It is important that we understand completely the abject failure of the Republican Party. The people who wrote the Constitution knew that a person like Trump was a real possibility–their experience with King George made them acutely aware of the danger of consolidating power in the hands of one person. To prevent this from happening they employed the idea of checks and balances to prevent such concentrations. Their logic was straightforward: since the lust for power could not be eliminated, they decided to distribute power in three branches of government and assumed that the lust for power in these three branches would be counterbalanced.
The system is not infallible, but it worked for most of the country’s history, the most recent example being the proceedings against President Nixon in 1973. Members of Congress protected the prerogatives of Congress and the Courts held that the President’s power was not unlimited. We are now witnessing the complete collapse of the willingness of the Congress to curtail Trump’s actions, such as the attacks against USAID which is an office created through Congressional action. Rather than telling Trump that he should seeks a law to reorganize USAID, the Republicans in Congress are simply abdicating their sworn duty. The sad fact is that the Republican Party now loves power more than it loves the Constitution or the Republic.
This reality is profoundly unsettling and augurs ill for the future of the country. I am convinced that there will be a backlash against Trump’s actions eventually, but much damage has already been done to our faith in the integrity of our political institutions. The decline in respect for the Supreme Court is just one example of something that will be difficult to restore.
Moreover, the previous Congress, the 118th, was the least productive in recent history: “The 118th Congress is on track to being one of the least functional sessions ever, with only 34 bills passed since January of last year, the lowest number of bills passed in the first year of a congressional session since the Great Depression, according to congressional records.” In place of legislation, the Republicans in Congress are content with a flurry of Executive Orders that clearly infringe upon the duties of Congress.
The Republican Party should be well advised to pay attention to a revised aphorism: Hell hath no fury greater than a people betrayed by their Savior.
President Trump and his Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, both claimed that President Trump had “identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas”. I was struck by this curious claim since the US has not been sending money to Hamas and decided to explore whether the claim was true.
It turns out that the US had sent $102 million to the International Medical Corps which had received $68 million to set up two field hospitals in the Gaza Strip. When queried, the organization responded that “No US government funding was used to procure or distribute condoms”. The organization described its role in Gaza as follows:
“Since January 2024, the statement said, the organization “has provided healthcare to more than 383,000 civilians who had no other access to services or treatment, including performing about 11,000 surgeries, with one-third of those categorized as major or moderate procedures. We have assisted in the delivery of some 5,000 babies, about 20% of them via cesarean section. In addition, International Medical Corps has screened 111,000 people for malnutrition, treated 2,767 for acute malnutrition, distributed micronutrient supplements to 36,000 people, and more.” Needless to say, all such activities in Gaza will no longer be funded by the US.”
“As the Guardian reported on Tuesday, a comprehensive report issued in September by the US Agency for International Development (USAid), not a penny of the $60.8m in contraceptive and condom shipments funded by the US in the past year went to Gaza. In fact, the accounting shows, there were no condoms sent to any part of the Middle East, and just one small shipment, $45,680 in oral and injectable contraceptives, was sent to the region, all of it distributed to the government of Jordan.”
Subsequent posts on X indicated that the money was in fact sent to Gaza to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. But the Gaza referenced in that $83 million grant was not the Gaza Strip, but rather a province in Mozambique named Gaza which was developed by the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation. The province has a high incidence of AIDS, so it makes sense to send concoms there. There is also a town called Gaza in Iowa–perhaps they received the condoms (one should check out Gaza, Iowa on Google maps–it looks like a lonely place).
Trump and Leavitt told a falsehood. I spent two hours trying to track down whether the assertion was true and used the reports from others who did the same. It was wasted time because there are now millions of Americans who believe that the US sent $50 million of condoms to a terrorist organization. But it was not really wasted because I wrote this post and some Americans now know that Trump lied.
““It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” ― Joseph Heller,Catch-22
“Over the decades since the Six Day war in 1967, when Israeli forces first captured the Gaza Strip, which had been under Egyptian military rule, Israeli officials and commentators have periodically pushed the notion that Palestinians in Gaza could be resettled in Egypt.
“Most recently that notion was floated in a leaked paper by Israel’s intelligence ministry – which prepares studies and policy papers rather than representing the intelligence agencies – a few weeks into the war in Gaza.
“That ‘concept’ paper recommended that Israel ‘evacuate the civilian population to Sinai’ then create ‘a sterile zone of several kilometres … within Egypt’ that would prevent return.”
The idea is profoundly offensive and clearly violates the Geneva Convention prohibition against ethnic cleansing. It is also something that the Palesstinians would reject, even though mush of the Strip has been completely decimated. It is extraordinary to view the numbers of people who have taken advantage of the cease-fire to move back into northern Gaza–even though living there will be dangerous, difficult, and uncomfortable. The photograph of the Palestinians moving back is a powerful statement on the Palestinian determination to not repeat the tragedy of the nakbaof 1948.
Both Egypt and Jordan have flatly refused to accept refugees from Gaza. Jordan already has several million Palestinian refugees and Egypt fears that its territory will be compromised by the refugees, who would likely continue to attempt moving back to Gaza. The Washington Post reports:
“Reaction from the Middle East was quick — and sharply negative. Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said that Jordan’s opposition to displacement of Palestinians was ‘firm and will not change.’ The Egyptian Embassy on Sunday reposted a 2023 comment by its ambassador, Motaz Zahran, saying that ‘Egypt cannot be part of any solution involving the transfer of Palestinians into Sinai.’”
“Germany on Monday rejected US President Donald Trump’s proposal to move Palestinians from Gaza to nearby countries – Egypt and Jordan.
“Speaking at a press briefing in Berlin, Foreign Ministry spokesman Christian Wagner said that Germany maintains its commitment to the international consensus regarding Gaza’s status.
“’There is a common position shared by the EU, our Arab partners and the United Nations, which is very clear: The Palestinian population cannot be expelled from Gaza, and Gaza must not be permanently occupied or resettled by Israel,’ he said.
“Wagner added that the G7 group of the world’s leading economies, which includes the US, has so far consistently supported this position in multiple joint statements.
“’Expulsions from Gaza, and establishing new settlements here is not possible. This is also something that we made very clear during the G7 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Tokyo in 2023. In this respect, I think our position is more than clear,’ he said.”
If Trump and Netanyahu succeed in “cleaning out” Gaza, the possibilities for a two-state solution are completely eliminated. John Lyons of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation makes that argument:
“Trump’s move has been seen here in Israel as essentially saying that these and other armed and violent settlers can commit any atrocities against Palestinians with impunity and without interference from the US. Rarely are Jewish settlers brought to justice by Israel for acts of violence against Palestinians.
“Trump’s early appointments are also a strong indication that a Palestinian state is very much an endangered species.
“He has chosen former Arkansas governor and Fox News host Mike Huckabee as new US Ambassador to Israel. According to The Times of Israel, Huckabee has said that Israel’s claim to the West Bank is “stronger than American ties to Manhattan” and he even laid bricks in 2018 as ground was broken on a new housing complex in the settlement of Efrat.
“The website reported that Huckabee had said that “of course” annexation of the West Bank was a possibility during Trump’s second term.”
Israel is the only country today that occupies territory with such a large population. There is no justification for its war of conquest.
Today honors Dr. Martin Luther King for his role in protecting the civil rights of every American. His genius was in understanding his audience. When he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, DC in August 1963, he knew that his primary audience was white Americans and his objective in the speech was to make civil rights palatable to those who refused to grant equal rights to black Americans.
The speech came in two parts. The first was written out and he followed the script, laying out how the idea of equal rights was the bedrock of the Constitution even though the actual text of the Constitution institutionalized slavery. It is a careful and patient outline of how the black population has been denied civil rights by segregation and Jim Crow laws. This part of the speech was to make universal civil rights consistent with the values and ideals of the United States. Because it was written out, the first part of the speech relied upon logic and evidence and suffered from the typical flaws of a speech that was read and not delivered.
The second part was not written out but was a speech that he had often given to black Americans and it begins about 10 minutes in the video below. This part of the speech demonstrated the power of the spoken word and the full meaning of rhetoric. Mahalia Jackson, a gospel singer and close associate of King, encouraged him to leave off the logic and to rely upon the emotions that flow from a sense of liberation. She gave King the license to treat white America to the true feelings of black Americans:
“The story that has been told since that day has Mahalia Jackson intervening at a critical junction when she decided King’s speech needed a course-correction. Recalling a theme she had heard him use in earlier speeches, Jackson said out loud to Martin Luther King Jr., from behind the podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” And at that moment, as can be seen in films of the speech, Dr. King leaves his prepared notes behind to improvise the entire next section of his speech—the historic section that famously begins “And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream….”
The result was one of the most powerful speeches in American history and a genuine turning point in the fight for civil rights. And the speech led to the Civil Rights Act of 1965 which laid the foundation for a more substantive understanding of what rights are. Those rights have since been extended to the rights of women and the gay community. More work needs to be done enhancing the rights of transgender individuals, disabled people, immigrants, and refugees. But King made these developments possible, and Americans should be grateful to King, and all those who supported him, for leading the way.
President Biden, in his final address to the nation as President, warned citizens against the danger of living in an oligarchy: “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.” He was not the first President to warn of this danger. John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, wrote the following:
“9 July 1813
“Your “” [aristocrats] are the most difficult Animals to manage, of anything in the whole Theory and practice of Government. They will not suffer themselves to be governed. They not only exert all their own Subtilty Industry and courage, but they employ the Commonalty, to knock to pieces every Plan and Model that the most honest Architects in Legislation can invent to keep them within bounds. Both Patricians and Plebeians are as furious as the Workmen in England to demolish labour-saving Machinery.
“But who are these ““? Who shall judge? Who shall select these choice Spirits from the rest of the Congregation? Themselves? We must first find out and determine who themselves are. Shall the congregation choose? Ask Xenophon. Perhaps hereafter I may quote you Greek. Too much in a hurry at present, english must suffice. Xenophon says that the ecclesia, always chooses the worst Men they can find, because none others will do their dirty work. This wicked Motive is worse than Birth or Wealth. Here I want to quote Greek again. But the day before I received your Letter of June 27. I gave the Book to George Washington Adams going to the Accadamy at Hingham. The Title is a Collection of Moral Sentences from all the most Ancien[t] Greek Poets. In one of the oldest of them I read in greek that I cannot repeat, a couplet the Sense of which was
“‘Nobility in Men is worth as much as it is in Horses Asses or Rams: but the meanest blooded Puppy, in the World, if he gets a little money, is as good a man as the best of them.’ Yet Birth and Wealth together have prevailed over Virtue and Talents in all ages. The Many, will acknowledge no other ““. Your Experience of This Truth, will not much differ from that of your old Friend.”
Most Americans are unfamiliar with the word “oligarchy” since the Republic has tried very hard since its inception to convey the sense of equality best expressed in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. It would be years before any American President emphasized the idea of equality over that of freedom. Lincoln did so in his second Inaugural Address. For the first time, an American President declared that slavery was incompatible with the values of the American people, notwithstanding the inclusion of slavery in the Constitution.
An oligarchy is a political system in which the wealthy direct the machinery of government to protect and enhance their interests as opposed to the interests of the citizenry. Brooke Harrington, a Sociology Professor at Dartmouth College wrote this for the Washington Post at the beginning of Trump’s first term:
“There are no laws against a president and his super-wealthy Cabinet using their power to benefit their own class. There is nothing that compels them to look beyond their privilege to address the needs of the citizenry.
“The problem with these prospective leaders is not their money. It’s that they — like Trump — seem more interested in what their country can do for them than in what they can do for their country.”
The concentration of wealth in the second Trump administration is staggering. The following table gives an idea of how concentrated wealth has become in recent years. Many of the people listed, like Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, have actively solicited Trump on various matters and represent business interests that clearly constitute conflicts of interest with a number of important policy issues like freedom of speech in a digital world.
Source: Bloomberg, “Bloomberg Billionaires Index”, 18 January 2025, accessed at: Bloomberg Billionaires Index, on 19 January 2025
Many of these people have contributed a great deal of money to Trump’s inauguration and several of them have been quite visible in the upcoming Trump Administration. We also have a hard time realizing exactly what these numbers represent: a billion of anything is far removed from anything we come into daily contact. One way to comprehend these numbers is to translate them into more accessible terms:
If someone made one million dollars a year, they would make about $480.77 per hour and $3,846.15 per day.
On the other hand, making a billion dollars per year would mean about $480,769 per hour and $3,846,153.85 per day.
These 20 individuals possess more wealth than most countries in the world. Indeed, there are only 7 countries with GDPs larger than $3 trillion:
There are 186 countries in the world with GDPs less than $3 trillion. The combined population of these countries comprises 56% of the global population. But 20 people have more wealth than each of the 186 countries.
Concentrations of wealth lead inevitably to a distorted political system. Adam Smith was well aware of the dangers of concentrated wealth to the public interest:
“Not only the prejudices of the publick, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it. Were the officers of the army to oppose with the same zeal and unanimity any reduction in the number of forces, with which master manufacturers set themselves against every law that is likely to increase the number of their rivals in the home market; were the former to animate their soldiers, in the same manner as the latter enflame their workmen, to attack with violence and outrage the proposers of any such regulation; to attempt to reduce the army would be as dangerous as it has now become to attempt to diminish in any respect the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us. This monopoly has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them, that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature. The member of parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance. If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest publick services can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists.”
This pattern was present as the Roman Republic began its descent into dictatorship. It was also evident in 13th Century Venice and in late-19th Century America. It is happening again, not only in the US, but in India, Russia, China, the low-population oil producers such as Kuwait, and Brazil. It is difficult to see how democracy can persist under these conditions. Active steps must be taken to create a more just distribution of wealth globally.
Last June, the US house of Representatives banned the State Department from using death statistics published by the Gaza Ministry of Health. The amendment was supported by most Republicans and many Democrats but the Senate has yet to pass on the legislation. The rationale for the amendment was best expressed by David Adesnik, Senior Fellow and Director of Research at the conservative think-tank, Fund for Defense of Democracies: “It’s a complete abdication of responsibility for the Biden administration to say it trusts the Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers because the UN considers them trustworthy. We’ve seen that the UN puts blind faith in the ministry’s numbers even when they’re completely implausible. As a result of trusting numbers from a Hamas-controlled entity, the Biden administration has become more focused on the restraints it can put on Israeli forces than how it can help accelerate Hamas’s defeat.” Israel has also criticized the Ministry’s statistics. The Anti-Defamation League published this analysis of the Gaza Minitstry of Health:
“ADL calls on all news organizations to properly caveat data and information cited from the Gaza Health Ministry with clear mention that it is controlled by Hamas and that it has shared false and misleading information in the past. Journalists and news organizations must acknowledge when their sources may be unconfirmed or unreliable.”
It turns out that the Gaza Ministry of Health undercounted the casualties (it only counts bodies that are visible, and does not search through destroyed buildings to find bodies that are covered by rubble). The amendment to legislation was According to the Lancet, one of the world’s premier medical journals, the death toll in the war against Gaza has been significantly undercounted. The study was limited to the period 7 October 2023 to 30 June 2024 so it does not include any reported deaths since July. The Lancet study came to this conclusion: “We estimated 64 260 deaths…due to traumatic injury during the study period, suggesting the Palestinian MoH under-reported mortality by 41%.” The Gaza Ministry of Health currently tallies about 47,000 deaths. If the undercounting of 41% holds from the period of 1 July 2025-11 January 2025, then a straight extrapolation would suggest a death total of about 67,000.
The Lancet study only looked at deaths attributed to military action. The report states that “our findings underestimate the full impact of the military operation in Gaza, as they do not account for non-trauma-related deaths resulting from health service disruption, food insecurity, and inadequate water and sanitation.” It is extraordinarily difficult to make precise estimates of these deaths (called “indirect” deaths in the literature), but the Watson Institute at Brown University has done a solid study. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has also done a report on the long-term effects of such conditions in Gaza.
It is very clear that we lack knowledge of the actual conditions in the Gaza Strip. But we should be extremely wary of attempts to undermine the credibility of sources by parties which have a vested interest in particular conclusions. It appears as if the Gaza Ministry of Health was, and is, the most reliable source in this dispute.
The Paris Agreement of 2015 set a goal of keeping global temperatures below pre-industrial levels, and determined that the appropriate goal of reaching that objective was to keep global temperature increases below 1° Celsius. The year 2024 saw the first time in human history that that objective was surpassed. The BBC reports:
“The planet has moved a major step closer to warming more than 1.5C, new data shows, despite world leaders vowing a decade ago they would try to avoid this.
“The European Copernicus climate service, one of the main global data providers, said on Friday that 2024 was the first calendar year to pass the symbolic threshold, as well as the world’s hottest on record.
“This does not mean the international 1.5C target has been broken, because that refers to a long-term average over decades, but does bring us nearer to doing so as fossil fuel emissions continue to heat the atmosphere.
“Last week UN chief António Guterres described the recent run of temperature records as climate breakdown'”.
“‘We must exit this road to ruin – and we have no time to lose,’ he said in his New Year message, calling for countries to slash emissions of planet-warming gases in 2025.”
The goal was reached long before the date most climate models predicted. Zeke Hausfather, a climaste scientist, pointed out: “I think it’s safe to say that both 2023 and 2024 temperatures surprised most climate scientists – we didn’t think we’d be seeing a year above 1.5C this early.” The last ten years have been the hottest years on record. The report by Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitor, outlines the significance of these developments in terms that affect human habitation.
It is impossible to connect directly weather events, such as wildfires, droughts, and heavy rains to climate change. But the evidence does suggest that climate change played a key role in the current wildfires in Los Angeles. According to the Yale School of the Environment, the connection is strong:
“As the planet heats up, rainfall is growing more erratic over much of the globe, leading to wide swings between wet and dry conditions. So-called ‘weather whiplash’ is ramping up the risk of wildfire in California, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA.
Last year, Los Angeles saw record rainfall, which fueled the growth of grasses and shrubs, but so far this winter the city has gotten a fraction of its usual rainfall, leaving dense vegetation to dry out. In light of the arid conditions, federal officials warned of ‘significant fire potential’ in the region.
Making matters worse, the region is seeing unusually strong Santa Ana winds, which bring hot, dry air from the mountains out to sea during the winter months. There is little evidence that warming has made the winds more potent, Swain said, but with climate change, California’s dry season is extending into the early winter, when the Santa Ana winds typically take shape. This, he said, ‘is the key climate change connection to Southern California wildfires.’”
And yet, President-Elect Trump blames the wildfires in LA on lack of forest management, water management, and disaster preparation. According to the New York Times: “In his post on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said: “I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!” I am not an expert on wildfires, and I suspect that there is probably a lot Los Angeles could have done to mitigate some of the destruction. The underlying conditions–months without rain and hurricane force winds–would probably have overwhelmed any response.
More importantly, perhaps it is possible to face the underlying conditions with more stored water, more firefighters, and airplanes capable of accurately dropping fire retardant in hurricane force winds. And maybe it is possible to control floods such as those caused by Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina. Who is going to pay for all these preventive and remedial efforts? This question is critical since we will have to pay for climate change in some way (money or lives) at some point (unpreductable).
But Trump is only raising the issue to divert attention from the issue of climate change which he described as a “hoax”. Instead, he wants to “drill, drill, drill”, a policy that would only accelerate climate change. He will likely pull the US out of the Paris Agreement (as he did in 2017) thereby compromising international efforts to control climate change.
Curiously, however, Trump apparantly does believe that climate change is real. His interest in purchasing Greenland stems from his belief that Greenland is going to be crucial as climate change creates a reliable northern passage for container ships. Moreover, Greenland is reputed to be a storehouse for minerals essential to a green revolution. The Economist reports: “….Greenland’s resource wealth is immense. It has known reserves of 43 of the 50 minerals deemed ‘critical’ by America’s government, including probably the largest deposits of rare earths outside China. These are crucial to military kit and green-energy equipment.”
If Greenland remains frozen, it would remain irrelevant to Trump’s aspirations. Unfortunately, climate change does not give us the ability to choose which outcomes we prefer.
President-Elect Trump’s press conference yesterday was an excursion into the mind of a seriously deranged individual. National Public Radio reports in an interview with Laura Barron-Lopez of NPR:
“And in it, the president-elect talked about using force to gain control over countries and territories. He raised the possibility of using military force to secure Greenland and the Panama Canal. He also talked about using economic control to pressure Canada to acquire it.
“And he said that — as you played there, Geoff, renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. And he also said that — quote — “all hell will break out” if Hamas doesn’t release hostages by the time he takes office.
“In addition to that, he said that he wants to use tariffs at a high level against Denmark to try to pressure it to cede control of Greenland to the United States. And on that idea of the annexation of Canada, Geoff, outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that — just outright rejected it on X, saying that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that it would happen.”
One never knows whether Trump is actually serious–he has a long history of making outrageous statements and never following through on them. But the mind-set revealed in the press conference is straight out of Nineteenth Century Europe when the balance of power was the operating system of global politics and manifested most dramatically in the carving up of Africa by the colonial powers. The period from 1870 to 1914 is commonly known as “The Scramble for Africa“.
After World War II, the US tried to create a different system, based upon multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, NATO, and various other organizations. The aspirations for this system were quite simple. Instead of the system of power politics characterized by Thucydides as one in which “The strong do as they will, and the weak suffer what they must“, the hope was that international politics could be governed by rules and norms agreed upon by the major powers. That aspiration was never realized, and it seems clear that Trump intends to govern US foreign policy by the maxims of power politics and to return the world to the 1800s.
Trump should read some history. He would find that the US did in fact invade Canada in 1812 and gained nothing from that war (forget the Battle of New Orleans and focus instead on the British burning down the White House). He should also learn that the Gulf of Mexico was named the Gulf of Mexico long before the US was even a state. He also needs a refresher course on what it means to be an ally–if Russia or China would dare to invade Greenland, the NATO treaty would obliged the US to defend the island because Denmark is a member of NATO. THe US does not need to “own” Greenland in order to defend it.
What is deeply troubling is that Trump uses the phrase “national security” to justify his fantasies in such a sloppy manner. He seems to be worried that Chinese companies on each end of the Panama Canal gives China a strategic advantage (conveniently ignoring that China is 6000 miles away from the Panama Canal while the US has easy access to the canal). China would have the same problems defending its troops that Russia had when it tried to place nuclear missiles on Cuba in 1962. When confronted with American military power in the Gulf of Mexico, the Russians had no choice but to capitulate.
Unfortunately, Trump seems to be following the policies of Putin and Netanyahu: grabbing land when it appears to be a task with few immediate downsides. Both Putin and Netanyahu seem oblivious to the long-term costs of being an imperial power: the immense cost and the serious damage to the reputation of their states. Randy Newman wrote a song about the phenomenon which is macabrely funny:
And while we are at changing names, Trump should now start thinking about purging foreign names from American geography. We should call Los Angeles the City of the Angels, Baton Rouge should be called Red Stick, and by all means we should get rid of Native American names like Massachusetts (“Large Hill Place”) and Connecticut (“Long Tidal River”). I am not sure I can survive this stupidity for four years.
President-Elect Trump has nominated a distinctive group of individuals to serve in his Cabinet: With some exceptions, they are all wealthy individuals with little or no government experience but a lot of experience as hedge fund managers. We will have to wait to see how these individuals fare in the confirmation process, but their nominations suggest that Trump believes that such people will manage the economy well. That assumption will likely prove to be very wrong.
We have historical examples of similar decisions. For example, Venice was once a powerful city-state and a dominant force in the global economy in the 13th-15th Centuries. That wealth was based upon international trade and Venice’s ability to link Europe to Asia through the Silk Trade routes.
“This brings us to the great puzzle of Venetian history. During the period 1297–1323, a defining epoch in Venetian history known as the Serrata or “closure,” Venetian politics came under the control of a tightly knit cabal of the richest families. It was, in Norwich’s (1977, p. 181) words, the triumph of the oligarchs. Furthermore, by the early 1330s this political closure had spilled over into an economic closure that excluded poorer families from participation in the most lucrative aspects of international trade. Finally, by 1400 the political and economic closure had created a society characterized by a new emphasis on rank and hierarchy. In short, after 1323 there was a fundamental societal shift away from political openness, economic competition, and social mobility and toward political closure, extreme inequality, and social stratification.”
Ultimately, more dynamic economic centers emerged, such as Portugal, Spain, the Dutch, and Great Britain, finding a way to bypass the Venetian chokehold on the Silk Trade by finding alternative routes to Asia. Venice lost its economic vitality and declined into nothing more than a footnote in the history of the global economy.
The argument is straightforward: rather than continuing to innnovate under the pressures of competition (such as the need to find a sea route to Asia), wealthy individuals tend to use political power to protect their interests through laws. That political power is then used to insulate existing techniques and technologies from externally induced change. Those industries become less efficient over time and economic growth slows as a result.
That same process seems to be in play in the US today. Robert Reich outlines the process in the YouTube video, “Wealth Inequality Explained”:
The composition of Trump’s Cabinet fits into this mold perfectly. In a broader cocntext, the process seems to be affecting many different countries in the world, as globalization produces distorted economic outcomes. Trevor Jackson describes the dynamic in his recent essay on theNew York Review of Books:
“For decades now, the ideology of free-market liberalism has obfuscated the ongoing distributive conflicts of the world, but it has not blunted the material suffering of the people on the losing end. Since the 2008 crisis, the reality of ruthless distributive conflict has become impossible to ignore, but the failure of market liberalism to reconcile political equality and economic inequality has produced a global crisis of legitimacy and a growing constituency amenable to antiliberal figures like Trump, Orbán, Modi, and Bolsonaro.”
The anger against the prevailing patterns of wealth distribution is not only found in political outcomes. The astonishing amount of support for the alleged assassin, Luigi Mangione, reflects the degree of animosity toward the “undeserving” rich. If the Democratic Party needs to make a decision about how to orient its platform for the future, it would be well-advised to concentrate exclusively on the process of redistributing wealth and breaking up the political power of economic interests.
” [aristocrats] are the most difficult Animals to manage, of anything in the whole Theory and practice of Government. They will not suffer themselves to be governed. They not only exert all their own Subtilty Industry and courage, but they employ the Commonalty, to knock to pieces every Plan and Model that the most honest Architects in Legislation can invent to keep them within bounds. Both Patricians and Plebeians are as furious as the Workmen in England to demolish labour-saving Machinery.
a Collection of Moral Sentences from all the most Ancien[t] Greek Poets. In one of the oldest of them I read in greek that I cannot repeat, a couplet the Sense of which was
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