IS OUR FUTURE BLEAK? (Updated on July 18, 2024)

Is Our Future Bleak?

NOTE: I am updating this on July 18, 2024

      

          After President Biden gave a good press conference on July 11, 2024, I am left both reassured and troubled. The reassuring part is this: we have a current president who understands foreign policy and that understanding is built on a long career in the United States Senate. It is also built on his own belief in the value of collective defense with allies. NATO stands as a shining example of a necessary defense treaty organization that is, in real-time, helping stem the advance of the new Russian Empire into Ukraine. President Biden is right: no one thinks that Putin would stop at Ukraine. The reason Finland and Sweden have both joined NATO since 2022 is that they know that Putin is dangerous. They know that a lot more than most Americans do about Putin and his intentions. And keeping NATO intact is vital to the stability of the West. That Joe Biden is the Joe Biden who gave complete answers about those subjects to the reporters.

                      That Joe Biden is on the mark when he notes that Donald Trump would seek to undermine and possibly destroy the NATO Alliance. Trump has said as much. Trump, who is not at all versed on foreign policy (and his weird mental combination of arrogance and intellectual laziness will not allow him to improve his knowledge) thinks that NATO is some kind of protection racket. He continues to refer to NATO as an organization that somehow collects dues and in which other nations are delinquent. The financial requirement of NATO has to do with each nation allocating an amount equal to two percent of GDP to its own defense. Yes, some nations have not done that and that is problematic. But these are not dues. Trump also say that the U.S. is there to protect other nations. He totally misses the mutual defense part of the treaty. He totally misses the idea that NATO allows the U.S. to forward deploy forces in Europe for use in other conflicts. For example, even if Germany was not supportive of U.S. efforts in Iraq, forces still transited Germany. Wounded military personnel still ended up at Landstuhl for treatment. Trump does not get any of that. It is impossible to believe that he ever would, since he boils any international agreement down to a bilateral contract that looks a lot like one of his golf course or hotel deals. 

                But here is where I worry: the Joe Biden at the press conference showed his age. I am not sure how anyone denies that. And Democrats who say that are told to get on board or shut up. Well, excuse me, but that sounds a lot like Republicans who say that Trump is the answer, and if you do not believe that, you are not welcomed into the party. In either case, the thinking is wrong. It is perfectly legitimate to have concerns about Joe Biden's mental acuity. I am a Joe Biden guy and I say that. If I were not a Joe Biden guy, I would not have agreed to be in a television commercial for his campaign in 2020 that ran in Nebraska's First and Second Congressional  districts' television markets just prior to the 2020 election. But I cannot tell myself now that I do not see what I see. 

            UPDATE: President Biden tested positive for COVID as of July 17. In spite of the ill-informed belief that COVID is no more dangerous than the flu (that is a lie), it is particularly serious when a person of Joe Biden's age contracts it. Yes, he is President, and one presumes he gets the best care, including Paxlovid and other drugs. Still, this is concerning. 

                But here is the thing: the alternative is horrifying for American democracy. Here is a list of Trump highlights; things he and his major spokespersons have said. If even part of this is carried out, we are in trouble. To be honest, this list could be made much longer. 

                 UPDATE: The big update, of course, is that on July 13, a lone individual with an AR-15 attempted to assassinate Donald Trump. No one should see that as good news. No one should make jokes about that. In fact, if you listened to what President Joe Biden said, he certainly does not think it is a joke. But here is what we know so far: the individual assailant did succeed in murdering one man attending the Trump rally. That is not only tragic, but ridiculous that a shooter could somehow access a rooftop line of sight. We also know that this assailant acted alone. He was a lone 20-year-old with easy access to a weapon. That political murder seems to be accepted by some as legitimate prompted me to post on Twitter that "We are living in the final year of the Weimar Republic." That is not a good thing. 

     True to form, Donald Trump and his followers want to assert that this assassination attempt is some kind of Democratic plot. There is zero basis in fact for that claim, nor will any ever be produced. But producing evidence is not what Donald Trump does. The other claim is that people who say Donald Trump is dangerous to democracy (I am one of them) somehow inspired this 20-year-old to attempt the assassination. That is silly. In fact, Trump and his apologists, like Stephen Miller, want to silence political speech. We cannot let that happen.

               1. Trump says that he will make government agencies loyal only to him. The people who wrote Project 2025 articulate this. Trump claims he does not fully support Project 2025, but that is simply a lie. That project wants to do away with a civil service and a military based in merit, and reform it based on loyalty to the executive. This part bothers me a lot since I did serve as an Air Force officer for 26 years on active duty. My oath was to the Constitution. Our service was based on the idea that we are professionals whose profession is, as Huntington saw it, "the management of violence." This is not violence for the sake of violence, this is violence authorized by lawful authorities of the state. The professional officer is supposed to carry out that mission with "neutral competence." That is, it doesn't matter what your personal politics are, you do your job. Trump would turn that on its head. It would not matter how competent you are, it would only matter where your loyalties lie. That is exactly the model Saddam Hussein used in constructing the Republican Guard. That is exactly what the Nazi Party did in reconstructing the Wehrmacht and its oath of office.

            2. By the way, we should not worry only about government organizations like the military and the FBI--the people holding the weapons. What about more mundane agencies like NOAA, BLS, BEA, the Fed. Is the unemployment rate only what Trump says it is? Are GDP and CPI numbers dictated by the Administration? Is the Fed rate what the President dictates? We have a government of experts for the reason that the bureaucracy is supposed to serve the People.

            3. Trump and his major spokespersons like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller says that detention camps for illegal immigrants will be created and "illegals" rounded up, detained, and sent back to whence they came. There is so much wrong with this, it is hard to know where to start, but here are some questions. Is this built on the assumption that most "illegals" are of Hispanic origin? It so, it sure seems that racial profiling will be the basis on which persons are detained. Will visa overstays be rounded up and detained? If so, lots of folks from Toronto and other places in Canada should be aware. Of course, since racial profiling will be a large part of this effort, it is likely these folks might not need to worry. What do we do with the said "illegals" once we detain them? Hold them in concentration camps? Transport them across the southern border over the objection of Mexican police standing there? Will the agriculture and construction industries lodge a protest on these actions? It turns out that American businesses rely on lots of documented and undocumented workers. It would at least be interesting to watch the rhetorical contortions. 

            UPDATE: The Republican National Convention is this week. It appears that Immigration is the strong focus area. There is a prominent sign held by many attendees to the Convention. It is red and says in bold letters: "MASS DEPORTATIONS NOW." What does that mean? It means exactly what Donald Trump and his advocates say it means. It means using racial profiling to round up Hispanic-looking people and throwing them into camps. It also necessarily means suspension of rights of the accused and trials. I am not sure how anyone cannot see that. 

        4. Trump and his allies in Congress have openly said they will investigate and put on trial their political opponents. Trump even supported a suggestion that Liz Cheney should be tried by a military tribunal on national television. And people like Congressman Jim Comer, a fairly lackluster individual in his own right, are only too willing to serve as lackeys to set up a system of Congressional investigations of people who step out of line. How long does the list get? Now, certainly they will not investigate half of the adult population, but the intimidation factor is obvious.

        5. I mentioned NATO above, but it seems like a foregone conclusion that Trump will work to get the U.S. out of NATO and our other alliances. All of this will be done in the name of "America First." Of course, America First is built on a fantasy that the U.S. can have both a strong defense and an isolationist policy. We cannot. We will leave a leadership vacuum that some other nation will fill. And, looking around, it is clear that those nations are China and then Russia. The Trump efforts to gut alliances will leave us more vulnerable and more likely to go to war than we are now.

        The bottom line to me is that Donald Trump is a madman. He wants to run the nation the way he runs his businesses. There is a reason that few Trump enterprises have sold stock and operated as publicly-traded corporations. Trump Taj Mahal and Truth Social are the exceptions. In both cases, shareholders lost a lot of money. Why? Trump might be okay as the head of what is essentially a bunch of interlocking family businesses, but he is certainly not a person who could be CEO of a corporation. There is way to much accountability demanded there and he does not want to be accountable to anyone but himself. The President is accountable, but Trump has so damaged his own political party that most elected Republicans who would attempt to hold him accountable have already retired from office or will do so this year. So, who will hold him accountable?

        This means that Democrats are left to run a good man, Joe Biden, who is clearly showing signs of his age. To say that is not unfair. It is also not unfair to question why people like Chuck Grassley are still in the Senate. It is also not unfair to question why Dianne Feinstein stayed so long in the Senate. But Joe Biden is what stands between us and Trump, and I would vote for Joe Biden in that case. It also seems likely to me that Joe Biden will not live through his second term, and I would add that the same seems like the case for Donald Trump. In that case, we are voting for ideas, and I happen to believe that Trump's ideas are dangerous. 

        But I also disagree with those Democrats who say that only Joe Biden, and no one else, can beat Trump in November. I think there are plenty of Independents and even a few Republicans who know that Trump threatens our democracy and will vote for Kamala Harris, or Gretchen Whitmer, or Gavin Newsome, or anyone else the Democrats nominate. The danger is Trump. We are at an inflection point. I do not really have the answers, but we need to discuss, not bury our heads in the sand. 

            UPDATE: I love Joe Biden. Joe Biden was the right man in 2020. Joe Biden saved our democracy. But Joe should not have run again, and he needs to serve the nation now by passing the torch.