The Trump Presidency

[Peter B]

Not just America, sadly. Same thing happens here in the UK.

That's discouraging.  I can understand the U.S. descending into a pit of near-fascist conservatism, but I had hoped the U.K. would be more stable.

It seems to be easier to look at the person on benefits and ask why they get more than me than to ask why I don't get more than them: a subtle difference in the framing of the question that makes all the difference in where the attention is focused.

And I think there's more to the comparative approach.  It seems to be human nature to want to achieve priority, not matter how slight and no matter how much the absolute values.  It's not enough for me to be rich; you must be poor.  It's not enough for me to be powerful; you must be weak.  It's not enough for me to succeed; you must fail.  Endemic to American capitalism is the notion that one's success must come at the cost of another person's failure, and that person's failure is because of his laziness or some other moral flaw.

I understand there's a school of economic thinking in Latin American countries that an economy has a fixed size, and so the only way someone can gain an economic benefit is at someone else's expense - the idea that an economy can grow and thus benefit everyone isn't apparent to them.

Do you think this sort of thinking occurs in the USA too? Or is it simply that the USAnian view of capitalism is inherently predatory?

Also, would you care to comment on how this seemingly win-at-all-costs attitude meshes with well-known American courtesy and hospitality?

That way the top tiers can keep the attention off their practices and on whichever slice of the population they feel like vilifying at the time.

In the specific terms of labor, the top tiers freely admit trying to reduce their labor costs.  This means paying American workers as little as they can get away with and making unions politically unpalatable.  It means offshoring to cheaper labor markets.  It means automation.  Every single economic indicator I can imagine points to conscious, deliberate effort on the part of upper management to reduce the amount of money the combined American labor force will earn, if only as a consequence of minimizing the money it will spend on labor overall.  Yet for some reason the story is that people can't find jobs because they're too focused on smashed avocado and social justice, or because jobs are being taken by scary illegally-resident minorities.

It baffles me to read comments from Trump supporters over at UM that on the one hand castigate big business for off-shoring jobs (which they say Biden would help with), while at the same time praising big business for all the hiring and wage rises they do.

But then again, these are the people who simultaneously dismiss Biden as harmless, hapless and helpless and fear him as the stalking horse of the Green New Deal. A recent episode of the Australian ABC TV show 'Planet America' (Google it with "iview") screened an amusing fake Republican attack ad against Biden which mashed up Trump's two views of Biden as helpless and dangerous.

...at every turn we see top executives abdicating all responsibility and deflecting blame to their underlings when things go wrong.

And getting away with it, because most corporations are actually run by boards of directors to whom the CEO reports.  And there is a cadre of upper-level business leaders in the U.S., all of whom sit on each other's boards.  No CEO is going to be held meaningfully accountable by a board composed of CEOs from other companies on whose boards he sits.  Nothing less than a catastrophe will unseat a CEO, and in most cases the exit arrangements for these positions pretty much set you up for life even in the event of gross malfeasance.  This arrangement is what partly tied Pres. Obama's attempts to restructure the financial industry after the crash of 2008.  The collective power of the U.S. industrial oligarchy outstrips the power of its government.

The Dodd-Frank Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act attempted to bring more actual accountability into the corporate boardroom and executive office suites, but naturally the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress (in Pres. Trump's early term) have largely eviscerated those measures.  And because of the unique structure of the U.S. executive branch, Pres. Trump can largely forestall enforcement of any provisions that remain.

Interestingly, this has started happening in Australia in the last few months. The latest case was just last week, when three senior figures at mining giant Rio Tinto had to fall on their swords after the company was found to have destroyed an indigenous site of tremendous cultural value.

It happened because one of Rio Tinto's major shareholders is an industry superannuation fund, the sort of fund which has considerable union representation on the board. Here in Australia employers have to contribute 9.5% of each employee's income into a superannuation fund of their choice, and the total value of super funds is around $3 trillion (about US$63 I believe ). While historically many super funds have been run by banks, they've generally been out-performed by the industry funds, which are not-for-profit. So, given their financial success and their management structure, the industry funds have increasingly had the economic muscle to force companies to listen to them when they voice their objections to lenient punishments of bad behaviour.

Trump is the absolute epitome of that, now going so far as to blame Joe Biden for the state of the country he is supposed to be running! What staggers me is just how few people seem to either see it or be willing to change it.

My über-conservative father-in-law texted, at the beginning of the BLM demonstrations, "Welcome to Biden's America."  People who would otherwise be smart are literally falling for the rhetoric that the state of the country under Trump -- now, today -- is what it's going to be in a Biden administration.  I frankly can't understand how people can be so uncritically susceptible to that sort of nonsense.

And yes, the campaign seems to be ramping up the rhetoric, criticizing Joe Biden's lackluster response to the coronavirus crisis.  What, literally, was he supposed to do?  He holds no elected office.  He has no power to order or bring about a single thing.  Literally all he can do is advocate action, which his campaign is certainly doing, and illustrate how he will handle the crisis differently when and if he does have the power to do anything.  This reminds me of when people tried to blame Obama for not taking charge more forcefully on 9/11.

With respect, was that actually a thing? I got the impression it was a satire.

I'm fully convinced that rank-and-file political advocacy in the United States really rises no higher than, say, sports fandom.  People cheer for the Republicans or the Democrats with no more thought and no less fervor than cheering for Manchester United or the Sacramento Piggers.  You want your team to win because victory is sweet, not because there's actually a future at stake.  Americans in general don't ever face existential (or even serious) crises, and so political contests aren't considered to matter, because everything in America will always be okay for us no matter what.  I hold out hope that the pandemic will convince some people that these decisions matter.  But it's bleak hope.

And yet there seem to be many more opportunities to get involved in politics in the USA, especially at the local level, than just about anywhere in the world.

[Peter B]

Johnson may well be more eloquent and well-read than Trump, but it just makes him more adept at avoiding answers or taking responsibility.

Unfortunately Johnson comes from that long line of privately educated individuals who think that a good basis in classics and Latin serves to make him an intellectual and an effective leader. He does at least have the common sense to realise that following science is a good idea during a pandemic. Unfortunately he doesn't know which science to follow and his cabinet demonstrate often they do not actually understand how science works. One minister complained recently that advice kept changing when it was supposed to be following the science, because how can the science keep changing. Scientist collectively across the nation facepalmed at that point...

One characteristic Johnson does share with Trump is the total abdication of responsibility and a propensity to lie about things that he said, saying he never said them when they are there on the record, and gaslighting the population. Witness his latest assertion that the EU Withdrawal Agreement was signed in haste and had some unsatisfactory bits in it. The current 'unsatisfactory bit' concerns Northern Ireland, which was the bit he said he had solved to get an 'oven ready' Withdrawal Agreement on the back of which he fought and won a General Election last year.

With respect I wouldn't automatically reject someone with those sorts of qualifications. I remember reading or hearing somewhere that back in the day IBM preferred to hire someone with a good classics degree than a fair science degree (or something along those lines). I dare say, though, these days, there would be more interest in the work experience these graduates had in addition to their degree.

Having said that, I've read of Johnson being described as a clever man who pretends he's an idiot, while Trump is an idiot pretending he's a clever man. I've also read an article (can't find it online) about Johnson by a journalist who described Johnson being invited to speak on a particular topic at some expensive dinner, turning up late, with no notes, and bumbling into an impromptu speech complete off-topic, yet somehow holding the audience spellbound. The journalist then described attending another dinner months later at which Johnson was invited to speak on some other topic. He turned up late, with no notes, and bumbled into an impromptu speech which happened to be identical to the one he'd given before, and again somehow held the audience spellbound. He seems to be incredibly charismatic, but in the game of Illuminati I'm sure he'd be the manifestation of the Discordian Society...

The levels of corruption and self-interest are off the scale

I can't for the life of me figure out how we have a cabinet in which children of immigrants are championing a new immigration system they freely admit would have blocked their own parents from entering the country had it existed back then.

To be fair I don't see this as a show-stopper. It would presumably be fairly easy to suggest that the nation's circumstances have changed from all those decades ago, and what would have been possible back then isn't possible now.

[Peter B]

The sting of it all is that the lockdown and the pandemic itself have shown that it is precisely these low-income workers we actually depend on to keep our hospitals running, our supermarkets stocked and our homes and streets free of huge mountains of rubbish. If these jobs are having a net drain on the economy then for god's sake increase their pay and let them do those jobs AND live without needing benefits. The whole idea of a living wage is that if you have it you can live without needing additional state support, but that clearly is not actually working.

At a certain point the marketing of the American capitalist paradise (and to whatever extent the U.K. shares it) simply doesn't remain convincing.  CEOs are not invariably essential and therefore should not grow rich as kings on the fat salaries they deserve.  Not everyone gets to be an astronaut, but a robust economy means that all roles have intrinsic worth.  The proletariat are not what's draining the system.

Again, Sanders is right:  the system is rigged.  Don't like your job?  Well, get a better one!  Hard to do, when the quality of jobs and the compensation is essentially controlled by executive fiat. Get more education!  In the U.S. that means literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that becomes payable the day you graduate.  The substantial pay rise you may have qualified for by higher education simply becomes interest on loans paid to the One Percent. I got rich, and so can you!  Not when one's wealth is inherited, and maintained by gaming financial systems that few others can participate in.  We contribute the most to the economy through our wealth!  Our local newspaper examined local businesses that received state aid to maintain payroll and discovered a substantial number of the recipient companies had no employees; their sole proprietors received "payroll assistance" simply to maintain their standard of living.  Yet individual citizens received a mere one-time pittance to sustain them.

Here in Australia we have the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS). If you pay for your degree up front then you get a discount. Otherwise you have to pay it back by means of a HECS levy on top of the tax taken out of your pay. However you don't start to pay the levy until your salary reaches a certain level. So if you can't get a decent job out of university you don't have to start to pay the government back.

[Peter B]

When his Indian removal policy was ruled against by the Supreme Court, his response was to ask if the Supreme Court had an army.  He did, and his policy ruled.  Small wonder he's Fearless Leader's favourite.

Spoken like an ex-general.  Except that unlike our Dear Leader, Mr Jackson managed to serve with distinction in the military.

Speaking of the military, something else that occurred to me with hollowing out the USA's middle class - this is the class that the technocrats and senior generals come from.

I get the impression the wealth in the USA aren't interested in serving in the military. On top of that, people who inherit wealth don't have to be particularly clever.

So if the American middle class is gutted, where are the people going to come from who will drive new American technology and lead its armies?

Wealth alone won't save the USA. History has a few examples of wealthy states which were conquered or which were in some way massively transformed interally, and others which came mighty close to either of these situations.

- To face Alexander's invasion, King Darius of Persia assembled what I suspect was the second largest Greek force in history, meaning he probably bought up every available Greek mercenary. Even so, after Persia's conquest, the Macedonian army uncovered eye-wateringly large amounts of money in Persian treasuries.

 - At the end of the 2nd century BC the Roman Republic was already the strongest state west of China. Yet a series of defeats at the hands of German barbarians left the republic with effectively no manpower from which to build a new army. This led to military reforms which helped drive the wars which caused the transition of Republic to Empire.

- When Ptolemaic Egypt was conquered by the Romans, its treasury was still large enough to allow Octavian to pay off something in the region of 150,000 soldiers and buy land at fair prices for them to settle on.

- The French Revolution was driven in part by a reluctance of the French nobility to give up financial privileges or even simply pay its bills, which had impoverished an otherwise active and educated French middle class.

- The Iranian Revolution in 1979 occurred in an otherwise moderately prosperous country with a strong military...

[gillianren]

This reminds me of when people tried to blame Obama for not taking charge more forcefully on 9/11.

With respect, was that actually a thing? I got the impression it was a satire.

It's not a common belief, but there are people who sincerely believe it.  They've gotten mixed up enough to think dumb things like that, because they can't admit that someone from their own party was in ostensible control during a bad situation.

[JayUtah]

Do you think this sort of thinking occurs in the USA too? Or is it simply that the USAnian view of capitalism is inherently predatory?

I think there is constant tension between the notion of winning (which implies the requirement of a designated loser) and the notion that all the average American wants is his slice of the pie.  (That this is a common phrase in colloquial American discourse should validate that the Latin American model has at least some traction.)

American capitalism is inherently predatory -- to a fault.  But the spectrum of thought across all strata of American economic thought includes the notion that one can achieve the American Dream without someone else being deprived of it.

Also, would you care to comment on how this seemingly win-at-all-costs attitude meshes with well-known American courtesy and hospitality?

In my experience the latter is endangered, if not outright extinct, at least in terms of how many Americans deal with strangers on a daily basis.  I guess the kids today are talking about the Karen factor -- the stereotype of the farcically entitled, rude individualist.  I think we recognize that as a straw woman, but in fact that sentiment is growing.  "I got mine, and you're on your own" seems to be taking hold.

Interestingly, this has started happening in Australia in the last few months. The latest case was just last week, when three senior figures at mining giant Rio Tinto had to fall on their swords after the company was found to have destroyed an indigenous site of tremendous cultural value.

If you scroll back past my walls of screed to an aerial illustration of the valley my city sits in, Rio Tinto owns pretty much the entire left third of the picture.  With the exception of a Northrop-Grumman facility that makes rocket fuel.  Rio Tinto can do pretty much whatever wants in my state.

The operation is a large, open-pit copper mine at the south end of the mountain range, and the various refining operations that occur as the ore is conveyed northward.  It ends at a giant smelter just a stone's throw from one of the theaters I work at (the one depicted in The Stand).  It requires a constant flow of train cars full of petroleum to keep it fired.  As a result, my city often has some of the worst air quality in the world.  But it's always chalked up to automotive exhaust.  We never talk about the big giant smokestack right there in plain sight.

With respect, was that actually a thing? I got the impression it was a satire.

No, it actually happened.  But it being such a jaw-dropping occurrence, it got far more media attention than it deserved.

And yet there seem to be many more opportunities to get involved in politics in the USA, especially at the local level, than just about anywhere in the world.

The last four years have seen an explosion of political activism in the U.S., for obvious reasons.  But the why is nebulous.  "It's important that these leaders get elected because their policies are presently needed," contrasts with, "We don't want the 'libtards' to win."  And yes, "We don't want the fascists to win," rhetoric happens on the other side too.

[JayUtah]

With respect I wouldn't automatically reject someone with those sorts of qualifications.

Nor I.  I don't disdain well-educated leaders in general.  Quite the opposite.  The candidate I'm backing now for Utah governor is a highly respected professor at the law school.  My spouse spoke very highly of his knowledge and teaching skill.  I think he would make an excellent governor.

However, I was referred specific U.K. phenomenon where Eton seems to be the de facto school to attend if you envision a career in politics.  There's supposed to be some -- as we call it in America -- "good ol' boy" network happening.  That's really all I know.  I read somewhere about the Eton effect and filed it away as a curious fact.

Again President Harry S Truman comes to mind.  Notoriously plain-spoken, as we was from the American midwest were such qualities are admired.  Not especially well educated.  But he was a voracious autodidact.  He read almost constantly during his Presidency: books, newspapers, commissioned reports.  Nobody could really ever accuse Truman of being uninformed or unsophisticated.  And so he played the apparent Johnson strategy to great effect.  He used his plainspoken ways to lure you off your guard, then he had you.  Because in the end he probably knew more than you did about whatever you were disagreeing with him about.

To be fair I don't see this as a show-stopper. It would presumably be fairly easy to suggest that the nation's circumstances have changed from all those decades ago, and what would have been possible back then isn't possible now.

That's a perfectly reasonable proposal.  But without the facts to test whether that is the case, or whether that was the legislative intent, it appears on its face as a sort of hypocrisy or ingratitude.  We'd have to dig deeper to see why that decision was made.

The immigration picture in the United States from our southern border has changed dramatically in the past 10 years.  A wholly different sort of person is trying to enter the U.S., and the enforcement posture under the Republican Party is still that it's a bunch of rapists and drug dealers.  We used to complain that it was just Mexico exporting its unemployment problem to the U.S., but in fact -- as we've seen -- there is a gray market for exactly the sort of labor that's part of that picture.  But I digress; it's perfectly reasonable to suspect that times have changed, as they do.

[raven]

I've only seeing a couple sources on this, so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently Mr. Trump claimed he would sign an executive order preventing Biden from being elected? 
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/20/trump-threatens-to-issue-executive-order-preventing-biden-from-being-elected-president/#30155f9976f6

[JayUtah]

Normally I would write that off as campaign rhetoric, or a joking reference.  But as President Trump seems to have no correct idea what authority he has, we have to consider he might be serious.

[raven]

Normally I would write that off as campaign rhetoric, or a joking reference.  But as President Trump seems to have no correct idea what authority he has, we have to consider he might be serious.

Especially since he likes to use 'jokes' as a way to backtrack if outrage crops up, testing the waters, from what I've seen.

[JayUtah]

Indeed.  "Look at how those panicky liberals reacted to my obvious joke. You can't trust their judgment."  Except that he ran on a platform of unconventional politics and maverick governance.  That primes the audience to expect that inconceivable proposals should be taken seriously.  If he says he's going to abolish the postal service, you are expected to believe that's what he intends.

[raven]

Well, he did say it. With a 'maybe', but see above. This is not something the president of a democracy should joke about, even if so.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4907992/user-clip-trump-sign-executive-order-preventing-biden-presidency

[JayUtah]

We say that, and we mean it.  Ronald Reagan's hot-mike take on bombing the Soviet Union just came to mind.  Except he didn't realize he was being heard and recorded.  Some presidents of some democracies can make some kinds of jokes.  But if Donald Trump has specifically set up a situation where he can equivocate at will and see how it plays out, that's not something the President of the world's most powerful (maybe) democracy should do.

[Jason Thompson]

Unfortunately Johnson comes from that long line of privately educated individuals who think that a good basis in classics and Latin serves to make him an intellectual and an effective leader. He does at least have the common sense to realise that following science is a good idea during a pandemic. Unfortunately he doesn't know which science to follow and his cabinet demonstrate often they do not actually understand how science works. One minister complained recently that advice kept changing when it was supposed to be following the science, because how can the science keep changing. Scientist collectively across the nation facepalmed at that point...

With respect I wouldn't automatically reject someone with those sorts of qualifications.

Nor would I, but that wasn't my point. It's not that there is anything wrong with those qualifications, it's the notion that knowing the 'classics' is somehow automatically a superior education than any kind of practical subject or life experience, and that such educated people are morally and intellectually better suited to leadership and authority. It's cobblers.

Having said that, I've read of Johnson being described as a clever man who pretends he's an idiot, while Trump is an idiot pretending he's a clever man. I've also read an article (can't find it online) about Johnson by a journalist who described Johnson being invited to speak on a particular topic at some expensive dinner, turning up late, with no notes, and bumbling into an impromptu speech complete off-topic, yet somehow holding the audience spellbound. The journalist then described attending another dinner months later at which Johnson was invited to speak on some other topic. He turned up late, with no notes, and bumbled into an impromptu speech which happened to be identical to the one he'd given before, and again somehow held the audience spellbound. He seems to be incredibly charismatic, but in the game of Illuminati I'm sure he'd be the manifestation of the Discordian Society...

Ironic, because his performance as PM has been anything but charismatic and coherent. He gives the impression of being well out of his depth.

The levels of corruption and self-interest are off the scale

I can't for the life of me figure out how we have a cabinet in which children of immigrants are championing a new immigration system they freely admit would have blocked their own parents from entering the country had it existed back then.

To be fair I don't see this as a show-stopper. It would presumably be fairly easy to suggest that the nation's circumstances have changed from all those decades ago, and what would have been possible back then isn't possible now.
[/quote]

[gillianren]

In my experience the latter is endangered, if not outright extinct, at least in terms of how many Americans deal with strangers on a daily basis.  I guess the kids today are talking about the Karen factor -- the stereotype of the farcically entitled, rude individualist.  I think we recognize that as a straw woman, but in fact that sentiment is growing.  "I got mine, and you're on your own" seems to be taking hold.

I personally tend to think the idea of "Karen" is in part intended to make a lot of gatekeeping perceived as women's fault.  I do not deny that there are a lot of middle-to-upper-class white women who have bought into the notion that their problems are the only ones that matter, but I suspect that there are a lot more men doing the same sort of thing and that they don't get called out on it as much because a lot of women are afraid of calling out men for that behaviour.  Also, a lot of men with that attitude have the power to change things rather more directly than making life hard for Target employees or calling the cops on black people for existing.