influences from what’s left of the sensible Republican Party. Trump is going to rule by the Only I Can Fix It credo he ran on, and it looks like he’s going to keep his hands in his business dealings despite all of the evidence that suggests that decision will be his ultimate undoing.

What’s even more disturbing is the news that the president-elect is not electing to attend the daily intelligence briefings that are vital in this time in our history. And if anyone needed more intelligence, it’s Donald Trump. This weekend he is bashing the professionals who are saying that the Russians were far more involved in the election that previously reported and he’s also questioning whether the Russians or “some guy in New Jersey (not me)” is responsible for the hacking.

These are the tidbits that let you know that Trump thinks that nothing is possible because anything is possible. He’s not anti-intellectual, he’s un-intellectual. It’s hubris, and we all know how that ends.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Donald Trump Donald Trump

Foreign Affairs: Be Very Afraid

I think I’ve decided that the best way to incorporate the reality of Donald Trump being president is to just assume that what he’s saying at the time is undergirded by willful ignorance, lack of knowledge, boasts, and the idea that he’s a huckster showman who has little working knowledge of the United States Constitution, the country’s history, and his responsibilities as the head of its executive branch. In fact, I have begun to sleep better at night assuming that he’s going to make a shockingly terrible decision on a weekly (daily?) basis, and at some point will provoke both domestic and foreign crises simply to keep himself in the news.

Perverse? Yes, but such is the state of our politics.

The litany of Trump’s ignorance of diplomatic and presidential protocol is concerning, especially for a 70 year old man who has some impressive educational accomplishments. I certainly understand that he believes that he was elected to shake up the system and to drain the political swamp in DC. The problem is that there is a right way and a wrong way to make great change. The right way is to have a comprehensive plan as to how you’re going to do it and to tell your friends first how your approach might affect them. Gushing over the dictators in Pakistan, the Philippines and Kazakhstan is not the way to do that, especially when British PM Theresa May only gets a “come by if you’re in the US” invitation. Trump is playing the businessman who doesn’t want to upset any potential customers, but this is reason one why electing business people with no political experience is a terrible idea.

And then there’s Taiwan and China. Somebody needs to tell the know-nothing who will occupy the Oval Office come January, that the Chinese have a great deal of power and that they are not afraid to use it. He can’t treat the Chinese as some backwater nation that can be cowed with 45% tariffs or threats about undercutting American companies with cheap materials and labor. Might Trump be the one who ultimately tames China and revives US trade? Possibly, but he’s not going to do that by wading into the one issue that China cannot abide, which is recognition of Taiwan. Perhaps Obama can save this bit of face before he leaves, but he and his team need to pointedly remind Trump that there are still some rules he needs to respect.

But what do you expect from a man who is surrounding himself with generals. Talk about sending a message. The problem, again, is that Trump is sending the message that he doesn’t really understand the constitution. The military is supposed to be under civilian control, not making major decisions about the country’s policies. And the bigger problem is that because Trump doesn’t have a clear plan and is ignorant of both policy and world events, he’s going to have to rely on those generals for advice, and there are going to be a lot of them in the room during cabinet meetings. If he appoints a Secretary of States that he doesn’t really respect, like Mitt Romney, Trump will more likely minimize his advice and turn to his military men. Not that Mitt Romney knows how to be Secretary of State. On-the-job training is going to be a hallmark of this administration. The will make unnecessary mistakes. I hope they learn from them.

If we could only have General Tso. But, alas, his creator is gone.

As for domestic affairs, the deal with United Technologies and Carrier was a public relations win for Trump, but at the expense of the taxpayers in Indiana who will pay more and get less because Trump and Mike Pence did the Republican thing and gave the company a tax break. Bribery? Yes. Smart? No. Because Trump will not be able to replicate what he did with Carrier with other companies. If he had thought about a long-term strategy, maybe he would have a template to work with., but he’s making it up as he goes along and the people who voted for him based on his jobs promise will be terrifically disappointed with the trade-off.

And my bet is that those 1,000 saved jobs will ultimately go to Mexico. After all, as Trump has said, it’s just good business.

For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

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