By Carl Davidson
Keep On Keepin' On!
‘Thin Gruel’ is the term I groaned at the TV as President Trump made his way out of the Chamber, meaning it was long on applause lines and short on substance. I was a little taken aback at the abrupt end, expecting he would eventually get to something.
But after a moment or two, I felt my initial reaction was too kind. It was mainly a speech promoting fear today wrapped in tomorrow’s air castles of glory. In the face of complex problems, we got scapegoats—murderous illegal immigrants, cold-blooded, heartless inner city murderers, crazed religious fanatics slaying anyone within their reach halfway around the world.
Are the examples he gave true? Undoubtedly. But where was the context? The millions of migrant workers who slave in our fields to nurture their families, the decades of urban profit-seeking leaving communities gutted and impoverished, with generations with nothing but bad choices, an Islamic world unjustly subjected to ‘shock and awe’ leaving hundreds of thousands dead in deserts and ancient cities for the sake of putting a relative handful of bin Laden devotees out of business—none of this served to raise our understanding of our quandaries and, indeed, our injustices. All you need do is mutter ‘drug cartel’ and ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’ and somehow you’ve waved a magic wand.
It was also a speech laced with American nationalism. I guess we can be thankful for small favors when an American president doesn’t present himself as ‘the leader of the free world,’ but simply of our country. But even that is also too kind. Trump promised a huge expansion of our military, when it’s already the most powerful in the world many times over. Even some 120 Pentagon advocates questioned his priorities earlier in the day. Trump wants to slash the State Dept. budget and foreign aid—the tools of ‘soft power’ and diplomacy—for the sake of iron fists without velvet gloves.
I have news for him. In a world of asymmetrical warfare and insurgencies of all sorts around the failed states of failed Empires, bluster doesn’t get you very far. And some of those who are not failed states—China, Iran—are not pushovers. You attack them at your peril.
On trade Trump gave us a nice story about Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and the unfair 100% tariff they faced in India. I’m sure there are more where that came from. But again, context matters. Want happens to Mexican farmers when US corn is dumped in their country at less than the cost of production? I can assure you of one thing. They will scale any wall before they allow their children to starve.
Trump praised Eisenhower for building the Interstate Highway system. Indeed Ike did, but he managed it by keeping FDR’s old wartime high tax rate at above 90 percent. Trump, on the other hand, is going to fund all his huge and great infrastructure projects with tax cuts and pixie dust, meaning that the working class, and not the people with serious money, will pay for them, if they ever get off the ground.
To wrap this up, I think one of his points was particularly cruel. He picked a young woman as an example of what can happen when you pluck a bright student out of a poor school in the name of ‘choice.’
Are such stories true? Indeed they are, I spent several years working in some of the toughest schools in Chicago, and I met a decent number of young geniuses making their way in harsh situations. Suppose these kids were plucked out by ' choice'? Those of us on the spot ask an embarrassing question. For every one you take out, ten, 20 or more will remain behind, but with fewer funds. What happens to them? Do they have more options or less?
The great thing about our public schools is no child is turned away. But we also know that schools alone can’t solve poverty and injustice. Trump had no kind word for the victims of police violence. But he had plenty for tougher police. Kids in these neighborhoods have faced little except ‘tough’ police for their entire lives. More of the same isn’t going to cut it.
The country needs serious green industrial and clean energy programs. Trump promised clean air and water, but in his first week, he got rid of a regulation preventing coal companies from dumping toxic slurry in mountain streams. We’ll seek our truths from facts, Mr. Trump, not from nationalist rhetoric or ‘facts’ from alternate universes.