The end of an empire, messy at best

Jonathan Last observes as the economy sinks that — the protestations of a lot of Wall Street types notwithstanding —– one thing you can never say is that you hadn’t been told:

We cannot overstate what has just happened. It took just 71 days for Donald Trump to wreck the American economy, mortally wound NATO, and destroy the American-led world order.

He did this with the enthusiastic support of the entire Republican party and conservative movement.

He did it with the support of a plurality of American voters.

He did not hide his intentions. He campaigned on them. He made them the central thrust of his election. He told Americans that he would betray our allies and give up our leadership position in the world.

There are only three possible explanations as to why Americans voted for this man:

1. they wanted what he promised;
2. they didn’t believe what he promised; or
3. they didn’t understand what he promised.

Pick whichever rationale you want, because it doesn’t matter. Whatever the reason was, it exposed half of the electorate—the 77 million people who voted for Trump—as either fundamentally unserious, decadent, or weak.

And no empire can survive the degeneration of its people.

Yes, sure, you can say that the national murder-suicide pact he announced on Wednesday was even worse than what he was talking about, but 1)the broad strokes were there, and 2)chaos and incompetence was also a clear part of the package you were buying.

Last also points out another illustration of the administration’s inability to grasp the implications of its own actions, in part because they don’t seem to understand that powerful sovereign nations are not in the same position as mom-and-pop contractors in Atlantic City:

On the day that Trump’s tariffs collapsed America’s position in the world, Secretary of State Marco Rubio went to Brussels to demand that NATO allies increase defense spending to 5 percent of their budgets.

But here is how utterly stupid and unserious our government is:

Europe is going to rearm. And they are going to do so by building up their internal defense industries so that they do not have to rely on America, which is in the process of threatening military action against a NATO member.

And the American response to this has been to cry foul…

…Our government thinks it can simultaneously:

• demand that Europe re-arm;
• threaten our European allies with territorial annexation; and
• demand that Europe buy American weapons.

We have a deeply stupid government—from our economically illiterate president to our craven and foolish secretary of state, from the freelancing billionaire dilettante who is gutting American soft power to the vaccine-denying health secretary who is firing as much talent as he can. From the senior economics advisor who thinks comic books are good investments, to the senators who voted to confirm this cabinet of hacks, to the representatives who stumble over themselves justifying each new inane MAGA pronouncement.

But also, we have the government we deserve.

Little Marco believing that the United States can maintain all of the benefits of the former system of international trade while belligerently and irrationally blowing it up — heavy, heavy shades of Brexit — exemplifies what Trump 2.0 is. (Remember when Rubio was one of the apparently endless parade of sub-mediocrities from Florida the national press was convinced was some kind of political supertalent?) It was what Trump promised. And he was the second Republican candidate to win a plurality since 1988. We’re adrift in the land of the brave and the home of the free.