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Donald Trump and the Erosion of American Greatness from Spiegaal
From: "Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>
Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2017 15:10:11 -0500
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From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com> Date: November 7, 2017 at 2:45:08 PM EST To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Donald Trump and the Erosion of American Greatness Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com [Note: This item comes from friend Shannon McElyea. DLH] Donald Trump and the Erosion of American Greatness Some say Donald Trump's presidency does not present an existential threat to the American Republic. But after a year of MAGA, it has become clear that a disaster is unfolding whose consequences for humanity and decency will be substantial. By Roger Cohen Nov 6 2017 <http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/roger-cohen-on-trump-and-the-erosion-of-american-greatness-a-1176642.html> Ten months into the Trump presidency, the world has not gone over a cliff. Nuclear brinkmanship with North Korea has not produced Armageddon. That this must be considered an achievement is testimony to how alarming Donald Trump's erratic belligerence has been. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has concluded that Europeans must now take "our destiny into our own hands." Dismay is widespread. The post-war order, stripped of its American point of reference, is frayed to the breaking point. This is no surprise. Trump's election, like Britain's perverse flight from the European Union, reflected a blow-up-the-system mood. The tens of millions of Americans who elected Trump had few illusions about his irascibility but were ready to roll the dice in the name of disruption at any cost. The president, who continues to act principally as the rabble-rousing leader of a mass movement, is the ultimate provocateur. He jolts the facile assumptions of a globalized liberal elite. Rising inequality and rampant impunity for the powerful certainly demanded such a jolt. But the question remains: How dangerous is Trump to the world and the American Republic? One school of thought argues: Not very. For all the presidential mouthing and angry ALL-CAPS dawn tweeting, there's no sign of the wall on the Mexican border; and NATO is no longer "obsolete" (at least some days of the week); and the "One China" policy has not been scrapped; and the Iran nuclear agreement endures for now, despite Trump's outrageous refusal to recertify it; and the United States embassy is still in Tel Aviv; and the North American Free Trade Agreement hangs on. Even Trump's decision to quit the Paris climate accord has not yet been made effective. So perhaps Defense Secretary James Mattis and H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser, have ring-fenced Trump's recklessness. Perhaps they have neutralized his ahistorical ignorance. Trump's "America First" may be a slogan of impeccable fascist pedigree, but it will not upend the world. I wish I could believe this, but I am dubious. A disaster is unfolding whose consequences for humanity and decency will be substantial. America's word, which has constituted the undergirding of global security for more than seven decades, is a fast-devaluing currency. Trump is likely to become more capricious in the coming months. The investigation by Robert Mueller into possible collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump presidential campaign has already led to the indictment of the president's campaign manager, Paul Manafort. War was ever a great distraction from domestic difficulty. Stepping into the Void Already, Russian president Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping of China are stepping into the void. This is inevitable. The message from the Trump White House is one of withdrawal - from global responsibility above all, be it for the environment, European stability or the fate of the Middle East. If the Iran nuclear deal is working but Trump chooses to trash it because the Islamic Republic did not become a benign power overnight - the deal was about centrifuges not Iranian support for Bashar al-Assad's butchery in Syria - then why on earth should any other nation conclude a treaty with bait-and-switch America? The most terrifying thing to me about the insults hurled in recent weeks between Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Un, was that it was impossible to distinguish between them. The American president had descended to the level of a tantrum-prone totalitarian despot. [snip] Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp
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- Donald Trump and the Erosion of American Greatness from Spiegaal Dave Farber (Nov 07)