MOB BOSS DEMANDS PROTECTION MONEY… QUELLE SURPRISE.

Breaking news… The Donald made a major foreign policy announcement that he will encourage his good mate Vlad Putin to invade NATO countries who don’t pay him protection money. But sources of journalism today fail to mention that thanks to the passing of the National Defence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, no president may unilaterally withdraw the United States from NATO without a two-thirds majority vote from the Senate approving it. This fact negates the apocalyptic pronouncement.

But such pronouncements don’t come out of nowhere. Yes, Donald Trump could care less about democracy. Yes, he has a history of asking other countries for money. (Just ask foreign diplomats who were expected to stay at Trump hotels in Washington and feed the coffers of the Trump family.) But, in all fairness, Americans as a whole don’t vote in ways that indicate they care that much about what the majority wants. One prime example of this is the proliferation of assault weapons. No matter how many polls show Americans want bans on assault weapons, they don’t elect representatives who work to bring that into effect. If that means school children are killed every week, so be it. People do get the governments they deserve. Words like ‘Freedom’ and ‘Democracy’ have long been code words for the American Dream. Trump voters aren’t stupid. They know the American Dream their parents believed in was and is a myth, but they still like the words, which are worn like idealogical tattoos. They know the blue cities and states don’t want them crashing the prosperity party, so why should they vote to keep the party going? The U.S. infant mortality rate is ranked 50th in the world. That’s not a reflection of hospitals in Beverly Hills. One could argue the federal government doesn’t even care if working class people of the heartland live or die.

Trump has promised to tear down the civil service and rule as a dictator who will reward those who vote for him and punish those who don’t. He does do as he says. He punished blue states very quickly last time around by having his lackeys in Congress change the tax code so that Democrats on the coasts could no longer write-off the full amount of their real estate taxes. It hit people I know personally quite hard, which it was designed to do. Young people can’t afford to step onto the property ladder in L.A., in part because they can’t afford the property taxes. The Trump administration actually attempted to get ahold of voting records after the 2016 election in order to identify exactly who and who did not vote for him. That struck me as a waste of energy in California.

Americans are tired. Many continue to work multiple jobs for little money, while their children watch YouTube videos hosted by preteens making many millions of dollars a year opening toys. They are beyond healing divisions. They’ll take the high-glucose reward of watching liberals undergo mental breakdowns as every insurrectionist is pardoned and freed. I grew up believing in the Pax Americana. It preserved the supremacy of democracies over autocracies. But tired people worried about just surviving and paying the bills don’t give a damn about the Post-WWII world order. And, again, if democracy hasn’t made your life better, why preserve it half a world away? Why, too, punish those who enacted the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, who believed generational revolutions were required to rejuvenate the state, but not punish others for looting shops during the Black Lives Matter protests? In actuality, over 10,000 protestors were arrested for offences during those protests, but that fact doesn’t fit the narrative of the right-wing opinionists who influence the GOP. And I would venture a guess that TJ didn’t believe people should revolt during his own presidency. He certainly didn’t think his slaves should have the right to revolt. ‘People’ meant white, land-owning men, who could be trusted with revolution. Of course, for revolution to be praised, that revolution must succeed. Success is the reason Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries are referred to as ‘Founding Fathers’ and not nuisance ‘traitors’ hanged in 1782. January 6th was not a success for those involved, but if Trump is re-elected, the date may very well be rebranded.

The Founding Fathers supposedly put safeguards in place to prevent the common citizenry making the wrong choice. Congress, as a branch of government equal to the executive, jealously guarded its power, for one. Never mind that Britain had determined the legislative branch should have ultimate say over the executive. If America still wanted their executive to have the power of a king, best to not give that king the legitimacy of an election, I say. But, whereas Europe has spent the last hundred or so years removing powers from the executive, America has gone in the opposite direction. In the 20th Century, legislators figured out that if they transferred more powers to the executive or simply didn’t put up a fuss when the executive branch took liberties with historical norms, then the president would take the blame for bad policies. Today, legislators are merely cheerleaders for the head of their party, whether he is in the White House or waiting in the wings. No better proof of that is the fact that a country of 332 million people cannot seem to rummage up presidential candidates who aren’t doddering, grumpy, old men with memory issues.

Strange for a democracy, Americans have never appeared comfortable with the idea of making voting easier or fairer. General elections are scheduled on a weekday to cause the most amount of stress to people uncomfortable with the idea, or even afraid, of leaving work to perform their civic duty. Early voting has been rolled back and ballot boxes in poorer neighbourhoods removed. Lawyers seek to halt counting the moment ballots indicate a swing away from their client’s party. Gerrymandering acts as a stopgap to ensure that votes from a certain demographic don’t end up having any effect on the outcome. As a North Carolina politician once said, and I paraphrase, we have to let them vote, but we aren’t required to make it easy on them. Why not? The most successful economy of the modern world somehow achieved that status in spite of tens of millions of its citizens ‘cheating’ when they vote? Inconceivably, many states left an interstate online database network that enabled them to confirm a voter’s identity, despite citing concerns with voter fraud. Is it just possible that democracy isn’t the desire of all Americans, as we have been led to believe? Yes, the primary system is broken and supports the selection of the most wacko candidate to stand in the general election. Yes, fighting inequity doesn’t appear to be a priority of traditional candidates. Yet, many would say that the crazies are at least offering revenge as an alternative. But as the Chinese philosopher Confucius opined, “He who seeks revenge digs two graves.”

Democracy aside, an America that steps back from the world and abandons its friends WILL empower its enemies. Those enemies may not say their primary target is America when they attack America’s allies… but it is. That then becomes an issue of sovereignty. This is also a lesson to Europe, who are finally waking up from the dream that client kingdom status provides the best of both worlds. Don’t put your own protection in the hands of a friend, no matter how reliable you think that friend is. The United Kingdom’s Tory Party has shamefully hollowed out one of the world’s great military forces. If the United States won’t entertain a free trade deal with its principle ally, then why should the British government count with 100% certainty on the ‘special relationship’ to guarantee the defence of Britain? That’s just foolish foreign policy. You wouldn’t catch Washington making such a bad judgment call, and they’ve kindly suggested to London that politicians reconsider what it would take for the U.K. to successfully fight a modern war. And, no, the Trident nuclear deterrent is not a substitute for conventional forces. Will the Labour Party reverse Tory decisions? Doubtful.

When I recently bemoaned the domestic state of America, a friend consoled me with the fact that America’s system of government means it is incapable of change. Nothing truly dramatic can happen during a second Trump presidency, despite the election year rise in hyperbole, because the country is eternally stuck in a stalemate. I didn’t really find that comforting. Due to the inability to change, America won’t consider the solution to its epic problem of cultural division: moving to a parliamentary system, in which leaders are removed without ceremony the moment they are deemed a detriment. As for the executive, that individual is a wise, kindly, non-partisan figure without power, who doesn’t punish half the electorate and, so, the electorate doesn’t hate that person in return. Pipe dreams.