All Kinds Of Lessons

 

Commentators are beginning to turn their attention to Donald Trump's legacy. Simon Tidall's column in The Guardian is a good place to start. He writes:

How much damage did Donald Trump do around the world, can it be repaired, and did he accomplish anything of lasting significance? Assessing the international legacy of the 45th US president is not so much a conventional survey of achievement and failure. It’s more like tracking the rampages of a cantankerous rogue elephant that leaves a trail of random destruction and shattered shibboleths in its wake. Last week’s wild pardoning spree is a case in point.

From five thousand feet, destruction and ruin are all you see:

Trump’s ill-disguised hostility left deep scars in Germany, the most important European ally. This apparent phobia, fed by Berlin’s large trade surplus and relatively low defence spending, had a misogynistic tinge. He was, on occasion, unbelievably rude to chancellor Angela Merkel. A recent Pew poll found only 34% of Germans think US relations are in good shape.

All that said, Nato not only survived Trump’s constant criticisms; in some respects, its original purpose – deterring Russia – was reinforced by deployments of additional US forces in eastern Europe and the Baltic republics. Trump’s demand that European allies spend more on defence was not unreasonable, although his bullying brought only limited change.

And in Asia, Trump has left all kinds of rubble behind him:

Trump’s habit of thinking transactionally, not strategically, had a disastrous impact in Asia and elsewhere. He treated loyal allies Japan and South Korea with disdain – especially over misconceived talks with North Korea. He indulged rabble-rousers such as Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines president, antagonised Pakistan, yet still failed to significantly enhance ties with India.

The fierce mutual animosity currently poisoning US-China relations is Trump’s most troublesome geopolitical legacy. Before 2017, there was still an outside chance that the old and new superpowers could find ways to get along. That’s gone. China is now viewed by Americans of all stripes as the No 1 threat. Beijing’s aggressive leadership is much at fault. But Trump’s trade and tech wars, Taiwan brinkmanship and “Wuhan virus” rhetoric made everything worse.

That's quite a record. And I haven't even touched on the ruin Trump has left in his own country. There are all kinds of lessons to be learned about what happens when you allow a mob boss to strut and fret  his hour upon the world stage. As Shakespeare wrote, "It is a tale told by an idiot."

Image: Vice.com

Repairing the Damage

Robin Sears is positive -- almost positive -- that Donald Trump will lose the election. Then, he writes, there will be a flurry of activity:

The impact this vile man had on partisanship, turning senators into quislings and too many voters toward violence, has been sad to watch. But his outrageousness gave many Democrats the courage to try on creative and even radical new ideas. Trump’s attacks opened a new policy dialogue and helped elect an impressive next generation of politicians. Democrats flirtation with Wall Street and neo-liberalism, and most revoltingly their cowardice in the face of the gun makers, will not soon return.

The GOP will face an ideological fork in the road, as well. Will they end their 50 year flirtation with racism, pushed from a dog whistle in Nixon’s day to loud racist rhetoric from Trump and his creepy children? Will they follow the path of the Lincoln Project, that impressive group of political consultants, former candidates and donors who launched a hilarious and undermining ad campaign against Trump. As one of its leaders recently said with a chuckle, he never would have thought it was shady political operatives who would light the path back to ethical conservatism.

The first order of business should be protecting the electoral system:

America’s electoral system has always been the weakest, most fragmented, and too often used to suppress voters access, than in any other G7 nation. It continues to be shockingly vulnerable to foreign intervention, local skulduggery, and even technical incompetence. Now there will be a rising demand to clean it up and strengthen it.

Trump, even in defeat, will not go away. But he has always been about the show:

It has always been about attention and money, more than power. Trump’s fascination with and expertise in manipulative TV programming may have another attraction: to help him defend himself against an array of criminal charges and angry creditors.

That said, he's done an horrendous amount of damage. And the damage has to be repaired. But for all this to happen, Trump must lose -- decisively.

Image: republicworld.com

Stiglitz on Trump

When I come across a piece by Joe Stiglitz, I pay attention. This morning he has a column in The Guardian. The subject is the long term damage Donald Trump is doing to his nation's institutions:

What concerns me most is Trump’s disruption of the institutions that are necessary for the functioning of society. Trump’s “Maga” (Make America Great Again) agenda is, of course, not about restoring the moral leadership of the United States. It embodies and celebrates unbridled selfishness and self-absorption. Maga is about economics. But that forces us to ask: what is the basis of America’s
wealth?

Those institutions are rooted in the Scottish Enlightenment and the work of Adam Smith:

Smith himself was a leading light of the great intellectual movement known as the Scottish Enlightenment. The questioning of established authority that followed the earlier Reformation in Europe forced society to ask: how do we know the truth? How can we learn about the world around us? And how can and should we organise our society?

From the search for answers to these questions arose a new epistemology, based on the empiricism and scepticism of science, which came to prevail over the forces of religion, tradition and superstition. Over time, universities and other research institutions were established to help us to judge truth and discover the nature of our world. Much of what we take for granted today – from electricity, transistors and computers to lasers, modern medicine and smartphones – is the result of this new disposition, undergirded by basic scientific research (most of it financed by government).

That process of experimentation, learning and adaptation, however, requires a commitment to ascertaining the truth. Americans owe much of their economic success to a rich set of truth-telling, truth-discovering and truth-verifying institutions. Central among them are freedom of expression and media independence. Like all people, journalists are fallible; but, as part of a robust system of checks and balances on those in positions of power, they have traditionally provided an essential public good.

Trump is engaged in a full court press against truth:

The attack by Trump and his administration on every one of the pillars of American society, and his especially aggressive vilification of the country’s truth-seeking institutions, jeopardises its continued prosperity and very ability to function as a democracy. Nor do there appear to be checks on corporate giants’ efforts to capture the institutions – the courts, legislatures, regulatory agencies, and major media outlets – that are supposed to prevent them from exploiting workers and consumers. A dystopia previously imagined only by science fiction writers is emerging before our eyes. It should give us chills to think of who “wins” in this world, and who or what we might become, just in the struggle to survive.

The dystopian future imagined in 20th Century novels like 1984 and Brave New World is becoming a reality in the 21st Century.

Image: Lord Lawson Of Beamish Academy

So Much Damage

The world has taken the measure of Donald Trump. And the news is worse than you might think. E.J. Dionne writes:

Susan Glasser, writing in Politico, offers frightening detail about how Trump’s stunning lack of knowledge and his indifference to his own obliviousness have led diplomats to label him “insane,” “catastrophic,” “terrifying,” “incompetent” and “dangerous.” Glasser concludes: “When it comes to Trump and the world, it’s not better than you think. It’s worse.”

And an article in the New Yorker offers the Chinese take on Trump:

Evan Osnos’s carefully reported and much-discussed article in the New Yorker demonstrates how Trump’s policies — but also his pathological focus on himself, his ignorance, and his astonishing susceptibility to flattery — have profoundly weakened the United States’ position in Asia and played into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s reach for international power.

Osnos cites a Chinese think tank’s observation that the Trump administration is a collection of hostile “cliques,” the most powerful of which is the “Trump family clan.” And its analysis uses a term from feudal China, “jiatianxia,” to define Trump’s approach. It means “to treat the state as your possession.”

Dionne concludes that matters are reaching the breaking point:

The United States does have extraordinary gifts for self-correction. But we must face the fact that Trump is accelerating us toward the breaking point. No matter how confident we are in our resilience, we should not imagine otherwise. Not even Mueller has a button on his desk he can press to get us out of this without scars.

Trump is extraordinary -- at least in one respect. Rarely in history does one man appear who does so much damage to so many.

Image: KeelyNet