Yet another example of memory of convenience. Krugman has forgotten that both Hillary and Obama advocated separating migrant families and having stricter border control.
Hillary Clinton said during a 2014 CNN Town Hall: "We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border - doesn't mean your child gets to stay"
Now she's all for everyone having a clear jump at the fence.
Obama separated migrant families at the same time encouraging migration while ignoring the growing crisis at the border. "How many precious lives must be needlessly lost, women raped, girls forced into sex trafficking or people trapped into the drug trade before the Obama administration stops luring them here with continued grants of amnesty, legal status, work permits, and benefits?" asked Rep. Louie Gohmert. -Daily Mail (2014)
Meanwhile, in 1993 and 1994, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) had some harsh words about immigrants:
"We've got to enforce our borders...The day when American can be the welfare system for Mexico is gone... I think we should enforce our borders..."
Of course, that was then.
10
Military dominance no longer does a great nation make, Professor.
Our Big Stick fallacy was put to rest decades ago with our defeat by small, militarily inferior adversaries in Korea, Vietnam and currently in the Middle East and Africa. (Watch for a reprise in Southeast Asia.)
Our American exceptionalist core values failed the smell test with the shameful SS St. Louis incident in which European refugees were turned away from our shores to face certain extermination under a Nazi regime not too unlike those our president now holds in high esteem.
And once we eventually were dragged kicking and screaming into supporting our allies in WW2, thousands of Japanese-American citizens faced incarceration in our own concentration camps to allay nationalized fear and prejudice.
In short, we have a track record for all that's happening now.
"What has been done is what will be, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun...there is truly nothing new on earth." Ecclesiastes 1:9
22
Pit Black against White for power and profit. Republicans...the Ferengi party.
34
Trump: Make America Great Again!
Trump is a fascist who despises the very idea that has made America great, globalization.
The Nazi fascism came to power in Germany in the 30's as a front against globalization. Trump is an autocrat who wants dictatorial power. He must be stopped.
73
Before the advent of Donald Trump, the peoples of the World saw the USA - the American people - as large hearted people committed to Freedom, Justice & Supportive of the Weak & Needy. Most peoples in distant budding Democracies of the World knew of Abraham Lincoln’s Visionary words ‘Democracy is Govt of the people, by the people for the people’. Most peoples admired Abraham Lincoln & the American people for fighting for the freedom of Negroes. Most people admired the American people for welcoming Oppressed peoples to American shores symbolized by the Statue of Liberty.
Donald Trump has demolished all that admiration & unique respect for the American people. Donald Trump was freely chosen & elected by the American people. Just as the German people freely elected the Fascist Fuhrer Adolf Hitler.
26
Indeed we had an American Empire. We built it by force, by maneuvering the political processes to ensure our puppets in power, and some cases we tried to buy in the name of development and defense aid. That’s why in my travel around the world I found America as object of both envy and hate. However, all empires collapse and it lasts for about two hundred years. They collapse is always from rot within. That’s happening now. Politics of extremism will divide us and escalate our move on the slippery slope. In about about a year and half America has become object of envy, hate and ridicule. Current leadership in the ruling party in Washington known as destroyer of the great America.
19
boo hoo Krugman-3.8% unemployment and wages rising-N Korea at the peace table. Securing the border, tax cuts and Jerusalem recognized as the capitol of Israel. I could go on but the American people recognize in Trump a strong leader who amazingly, is keeping his promises.
I love winning, bigly!
5
Russian professor Aleksandr Dugin, called "Putin's brain" by Foreign Affairs magazine, gets surprisingly little ink in the American press, and we should be much more aware of his ideas because they're central to what we're witnessing now. And the connections between him and Trump are a lot less tenuous than one might imagine.
America's decline is Dugin's goal, and he's not at all vague about it: "The American empire should be destroyed."
Dugin and Putin are determined to unite fascists around the world to create a new empire that's the antithesis of the America that Krugman describes. Putin has enlisted Trump to form a new Axis.
Says Dugin: “I truly believe that the era of nation states is no more. There are far more ethnic groups than nations, and national boundaries therefore will always remain unfair. This is why the time has come again to forge new empires. This could either be one empire, the Western US empire, or multiple ones. This is the question we have to decide and seek answers for."
The "ethnic groups" business is the old racial superiority ideology rearing its ugly head again. Not hard to see why Trump, Sessions, Bannon, Miller, the Mercers and their ilk are on board. And Dugin is a friend of Miller's white supremacist pal Richard Spencer, whose Russian wife is translating Dugin's books into English. Like I said, the connections aren't so tenuous.
Trump's Administration is a fifth column.
+
41
When I read this column, and the comments following it, I can see the danger that this daily frothing up of outrage against Trump is moving the Democratic Party too far to the Left, which will only make Trump's re-election a certainty. We're hearing today about the evil American Empire. Tomorrow we'll hear calls for revolution. This can only solidify the connection that Middle America feels to Trump. He won by the thinnest of margins. But that was before liberals started anointing him Hitler's heir apparent, and celebrating public figures whose obscenity-laced tirades against him contain language that at that one time was used only by an indecent Trump, himself. I hope some good Democratic leader will come along who can take all this fury and channel it into something constructive that can defeat the GOP this fall and in 2020.
26
There is no such thing as "gone too far" for this administration. When your president pillories your closest ally and largest trading partner, and maligns its Prime Minister, while lauding a despot who kills American citizens, caging children should be expected, not excepted.
Adolf Hitler came to power in the Great Depression with promises of returning Germany to its pre-WWI eminence. With nothing to lose, the population went along for the ride, and we all know how that turned out. President Trump doesn't have the same circumstances. The American, and world, economies have been humming along smartly for the last few years. By creating a trade war, he needs to plunge the world into recession. This will give him the ammunition to double down on immigration (the recession being other countries' fault), and perhaps suspend the 2020 elections declaring economic conditions a national emergency. After all, the tariffs are being put in place as a matter of national security, so the next step in the path is a simple one.
There are no more checks and balances. Power and control are the only things that matter in this administration. The only thing left is to give him his crown.
22
America has not been perfect, but we were founded on the concept that we as citizens of this great land had unalienable rights. We did not always live up the promise, and have done some egregious things and have been divided, but not since the Civil War has our country felt so at odds with itself. Trump is a symptom, not a cause, and the causes are many. We do not communicate - lobbing insults on Facebook and Twitter is not communication, and the 24 hour news cycle does not always inform, but creates feelings of anxiety and “aloneness.” Until conservatives and progressives and those in between realize and speak to each other and know that we all share in the benefits of the American experiment, we will continue to be fractured.
6
Sad to think that Trump and his minions are doing this just because of a former black President.
34
Like all human beings and communities, America has a checkered history - genocide of those who 1st settled America (Native Americans), slavery, assaulting women, child labor, and worse around the world. Yet we have also brought the deep human values and goodness that most Americans hold dearly, from our Constitution, saving the world from tyranny in WW2, innovations that make life better for billions. For the last 40+ years a dark force from the far right secretly crept in to our politics and nation, their goal to make America sick, greedy and devoid of our goodness, loving, compassionate human values.
They now own the Republican party and our government. trump is simply the pimple that needed to be popped to let in the sunlight of disinfectant on the abhorrent values held by some extremely wealthy and greedy elite (trump, Koch Bros., R. Mercer, S. Adelson, etc), by the white supremacists, Nazis and others of the most corrosive of leeches feeding off our nation's general goodness. So, trump, pruitt, mnuchin, kelly, sessions, Fox Lies, the congressional Repubs are all complicit and trump has done us a great favor by exposing for all to see what he and these people truly stand for.
No more excuses, America - the children torn from parents and caged like animals is picture perfect - this is what trump & co stand for. Now it's our turn. Do not forget what is at stake here. Lesson learned? Throw trump and Repugs out with the garbage. November 2018 is approaching.
23
Maybe the fall from "American exceptionalism" and being the self-awarded "world's leading democracy" isn't that shocking. Maybe a lot of it was just hot air.
7
Trump is getting all of the poisons in the mud, to hatch out.
3
I recall that by the Vietnam war's middle years(in 66-67), with thousands of US draftees dead , mauled and killed every day to "prevent communism", we weren't an empire. Nor ever since. The British, Germans and French, almost noone else aided or helped our moronic warmaking in Vietnam and Cambodia. The idea that we were an "empire" or a world policeman seems to have polluted the minds of many thinkers, like a unseen underwater oil leak, made worse by the eventual self-collapse of the USSR-something we had little to do with, nor ever planned- in fact, our CIA in the 80's predicted the triumph of the USSR,(the obvious superiority of a command economy), over the foolish, wasteful democracies, always in perpetual competition and abusing their own people and throwing good money after bad. All of a sudden, after the end of the cold war men like Brooks and Krugman now see us as mighty magicians. In fact, we are lucky to stay alive bouncing from war to war. We are not ,nor have been an empire. We are lucky-placed in a very wealthy and profitable spot between Mexico and Canada, literally "Not too hot and not too cold". A Goldilocks nation. Until recently we stayed this way by remaining outside of other's problems. We have done worse then Trump,(Chinese exclusion?) and may do worse again. We don't do it because we are beholden or because wer'e not-we are human and bleed red, too. Like the disaster on 9/11/01, the awful behavior of the US at our border will pass, too.
2
True enough, Paul.
However, the biggest tragedy is not border atrocities, attacking the rule of law, insulting democracies while praising dictators, or other such outrages. The biggest tragedy is that a sizable portion of the US population supports, or desires, or even craves this repulsiveness.
Hopefully, the US will survive the reign of this tin-pot wanna-be. However, the aftertaste will remain.
31
It is a mistake to assume this is entirely the work of Trump. He is merely the embodiment of our national malaise of divisiveness, corruption and disenfranchisement.
10
The Roman republic ended with Augustus. Whereas the American republic has ended with Caligula.
16
Really? Which of your rights, specifically, have been violated by the Trump Presidency? I will answer for you-none. We are only in danger by the swamp monsters like the cabal at the FBI, that is trying to overturn an election.
1
The answer is simple people: stop using children as pawns to bypass immigration laws. They need to pass something immediately where they can deport the entire "family".
2
Committing atrocities at the border? The atrocity is to let any one with young children walk right in. Immigrant crossing with kids went up 600%. Dragging children across our southern border is an atrocity. I could not survive the trip. That is like locking a kid in a car in the middle of summer with the windows up. You can not carry enough water for everyone to be safe. People are accusing their own country of committing an atrocity for partisan political reasons. It makes good reading. What to do with the kids of criminals? Obama built concentration camps for families to be detained together, but that is not constitutional, so he just let them walk on in. Oh he told them to come to court. But without a car or a job or money, how can they make it to court to be deported. Not too many showed up. So what to do? Keep letting them come with kids? They are using the kids. What kind of parent would bring kids in the heat of summer. Yesterday the heat index was 105. I cant even imagine Texas. The atrocity ends when the kids are safely in custody of the USA, not the insane parents with them walking in the desert.
7
n the beginning, there was faith,
which is childish;
trust, which is vain;
and illusion, which is dangerous.
Elie Wiesel "Night"
#NeverAgain2018
#StopFascism2018
#VoteBlue2018
November 6, 2018
13
Krudmanomics + Totalitarian Socialism = Death of Freedom
Restore Freedom - Eradicate Totalitarian Socialism, Liberal Fascism
2
I can't help but point out the reality that the majority of Americans did not vote for Donald Trump for president. It's the warped nature of our political system--especially the antiquated, agrarian-focused electoral college--that forces the majority of this country to live under the boot heel of an easily-conned minority. This system must go. If there were no electoral college, there would be no separation of children from their parents at the borders; no growing concern among the financial markets; no sucking up to dictators; no ongoing fear of the hacking of our voting processes; no alienation from our allies; no soul-numbing chaos day in and day out; no degradation of our judicial institutions--in short, no President Donald J. Trump.
18
"Think about it. By the end of World War II, we and our British allies had in effect conquered a large part of the world. We could have become permanent occupiers, and/or installed subservient puppet governments, the way the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe. And yes, we did do that in some developing countries; our history with, say, Iran is not at all pretty."
Dr. Krugman, I like you, I love you. But yes, think about it. Didn't we in fact do all those things, except where the other two superpowers the Soviet Union and China prevented us (and they were no angels, either)? I could list the countries that, in my own life time (born 1951), we have invaded, occupied, bombed, set up dictatorships, overturned elected governments, trained state police in terror and torture, mined harbors, shelled from battleships, sheltered human rights monsters, used slave labor, and on and on. Sorry, it's not been the good US vs. the bad Soviet Union and bad China, but rather three very bad actors on the world stage. Read your Chomsky, Dr. Kruger, and God help us all!
14
The allies have learned one additional lesson in this time of Trump, namely that this country can easily elect an unqualified president and have little in the way of means of removing that person. That a leader as bad a Trump could come to power would be unheard of in a UK-style parliamentary system where the leader is vetted by their party. And even if one were to become head they could be easily removed by simple votes within the party or by parliament as a whole. By contrast such an event plunges America into a constitutional crisis of years duration with uncertain outcome. America prides itself on its businesslike manner yet no business other than one heading for Trumpian bankruptcy could operate this way. I think America will have a hard time regaining world leadership as the fundamental weakness of the American constitution registers with our allies.
17
Krugman has it right in the title: this is the "Fall of the American Empire". But what he doesn't get is that the fall of the Empire is not a tragedy, not a disaster, but a long overdue victory for those that the Empire has oppressed, both in the US and abroad, and for the planet, which our unbridled economic growth is destroying. That may be hard to grasp for those that identify American success with the military, political and economic domination of the world, control of the world's resources, and economic exploitation of workers everywhere by US corporations. But for those of us that wish to see a sustainable, livable planet based on democratic values and "liberty, equality, fraternity", "with liberty and justice for all", the fall of Empire (and not just the American Empire) is a clear necessity.
3
And how exactly will huge tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens and biggest US corporations, combined with high tariffs and withdrawing from the Paris Climate agreement, as this administration is doing, somehow become a "victory" for poorer countries ... ?
5
I believe the agony that Trump has wrought on his nation will only amplify once the Mueller investigation finally reports. Then, the full extent of his epic perfidy will be known. These vile acts of ripping children from mothers and fathers, the attack on trade, the general social carnage he has committed, are a decoy to obfuscate the truth of his staggering villainy. Now, word is emerging that he is withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council, an ominous portent of things to come. Will it even be possible to remove the man from office? Will there be a prison strong enough to hold him?
Trump has declared war on a social order. There is no longer any doubt that he is a dictator. He rules by decree, utilising the unilateral power of his office to destroy government by consent. The Republican Party is malignant and complicit. It has provided a steady raft for killers and tyrants since, at least, Nixon. Worst of all, the metastasis has spread to the American people who elect these blackguards and vicious fools. So much for American goodness which has been replaced by American wilful blindness.
Unless the rational and sane give up their shocked, fearful, petrification, America stands to be lost to the world. Unless it realises its own value, it won’t have any values at all.
10
It's really all a bait and switch. Trump ran as a deal maker. He was going to redo all the deals and we were going to win in every deal. He would make deals that would bring manufacturing back.
He hasn't done a single deal since becoming President. I'm not counting $10 trillion in debt through tax cuts as a deal. If it was, then George W. Bush was a great deal maker. Trump is a fraud.
11
Is China the next dominant power?
2
Pax Americana went the way of the Berlin Wall. It was held together by a common enemy, Soviet Communism. It funny to hear the Left romanticize this era, when in fact they were fellow travelers of the extreme left during this period.
3
Except that if you try to back up those claims with some concrete evidence, you'll find NOTHING.
Yes, for decades America has fought against communism - the USSR as well as China and Vietnam and elsewhere.
But WHO is today supported by those same countries, and WHO is calling them friends and smart etc?
Right, Trump and the GOP.
Time to take responsibility for your choices ... no?
6
Trump knows how nasty and mean his base is, and he channels those passions instinctively and flawlessly. There isn't a politician in the land to equal him in drawing and nourishing a following. His pollution of our political environment is the most important fact of our time. This has led to endless theories on how to "beat" him. It probably can't be done. To defeat him, he needs to be outdone; he needs to be confronted on his effects, not on his means.
4
Paul, great to hear you (and the "Times") addressing Empire!
Emperor Trump is becoming more and more recognized by Americans as an Emperor intent on "Making America an Empire Again".
All Americans --- even students who failed High School History --- know that America was birthed by overcoming the British EMPIRE.
My only (current) demonstration, march, and protest sign is coming true in spades — as it shouts-out on the front side simply:
DUMP
EMPEROR
TRUMP
and on the back-side under the image of ‘our’ American flag:
“We can’t be an EMPIRE”
However, my new demonstration, march, and protest sign being printed by a union print shop in Portland will say — as it shouts-out on the front side simply:
DUMP
IMPERIALIST
DEMOCRATS
and on the back-side under the image of ‘our’ American flag:
“We can’t be an EMPIRE”
"The U.S. state is a key point of condensation for pressures from dominant groups around the world to resolve problems of global capitalism and to secure the legitimacy of the system overall. In this regard, U.S. imperialism refers to the use by transnational elites of the U.S. state apparatus to continue to attempt to expand, defend, and stabilize the global capitalist system. We are witness less to a U.S. imperialism per se than to a global capitalist imperialism.
We face an Empire of global capital, headquartered, for evident historical reasons, in Washington."
Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity, 2014 Robinson, William Cambridge University Press.
1
1. Even Trump supporters don't support the idea of making America "an empire again", they instead support his isolationism.
2. Krugman doesn't claim here that Trump is turning the US into an empire, he's showing how he's DESTROYING what still remains of the US empire.
3. Start wanting absolutely ideal Democrats, and once again those who disagree with Trump will stay home rather than prevent him from destroying the country, instead of - however imperfectly - rebuilding it, as even the worst Blue Dog Democrat would do.
Opposing Democrats now, at a moment in time when a totally corrupt GOP is destroying this country on a daily basis, just because Democrats don't bring us paradise fast enough once they control DC, means actively contributing to the current massive destruction.
It means being politically illiterate at best, and being totally irresponsible at worst.
7
This week's scorecard:
1. The President is all in with separation of families and the internment of small children, because 'the law must be enforced.' His attorney general says this is the will of God. The President says Democrats are at fault because 'they want MS-13 gang members to come here and vote.'
2. This morning, the President stated his strong opposition to expanding the roster of immigration judges, courts and detention facilities. The judges, he says, will be 'So corrupt. Can you imagine the graft'? So much for enforcing the law. The law, it appears, is what Trump says it is. Which is why it does not apply to Trump or the members of his regime.
3. The President announced expansive tariffs on Chinese goods, declaring a trade war that no sane human wants. It amounts to a huge tax on American consumers, in the guise of 'protecting us from the countries that are ripping us off.' A trade war is already well underway with our European 'allies,' whom Trump berates and undercuts as he heaps praise on the world's brutal dictators.
4. The President demanded the creation of a 'Space Force.'
5. Financial markets around the globe are beginning to swoon... not in a good way.
Bottom line: We are being led by a madman who apparently has gone off his meds. As he told us long ago, he firmly believes 'I alone can fix it.'
We are on a slippery slope, and our descent is gaining speed and momentum. If Congress and the courts do not pull the ripcord soon, we are doomed.
7
To always hear and read Trump this, and Trump that, and now even the more news of evil on the border, is frustrating, as the only thing we can do is wait to vote, and VOTE we will !!
1
It is more of a fall into the hole of our own digging, rather than any grandiose heights supposedly achieved. Good riddance to the bloody twentieth century, Times wrecking ball is in full swing, and operating in the light of a new day.
1
Mr. Trump's slogan may be Make America Great Again, but in action, it's more like Tear America Apart and Destroy Her.
Born shortly after WWII, I can recall presidents back to Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. Even the ones I didn't particularly like had a core of goodness in them that was evident during tough times and even when they made grave errors.
Mr. Trump is of a different ilk. He has no core of goodness that I can discern. On an almost daily basis, he works to aggrandize himself at the cost of most Americans. Even his base is beginning to see who he is, given that only 28% of Americans approve of his immigration tactics, especially taking children from their parents.
Mr. Trump has no plan for America, no way to make our country great. We were great when he came into office, but he is ruining our reputation among our allies and our enemies, squandering our political capital and appealing to the basest of human instincts.
I pray our nation survives and gets back on the right path.
14
Thank you, Paul Krugman. How is it that money can be the only comfort for Donald Trump. Is his life so empty that he can only think of dollar signs. Small comfort when you go to sleep at night. So telling when asked what he was doing for Father's Day...placing a telephone call to Chairman Kim! The thought that he would want to spend time with any of his children....NOT! What would they say to each other?
There is such a sadness hanging over our Country right now...utterly heartbreaking...and not just about the horrific situation at the boarder. Those of us who can actually think (excluding most members of Congress) worry every day what the long reaching effects of Donald Trump and his ilk will be on our Country. He is tearing it apart, piece by piece, and it will take a long time to bring it back to sanity. The debt, alone, will stretch out long after I'm 'dust".
Our hearts are sad.
6
I take at least some comfort in the fact the Donald Trump just turned 72 years old, appears unhealthy, and seems far too full of hubris to do anything about it.
4
The US is, for all intents and purposes, a failed state.
6
Krugman gives voice to my own: Trump, those in the Trump Administration, the GOP who have enabled Trump, the Trump base and all of you who voted for Trump & Pence take note: You have much for which to answer and history will hold you to deplorable account.
15
Does wealth of a country matter if it is morally bankrupt?
Then again, a country that cannot afford paid parental leave is probably extremely poor lol
9
Mr. we could use a man like Harry Truman again!
2
I increasingly believe Americans do not deserve the bounty given. Wm. Burroughs was right all along.
Americans embracing this policy do not deserve a secure or content future. Certainly I will remember their names. When the bill comes due, there will be no amnesty coming. They know exactly what they are doing. They are ghouls. I hope the children remember each and every face of those assigned to guard them.
1
Paul points out the creation of chaos, but hasn’t identified its source. Rabble rousing is an art, and it is at work, but why is it being fueled?
Apparently there are a number of very wealthy wackos who see democracy as an impediment and chaos as an opportunity. It is these people we have to pursue, not their army of brainwashed malcontents.
4
You know it's bad, when you recall the Tea Party and their pack of lunatics with fondness. Remember Michelle Bachman, Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell...they were kinda fun, in retrospect. This is a terrifying show. The rest of the world will sort it out, the only winners will be the Chinese.
2
How many times can you be wrong about economics and still respected, Krugman? China needs to be addressed. Every president claims they will right the ship, but every president except Trump has lacked the courage to actually confront China.
Let's be honest, a trade war will have a lot of casualties. However, just as there were casualties during the Second World War the outcome actually made the world safer. China will go into a recession while we will only slow our growth. It will be painful, but once we win this fight (due to the power dynamics) America and its citizens will be better off. You and the Lefties did the same thing to Reagan. You were wrong then and are wrong now.
Finally, the reason you and the Left keep losing all across the world is because people listen to your statements and threats of never ending crisis. Yet exactly the opposite happens. Immigration is a prime example. Give in and you will incentivize more illegals to bring children here. Mind you, some of these children will be sexually assaulted, abused and otherwise mistreated. Yet you either ignore this or are too stupid to see that it is much better to be firm now than deal with the precedent and subsequent flood of illegal immigrants.
1
Masochists always suffer the misconduct of sadists. Half the American people voted for the man. Now they must suffer along with us to learn the hard way, and suffer they will.
1
Watch The Krugman drink the "Exceptionalism" Kool-aid.
He might also want to check with the Chileans, the Guatemaltecas and many others about how beneficent the US Empire actually is.
Verterans For Peace
3
And this is exactly what Putin wants, to bring us down and dissemble the western alliance. Trump is doing Putin's bidding....the Kremlin Candidate.
3
So, is this some plot by the worlds Billionaires to take over the planet?
Trump did mention " We have a world to run" wanting Putin to be able to cash in too.
Please, do not think this is crazy, it can easily happen, it maybe happening right now.....Trump is the perfect leader too....
1
Question: any idea whether Guterres, UN Secretary General, and former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, has said or done anything official about the US refugee situation? Thanks for any info.
2
What is amazing is that one man, a charlatan carnival
barker, can bring down a great nation. Only because
the nation is willing to be brought down.
4
It is gratifying to think of the U.S. as the guiding light of freedom. Tell it to the American Indian, victim of germ warfare. The peculiar institution was a contributing factor, but not the overriding factor in the Civil War: economic constraints and the question of division were paramount, although it is true that the first was perhaps dominated by the slavery question. Human rights and the legacy of lynching in the south question just how effective such a light was. The industrial revolution and what followed was what made America great. The magnificent gains in productive capacity to fulfill the needs of a burgeoning population allowed the U.S. to assume leadership as a model for the world to follow. Now, of course, overpopulation tends to overshadow the gains and retard human rights. It should be remembered that Lend Lease saved the world from an authoritarian grip, and it was paid back in full by the Russians. The cold war brought us nuclear power, perhaps an equally authoritarian grip, the destructive waste by product of which is perhaps as obnoxious as it is noxious. The involvement in Vietnam, a country the size of Connecticut, occupying a full eighth of our time here, there, with its virulent assault on civilians, brought into question just how the U.S. interpreted Freedom, and our unqualified support of the Zionist entity continues to do so on a daily basis, since 1948. The U.S. is rich, as is Trump. Too rich to live up to ideals which have long since passed.
1
Perhaps we're living inside a real horror movie, "The Creature inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue".
3
Ben Franklin (1787): "A republic, if you can keep it.” How prophetic.
4
Becoming an Empire was not in the original document. If anything we are a military Empire as in policemen of the developed world not an economic one. Tradionally we've been very much against centralised power which is the real reason for your fear. It's ok when the best and brightest have centralised control but not the barbarbarians.
As much as economics had to do in the decline of Rome you can take bribery of other countries elites so far. Why pay tribute when there's not much is returned.
The creation of a one world government has hit a little turbulence but It hasn't failed yet. The Greeks tried it. The Romans tried it. The Popes tried it. What's it going to be like when there's the pesky idea a central government is a detriment to freedom?
The other sign of the fall of the American Empire is billionaires like the Kochs financing supposedly 'grass-roots' campaigns to defeat investments in infrastructure that benefit the public. The combination of out-of-control plutocrats and an out-of-control President may be lethal.
5
We were never the country we envisioned ourselves to be. America is just showing it's true colors and it's President is representative of what we are now.
That being said, it doesn't mean this has to be the way we are going forward.
2
Of course, the US is 'great' compared to actual dictatorships. Our Democrats and almost any politician now obviously look great compared to Trump. Depends on your standard of comparison.
But the US lags behind advanced democracies in how many of our politicians truly work for our interests, instead of their big donors. We lag in middle class security, in our extreme poverty rates, our downward moblity, and public safety from gun violence.
Our apologists amplify the good and downplay the negatives. This way they stay influential, prestigious, but show humanitarianism. We get it. In the Trump age, that's easy.
This is how we're manipulated, our standards get lowered, and We The People get played. Krugman shows ever more clearly in this column where he's coming from.
1
History tells us that the collapse of states, the fall of empires, happens when these empires "commit suicide". Many former collapsed states had the ability to right themselves before the end but failed to do so. These historical conditions obtain now in America. America is committing suicide by supporting Trump.
8
Krugman has become a strong supporter of the Democratic Party---our only alternative to Trump, so he focuses on our worst president ever and a rw extremist GOP.
This makes the Dems look like saints,by contrast, but we must hold them to a high standards to dig us out of the political pit we’re in. Now above all, we need objectivity from our Nobel Prize winner in spotlighting the faults of our economic and political systems not doing right by us. Trace causes. Give us role models.
Now a new, sharply critical United Nations report is revealing:
40 million Americans live in poverty and 18.5 million in extreme poverty.
The U.S. has the highest rate of income inequality among Western countries and one of the lowest rates of intergenerational social mobility.
Americans live shorter and sicker lives compared to citizens of the other rich democracies.
This is what the conscience of a liberal should be including in his columns.
The U.S. is the only country in the world not to have ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Our American exceptionalism is our shame, in too many areas.
On Fathers Day we are reminded that the US has the largest % of population incarcerated of any nation, leaving millions of children without their father. And we must criticize how badly the US supports their mothers in jobs, pay and health care.
Talk about all that, PK, then include a few paragraphs on the obvious, ongoing iniquity of Trump that we’re all painfully aware of.
6
This is a grim forecast, but one that is a distinct possibility.
We can never say NEVER. The follow up question is "What are we going to do about it?" It's foolish to look back, we can't change the past. The NOW is the consideration for each one of us in the 2018 elections. The mid-term elections are on the threshold of the here and now.
As much as your column could make us weep, Mr. Krugman, I hope most of us see it as a big red flag to get us in motion.
How many commenters of this column voted in the last election?
Members of their families?
I recall that the Trump children couldn't vote for their father in the primary election in NY because they weren't registered to vote.
Don't be like that.
Dr. Krugman, I'm a really big fan because you care about everyone, but on this, you're wrong. What we are seeing is the decline of Democracy as the Military empire assumes power vested in Trump and the compliant Republican Congress as the Democrats, shell shocked by the old strategy of "Shock and Awe", look on in impotent disbelief. The Republican Revolution is a false one in which the traditional revolts were always against a repressive power or King. Here in our nation, the military always controlled politics, right there on C-Span if you will, but has now come out entirely in the open veiled as political leaders. The military anticipated a real justified revolution and played the role of victim instead of being recognized as the oppressor that sacrifices our young for their hatred aspirations and to be worshiped and supported. This is a military takeover by mission creep as Democtracy is slowly sabotaged. Trump is a military leader and AG Sessions and many others in the administartion are touring the nation and bring the police forces under their influence as well. That former General Kelly, the Chief of staff has control over Trump et al should scare everyone. The American empire will be even bigger, just not democratic.
3
I can't think of any country that, having freely elected a government motivated by beliefs and values any civilized human being would consider repugnant, was able to put them back out of sight as if they were Jack in the Box, and go back to the previous order. Unless that government and the voices it represents are silenced or destroyed, with the country, in a terrible convulsion, usually war. That is obviously not a desirable solution to entertain, but equally it is hard to imagine that the half of the electorate who endorsed a man with no notion of right or wrong other than winning and making a profit, in full knowledge of his ghastliness, a country whose majority embraces racism, xenophobia, disdain for democratic allies to favour dictators, and all the rest of Trump's actions that have caused no change in his support, will suddenly become followers of Jefferson and Lincoln.
1
I believe in the separation of church and state, not the separation of children from parents.
4
I do not believe that America will recover, faith is foregone. Could we ever again believe as innocently as before that US keeps word? Republicans let Trump do, although they could stop this madness in Congress any time, and there is mainly one explanation: They and their voters (i.e., the majority) want this to happen, it's not just Trump. You cannot do this single-handedly
7
The great strategist, Sun Tzu, stated long ago that the greatest generalship was to achieve victory without every bringing about a clash of armies. The American system installed after World War II did this masterfully, and has proven to be a sound strategy for peace and security at the least cost to our economy, allowing us to expand economically and to increase our wealth and power, too. That is what Trump is dissembling and what makes people like Pompeo and Bolton ridiculously clueless experts on national security for both think that fear of military power is what sustains the American system.
4
Ask Paul to look into the possibility of Canada dishonoring the treaty controlled drug patents. Thanks.
1
corporate raider model applied to politics. squeeze the cash cow, then leave the husk . short term gains at the expense of those who must labor for the long term.
7
Good to see you, Mr. Krugman, catching up with Chalmers Johnson's Blow Back series. But you seem to forget our beneficence runs (and has run) to billions of dollars spent every year on mire than 800 US military bases in over 70 countries, a constant reminder who's boss...or else. Johnson predicted the fall of US Empire some years ago - and compared the US Empire to that of Rome.
3
There are many points of historical and personal anecdotal precedence being implemented in order to contextualize, persuade and/or justify many of these nascent and unabashedly more cruel policy developments.
We chose Imperialism around 1898, and we chose Corporate priorities over Human ones between WWs 1 & 2.
Since then, civil rights have only been measurably improved after gross extremism (yes, it was arguably worse than now) in the face of their deserve, and business interests were pursued overtly and ardently albeit with tactical subtleties and perfidious arguments in their facility.
The former is a reality we hold as a somewhat unattainable ideal, and the latter a solid pursuit of something that is--in human terms--not real.
We've gotten it back asswards.
The Trump Presidency will go down in history as the moment American exceptionalism died. The failure of the American system in throwing up this American Commodus and its inability to remove him will long be remembered by the rest of the world.
5
"American goodness and American greatness went hand in hand" - most of us still do have those ideals.
Krugman's thesis is entirely plausible. No doubt the eagle has been knocked off its perch but where it alights is still a matter of some uncertainty.
The epitome of everything egalitarianists the world over despise, Trump is the quintessential un-American. His is a divisive, destructive regime that undermines not only America's place in the world but its prospects for social and economic advancement at home.
The ascendency of the extreme right with its loathsome, parasitic champion is, in part, an undeniable expression of middle America's disdain for the status-quo. The marginalized, disconnected who have long felt betrayed by the left, have instead turned to the right not so much for the hopes they have abandoned but rather protection from the great irrational fears sown by those who have much to gain from them.
A nation that thrived on industriousness, co-operation, compassion and (with notable exceptions) fair play has morphed into one dominated by aggrandizing elite who would subvert America's democratic institutions to one narrow purpose - the accumulation of personal wealth. Their rallying cry is 'us versus them' - which is which left sufficiently vague to confuse the masses.
This could indeed be the beginning of the end of the great achievement that was America, or it might be the last gasp of reactionary forces that would see it become the private pantry of the rich and powerful. November might help us better understand in which direction it is headed.
5
November 2018, a referendum on liberty and justice for all.
Time and place of follow on referendum on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to be determined.
Vote.
"The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults."
Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America"
6
I'm ambivalent often, but tend to agree with your attitude re DJT.
As Robert Reich writes, a phony populist is demagoguing our nation.
The damage is incalculable and two to six more agonizing years to vandalize
our self-concept, honor, goodness and reputation.
He has lost no time turning our ideals into some bad jokes.
We are of course full of contradictions no matter our potus and politics.
He is the worst human being perhaps since Roy Cohn, an alleged role model.
His many admirers are ... reactionary fanatics, while being so wrong and delusional is their right, and are my good neighbors besides.
The paradoxical America realities are what our forefathers courageously
understood about the ... our human conditions.
3
It will take a military coup to get trump out of office. He will not leave voluntarily. What we have become..
Trump's greatest triumph will be to build a Trump Tower in North Korea which will go bankrupt. His other achievements are making friends with brutal Dictators and moving US embassy to Jerusalem, maybe start another conflict in Middle East.
3
Putin and Xi Jinping have promised trump the whole world and his own dynasty in the future if he promises to bring America to its knees. He is more than happy to oblige. He will be able to get his very own Coat of Arms and not have to use the one he stole from the original owners of Mar A Lago. His grandchildren are learning to speak Chinese for a very good reason. China is handing the trumps patents at a fevered pace.
I'm no Nobel Laureate but I can see that Krugman's history is patently false. Britain was no equal partner in WWII or its aftermath. The terms of Lend Lease and the Atlantic Charter were the winding down of the British Empire and the rise of the American. The final swan song was the Suez Crisis of 1956.
Krugman fantasizes about "principles" guiding US policy. Hogwash! How about naked self-interest - from the annexation of Hawaii to the invasion of Iraq?
These racist policies on the southern border are a legacy of the United States having been the first settler state. South Africa? Zimbabwe? Israel? Small fry.
The original Americans (who got here by walking across the land bridge 19,000 years ago) were subject to genocide. Those that remained were dispossessed of their communal property. This was in exchange for their gift to the world of the species of cotton that accounts for 90% of present production, corn (the most valuable US crop), tomatoes, chocolate, vanilla, chillies, potatoes, and other essential foodstuffs including even... the Thanksgiving turkey.
One of the first acts of the 1810 Mexican Revolution was the abolition of slavery. That led to the Alamo in 1836. The fight for Texas "freedom" was the fight of Southern planters to defend slavery. That was followed by the theft of much of Mexico in a predatory war (1846-48) led by those same planters.
This shameful history now expresses itself full force in the period of the collapse of the American Empire.
7
Speaking of longstanding american values how about the value of generations of immigrants including my ancestors who came here legally to work hard and assimilate...no welfare state or education and government in languages other than English; Just the chance for a better life through their own efforts?
1
The ongoing rejection of longstanding American values isn’t just tied to the current President. Trump is the nexus but the entire Republican Party is equally culpable. What is the one phrase that even a D- student can remember to describe American government? Checks and balances.
How is that working? It’s not. Trump could not be doing what he is doing without the acquiescence of the Republican-controlled Congress. The family separation policy being implemented on the southern border, the idiotic tariffs, both of these things could be ended or constrained tomorrow with a veto-proof majority vote of Congress. Republicans have the majorities and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell set the agenda. They could get overwhelming support from Democrats to rein in Trump. If the President’s exercise of power isn’t being checked it’s because Republicans don’t want to do it. They either actively support Trump or passively consent via their silence.
2
You forgot the criminal coups in dozens of countries including Chile, Honduras only recently, the backing of death squads in Nicaragua, Guatemala and Colombia, the 5 million killed in Vietnam, the 80,000 tonnes of unexploded bombs in Laos, the destruction of Iraq, the economic assassination of countries that don't play ball, the support of vile oil regimes like Saudi Arabia, etc etc. Trump is just the mask ripped off.
8
In the United States being nasty is considered being strong, while being fair, understanding or compassionate is considered a weakness. In that sense Trump is just another typical American.
5
It shows how fragile our society really is.
One year of this fraud of a President and we are falling into the abyss.
10
Au contraire, my dear Krugman, the American Empire has returned. And like the Pheonix, has risen from the ashes of the past administration, and has only begun the strike back!
And how, more precisely?
1
Your country is doing a fine job of hosting the World Cup. Kudos!
Read "Killing Democracy. " It's a $1 ebook on Amazon (print copy is more). It details how Trump and his collaborators are disassembling our republic from within. It's what goes on after "Trumpocracy" stops. Every day the semi fictional account in the book becomes more and more real. It will scare any sensible person to the core. Our amoral president is creating an amoral America. I think that's Krugman's point. The book shows how it's done.
Wait...haven’t we been told ad nauseam that America isn’t—and has never been—great? Can’t take away something that never was.
1
The US has pursued policies which have been detrimental to the rights, lives, interests and well being of people in many places around the world for decades.
Donald Trump's execrable policies are helping to shed the mask of benevolence that once acted as a veneer for the US government's worst excesses.
4
I simply cannot understand what it is America stands for anymore. If this is what you really believe is good for the U.S.; then I am afraid your friends and allies are simply going to realize there is no point pretending human rights mean anything to Americans anymore.
2
The last paragraph suggests that this is Trump's fault. While he is the agent of the abandonment of American ideals, doesn't the fault lay with American voters? While Trump may have lost the popular vote, he won enough votes to win the election. We are the ones not demanding change from our leaders. We are the ones not in the street. I think it is time that each of us ask what we can do to stop Trump/fascism now. If we just throw up our hands in despair, we the voters in this democracy own this travesty.
1
He's tanking our economy with his "tax cuts" and trade wars. He's tanking our world standing with withdrawal from treaties and the climate change agreement. He's tanking our safety with his destruction of our long standing alliances and hie embrace of dictators. And he's tanking our moral standing in the world by his ill treatment of human beings at the border and people of color in our country and around the world. He's managed to do this with his complete lack of ethics and all his lies. He's dragging the rest of us down to his level and his fans are loving it!!
1
The depravity of Trump and his administration know no limits. From the economy to the environment and children and families both sides of the aisle are speaking out against Trump. As if his actions are not bad enough, the people he represents are an even great threat to our national security. Pax Americana is indeed all but dead. We can only hope our allies see him as an abhorrent aberration who will hopefully be thrown out of office along with many of his congressional counterparts. Still, there are all those far right discontents who will continue to pose an ongoing threat to our society.
As counterintuitive as it may seem, we have to improve their lot by reducing inequality so there is greater buy in to mainstream life.
Like he has done most of his life 45 is bankrupting American morality, cultural norms and trying to bankrupt the rest of the world. It will be a long time for all of us to recover from the evil he, his administration, the GOP and evangelicals unleashed in their quest to "make America great again". He had torn everything apart.
2
Y’all realise how close Mr Krugman is to describing Noam Chomsky’s view of the world right? As someone else mentioned Paul’s glasses are a little rosey ....but otherwise.
2
Some blame deluded voters for Trump---including those who didn't vote at all. Say many Americans lack "civic responsibility". Maybe so, but why do we have such low voter turnout, and such distorted politics?
in other democracies the turnout is much higher. Why do they show civic duty and more realism? Is it because they see how their govt actually responds to their needs, with policies benefitting the public good to a greater extent? Health care for all is the most obvious of many examples.
In other democracies, they make it easier to vote, using holidays.
They don't turn their election campaigns over to the richest corporate donors for financing, thus the people have more of a voice in policy making.
They don't use American style voter suppression and they use independent commissions, not political parties to draw voter districts.
Our polls show US citizen majorities disagree on most issues with our big election donors who direct policy in their favor. Who gets listened to by lawmakers?
So if the govt shows its civic responsiblity and duty to the public interest, so will the citizens. They'll turn out to vote, demand representation, and vote for their interests. It all works together.
Maybe the problem was the people pushing Hillary on us. She couldn't even win the states Obama won.
Very pretty words, Mr. Krugman, while the United States goes broke. What about the 800,000 factories transferred overseas? Do they represent military power, transferred to the Chinese? What about the $500 billion NET transferred overseas, each year, of American wealth? Look at Rome, the British empire, the Spanish empire -- they were all powerful when they were RICH. When their finances turned negative -- a la' the United States -- their military power and standard of living suffered. Mr. Krugman, learn some history. America is in decline.
1
Your confounding trade deficits and federal deficits.
A trade deficit means that you're buying more stuff from another country than what that country is buying from you.
The US is the wealthiest country on earth, with the biggest economy on earth. So of course it's buying stuff from the rest of the world ... it has the money, and after all, this is what capitalism is all about, remember?
So when those American companies transfer factories overseas, (1) it is THEIR decision to do so, not the decision of foreign governments, and (2) they do so because it allows them to become wealthier. You cannot possibly support capitalism and then oppose the freedom of any business leader to make his products where he wants.
So IF you believe that trade deficits would be bad for the US, could you please explain why, more precisely?
As to Trump's tariffs: they're reducing trade. Why would that be a good thing? Why would selling less stuff to the world be a good thing for the US? What CEO would ever propose a business plan where you sell LESS rather than more ... ?
Finally, a FEDERAL deficit means that we're borrowing money (mostly from China) in order to pay for our military, government, etc.
Bush left with a record $1.4 trillion deficit. Obama cut that by two thirds. Trump and the GOP now already DOUBLED it again. Why would that be a good thing?
Conclusion: it's federal deficits, not trade deficits, that are bad for any country. And the GOP is increasing federal deficits ...
2
I enjoyed reading the Good Professor's column as well as many of the responses. Often times the comments to the NYT columns are as good or better than the columns and also often times the other commenters have said what I think better than I could said it. So I will confine myself to two brief comments.
In the last election there were many people including a good many democrats who could see no difference between trump and Hillary. Are these people starting see any difference? From what I have read of trump's background and business/television career, nothing that he has done so far has been a surprise. Anyone who is unhappy with trump needs to get busy and support candidates in the upcoming elections to oppose him. And above all else go to the polls on election day. If all of the democratic leaning voters had gone to the polls and voted for Hillary, she would probably be in the White House now.
There has been an outcry over the immigrant children being separated. But I am not convinced that the issue will really get a lot of traction. Many Americans, and in particular the average trump supporter, don't care if immigrant children and dark-skinned children are mistreated. It will take an issue that hurts big business (or republican constituencies like big agriculture) to hurt trump. If trump's meddling with tariffs and trade start to cut into corporate profits, then he needs to start worrying.
4
I think I have run out
of reactions. Life in a
time of numbness.
We are a divided nation
with the continued
deterioration of
civil discourse.
I despair.
Is there a rational way
out of this situation?
Are we at a moment in
time that will be a turning
point in history?
7
As long as the current Constitution remains intact, each and every citizen has the legal right to vote, and to engage in real, respectful debates with those who disagree.
66% of the American people strongly disagree with what the GOP is doing.
They strongly reject the idea of having an immoral and ignorant president, such as Trump - as well as Trump's obsolete, scientifically proven to be ineffective "leadership" style.
At the same time, part of those belonging to the majority lack the "political literacy" to know that voting is crucial, EVEN when your absolutely ideal candidate isn't on the ballot.
Conclusion: although despair is perfectly understandable, this is not the time to go numb. We still are the majority. All that is needed is that we finally start to engage, go knocking on doors to convince people to vote, inform ourselves about who is doing what in DC, fact-check the news (especially news that seems to confirm our own perception and worldview), and educate ourselves about why voting is so important in a democracy.
If a majority of those 66% start doing this, wealthy GOP donors and Fox News will no longer be able to sell their false narratives, and ordinary citizens will take their government back.
That is the only "rational" way out of this situation.
Yes we can ... !!
1
This country was founded by immigrants seeking religious freedom and economic security. The rule of law and the ideals of the enlightenment were prominent in building this country starting with the humble outposts that immigrants created in the vast wilderness that they found when they first landed here. Those ideals are difficult to live up to and we have often failed to do so, but keeping the ideals alive is essential to our survival. If we are to move forward, we must first look back at our foundations with respect gratitude for those who came before us. We need to remember that we are more than consumers of cheap goods or social media. We are citizens of a once great country whose survival depends on us exercising the responsibilities of citizenship.
2
Well , ALL empires fail, eg. the Roman , the British , the Persian , the Assyrian , the Hittite , several Chinese empires , the Mayan , the Aztec , the Inca , the USSR , the Babylonian , Indian empires , etc , etc. The USA`s empire has passed its due date and Trump , rather than slowing the decline , is turning up the heat to accelerate the rot.
Trying to hold China`s progress/plan to be a global leader in developing & manufacturing high tech goods is Trump`s folly. He has no vision of what the future will be or he would not have made Betsy DeVos Sec. of Education or Pruitt in charge of the EPA or the Russian money laundered, W. Ross Sec of Commerce along with the other swamp creatures in his cabinet.
America , what have you done to yourself ~
9
It seems easy and a bit self-serving to blame it all on Trump rather than reflect on the increasing probability that there is much truth in the old adage that "people get the government which they deserve".
8
No, there is no truth to that at all.
There is no consensus that chooses a government.
There will always be a minority that gets a government that it does not deserve.
1
Don't blame me. I voted for the woman. I don't "deserve" this current government at all.
1
The problem with being an "American Empire" as Krugman calls it ... is that there's a pretty high cost to it. And a lot of Americans (myself included) are just tired of paying that cost.
Consider foreign policy. We've got 185,000 troops permanently stationed abroad - mainly in wealthy countries like Germany, Japan, S. Korea and S. Arabia. Yet, we pay THEM for the leases. Why ? The 7th fleet routinely monitors the S. China Sea. Anyone ever seen the French fleet protecting our shores ?
Or trade policy. We currently have the largest trade deficit in the world - $566 bn. And sure, some ivy-tower economists tell us that such trade deficits aren't necessarily a bad thing. Let's all cheer because we can buy $5 t-shirts from China in Walmart ! Go tell that to the steel workers in OH or PA. And yes, those countries finance our huge deficits. But maybe it would be a better thing if we didn't have such huge deficits ?
Last is immigration policy. Sure, it is heart wrenching to hear the cries of infants crying for their parents. But if that's the case, why did their parents come here ? Sure, many left failed states in places like Nicaragua. But why come here ? Most crossed Mexico to reach our border. Why not stay in Mexico ? Maybe it has something to do with our welfare system - which liberals decry as insufficient but is still more generous than Mexico. I understand the tragedy of the situation. But are we the world's patron (or the world's sap) ?
2
If that would be a cost too high to pay, could you please explain how come that today the US is the wealthiest nation on earth, with the biggest economy on earth, and the biggest and most powerful military on earth?
And of course, it's precisely BECAUSE of the fact that we're the wealthiest country on earth that there's a trade "deficit" in the first place. A trade deficit simply means that we're importing more foreign products than what other people buy from us. Why? Because we have the MONEY to buy all these things, contrary to all the other countries on earth.
The very essence of capitalism is that you try to make money, and once you have it, you buy stuff.
So could you please explain why you are AGAINST trade deficits? Would you prefer the situation of a third world country, which indeed doesn't have any trade deficit as it doesn't have the money to buy anything ... ?
Finally, having lots of troops abroad obviously helps us not merely to maintain MILITARY influence in those regions, but most of all to maintain economic influence. Since when are those bad things? And WHERE is the genial plan showing that we could be as wealthy as we are today, as a nation, WITHOUT being militarily present in so many countries ... ?
It's not Trump or the GOP who have or have shown such a plan, in any case ...
8
The costs of leadership are high, but rewards are even higher.
Excluding small oil rich nations, the U.S. is near the top in income per capita. It is the highest when it comes to manufactured goods and trails only China in value of exports.
The fact the U.S. outpaces the world in imports is simply a reflection of the wealth it generates. Does it import too much? Yes, especially when it comes to consumer products as opposed to factors of production such as machinery and raw materials. American debt levels are also high, which signifies the country as a whole is living beyond its means.
But the disparity of income in America is the highest of 17 industrialized nations. The share of national income going to the richest one-percent has doubled since 1980. Hence the resentment from ordinary working Americans who fuel that massive transfer of wealth to the already wealthy. Sadly they are being encouraged to vent their anger not at the wealthy but rather at people worse off than themselves.
You may think that snatching babies from their mothers at the border will change all that .....but it won't. This is another case of the elite creating a scapegoat to deflect attention from their colossal greed.
Ironically it was the angry, lower income voters who passed up an opportunity to elect someone whose goal it was to redress that imbalance of power and wealth. Imagine how much better things might be if the Sanders staring you in the face every day was Bernie - not Sarah Huckabee.
3
There is a middle ground between patron and sap: it's called compassion.
You've identified the core of the rottenness that has led us to brink of collapse Paul. There is a line in the book Alcoholics Anonymous - aka "the Big Book" - that goes: "...selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our troubles..." that I think sums up what affects the majority of Americans. And while all certainly not alcoholics, most are addicted to instant gratification, fueled by cheap credit and cheap goods manufactured offshore. They don't even stop to think about all the jobs and wages lost in pursuit of their "fix". And they certainly don't stop to think of the effect of the loss of the American Ideal that enabled near-global cooperation, which in turn led to America's power and influence becoming the greatest in history. Just let them continue to have their cheap toys and merchandise that they can afford on their low paying jobs that can be taken from them on a whim (or a ripple in the stock market), and the rest of the world can go pound sand.
Ain't American great?
2
t's time for better countries to step up to lead the world to dignified democracies that respect human rights, including those of children.
The US has lost its way.
12
I'm afraid that America's "goodness" and moral superiority to other nations is unfortunately largely a self-delusion. Dare I call it "fake news"?
I've always felt that Mark Twain's 1901 essay "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" should be a part of every American curriculum. It is as relevant today--actually, more so--than it was at the turn of the last century.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/sitting.html
(We could add the quotes of General Smedley Butler
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/115545.Smedley_D_Butler . Actually, there's more than enough material for a full-year course on "American Injustice and Imperialism, and The Lie of American Exceptionalism."}
I do agree with the article, however, that the current administration is destroying whatever credibility the US ever had.
9
As far as the trade war goes it doesn't take an economist to see where this is going. Countries around the world will simply make new free trade agreements and cut the US out of them. Sure it would hurt them short term, but they would never be subject to US nationalistic whims ever again. At which point we lose.
12
100% right. Trump is the worst human being to have held this office. And it will get worse before it gets better and we tar and feather this deranged man.
10
Because Trump is a very flawed & insecure being, he wants to bring the USA down to his level. Trump is envious of the Pre-Trump America because he could never live up to or meet its greatness, so he diminishes America and what she stands for.
Trump will fade into oblivion and only be remembered for his degeneracy, his corruption and his ineptitude.
America will survive Trump & his allies and become stronger and more benevolent and Trump will become a lesson to us as Hitler is/was for Germany.
13
Krugman, what do you expect from a man who believes he is somehow special. Who doesn't read, but believes he knows more than those around him. Who praises the military but hid behind money when he had a chance to serve. Who claims family values but has cheated on every wife he has been with. Who claims the media is false when every thing that comes out of his mouth is a lie. Unless we rid ourselves of this selfish narcissist we will find ourselves not only financially strapped, but probably involved in a war for no other reason than his ego needs stroking.
16
When all is said and done historians will probably note that it was Trump that instigated the downfall of America. But they will also have to note that he would have failed without the complicit help of a majority of American citizens who stood by and did nothing to prevent this one mans obliteration of their Ideals.
If you don't like this potentially prophetic commentary then you can start to change it folks. Vote in November. It's time the majority stand up and say we have had enough of the antics of this congenital liar (in Chief). He does not represent us nor the ideals of our Republic, and we want him and his minions to stop what they are doing, and stop it NOW! Vote folks; VOTE, less you witness the death of the Republic.
John~
American Net'Zen
11
".... they’re all tied to the character of the man occupying the White House, surely the worst human being ever to hold his position. "
You're too kind.
11
Any so-called “parent” who drags their children along on the treacherous and often deadly journey from Central America to the US border should lose custody of the children. These poor children are often at the mercy of human traffickers and suffer through harsh, inhumane conditions as they are used as pawns by people who are trying to enter our nation illegally.
What the rabid, lying, anti-Trump media is not reporting is that these children can only be detained for 20 days under law. Often, their “parents” are processed and removed from the country within 36 hours. Their children are sent home with them. If the illegal alien attempts to claim asylum (usually frivolously) and the 20 day detention on the children expires, the children are turned over to relatives either in the US or in their home countries.
Bottom line, if you don’t want to be separated from your children, don’t smuggle them across international borders.
Also, it’s worth noting that lefties like Krugman offer no solution to this “humanitarian crisis.” The left’s holy grail is and has always been Third World immigration. A poor, uneducated, underclass will more easily take to their tired socialist policies. Thank God Trump and Sessions are enforcing our laws and protecting us from these Third World hordes and their communist masters. #MAGA.
3
I would think that if your children were in constant danger at home that you would risk the dangers of trying to get them to a safer place. Tell me otherwise.
In real life, parents are fleeing their home country WITH their children because it isn't safe for those children to stay there, remember?
1
Trump has put the country in moral reverse. history
will not be kind to him or his gutless feckless enablers
who remained silent in the face of lies, bigotry, cruelty,
grifting and incompetence.
8
We have seen it...
No words
No
Words
World we live in?
Yes, indeed.
The one and only world we all have.
And are meant to share.
No choice.
Wishing...
That the American people will stand up
Stand up and stop this nightmare
Vote
Against this being in power -
with no power in his brains
Vote
Say STOP
This was it
Back to work
Vote
Say STOP
This is not us
Back to human dignity
No choice
Vote
9
NOT MY PRESIDENT is a vile man with a black hole for a heart. He cares not for the welfare of the common man, nor the majority of American citizens.
How anyone can condone his actions is beyond me. Call your Senators and Congressman today and demand this heinous crime be ceased.
10
Somehow this doesn't convince me that border control enforcement is tantamount to the fall of an empire.
I can think of many trends that will lead to waning American power, including some cited by Krugman about alliances and treaties, but curtailing illegal immigration is certainly not one of them. Illegal immigration has the prospect of weakening our nation from the inside because it is creating a permanent underclass of millions if not ten million of off-the-books, black market workers than undercut prevailing legal wages.
2
Trade agreements could express our values as a country, with enforceable labor rights, human rights and environmental protections. How cool would that be?
We could set a global standard that public interests were at least as important as corporate interests!
1
Our core values seem superfluous to many lately. As standards of living and yes the ties that bind our communities and families have withered so have our individual and national understanding and commitment to the values enumerated here. All too often they appear to be replaced by a vague and unsoothable anger. The targets of the anger are the easiest and the weakest opponents in the near term. This anger is bestowed on these targets in the name of our core values, despite any logical or moral connection. hard times.
5
Trump the Trash Man. Perfect! He’s the guy salivating over icondos on N Korea beaches while rockets were fired. He was planning trade with N Korea at the summit with his cutesy iPad video - sorry buster - China and S Korea were there first. Is that why they are not at the negotiating table - making America first in supporting dictators? Astounding that Trump was thinking ldevelopment while watching the rocket launches from N Korea - but not thinking about the threat to the US and it’s allies. We are a pathetic nation with a pathetic emasculated Congress.
3
This is an incredibly myopic read on the past 70 years of U.S. policy and leadership. Trump has just made the hypocrisy of the United States more apparent to Americans. The rest of the world has long known the US publicly touts equality and freedom while secretly propping up dictators, housing nonviolent criminals like animals, building military bases throughout the world, and invading sovereign countries and funding coups.
They're all pigs, Trump just doesn't try to hide he's a pig with lipstick, and that makes us oh so uncomfortable.
1
Trump is not the worst human being to ever hold the office. That's insulting to human beings. Trump is an animal. A desperate, feral animal who thinks only of his own survival.
5
All true Paul.are we becoming the Israel of the Western Hemisphere? Isolated and self righteous? Walls and leaders above the law.?
5
Let us not forget The Sacred Oath.
"All public officials, whether elected or appointed, are required to swear an Oath of Allegiance that they will protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, both foreign and DOMESTIC.
The people, as sovereign rulers, must hold these officials accountable for every act that violates their Oath."
Surely Trump and his GOP lackeys qualify for and meet the standard of being "domestic".
Surely they are in violation of this Sacred Oath.
Decent members of the Congress, as representatives of the people, must act accordingly.
Surely decent members of the electorate will support this vital undertaking.
Let this necessary effort take place as soon as possible.
1
We need criticism of Trump’s brutality and racism that maybe recognized the ugly truth—so far, as bad as he is, other Presidents have done things which were worse. Trump, of course, has the potential to top them all, but so far he hasn’t matched the invasion of Iraq, or the Vietnam War. Possibly his worst crime is the support of the genocidal Saudi war in Yemen, but that is an extension of a policy already in place when he came in.
The one aspect of Krugman’s column that is true is that other Presidents did some things right. It is hard to see anything at all positive about Trump. I hope the Korean talks go well— the South Koreans are more supportive and have more at stake than Trump’s critics in the US. But since it is Trump we are talking about, there is a good chance we will be back to saber rattling and childish insults.
1
Methinks Dr. Krugman is worried. Very worried.
3
For a guy capable of writing the wonkiest of blogs, Dr. Krugman consistently lays it on the line more directly and accessibly than any other columnist of the two major papers I read.
Upon returning to the United States after receiving the phoniest Peace Prize since Henry Kissinger, Trump should have his baby ripped from his hands by border guards and same should be awarded by divine right (I have the Biblical citation right here) to this new Orwell.
No need to look in a mirror, America, as the President is our mirror. He is the most revealing reflection of the ugliness of our culture: spoiled, intellectually lazy, cowardly, racist, misogynist, vain, narcissistic, celebrity worshipping, an epic liar; the list could go. He is us, my fellow Americans. Until we own this ugly side of our culture and politics, the rot will continue to spread.
We have to acknowledge our culture is broken when the suicide rate increases year after year, and the opioid epidemic is becoming a tsunami swamping rural communities in every state.
When special interests prevail over the common good, history shows those countries and empires collapse: Roman Empire, France in 1789, Russia in 1917. It took centuries of rot before the Roman Empire collapsed; it may take only decades for Pax Americana to implode. Indeed, when we can no longer agree on truth, nay, don’t ever care about facts and truth, we are much further along the road of decay than we care to admit.
6
I think this is the beginning of the end of US hegemony. The world will progress as US is left behind. But Americans are not smart enough to understand— even when they lose their jobs and their health care.
2
All the way back in 2000, after multiple forecasts for nations that all came true, Dr. Johan Galtung made his forecast for the US. We had until the year 2020 before our empire would disappear and we would fully embrace fascism at home.
At the time, his forecast about the US seemed insane.
But now we know precisely who is at the helm while that forecast is coming to fruition. All of their names will forever be recorded as complicit to the US's downfall, the destruction of our Republic and the collapse of our worldwide influence. All of their names will forever be dirty words. 45's will be the most dirty.
I quite agree with you. Unfortunately something just as potentially bad is in the making here in Europe.
If Europe cannot grow a communal heart very quickly, it will crack into its constituent self-centred parts. 'Chacun pour soi' will set us back more than a century - or worse.
2
What continues to puzzle me at this advanced stage of the American disintegration is that we aren't ALL taking to the streets to protest. We should be protesting daily, striking, causing a much bigger fuss.
Are we waiting for that one congress person to be our savior? Do we wish that Justin Trudeau was OUR president instead?
Do we think the 2018 2020 elections will just solve it all and everything can be reversed?
What the.....????
We have heard twitter comparisons to Nazi Germany. I, for one, wonder if one of those comparisons should be the meekness with which we are fighting this battle. We are all afraid, but freedom has never been won easily....shouldn't we be taking more chances to reverse this situation?
3
Hysteria, thy name is Krugman.
1
Well said, Sir. "Decline of American Empire" maybe sad for us but maybe "good riddance" from much of the rest of the world. (Given our current actions) And the same might be said for the extinction of the human race, since we seem willing and able pull that off. Maybe some wiser kinder cockroaches will emerge from the rubble. Just to be optimistic.
1
Why wasn't the public shown Trump's entire campaign slogan: Make America Great Again, After I Leave
8
Dr. Krugman,
You should stick to economics; political commentary is way out of your depth especially since you're suffering from TDS=Trump Derangement Syndrome. Our silly immigration laws are the reason we're going through this guilt angst for other countries' citizens since we have to bring them in and hold them on our side of the border rather than stopping them from coming in in the first place.
1
You're not paying attention to the face that Stephen Miller's policy of CAGING CHILDREN is the mark of a sociopath, not law.
More Hand Wringing from the King of Hand Wringing...
2
Thank God for Paul Krugman
1
I don't believe articles like this help the cause of the Democrats, but rather undermine the credibility of the writers and publications that print them.
Headlines like "The End of Western Civilization" " The end of American Greatness", comparing Trump to Hitler etc seem hyperbolic and childish. If the writers really believed do, why don't they flee as people did the Nazi regime?
Intelligent rational criticism is needed. Fantastical embellishments are damaging and give credibility to a president who pounces on them to prove the unbiased nature of the forth estate.
Paul. Don’t you know that’s what people in power always do now to justify and hide their evil? They give it an ad campaign with a catchy tag line - Make America Great Again - when they are doing the exact opposite. Trump and his handlers had and have no intentions other than to tear America apart and take as much loot with them after they burn it all to the ground. Make America great? It’s Just the opposite.
When will journalists stop giving the fascist monsters the benefit of the doubt and stop trying to judge them based on antiquated ideals? They are fascists. Con men. And evil to the core. That’s it.
2
The press and viewership ratings have taught the idiot on thing - To the self-centered illegitimate president under dozen's of criminal investigations; a few months to a year from his disgraceful impeachment and jail -- a war of any kind is his greatest desire.
He'd do anything but the right thing of course, to avoid the kind of "optics" he's been enduring the past few days.
so, Same old story that anybody who is conscious has bee aware of for a couple of years now.
Commentators, including you Paul, We Know This. How about using some of the precious space and brain power to suggest ways to fix it.. practical workable ways. like holding forums that you will organize and attend for people who do not even know what the NYT is. We need to speak to the uninformed instead of each other.
You think?
1
Still, with about 40% of the voters still backing the thug as President, it will be hard to reverse it, if ever, especially since Democrats aren't interested in voting. Then there was yesterday's SCOTUS vote about gerrymandering, essentially a big meh! Gotta keep those Republicans in office with any means necessary.
With regard to Pax Romana: What happened to them? Goths and Visigoths took them down. Who are our goths, and I don't mean the 20 somethings in Portland?
The only thing Fat Donnie stands for is the National Anthem. And he only does this because of his opposition to African American NFL players , and their supporters, who protest injustice by police.
He is systematically tearing the USA down.
Who will stand up to this guy?
3
Me, and you. Those who understand the the cause, are called to it.
Dear leader's forte. Destruction and chaos. This is the only reason he took this job, besides making a lot of money for himself and his progeny. Disgusting little man. Once we are rid of him, will we ever get back on track? I feel the countries dirty secrets are out in the open. We are a country of prejudice, misogyny, basically unpleasant friends. We won't find many countries who will trust us when this is over.
3
Wow, this is the third article of yours I've read today!
Urgent measures....
1
Trump is an abusive creep who is setting you up for more abuse. Supporting the Republican pedophile who lost was not his first foray into establishing new moral lows from which subsequent abuse looks less shocking. This seems to be another bomb meant to traumatize you into accepting child abuse. He maybe abuses women; so what's next? Keep a close eye on those children.
2
"The U.S. government is, as a matter of policy, literally ripping children from the arms of their parents and putting them in fenced enclosures". And if you read some of the comments in even the NY Times, you can see Trump's base, over and over again, declaring the same thing...The migrants have entered here illegally and should therefore be punished. What better way than to wrench their children from their arms and put them in cages?
To Republicans, including your Dear Leader, I ask. Who will mow your lawn, clean your house, pick your crops, clean your pool and rear your own children, without immigrants? Are you relying on the unemployed white person in West Virginia to take these tasks on? Good Luck.
6
Here in CA, not a single white Republican has taken a job left over after they decided they needed to be in lockstep with 45's assault on migrant workers. The Central Valley - our breadbasket - isn't mysteriously filled with Republican children who had been demanding jobs. Isn't that special?
There are over a thousand comments here and several more thousand comments tied to other articles in the New York Times everyday. Are we all going to Vote? I hope so. It would be a pity to waste all these words.
11
What`s the point of even watching the news, every word coming of the mouth of trump is a lie, same with Sanders, together will anyone else in the cabinet.
Reporters are only allowed to see a little of what is happening.
This old man, accidental president trump is a con man together with everyone of his family.
American Empire will survive if Donald J, trump is voted out of the office.
Please, Citizens please register, if you have not now to vote the liar in chief out !
7
If I may simply express my impression of this Trump era, excuse me, I am simply without hope.
Mr Trump issues statements and tweets that are accepted as facts due to his simple delivery of said statements and tweets. His issuance of policy has become propaganda the likes of which have not been witnessed since Adolf Hitler. Nearly 50% of Americans believe Trump simply because he says the words, in direct opposition to facts, truth, and/or verifiable data.
I am simply without hope.
4
Somewhere treason lurks in the trump administration, and I hope Mueller has found out where.
2
Our Fake President will eventually receive his well earned comeuppance, hopefully a lot sooner than later. Although wounded, domestically and internationally, by the arrogance, stupidity, and criminality of a raging narcissist, America will somehow recover.
But the millions of voters who eagerly cast their ballots for this amoral Con Man? What will become of them and their political influence relative to the long term stability and enlightenment of our republic?
11
The United States is still a land of opportunity for all, but it takes education or re-education, perseverance, and possible relocation.
3
President Donald Trump has N. Korea, S Korea, Japan and America sitting at a table. If Peace is achived GREAT WORK
from all 4 of the leaders. NOW , Trump is claiming that the Democrates have caused the FIASCO at our Southern Border. Trump controls The White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Trump and his Slime from the Swamp he drained and some other Republicans (puppets) are ready to put those children striped from their mothers and fathers into That SWAMP. President Donald Trump is looking for his Passport for Russia. The devil even rejects TRUMP
1
Trump and his goose stepping republican sycophants and base need to go down in flames on November 6, 2018.
See you at the polls.
13
Trump is trashing our allies and institutions and praising tyrants because that is what he has done his whole life, including his early childhood. What all in the media and in government, as well as in the general population fail to recognize and understand is that Trump's severe childhood trauma under the thumb of a tyrannical bully father has produced a bully tyrannical person who has skillfully used the techniques of propaganda deception to become the POTUS. It's not rocket science. It's basic psychology. His father perpetually instilled in him the idea that every interaction with people was a contest in which if you did not win, you were a loser. Any child in that situation would develop a sense of being a loser. To defend against that painful awareness he copied the behavior of the person he saw as a winner, his father. His behavior grew more and more incorrigible until even his father became fed up and sent him to the NY Military Academy in hopes it would discipline him. Instead he found himself surrounded by who he perceived as bullies and by a means to develop and perfect his bullying skills. Hence his attraction to military generals and tyrants.
The underlying source of Trump's behavior is actually an avoidance syndrome. He must avoid the boiling undercurrent of the pain hard wired into his brain from childhood that he is a loser. Some have said he's an "idiot, or a "moron". No. It's his childhood persona pushing to the surface like lava from an active volcano.
"It's consumerism stupid." It's untethered capitalism stupid."
We are receiving what we have sold to the world. The system is doing exactly what is designed to do. Capital seeks the best return and it is no longer here. Capital cares only about where it can find the best return. Welcome consolidation. Welcome capital flight.
"It's the system stupid."
2
"Fall of the American Empire". Speaking of falls, let's also talk about the looming recession -- projected to be catastrophic. Mr. Krugman, in the weeks ahead, please help us understand what we're about to face. If your sage insights may not help our wallets, they may at least help our will.
4
This piece left me truly shaken. There are many of us who believed that it couldn't happen here but it has. A great sorrow that has been creeping up for several generations.
2
Mr Krugman,
That talk about your American ideals and exceptionalism is all Hybris!where did you get your magnificent ideals from?Imagine how we as Europeans feel when you keep playing the American exceptionalism card.
1
It could be because unlike some countries we didn't declare ourselves neutral during WW 1 and WW2 only to be invaded by Germany anyhow.
I think Mr. Krugman is right in talking about exceptionalism, besides Europe had their chance and it came and went. At least we're recognizing the need for change instead of declaring neutrality like the Netherlands. So play your role and just stay neutral in the conversation.
1
November can't come soon enough. The GOP has made us all sick.
3
Whoa, people. Pump the brakes. If I didn't know better I'd think I just woke up, it's 1968 and this is the Letters page of "The Manchester Union Leader." It's the "New York Times" not "Pravda" and it's just an opinion. There's no reason to start throwing around insults or manning barricades. Democracy is a process so let it play out. The country has survived worse times than these. The difference now is there's a thing called the Internet which stokes people 24/7 and to be honest I'm not so sure it's progress.
2
And surprisingly enough, the people that support Trump seem to be brain washed not to see the wrong and inhuman actions of this dude in the Maison Blanche. But, of course, their common denominator is that they are racists: like Trump, who prefers "immigrants from Norway", and ignore the plight of Puerto Rico: they are Latins, you know, and they speak Spanish; even worse.
I know old women that went to college, and are behind Trump; although they ignore many things, like our big US debt with China, our dependence on "rare earths" that China has a big supply of them, and if things go worse, they might cut them to the U. S. industry.
Trump does not have all the marbles in his bag.
1
What Trump and company are doing to this country, and to those poor children and their families is disgusting. However, if any of us has forgotten this country's history of mistreatment of people - women, children, men, then it's time for a refresher course in that American History. From the moment European explorers hit the shores of this country, there has been inhumane treatment of others - Europeans infecting Native Americans with Smallpox, slavery of Africans ripped from their homeland, the decimation of Native Americans by the US Government, the attempted 'whitening' of Native American children, who were ripped from the arms of their families, by the US government; the Chinese Exclusion Act, the arrests, beatings and force feeding of American women suffragists, the internment of American citizens of Japanese ancestry; Jim Crow laws; racial segregation of our public schools. It was not that long ago that the US government refused to accept Jewish refugees, trying to flee Hitler's march throughout Europe. And that's just our fine American History through the 1940's.
3
"What we’re witnessing is a systematic rejection of longstanding American values — the values that actually made America great."
What was it in our past that made America great? Our slaves? Child labor? Separate but Equal? Vietnam? Iraq? What makes America great now? Global warming? Trump's base? Gerrymandering? Jeff Sessions? Driving while Black? Trump? Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell?
Maybe its just time we admit we are not really a great nation with great people? Maybe our hands are bloodstained. Maybe we are a troubled nation with many problems and as vulnerable to history's vengeance as the Third Reich and the Confederate States of America. Maybe we have to start worrying - before it is too late.
2
Donald is doing exactly what he was elected to do. Trump is a backlash against BO and The Clinton’s especially.
Everyone in these column are whining that the sky is falling down! America is going downhill!
No America's values are changing just like the rest of the world. Trump is driving the message. Check what is happening to the social justice warriors all over the world.
Detente with North Korea, ISIS marginalized, strongest economy in the world, unemployment at record lows, stock market and everyman's 401K at all time highs, Iran and Tailban on its back foot, climate change and trade agreements put on the correct levels of concern: Gawd I love winning! I am getting sick of winning!
Oh yes, immigration.
If you come here illegally with your children then prepare to pay the price for the crime. Get the message you are not wanted here if you don't follow the rules.
Why should legal citizens of the US compromise their quality of life for illegal aliens fleeing a third world country for economic reasons or social (gangs) reasons? My quality of life is compromised when these illegals come here: traffic, overcrowding, crime, pollution, taxes going for these illegals, climate change, trash and homelessness.
1
I am not sure what Trump means when he says, "make America great again"? The U.S. has always been about exploitation; from settlements in 16th century Florida to Massachusetts. The lands, native peoples and natural resources, have been up for grabs by European royalties, adventurers and recalcitrant religious protestors. After the "red people where decimated, the "Black" African people, then the "Yellow" Chinese became the labor force to make America great. The wave never broke.
Our treatment of Iran is deliberate and calculated to lead toward confrontation. It almost pales in the face of our treatment towards Central Americans. The latter being the principal reason for America's southern border crisis, as defined by the descendants of America's poor white trash mentality.
America has long way to go to become great.
1
Well done.
As a Republican for 40 years I could not take it any longer and became an independent. This article better than any other explains why.
The very soul of our country is being revealed by the crude thug we voted into the WH. May God have mercy on us.
7
My heart is heavy and my stomach sinks more and more. I hope our republic can last through this administration. The sight of little kids in cages like stray dogs is horrific and nauseating. I can't wait for the mid term elections, but alas, the Republican Taliban has a strangle hold on elections with their corporate backers, so I am not overly optimistic. Sigh...
2
Wrong again. He is making us great. According to liberals he is so despised that I feel sorry for him and like him for that reason.
Any concrete example of that greatness?
1
Dr. Krugman,
A false step here. Perhaps the more convincing rhetorical move, because truer, is to say that even though the US was a murderous occupier and invader of many foreign lands, set up over 800 military bases on foreign soil worldwide, assassinated democratically elected rulers, trained and funded assassins and torturers of workers and peasants to meet our global corporate interests, and killed 1 million plus Iraqis and 2 million plus Vietnamese, supported the killing of over 1 million 'communists' in Indonesia, and paved the way for the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, that we provided a kind of Leviathan whose interests were better than Hitler or Stalin.
Let's not sugarcoat history because the Fascists are in power, filling the courts, and have the full support of one of the major parties in the US.
2
Yes we did all of that and much worse that the press isn't aware of but you only need to ask the people teaching in Fort Bragg for revisionist history but at end of the day our Republic also has these luxuries because we had people doing that.
You have to love every blade of grass in this country, whether it's a blade in Washington Square Park close to NYU liberal ideals or in Trump Country in Indiana where it's the home of the Klan. When you accept that you rather have the children and the lives of people you don't agree with prosper and like well because they are Americans despite there being good people and kind hearted souls elsewhere then you'll put country first.
Dr Krugman is correct in his interpretation because he's holding up the ideals we strive and fall short of compared to the new ideals beings presented by this administration.
Trump is indeed the worst person to ever hold the office of President, and his impact on the fabric of this country is malignant. We may not survive it. But why thoughtful columnists and pundits keep acting as if the evil platform that Trump rules from (and, yes, he rules rather than leads) is a surprise or some exotic aberration is a puzzle to me. I can remember during the televised Republican debates for choosing their nominee that Trump stood out because he was a malevolent personality. Because he was a proverbial train wreck that the media could not turn away from, there was no analysis really that at policy levels, there was no difference between Trump and the other candidates in how they saw America and the world. The difference was in degrees of disruption these folks could inflect on the fragile American order. Recall that Jeb Bush proposed a relatively sensible way to address immigration, and the entire field of Republican candidates, along with the Republican primary voters, rejected him mercilessly. The Republican party and its allies for decades softened the ground with its dog whistle platforms that sought to dissemble the New Deal framework at home and abroad. Trump is a horrible human being, but the Republicans say nothing because he is doing what they had as their objectives all along. I think we may have been falling for a while and just didn't realize it; Trump is sadly the sickening thump as we hit the cement floor.
2
Trump is beyond terrible, but Trump supporters are the cause of this country’s present misery. Look no farther than the nearest Trump supporter if you want to know why you’re living this atrocity.
6
Americans have been ripping brown and black kids away from their families for pretty much the entire duration of American history. It's absolutely an "American value". If we really want to move beyond this sordid business, lets stop this liberal hand wringing about this whole thing being an aberration. It's not an aberration. Trump himself is not an aberration. Its us. It's our dark, ugly heart. It's been there all along. We were founded on the backs of slaves. On institutionalized discrimination against Chinese Americans. On forced internment of Japanese Americans. On the kidnapping of Native American kids. Trump did not start this. He is just one rung on a very long, very ugly ladder.
4
Trump the bully. America is his china shop. Our values and norms are broken shards of glass. We need an F.D.R. to put the pieces back together.
4
The American Dream is Dead
Not because of economics- though to the extent that dream was rooted in the Ozzie and Harriet lifestyle- perhaps. But because perceptions, illusions, values and ideals shape reality.
The American reality was never rosy. Hypocrisy, lies and corruption- whether domestic or foreign are nothing new.
But what is new is not merely a loss of innocence, but an un-mooring from any concept of right and wrong. If nothing else the American dream aspired to be good.
Too much TV and social media has become crude, decapitating violence- with no pretense of reality- but rather whetting the appetite for violent extremes. And each extreme raises the threshold- the bluff- on to greater and greater pits of depravity.
And our politics embodied by our Chief represents ever widening circles of blatant criminality and bestiality. Here, words cannot describe what adjectives like disgust barely touch upon. And yet we accept it. It becomes post-truth. It brainwashes. It re-imagines a future where a reality TV Hitler won, dominated and became enshrined.
Still, as always, for those that actually care and act- there is hope. In Legend, it is said that if one man is virtuous the World may be sparred destruction. So there is always hope- unless the legends are wrong- and with too much loss there is no return. We're not quite there- but almost.
2
oh, where has my country gone?
3
Trump has always been cheap and second rate, that is why he did not rise to the first tier of New York developers. He is always scrambling and taking short cuts. He is always counter punching and catching up.
He is a loser and now he is losing for all of us.
4
Donald Trump is not the "counterpuncher" that he fancies himself. It only appeared that way because Democrats presented him with a punching bag for an opponent. Now because of that error in judgment predictions don't matter. Donald Trump is on a mission to bring the world to its knees and we will know for sure how effective that will turn out.
"...are all about ending American exceptionalism...."
Ah, hypocrisy, thy name is American Leftist ivy league liberalism.
Before Trump set out to "destroy" American exceptionalism, there was the apology tour of Barack Obama. Our "exceptionalism" was really just imperialism and we never seemed to do anything right or worthwhile.
Indeed, the first "fake news" was Barack's labeling of Islamic fascist violence, in Fort Hood, Texas, as "workplace violence," and similar dissembling and outright lying.
I wish Professor Krugman could explain why Trump's economic policies have wrought mostly good news so far, but he seems preoccupied with matters beyond his ken.
I do not believe our "empire" has fallen. And if it has, the fault is certainly not Trump's alone.
Still glad we don't have four years of Hillary. Somehow, I find possible peace with North Korea as more important than shutting down Kentucky and West Virginia coal mines.
1
Where to start ... ?
1. The UN and the entire world strongly condemned the US war in Iraq, and by the time Obama came into office, a clear majority of the American people agreed that it has been a huge, horrible mistake, with horrible consequences of the US debt and for ordinary citizens in the Middle East and US national security.
So when the US elected Obama, who explicitly rejected the neocons' warmongering and promised to make a U-turn, the entire world and most Americans felt a sigh of relief. World-wide appreciation for the US went up again.
Yes I know, Fox News claimed the opposite. But all you had to do to know that they were lying was fact-checking.
2. Fort Hood: until it was PROVEN that it was a terror attack, Obama indeed chose to call it a isolated "workplace" incident. Why? Because ISIS always sees its recruitment numbers go up after a successful terror attack, so refusing to give them that piece of propaganda until the FBI has proven that it is a terrorist attack, was part of an overall anti-ISIS strategy - which we now know has worked. So what's your problem here, actually?
3. Since Trump became president, there has been NO dent whatsoever in economy graphs. All that you see is a perfect continuation of the Obama economy. Combine that with the fact that Trump didn't sign any mayor economical bill into law yet, and that even his tariffs are only starting now, and it becomes unclear why we should give Trump any credit here, rather than Obama ... ?
2
American children are watching President Trump, and they are not a dumb as republicans think that they are.
2
Professor Krugman, you are too kind.The man in the White House is a wrecking ball, a primitive narcissist , a ahistorical dabbler in politics. At the same time he represents our worst insecurities and American provincialism [his so-called loyal evangelical christian base] and climate change- and evolution denying segment of our population.
"It can't happen here"?-----It is happening!
3
Read anything by ex-New York Times writer, Chris Hedges. He’s been ringing the alarm bells for 15 years.
1
The workers that Paul mentions have already been DISPLACED by NAFTA and the previous trade agreements put in place by the previous administrations. Not to mention the doubling of our national debt. Paul is truly delusional and intoxicated from the obama koolaid. Wake up Paul! The chickens have come home to roost! The Trump revolution is just beginning!
1
1. The debt.
Bush left with a STRUCTURAL, record $1.4 trillion deficit. "Structural" means: which cannot be eliminated entirely for decades, even if new presidents wouldn't sign any unpaid for spending bill into law.
What Obama managed to do, notwithstanding a -9% GDP and 700,000 jobs lost a month, was not only to completely turn around the Bush economy and create a decade of solid economical growth (continuing until today), he ALSO already cut the Bush deficit by two thirds.
Now compare that with what Trump and the GOP have done: they already more than DOUBLED the deficit they inherited. So now, contrary to the Obama years, the deficit is growing again, and growing fast.
2. I'm certainly not a big NAFTA fan, but if you compare NAFTA to the vague ideas Trump is proposing (and will NEVER get negotiated ... he can't even negotiate funding for his wall with his own party ... !), it's clearly much better for blue-collar workers than Trump's "ideas".
2
Obama was a clear disaster for the economy with the growth rate at the lowest ever recorded for a modern day president. I heard the City of LA was going to name a street after him. An appropriate name would be "A road to Ruin" or A road to nowhere". However the GOP should be the ones naming a street after him. He was the biggest gift the Republicans ever had with over 98% of state legislatures turning over to the Gop not to mention the Governorships. With that said, obama did very well!
Please spare us the America as a benevolent force for peace and justice in the world ! We have been undermining countries all over the world covertly and overtly in pursuit of our neo-liberal colonial agenda throughout the non-white world !
From Guatemala to Chili, from the Congo to Indonesia, from Granada to Nicaragua, from Vietnam to Iraq we have sowed our destruction and death throughout the world ! We need to look objectively at our actions as a nation and take off the rose colored glasses.
2
What worries me more than Trump, a complete nut job as president, is there are still so many American's glued to FOX news that still support him.
2
America is in dire need of intelligent leadership and integrity now more than ever. Trump has made it very clear that he is a failure as a President and a human being.
3
Russia knew it had the perfect subject when they targeted Trump in the 80s. But boy did they know what he would become? A deeper conspiracy is did they help him become that way? Probably not. A vain blowhard with little care for world politics would naturally age into a recidivist, racist destabilizer. I just wonder how much of Trump’s behavior is innate or guided by Russia? I think anything related to immigration is his own, anything international is Russia’s.
2
But of course that is why Putin selected him.
2
Yeah, but trump stopped those black players from kneeling during the National Anthem. This from a draft dodger who refused to serve his country. Caging children is just another reason to vote tis despicable republican party out. VOTE BLUE in 2018.
4
Time for a new, unapologetic exceptionalism - stop pretending elitism is a dirty word. Cordell Hull, FDR, the scientists who coordinated the Manhattan Project, the visionary statesmen who formed the post WWII Pax-Americana - these were people who channeled the benefits of privilege (indoctrinated civility; higher education; respect for an striving towards genuine accomplishment) - these were better than average individuals. Obviously many such are still among us.
I am beyond tired of the reflex of cowering in the face of accusations of "elitism" from the Jacobins waving pitchforks as a result of Fox News brainwashing. I will not be cowed by nor will I let my country be hijacked by spineless politicians who feel compelled to placate a mob of fundamentally stupid people whose equality as Americans I don't begrudge but from whom I will not accept a slouching towards dictatorship from an unelected moron like Donald Trump. His constituency of uninformed haters are not a majority, and capable people of good will - who actually did make America great - are still among us. Time to acknowledge that good faith, good will and conscientious intention towards good governance is better than uninformed hatefulness. If that is elitism, fine. Bring it on. Let the better among us take charge again. Be proud of being better and say so!
8
Give me a president who destroys our enemies -- including the cartels. Save me from fools like Trump and Krugman -- who are playing the angles.
it's pretty clear by now: President Trump isn't stupid. but he is delusional.
now, the question is this: is he a good enough salesman to convince a lot of Americans that his delusions are real... or are there still enough of us who can tell what's real and what's fake?
film at 11...
We support numerous dictators. We overthrow democratically elected governments. We bomb and invade more countries than any nation on earth. Brutalize and lock up more of our people than any country in the world with a racist criminal justice system. Deny healthcare to millions and saddle our kids with enormous debt for education.
We are by any definition, a plutocracy.
1
Somebody fix this problem, please.
1
Of course Trump is delusional. And of course he isn't making America great again. But he is making America Broke Again and he is making America Hate Again.
3
What has corrupted America is what corrupted Rome. Forgetfulness.
2
His mission is to Make America Worse.
Thank You Mr. Krugman. Abrazos!
1
I used to think Donald was merely ignorant -- that he doesn't know our history and traditions, even though he grew up here during the same 70 years I have.
But he doesn't read. He doesn't learn. He doesn't take advice. He is contrary.
Well before the end of his first year, I've concluded that he is truly ineducable. Stupid, in the vernacular.
We have a president with a lot of power who lacks restraint and vision. He can't see over the horizon, where our future is.
3
To a narcissist, might makes right, and for him to win, everyone else must lose. Trump IS destroying everything that made America special and trying to push us into being perceived like the bullies against whom we've fought for decades. God help us to stand our ground against evil, deceptive, greedy tyrant who would turn us into heartless thugs.
3
"The whole world is watching."
2
Very Sad!
1
Trump is an amoral man. Our local Senator Terrence Murphy and Assembly Member Kevin Bryne in the Hudson Valley are still supporters of cult 45. We all just can't wrap our heads around how anyone can support the 3 time married, immoral, no ethics, con artist who tanked everyone of his businesses. Calls and emails to both elected officials are ignored. WE WILL RESIST AND VOTE THEM OUT.
3
Written on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore,”
The policy of Trump and Miller: "We've got a whole lot of empty cages that need to be filled!"
2
Excellent column. Wish it left us with a hopeful sign that the extremist Trump wave will ultimately be stopped. Neo-nazis are raising their ugly heads in Europe again with the real threat of governments there being seized by them. Surely we have learned through the apocalyptic reign of Hitler's storm troopers and concentration camps that white supremacy must never, ever be tolerated. Yet the hallmarks of such ugliness are becoming more and more apparent in the twitter rants and speeches of Donald Trump, leader of the most powerful and influential nation on earth - and the one with the most powerful military. Who is brave enough to stand and be counted in the hallowed halls of Congress to block this man's evil and unlawful pursuits? We can only pray.
1
Let US not romanticize America. Today is Juneteenth. This commemorates the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation and that the Civil War was over, and they were free.
A century ago, the United States was in the grip of lynchings and anti-black pogroms misnamed race riots where ordinary black people, including families, were victims of what today we would call domestic terrorism. The second iteration of the KKK was a respectable, even glamorized, organisation whose hatred extended beyond African Americans to include immigrants.
Now we have elected a lying sexual predator bigot birther as president of the United States and are shocked that we see what we see.
The good news is that our founding documents are aspirational. The Declaration of Independence reminds us that it is our duty to make sure our government secures human rights. Our Constitution speaks of the establishment of a more perfect union.
We the People are the ultimate check on power. It is up to US to make America be what it ought to be. Give control of Congress to the Democrats in November.
3
Will no one did us of this troublesome man?
1
All nations have lost power to global plutocracy, in the last few decades. Elected “representatives” have become little more than servants of those who have the real power: bankers and global plutocrats.
This, by the way is how the Roman State fell. First Roman (quasi-) Direct Democracy fell into plutocracy, then a mix of an oscillation between tyranny and military dictatorship.
What does that have with what is going on nowadays?
All democracies have turned into plutocracies. This happened in a sneaky way. US plutocracy systematically played German fascism and national-racism against European democracies, especially France.
In World War One, the US broke the Franco-British blockade of the Kaiser’s Germany (which had plotted for 18 months, and then attacked four nations, hoping to finish France and Russia before Britain could weigh in). Busting the blockade enabled Germany to hold 4 years.
Afterwards, Germany became a US plutocrat playground, leading to, and fostering Nazism. The result was the destruction of Europe and the, therefore not so benevolent establishment of the US worldwide empire.
The US could have destroyed Nazism in 1937, when German generals asked the UK and US to declare officially their support for France (to excuse a coup).
The US empire was dishonestly acquired. “Things which made us great”? Mauling European civilization by global, mostly US based plutocracy. Destroying the order US plutocracy created may be what is needed to save civilization.
5
33% of the U.S. voters chose this wretched excuse for a human being--a vote aided & abetted by Russia, Facebook bots, & Comey's last-minute reopening of Ms. Clinton's e-mail investigation. The GOP Congress & Senate supported this "candidate", so that they could "win".
Is anything of "American" value left for him to destroy?
It won't be long before every state decides to secede from the Union. Then the American Empire will cease to exist.
2
Mr.Krugman
There are hordes of people in this country for whom Fox News is the gospel and if they are told Trump is making America great again, well then ,he is.
Nobel prize winning economists be darned
4
Trump and the whole Republican Party just shot someone on Fifth Avenue. Are we going to let them get away with it??
Vote in November. Vote the criminals out of office.
3
Mr. Krugman, have you read the work of your Princeton colleague Peter Brown? Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity; Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome and the Making of Christianity in the West; The Body and Society; Authority and the Sacred; Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire. Peter Brown pretty much created the whole field of "late antiquity."
The trade war is the most dangerous of tRUMP's policies, as it is the one most likely to lead to military war. Why? Currently, all the major nations we trade with are DEPENDENT on the US for their economic prosperity, and we are dependent on them for ours. This is what postpones the next world war - you don't go to war with a nation upon whom you are dependent.
International trade does more to promote world peace than the efforts of all the diplomats and their governments.
4
There is no counter narrative to Trump at present and that will be a problem in mid term. He is hogging the news cycle.
2
I am feeling ashamed of our country right now.
There have been hundreds of Americans permanently separated from their families because they were killed by people who entered our country illegally. And our country does not seem to care.
Now we we have a couple thousand children temporarily separated from their families because the family entered our country illegally. And everyone seems to care.
It appears absolutely clear that the politicians we elect have used the immigration issue to divide and conquer us and have done so for thirty years. And no one seems to care.
America: We are better than this.
2
Let us not forget The Sacred Oath.
"All public officials, whether elected or appointed, are required to swear an Oath of Allegiance that they will protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, both foreign and DOMESTIC.
The people, as sovereign rulers, must hold these officials accountable for every act that violates their Oath."
Surely Trump and his GOP lackeys qualify for and meet the standard of being "domestic".
Surely they are in violation of this Sacred Oath.
Decent members of the Congress, as representatives of the people, must act accordingly.
Surely decent members of the electorate will support this vital undertaking.
Let this necessary effort take place as soon as possible.
2
With the tragic recent spate of suicides, has anyone noticed that the United States of America is killing itself? As citizens, we are doing our best to destroy each other. As a nation, we are destroying the world's economy and its environment. The Trumps and their friends are getting richer but will there be anything left to spend it on?
5
I no longer recognize my country. My overwhelming feelings are sorrow and shame...but also fear. Who are these neighbors of mine, fellow Americans, who are so angry and so hateful that they condone punishing CHILDREN??
I was a teen in the flag waving bicentennial years, innocently proud of my country.
My husband, a decorated Vietnam combat vet, took the flag in today.
9
This whining only appears as a coherent narrative. In reality it is full of contradictions, paradoxes, multiplication of hypotheses. America was good, but actually it was like an empire (was it or was it not?), but it was a good and benign empire (if such thing is possible?). Benign or not, empire is an empire and it is built on exclusions, Professor Krugman. Yeah, we had occasional lapses (like the war in Vietnam or the invasion of Iraq). In Krugman's book this is all benign now. He will certainly benefit from applying the principle of Occam's Razor. This piece reveals a total chaos in Krugman's thinking. It's only organizing principle is his subjective and totally irrational desire (because unjustified logically) to remove Donald Trump. But he cannot do this because it would mean that he would have to violate American law, its Constitution, that which made America great. So, Krugman continues to live in his perennial Apocalypse. His problem is that many readers of the NYTimes are practical people and will not follow him into his dead end.
You are just incorrect. Many, many of us want to remove that cancer from the White House, but nobody has suggested anything other than legal means, e.g., impeachment or the vote.
3
What am I incorrect about exactly? That Krugman portrays a confusing picture of America? That he idealizes (almost) the past and demonizes the present? I do not say that he wants to use extra legal means. I say that he wants to remove him but there are no rational means to remove Trump because his election is totally legal. As we can see, the legal method is totally failing and even backfiring.
Americans are decent. I'm not sure our President understands , or cares, what decency is.
4
Liberals like Krugman definitely believe their own propaganda. Remember, Obama like Trump also wanted the Flores agreement disbanded so he could detain illegal parents and children together, but was shot down by the courts. Obama's resulting decision was to not enforce immigration laws at all:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-behind-family-separation-at-the-borde...
Trump's response is to enforce the law, which means, according to the Flores agreement, that detained parents must be separated from their parents.
The fault may be the Law itself, as both Obama and Trump have claimed.
1
"worse human being to hold this position"
I am not sure that he is worse than James Buchanan.
Nearly half of America voted for it. They are the problem. Trump is a symptom.
9
No, actually 24% of America voted for it.
3
The voters for Trump were brainwashed by the billionaire propaganda machine inciting the id and squashing reason and humanity.
Rather than deal with this mass of the enthralled, we have to deal with the sirens singing the song, and dismantle their huge propaganda apparatus of TV, infomercials, blogs, talk radio, evangelists, social media trolls, et cetera. With this clamor gone, reason can hope to again govern the id.
1
It would appear that in the absence of wars, the human - and specifically American - quantum of bellicosity requires a good fight. Donald Trump is the avatar of that lust for war, and he is acting out our collective need for a good fight. Of course, only 29% of those eligible to vote elected him, but even those of us who voted for the other guy -er, gal - now have a fight on our hands, and doesn't it feel good when we can pound away at Trump and his corrupt henchmen and -women. I know we've had forty-some wars since WWII, but since Vietnam they've been minor and remote, fought by a cadre of professionals whom we thank profusely without being willing to join, or to make sacrifices for. The election of Trump benefitted a tiny number of plutocrats, but it was an angry, disaffected bunch of losers and bigots who voted him in, and they were spoiling for a fight. Well, they've got it. Maybe it will become a moment of truth, when the better angels of our nature will stage a counterattack, but if not . . . well, the future looks dark.
A good follow-up of What the Romans Ever Do for Us.
1
Krugman (and many others) nailed it: “ trump is delusional...” No qualifiers needed. Also trump is misogynistic, paranoid, amoral, a pathological liar, egotistical, racist, etc... The list goes on. And on. We are all reminded daily about trump and his total lack of character.
The gop has totally disolved into the party of trump. They now proudly proclaim the same flaws as their “leader,” whom they support and defend to the end. There are no discussions or arguments to be had with republicans - they have consumed the Kool-Aid. The gop is a lost cause.
It’s up to the rest of us to reclaim our once great country, to stand up unified in rejection of hatred and fear mongering and put the USA back on its righteous course.
3
Oh Paul, how is it a man of your caliber can be reduced to the mouthpiece you've become? Isn't the point of the "opinion" or editorial section to solicit a range of views, collect input from different corners of the political and intellectual spectrum? Yet day in and day out the Times fails its paying readers with the same view from the same point on the compass from the same handful of columnists. This group never ever questions their own stance or offers the possibility they may be overreaching. Just fight fight fight Trump. Such intellectual dishonesty and refusal to ask the right questions is truly divisive.
1
The leader of the free world is now France. I hate to say that.
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
~Friedrich Nietzsche
2
He does this only with our cooperation !
1
This painful Trump era couldn't be a greater reminder that character in leadership matters. Nothing structurally has changed in our government since his election. He hasn't really locked up his enemies, declared martial law, closed the press.
This awful human being has simply taken what have always been the president's prerogatives and twisted them to suit his strongman impulses. He's in this for himself, first and last. He is utterly selfish. Every decision he makes is done to make a splash, make himself look decisive, strong, tough and independent from anything like the status quo.
There are actually some Trumpian themes which are important, things like unraveling our empire, expecting our wealthy allies to take on more of the burden of their own security, confronting our broken immigration system, which in the hands of a decent, thoughtful leader could be done productively. Trump being Trump, he's poisoned these goals.
1
Mr Krugman suffers from the same idealized, selective take on US history that Trump appealed to with his 'Make America Great Again' campaign slogan...
Some examples of dictators supported...
Noriega, Pinochet, Pahlavi, Rhee, Marcos, Nimeiry, Barre, Seko, Batiste, Trujillio, Montt, Stroessner, Salazar
Some examples of ideological frameworks to justify activity which stands in stark contrast to democratic ideals..
Manifest destiny, the Truman doctrine, the Kirkpatrick doctrine, the war on drugs, the war on terror
You're right ! This IS unprecedented
2
Thanks to Paul Krugman for this brilliant, well thought out column. We so need his voice to continue as we live through these horrific times with the worst human being ever to sit as President of our country causing so much pain, suffering and utter chaos. Why does this man hate everyone so much?
The Empire is on fire with its own rot and greed....the new political hats must read "Make America Exist Again".
1
Thank you Dr. Krugman for reminding us of who we have been...perhaps imperfect, but striving toward the ideals. I once compared the damage by this administration as that of a bull in a china shop, but it is much worse. It is like a giant bulldozer pushing everything of value into a pile of detritus (I meant another word, but could not use it here). I daily try to find a spark of something good to keep my optimism alive. But lately it is like trying to survive on moldy crumbs of what we once were.
I believe Mr. Krugman is trying to appeal to the concept of aiming high. The sad result of this president’s reign (and I choose that word deliberately) is that outside of your country the ugly American is looking uglier.
1
I spoke to someone at my local coffee shop today, who let it be known that he was an enthusiastic Trump supporter. When I asked him what drew him to Trump, he said "He's crude, but he talks straight talk. He doesn't talk like a politician. I trust him."
This man wasn't an idiot. He was a successful insurance salesman who is making his way in the world. But the fact that he says he's supporting Trump because he believes in Trump's honesty and authenticity left me utterly gobsmacked. Trump lies so consistently that news outlets have difficulty keeping up with the falsehoods. He contradicts himself so frequently, often in the same statement, that it's often impossible to parse his meaning, much less his intentions. If what he doesn't like about politicians is their dishonesty and doublespeak he couldn't have designed a more inappropriate man to admire.
When people tell me that I should try to be more empathetic to Trump supporters, that they can be won over with gentle persuasion, I wonder whether anything can convince people who are so completely committed to ignoring the obvious. How can you convince someone of the truth when they are emotionally committed to a liar and the lies he tells?
5
"Let's help to install a somewhat dimwitted egomaniacal narcissist as President of the US and then encourage him to dismantle and destroy everything that makes that nation strong--character, ethics, values, diplomacy, the lot! Let's have him sow racial discord. Let's have him systematically undermine the free press. Let's have him insult every nation allied with America and then nullify all of their military and trading relationships. Let's have him instigate strife and enough violence in the streets that he will cancel the 2020 presidential election. Let's have him order US military to occupy every state capital and initiate another full-blown civil war. That's the cheapest possible way to entirely destroy that country and we won't have to fire a single shot." --from minutes of the global strategy meeting of the Kremlin Ministry of International Affairs
3
The President is destroying America as an idea, but the time he is done we will be greatly dimished. We are shrinking with each tear of every kid we are torturing.
4
We are not rejecting our ideals. One man, Donald Trump, and his coterie of sycophants are rejecting our ideals in our name.
But ultimately, despite voter suppression and gerrymandering, despite calls to our reptilian brains, we have the power to reject the rejectors.
Like Bill W. and Dr. Bob did long ago, we can sober up and cast off the pall of this mind-numbing intoxication. But just like the above founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, we must do it together.
One day at a time. One vote at a time.
6
“They were formed by the stifling conformity they found at liberal universities.” No, they were formed by bigotry, racism, xenophobia and hate. Stop making apologies for these people and stop blaming places where people go to learn for the people who refuse to do so.
1
The shameless, delusional, self-righteous ,sanctimonious, hypocritical assessment of what the U.S was and is now no more, that Mr. Krugman espouses (with hilarious exceptions and qualifications),only prolongs the psychological deformity the american people have been feeding each others for decades and centuries.The Trump administration, if nothing else, is a less phony mirror-image of american society.
So now we learn that President Trump wants to extend the American Empire into space. Well, sir, good luck with that because your German ancestral countrymen failed miserably in their efforts to dominate the high seas in WWI.
I accept that making Nazi comparisons are verboten - so I won't, but Otto Von Bismark is open slather, and Otto can fairly and squarely be held just as accountable as his idiotic British counterparts for that horrendous European conflict.
It arguably began as battleship envy over dreadnoughts. As the thinking went, building these pig-iron behemoths was the pathway to maritime mastery - only it wasn't. The costs were crippling, the vessels were unwieldy and their effectiveness was best measured in PR values.
Space is an extraordinarily expensive and hostile domain to access. 'Dreadnought Diplomacy' was a massive failure. Warships don't win wars, people do. Maybe the President should watch Star Wars once more - with a copy of Joseph Campbell's 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces " by his side.
'When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives becomes dissolved.' (Joseph Campbell.)
4
Thank you, Paul, for your unvarnished opinion of the fall of America.
4
Trump needs to go - by any means necessary. Any legal means, certainly, but he... must... go.
6
Your President has already done irreparable harm to your country's reputation and image abroad. The retrenchment of your country on the international scene is great news for countries like China and Russia. In particular, Trump's latest foray into causing division in the G7 and in the EU is something straight out of Putin's wish list. When will your country wake up and realize that you have a traitor at the helm of your government.
2
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK remarked that if all their efforts ended in the destruction of the nation then any remaining members of his administration would find themselves hanging from lampposts all over Washington, D.C., courtesy of any surviving citizens.I
I suspect his response would be similar as to any administration which caused the destruction of our Republic by other means.
2
The US now has very few allies in the entire world. South Korea, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Australia. The rest of the world wishes that the US goes down in flames. Nice state of affairs.
It is exactly the way The Trumpeteers wanted our nation to be. A Vietnam Draft Dodger as their Leader just because they believe he will make them rich. He is a Great orator of the Fake News.
1
Let's "Make America Good Again"
1
How can Trump remain in office?
Your last sentence should read: In short, he is carrying out Putin's agenda.
8
There must be some way that the NY Attorney General and the IRS can use the disingenuous "“piggy bank that everyone else is robbing,” as evidence against the Trumps in their prosecutions of the Trump Foundation.
1
Is this the new American philosophy? The editorial staff should keep commenting on this new reality and its effects on our morality, ethics, and our species.
There is nothing more dangerous than the combination of arrogance and ignorance. Trump is the personification of that combination.
1
As always Krugman ignores the one and only truly new thing under the sun: a finite planet. This reality has never existed before in human experience and our refusal to deal with it will more surely be our downfall than the lack of more stuff. Expanding trade just facilitates the rape of the planet and hastens the end of human existence. Enjoy modernity while it lasts for it won’t be around much longer.
1
Trump confuses "bully pulpit". See, below
"A bully pulpit is a conspicuous position that provides an opportunity to speak out and be listened to. This term was coined by United States President Theodore Roosevelt, who referred to his office as a "bully pulpit", by which he meant a terrific platform from which to advocate an agenda. ' (From Wikipedia)
Trump is the bully, yes and we have to keep repeating this.
===========================================
1
A Republic and not an empire, Krugster.
1
It seems the GOP, once the party of conservative values, now stands for Gulags, Oppression, and Propaganda.
2
The enormity of my shame emerging from our debacle in Vietnam has taken a back seat to the atrocity of the child abuse we condone by this administration. Shame on republicans (sic) who try explaining it away.
3
Indeed, Trump is a puppet of Putin. Why? Because Putin wants America to become a second-class nation, so that Russia will dominate the world. No wonder Russia played a role in electing Trump as the U.S. President. Let us get rid of Trump by electing Democrats to Congress in November.
Jeff Sessions bible thumping evil: “Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.” John Adams
Flavor of Enlightenment? Just the flavor. "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." Oscar Wilde
There is one positive as we watch our fall and that is it is evident that the founding fathers anticipated and planned for a despot coming to the White House through the backdoor. What they didn't anticipate was the other branches of government not being the check and balance. Our three legged stool of government has faltered because our Judicial Branch failed big time with Citizen's United, the Executive Branch is currently in write-off mode and a vehicle for systematically destroying our dreams and the Legislative Branch is now comprised of self servants, not public servants, more interested in their reelection rather than keeping a raging despot in check. What to do in this situation? Will the remaining Americans have to fight to preserve our country. It is becoming evident that maybe Mein Kampf was the only book the POTUS has read. Folks that I thought were "normal" are defending the actions at our southern border and this is the thing that is frightening. Not Trump. We knew who he was many years ago.
Is it the first heatwave of summer? Are the planets in some sort of alignment? What on earth has driven liberals to the hysterical edge? Krugman is the latest to have gone bonkers, fearing the fall of America due to Trump. Are there any grownups left at the Times? How in the world do such people even carry on through a normal day seeing the apocalypse at every turn?
1
Let’s face it—we are all boiled frogs. The myth-making Trump, whose entire political and business careers has been based on outrageous lies, has inured us to moral destruction. Aided by complicit cronies, of whom the cracker Sessions and the would-be kapo Miller are only among the more odious, we are now almost cooked. The fire next time may be the only way out.
4
Two thoughts: (1) Trump is an evil man, and anyone who still supports him is also evil. (2) I'm curious about your view of Kuttner's "Can Democracy survive Global Capitalism". He has a much less sanguine view of world trade than you do, though global finance seems even more of a problem than "free" trade .
2
It is very sad to see the country we all looked to for guidance and in admiration, now resorting to bullying their own and their closests friends. Certainly there are imbalances, the attending to which are due and in some cases overdue. But, I am afraid this point gets lost in all the bullying and "who blinks first" war mongering. You dont need to tear down the house, because some windows need replacement. Andas we are already seeing, it opens the door wide open for all less desireable states and political movements looking to benefit and create further conflicts. And excactly this has been the good thing with the alliance we have had for so long and which is now in danger of going down the tube; the mutual protection and support. And in the final end, we are all going to lose. And perhaps one day wake up to the fact that we have all been sleepwalking, or pretending to, basically hoping that it would all sort itself out. Perhaps it will, but in the meantime.....?
1
These corrosive elements have always been present in the US, as they are in most nations. What has changed and allowed them to become ascendent is the collapse of any sort of opposition. The Democrats have gone for the corporate gold and seem content to present themselves as "not as bad" while continuing to cash the campaign checks. We are all to blame.
1
The jaw-dropping bit about Trump is that we continue to allow him to get away with it.
We have no clear sense of how or even if it can be stopped.
Mr Krugman's reflections are typically informative, challenging and offer a wider perspective. But do nothing to change the situation..
The fox is in the chicken house. Do we expect him to change his behaviour by standing around, tut-tutting, analyzing, poo-poo-ing... This Fox laughs at us and (in the same way he criticised European leaders) is amazed at "how long I have been getting away with this".
Nice article but where's the action?
Maybe a different headline?? "Watching the American Empire burn as we all sat around, chewing our gums and moaning about the crazy fiddler"???
2
For years before Trump, candidates for elective office have sought to convince us that their success in business, i.e. becoming personally wealthy, qualified them for government positions. In reality, they just want to use the tools of government to further enrich themselves, advance their personal pet projects, and alleviate their personal grievances. Through the examples mentioned in this column, the Trump Administration has demonstrated all too clearly that a loud-mouthed businessperson is not who should be running our country.
3
I am no economist but I agree with 90% of what you say, with one main exception:China.
From what I have read in the legitimate press, China has very little respect for the rule of law, especially the law of intangible property. They steal our patents, copy our programs, movies and recordings without paying royalties and in general rip us off on our IP for many billions of dollars. They also have impossibly strict rules for US companies that want to do business in China, and subsidize certain industries (steel e.g.) to such an extent as to have a ruinous effect on US manufacturers of the same goods.
Assume most of the preceding is true. Also assume that protests to the WTO don't work. Why not try tariffs (against China only)? Yes they may hurt us as well but China is already doing great damage to our economy with its grossly anticompetitive and lawless behavior.
China keeps factories overproducing because if they don’t there will be riots in the streets. Part of their social contract, maybe a communist relic, is that there is work. It’s at a government level - they’re probably breaking even or losing money on steel.
Donald Trump is not destroying what Mr Krugman thinks he is destroying, he epitomizes what the US have been about for a very long time: profit making and greed mythologically dreamt as opportunity for all, while violently or subtly excluding those perceived as not deserving ( which started as soon as in the wake of independence, with a Second Amendment meant to control slaves rebellions)
The American Dream was basically white, even if enlightened citizens did believe in and fought for something else. The real novelty is that their 21st century peers are still to be found before they can be heard, in a world so fast changing they have to understand it first.
5
It is shocking that Americans still call their president the leader of the free world. Americans should stop deluding themselves. They stand for nothing. They have lost any sort of moral compass. Their politicians are pathetic and we Europeans do not want their values.
1
We live in the world in which everybody cheats on everybody.
That’s the essence of relationship between the USA, Europe, China and Russia.
The moment of reckoning will come once America is forced to print out twenty trillion dollars and pay off all the creditors.
At that moment the entire world will shake up and the new dawn is going to come with the new set of winners and losers.
At that moment Europe will realize that the NATO protection wasn’t free at all. China will realize that the free trade does not work so well for them. America will see the stocks and the retirement funds losing a significant value due to the rampant inflation and that piling up the national debt wasn’t free but extremely expensive strategy.
There is no free lunch. Somebody always pays for it.
4
Our country is becoming increasingly diverse, transitioning from an industrial to an information-based economy, experiencing growing income inequality and dealing with environmental issues exacerbated by climate change. When faced with these issues, this administration would like to pretend that we can revert back to the 1950s for solutions. This can't end well.
3
Amen!! I just hope the voters in November realize this, and I pray it's not to late to undo ALL the damage he is doing to our country and our values.
11
"So Trump isn’t making America great again; he’s trashing the things that made us great, turning us into just another bully — one whose bullying will be far less effective than he imagines."
I'll keep saying this: we elected this man. Enough people voted for him that he won the required number of electoral college votes to put him in office. If I were on the outside looking in I'd say that his election means that Americans want to be bullies, they want to destroy whatever balances there were in the world in order to benefit their country at the expense of others. And, while I might not like dealing with China America, at this point, is not a reliable partner or a considerate partner.
What has happened to the country that conceived of and set in motion the Marshall Plan? What has become of the country that used to lead the world in technological innovation? It has become a prisoner of its own politics and inability to function. It elected an intelligent black man as president but also elected senators and representatives who were determined to oppose every action he took. America is a country that claims to value life while it refuses to help its own citizens unless they are rich. America has natural resources, plenty of people who are willing to work hard, lots of land and yet its people are completely uninterested in learning from any other country. If America were a person I'd say it was suffering from senile dementia.
12
Trump will not be "shocked" by the effects of his coming trade war. The effects won't occur overnight, but will gradually accumulate. So we will hear Trump say something like, "Nobody knew international trade was so complicated," and he will howl and bellow and tweet about the rest of the world treating us very unfairly. Some working-class Trumpists may be surprised when they or others lose their jobs, but my guess is that many or most of them will blame the foreigners, and stalwartly proclaim that they are ready to pay any price, and bear any burden, to put an end to the rest of the world taking advantage of us, and to make America great again.
8
There is a naïve believe that once the Trump policies come home to roost, the scales will fall from eyes of his supporters. Don't kid yourself; admitting one was wrong takes a moral courage absent in virtually everyone (and I don't exclude myself). Trump will only find some other group to blame or double down on his current obsessions. Fasten your seatbelts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
14
A mob boss at the helm with a clear us and them viewpoint. What's good for me and the family is policy. If one feels a part of Trump's America then what America used to at least pretend to stand for is of little concern
8
Thank you, Mr Krugman - your words are exactly my and many American's thoughts. Keep speaking out loud!
12
I have lived in Mexico for the past 24 years and living outside of the United States, I can see inside with more clarity, I believe, than those living inside and buying into the America is the greatest country hype. It used to be. It isn't anymore. And it's getting worse by the day with Trump in the White House. I have friends who are Trump supporters and who refuse to see what he is doing to what used to be a great country and I fear by the time they 'get it,' it will be too late. It makes me sad to watch. God help us....
10
Despite I full agree about your comments about this president, I have to say that US was not that kind of democracy, freedom, human rights and rule of law guardians, because if we analyse the Latin American modern history (not to mention other continents) we see many coups d’etat sponsored by US, including democratically elected government, all over the continent, leading to repressive and merciless regimes. And in our case (Brazil) leading to an economic downturn and a huge external debt…
So it’s a sort of hypocrisy tell us that kind of assertion.
5
Makoto—Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve always gotten the impression that the US typically supported Latin American bad guys who were the least bad of the feasible alternatives. And during the Cold War, which is when most of this stuff happened, you could hardly blame the US for not supporting leaders who openly supported the USSR. And yes, the US government typically helped promote US businesses in the Latin American market, against corrupt local tyrants and opportunists who just wanted bribes and extortion.
"Trade agreements were meant to (and did) make America richer, but they were also, from the beginning, about more than dollars and cents."
Um, hi, the TPP was exactly this: a geopolitical arrangement masquerading as a trade deal, to enhance alliances with current allies and bring more marginal allies onto our sphere and away from China (namely Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore). Yes there were problematic areas but with more negotiations those rough patches could have been smoothed over. And Trump killed it based on lies and nonsense. It was a blow to our work to counter China's growing influence in its region and across the developing world.
(How convenient: Trump doing China's bidding... what did they bribe him and/or his family with?)
2
We do not become great by caging children, denying our citizens the right to vote, insulting our friends, choosing cruelty over honor, lying so much it becomes an echo, having our own state run TV, not having checks and balances, living with a gutless fearful Congress, emulating tyrants policies, having a corrupt administration, trying to weaken our law enforcement, trying to dismantle free speech, ignoring the constitution, hating anyone not like us. We are becoming so small and weak. And perhaps soon irrelevant.
4
Germany did a lot of soul searching after 1945.
Our soul-searching is now way overdue! We are now a world pariah.
10
And Germany can be an encouraging example for us as we try to make amends. I just hope we get the chance.
1
Yes, Professor, the U.S. was a great nation even shortly after WWII when many of its excesses, such as the tragedy of Vietnam, could have been understood (if not excused) as naive Cold War attempts to prevent the spread of Communism.
The U.S. mindset changed from largely political to obscenely commercial after the fall of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. decided it could rule the world and secure its commercial interests through sheer military force.
The result has been one blunder after another: $$$trillions wasted on Wars of Choice, neglect of domestic infrastructure, blackmailing of allies, befriending of the world's worst dictators and a plunge to the moral depths (torture, Extraordinary Rendition) associated with the world's most barbaric regimes.
The U.S. is surviving on Dollar life support, essentially printing money to finance profligacy as befits its fiat currency status. But once that goes the dam will break.
1
Totally agree with your insights. Have long said US is in a spiraling state of decay similar to the fall of other great empires. Regrettably this president epitomizes all that is wrong with that spiral.
3
This says all we need to know about the rot in the White House: "The U.S. president is demanding that law enforcement stop investigating his associates and go after his political enemies instead. He has been insulting democratic allies while praising murderous dictators. And a global trade war seems increasingly likely."
The degeneration does not stop there, unfortunately. We see it present in both McConnell and Ryan, two of Trump's apparatchiks who are serving him but doing nothing to advance the public good.
7
How come no one ever talks about WHY we have so many Central American families desperately fleeing their homes? Where were our great American values of "freedom, human rights, and the rule of law" in the decades during which we propped up right-wing death squads (trained by our own military!) in their countries? Dr. Krugman briefly mentions our "not at all pretty" history with Iran. Wouldn't it have been more appropriate in this context to mention the CONTRA side of "Iran-Contra" -- especially now that Oliver North has slithered his way back in to American public life?
And how about Trump's favorite scourge, the Mara Salvatrucha? These evil butchers may be Salvadorean by blood, but the MS-13 was born and bred on the streets of Los Angeles, then *exported* to El Salvador. It is these US-made weapons of mass destruction -- these "animals," (as Trump calls them) -- that the families and children at our borders now seek our protection from.
How about we focus a little less on the Keystone Kop shenanigans at the White House and a little more on raising public awareness of why we have such a huge "refugee problem" in the first place?
6
600,000 civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan because of Bush's lies. Trump is just the culmination of Republican lies about taxes, terrorism, health care, the deficit, global warming.... With the aid of FOX 'news' they are going after the courts and legal system. Seems like we should get used to living in a capitalist version of the Soviet Union.
12
It’s an opinion piece, but I agree with the opinion. It is truly a tragedy that those who stand to lose the most, stand by Trump so mindlessly. What also troubles me—as a child of the 60’s—as a retired military officer—as a protestor no less—is where’s the outrage? If kids were taken from parents at the border in 1968 the entire country would be shut down. What happened to our collective social conscience that galvanized folks to take action against injustice?
2
I know just how to make America great again. Let’s go down to the boarder and for each immigrant who is yearning to be free, we will trade one Trump voter who can live their dream in Nicaragua or El Salvador, countries led by dictators and hemorrhaging from corruption and gun violence.
3
Neither Trump or his followers have read history or will learn anything from it. America is heading toward Handmaid's Tale, specially if Pence is elected after Trump
12
We abandoned the moral high ground when dubya ordered the invasion of a country that posed no military danger to us against the will of the world on a pretext based on lies. It was all downhill from that point on. The economic consequences of that war combined with reckless economic policies resulted in the downturn that got Obama elected but that merely enraged racists. The GOP set about blocking anything he tried to accomplish and in many ways succeded.
Emboldened, the racists then proceeded to elect the candidate of their dreams, a man who was even more like them in temperament than dubya.
And here we are, in free fall. In a previous generation drumpf would have been impeached by now and we'd have had president Pence but a new generation of GOP cowards with no principles or scruples lack the guts to confront this man-baby wannabe dictator for fear of their precious political careers.
The scary thing? His popularity ratings are going UP, not down. November can't come soon enough.
8
You say “millions of workers will be displaced”,and I say I hope it happens, because it’s these deluded people known as the “base” that is the driving force behind this madness. I only hope that this group bears the brunt of what is coming, because they are the fans to Trump’s flames, and they should suffer the most. These misguided hateful people, blaming their own misfortunes on “liberal elites” are the cohort Congressional Republicans kowtow to in order to maintain their own cushy lifestyles and who could care less about any damage they do to our republic. Eternal shame an very last one of them.
16
The “American goodness” of Krugman’s idealized Pax Americana was founded on the wealth amassed through incalculable inhumanities of slavery and genocide—roots from which generosity, nobility and the liberal spirit invariably arise, according to the great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, writing about the “will to power.” America is not in a condition to rehearse its founding cruelties even if it was deranged enough to want to try. So things could be worse (and probably will be, down the road): the man in the White House could be someone with all Trump’s stated aims but prudent enough not to make political blunders like the current border fiasco.
3
Republicans neither follow the Constitution or the Law now. Trump neither, but he's, unfortunately, an uninformed, choleric misanthrope.
Not all Republicans voted as they do now, yet they follow Trump -- primarily to keep their jobs. The Constitution doesn't say they should do good, just "provide for the common welfare ". They refuse.
The U.S. has always worked for its financial benefit, particularly the benefit of the rich. All countries do.
I think after WWII ended and the middle class rose, the U.S. rode the wave of being "the post-war good guy", but we never overcame our ugly underbelly. The U.S., as the land of freedom and happiness, starting in the '50's, was a myth.
The literal goodness of the 1930's, FDR, Cordell Hull, prosperous trade among nations for an enduring peace, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade are long forgotten.
But our values of racism, sexism, antisemitism, greed exist as they always have. Trump makes them "okay"... celebrates them.
Trump and Congress seem to be destroying what we thought was America. Maybe they're revealing us.
Look to the voters who support him. Educated or not, they somehow think he'll provide jobs and lower taxes. And the wealthy have gotten huge tax reductions. His base sees their own ugliness and desires, ignores his lies and he wins.
Gives credence to, "Nice guys finish last".
3
The President, one Donald J. Trump, wants total control and authority to do whatever he sees fit to do.
It is not beyond the realm of possibility, to see elections postponed or even cancelled because of his thirst for control. He's running roughshod over the country with his belligerent attitude. He is being enabled by an ignorant, uninformed base of bigots, and a cabinet full of toadies and yes men.
Congress is useless and spineless and afraid of him. There isn't going to be any action from them.
Trump is itching to be a dictator with all that goes along with those powers. He admires the likes of Vladimir Putin and others of the same ilk.
Is the country, read the people, going to finally stand up to him, and say, enough is enough? Right now, that remains to be seen.
These are dire times for the country for those willing enough to really see and understand where he is taking the county.
This has to stop. Time is short, and yes, we can find ourselves living under marshal law and all that goes along it. He well take more and more if he isn't stopped.
Is this all overblown fear and hyperbole? One hopes it is, but.........?
It can happen here if we let it.
14
The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock with a boat load of refugees fleeing persecution. Trump says he will never allow America to become a refugee state. America was founded by Refugees. His family included. The only difference today is the ethnic, religious background, or skin color of the current refugees fleeing persecution. The POTUS, has no clue, of what really MAKES AMERICA GREAT.
6
Too bad Krugman is preaching to the choir.
Everything he says is true.
If the GOP in congress cave yet again to this tyrant, we may as well give up. We elect these representatives and ask them to guard our constitution and our ideals, but they failed. They have failed us.
5
The greatest threat to our democracy is our current president. Donald J. Trump is a human wrecking ball. He is trouncing our collective soul with golf shoes. He blames everyone but himself for his shameful acts against America. That said, I believe in America. That we have a collective karma. That we will survive Trumpism. That he will not survive (politically) his own chaos. There are a faint lights in all this darkness. Namely, the Republican leadership, for all their spineless support of Trump, stand behind Mueller's investigation. They know Trump's unhinged. That he's using the White House for financial gain. That his tariffs are bad for America. They're waiting for a breaking point to pounce. Until then, Trump's will continue to wreck America.
2
I will keep asking. Did the Romans know they were in the midst of a crumbling empire as they cheered on the gladiatorial fights at the Roman coliseum? No, they didn’t, they were gleefully blind.
We are loosing the world and Pax Americana on every possible Intellectutal ground and civilized reasoned argument anyone could make. And, instead have a president and his aids who seem to delight in the mayhem, suffering and chaos they create at every turn.
We became a prosperous nation because of our giving, helpful and loving nature. And what we gave to others we gave to ourselves in the form of a world that admired us and willingly gave us the best of their best children and minds. Today, we rip those children from their mothers and put them in “camps for the unwanted”. The universe will see what we have now done and leave us with dust. The admiring and loving glances from the world will turn into fearful and hateful glares of disapproval and resentment. Their best children and their parents will stop coming. And our inheritance of love and goodwill amongst nations replaced by one of fear and hate. And, someday we will need them again, and instead of coming to our embrace, we will be castigated with the whip of indifference.
Yes, Professor Krugman, we are in the midst of a crumbling American empire.
I am glad that someone in your position has finally said it in the most direct way possible. Historians will judge you kindly as one of the few voices of reason of the time
6
The so-called "values" that we grew up believing existed in the United States was a myth that we are only becoming aware of. Those "values" were racist, self serving, harsh, isolationist, and similar to those we see fully revealed within the right wing who Trump and his enablers represent.
Maybe we need to stop crying over the past and understand that the past was not what we thought it was. I grew up in the south surrounded by racists. Those racists are still here and thriving at the expense of people of color. So what we are living through now has always been there, we just thought (or hoped) that those ugly aspect of our society were long gone. There are here and they are driving our nation's social and economic engine.
5
It was not just Trump. It was America tha turned its back on what made America great--by choosing the Trump way during the election, and now.
2
I am almost in agreement with this, but not quite. Whether the values of the liberal America of "soft power" were sincerely held or were simply very efficacious at ruling (which, in a sense, would render them as yet another hucksterism) is an open question for historians. Krugman's argument does not convincingly establish the sincerity of the values. Just reading a few books by Noam Chomsky can be very persuasive in the other direction. Secondly, since America has already been in economic decline for decades, the Trump ideology represents a (stupid) switching of strategies to brutal "hard" power. To try to reverse the decline. Krugman is completely right that the new strategy will fail big time. It will accelerate the decline and cause all kinds of disasters. But the old "soft" strategy was neither working so well nor was it pure and innocent. For example: Europe is in crisis now because of the migration problem. Wars made by the West in the Middle East produced the millions of refugees. Those wars were justified by Dubya in the name of soft power human rights and democracy, etc. values. And supported by the New York Times in the post-911 days. Trump and his European far-right analogues are like step 4 of this process.
1
Alan from Frankfurt:
I respect Chomsky but he, like you, can’t imagine anybody having mixed motives. American policy is based on mixed motives of Enlightenment values and the possibility of getting rich, among other things. And as far as our debacles in the Middle East, stupidity is more than enough explanation of our policy there; it’s hard to see how these policies in any way fit the Chomsky doctrine of Bad America.
We export diabetes and obesity throughout the world creating a sea of plastics larger than Texas all in the name of free markets. American financiers bilked the world out of trillions with their financial engineering schemes. We have waged war on the world either Vietnam and now the Middle East. The world would be much better with a greater diminished role for the USA. All to make the 1% richer.
6
Pax Americana has not panned out so well for millions in more rural American and the rust belt. Driving through rural America one finds one ghost town after another. In terms of values, our blind allegiance in the US to unfettered capitalism is a fatal flaw.
7
See how easy it was to turn our country into its exact opposite? All it took was one man and a political party addicted to power. It took a year and a half. I think we can stop congratulating ourselves now.
9
Your point is well taken But I would mark the exact date of the commencement of our moral dissolution as August 3rd, 1980, the day Ronald Reagan went to Philadelphia, Mississippi and dog-whistled to a receptive crowd, “I believe in states’ rights.”
2
I want to add my voice to the concerns stated by Mr. Krugman in this column. I view every single action taken by the Trump administration as contrary to the best interests of our country. Trump's actions of the past 10 days have been the most egregious. My congressional representatives align with my views, but they are in the minority. I have written to Mr. McConnell and Mr. Ryan with my concerns, but to no avail. I am sick at heart to see what is happening, and I fear that it will be decades, if ever, before this country and it's people recover.
3
Sometimes much of history for me, including why empires rise and fall and how quickly or slowly they do both is most economically explained by two statements made many centuries ago in Greece by Heraclitus - "The only constant is change" and in China by Lao Tzu - "When leading people and serving Heaven, nothing exceeds moderation".
While unrelated to the central theme of this article, Trump has pledged to release his tax returns after the IRS audits were complete. The audited returns date back many years. Has any reporter followed up on the status of those audits? Surely, they could be completed after 500 days with this maniac at the helm. We need full disclosure and we need it now.
6
The only way Trump`s taxes will see the light of day is if there is a patriot in the IRS that has access to them or a hacker gets to them. If that were to happen the nightmare would soon end.
America's fall from greatness is not due to its leaders, it's due to its people. We are still a democracy. That's why we should wait until November before casting judgement. That is when we will know who we are. At that time, Trump will be merely a reflection.
4
I agree with most if not all of your points, Mr. Krugman. My questions are why do you think Trump is doing the things you've cited, and what type of government/political system will we have if he is successful?
1
Cordell Hull had a great idea when he said "countries that trade with each other will not war with each other." However, the global economy that was supposed to enhance that idea did not follow the script.
The global economy has been one sided, in that the profits from trade were not equally distributed by the populations of the participant countries. The greatest profits have gone to the oligarchs, instead of benefiting the populations as a whole.
Global trade has allowed American multi-national corporations to siphon a great portion of the profits rather than middle class workers. Global trade has brought about the greatest income inequality in all of the participant nations. This economic inequality is causing a worldwide disruption, and hence the move toward nationalistic interests appears to be a remedy. Unfortunately, money corrupts. That corruption has greatly infiltrated global trade.
Oligarchs have captured a disproportionate share of the profits from the world trade, leaving the populations of their countries in shambles and looking for another remedy for economic equality.
5
On the Friday night of Memorial Day weekend, our synagogue congregation ended the service by singing "God Bless America." Both my husband and I began to cry. My husband later said that in that moment, he felt like he was on the Titanic, listening to the band as the ship was sinking. The damage to our country by one evil man in less than two yeaars is astonishing. Embarrassment doesn't even begin to describe how I feel. So much has been destroyed or damaged and I'm too old to live to see it repaired. Who are we? I don't recognize us. And now, the children in cages without comfort. How much worse is it going to get. I have never felt so helpless and November feels really far away. "The land that I love" no longer feels apt.
25
Jane Jacobs' last book, in 2004, described precisely what you are describing: a Dark Age Ahead (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Age_Ahead), in which five "pillars" of American ideals will wither without new commitments. Trump must have read Jacobs, since he's not smart enough to re-invent the fall of (a) family and community, (b) higher education, (c) bad science, (d) bad government and (e) bad culture, all of which she describes elegantly and he undermines with precision. We face another dark age indeed, unless we turn sharply at local levels, to protect centuries of achievement.
7
In reference to Myrdal's statement about the treatment of black people in America, America's foundational myth excludes any reference to slave labor as the underlying source of its founders' wealth. America's founders were mostly the early families that obtained ownership of large tracts of land, which they turned into plantations worked by slave labor. Usually, the largest expense of operating a business is labor costs, so unpaid labor enabled the founders to accumulate immense wealth compared to other businesspeople, who had to pay their workers. George Washington's immense wealth ($525 million), for example, came from his ownership of land and slave labor. Prior to Trump, and we're not sure if Trump's assets exceed his debts, slave owner George Washington was the richest American president. The real sources of America's power and prosperity are shrouded in myth and deception.
9
America is where it is today due to a faulty industrial policy (impicit, not explicit) carried out over the last 30 plus years, that includes both formal trade policies and domestic tax, subsidy, anti-union, and safety net policies.
Trump is not going to fix it in the short term through the brutal application of meat axe tariffs against allies and less friendly competitors alike.
It's going to take time and hard work and I don't see that the American people are up for it.
4
Every time I hear something new about crazy President Trump, I find myself thinking: “He doesn’t get America.”
Our president is a man who doesn’t know a thing about this nation (or maybe he doesn’t like anything about this nation).
He has no clue that the president is equal to all other citizens and is not above the law. He doesn’t understand that America is a nation of immigrants and a nation of ideas, that America does not revolve around the cult of a single personality, and that the beauty of the country is that anyone in the whole world can come here and become a U.S. citizen. These features define America.
It’s like we hired Donald Trump to be the manager of an ice cream shop and on his first day, he gathered all the employees and said, “OK, everyone, our big priority is for every dish to promptly leave the kitchen and arrive hot.” And there is this shocked silence. Every jaw drops. Did the manager just say that? But, but, but, this is an ice cream shop!
I feel like those fictional employees every single day. But, but, but, this is America!
6
It's not that he doesn't get it or understand it. It's that he doesn't care.
3
Yet another devastating critique, but why does it not end with a call for Trump to resign or be removed? He is a common criminal. The facts of his foundation are incontrovertible, and there would be more with better information about his businesses and taxes. It is increasingly undeniable that his election was not legitimate. And his every word and deed is an eminent danger to the country and the world. Where is the courage to draw the conclusion?
7
As Krugman points out, America has always been about ideals -- and I feel that's one reason the American Empire is falling. We’re trying to view Trump's America through a lens of American ideals, which is filtering out reality. Our perception of how things should be is blinding us to how things are.
I think the majority of Democratic politicians and DNC have failed to recognize they are participating in a street fight. Liberals have been playing by rules while conservatives (the billionaire backers) have been mining the minutiae of gaming the system while making it appear as if they’re champion of American values.
We’re falling because of a hostile takeover, because an elite, incestuous group of corporate billionaires and foreign interests (ie, sociopaths) is attacking us with targeted, relentless, stealth warfare tactics. Their goal is simply to control governments, media, laws and people for their own profit and power.
A conservative NYT reader commented recently, "You liberals need to stop talking about how you won the popular vote. You won that battle, but you lost the war!" He's right. It doesn't matter if we win the popular vote. What matters is that billionaires are spending vast resources, effort and time figuring out how to win electoral votes. We would be wise to follow their lead so that we can regain control. Only then can we restore sanity to our government and change the laws that allowed them to game the system in the first place.
8
America is not the country I recognize any more.
5
This is precisely the same Donald Trump who morphed his supremely selfish bullying into a dubiously successful business career. The facts of his fortunes and failures belie his claim to wealth and business acumen. Only his publicity machine and his phalanx of lawyers have protected him from being seen as the third-rate real estate tycoon that he really is.
He may cow his competition and cheat his suppliers in the context of his not-publically traded company. But the geo-political world and the smart leaders of our allies and foes will not be so easily dominated or fooled.
He’s a failed businessman and a failed President. Bad for America, bad for the world.
11
Trump is turning America into something which must be destroyed. Oddly enough he's just the man to do that, also.
2
Once we were a beacon for the world. Now we are rapidly becoming a pariah state. Vote in November as if your life depends on it, which, if you're not a rich, white, christian male, may very well be the case.
6
Border baby-snatching is pretty abominable, but the only reason we're all so outraged by it is because it's happening here. The murder, rape and mayhem committed by Contra death squads in El Salvador in the 80s was much worse. We, U.S. taxpayers, were their paymasters. They worked for us. There was plenty of information at the time detailing the atrocities these squads were committing with our money, but Ronnie Reagan hardly cared and most of the public was "meh." None of these nations have ever really recovered since then, and hence they're coming north.
Would that Americans actually see what their planes, bombs and trainers have been doing to dirt-poor families in Yemen. I daresay that the benighted people of that land would prefer a temporary baby-snatching to the destruction of their homes and the famine engineered by our Saudi proxies.
Pity the poor American people who this time can't avoid looking at the ugliness of its own collective soul. And it isn't just Trump Americans either. The Yemen atrocities are the work of Barack Obama.
5
The Republican Party is owned by the Kochs, Adelsons, Mercers and their fellow of ultra-right wing corporatists. No doubt about that. They have indeed destroyed our two-party system through the purchase of state legislatures with Citizen's United dark money for the purpose of systematically suppressing votes by Democrats.
However, the greatest harm the Republican servants of the ultra-rich are doing to our nation is allowing Donald Trump to remain in the Oval Office while continuing to make a mockery of the United States of America with every action he makes, with every word he utters. We see the Republican lust for money for what it is, but what is incomprehensible at any level is the total lack of concern that Republicans have for the security of our nation. How can they look the other way when they know like we all do that Putin controls Trump? How can they allow Trump to trash relations with our true allies in order to do Putin's bidding? How can they sit quietly next to Trump while he rips babies from their mothers' arms?
We see what has happened to the Republican Party. We see them clearly for who they really are: power hungry, greedy, shameless cowards.
We are descending into a corporatist/Trumpian dictatorship. The only possible salvation is getting out the vote on a massive scale.
14
Well said, Jefflz. But sadly, these people don't care what liberals think or feel or want. They care only about money (amassing and hoarding as much as possible for themselves) and power (making the world in their image), in that order. They have figured out how to control their base, which is simply a means to this end for them.
I think the day we stop trying to make them care (realize they never will) is the day we start winning this war. You can't fight a sociopath using feelings, emotional outrage, reason, empathy, logic, compassion. They will always win that fight because they aren't encumbered by emotions and they have perfected the art of twisted thinking (logical fallacies, lies, gaslighting, deflection, disinformation, chaos...).
The only way to beat a sociopath is to stop feeding it your emotions, ignore it, recognize it so you can protect yourself, but start focusing on the forward momentum of your own goals. Liberals need to learn how to "fight smart" against that beast.
The communists always said our fall would come from within ourselves. They forgot to mention that someone like Putin might give us a little push.
4
America lost it´s face already when Bush opened Guantanamo. Since then America is not a symbol of freedom anymore. The american dream is dead!
1
Sixty million Americans approve of Trump's conduct; he may be the conductor, but it it the orchestra that is rotten to the core.
22
We stand by the rule of law? Surely you understand that it is unlawful for illegal aliens to enter our country.
Enforcement of the law is one thing. That would result in deporting the aliens not charging them with a criminal charge instead of a civil charge. All this does is clog the courts and the jails. Maybe Trump's new real estate ventures can be jails.
Professor Krugman is right: Trump's rejection of trade policy conducive to international cooperation, his inhumane immigration policy, his contempt for democratically elected leaders and his love of dictators all degrade the United States and diminish us in every way. Now it's time to ask who benefits from this. Trump isn't merely a lowlife boob playing to his reality TV fans (though he surely is that). He's a lowlife boob who's a very useful tool being used by very powerful forces. It's time to find out who they are and expose them.
1
Trump is a short term, quick fix thinker and doer. That was his appeal. His voters want to believe in simple solutions. He's rash and wiggles out of the costs and pain he inflicts on others. But this won't work ultimately on a national level. I only hope enough people realize what a colossal mess he is creating to vote him and his sycophants Congress out.
1
I feel like the state of America today is like an animal caught in a trap, gnawing off its leg to escape. We can't vote our way out of this; that game is rigged. We can't work hard enough to earn the money to buy our way out of this; that game is rigged too. We fight with each other in a cage match the idle rich languidly watch and place bets on. The level of frustration and despair shatters families, induces addiction and the anger is causing people to take the worst of positions fighting against each other rather than for anything. Half the country thinks the other half the country is evil and stupid. Tied together in a three-legged race, we're all convinced we're going the wrong direction. We are ripe for someone to rid of us of "those people" and we're ripe for dictatorship.
3
this is part comment and part question . In the last 2 weeks the daily reported " summation " of "Approve Trump" vs. "Disapprove" in Real Clear Politics has changed. For many months the approve never rose above 42% and the disapprove never (to my knowledge) below 52%. Since he is cruelly treating illegal migrants -- no matter their state of suffering and oppression they want to escape in their native countries-- the approve goes up almost daily and the disapproved goes down so the question: will we continue to approve more and disapprove less as his cruelty increases?? will popularity arise if Muslimes must wear and arm-patch, for instance???
2
Krugman is correct about the corrosive influence President Trump has had. Unfortunately, it goes deeper. His election was a symptom of our individualistic culture. We "held" ideals until it pinched. Our conversion from racism was tenuous. Our generosity was enforced through a tax system that once worked to "level the playing field."
Noticeable was our caving after 9/11 to torture, imprisonment without due process, and violations of human and civil rights at home and abroad. When people now say, "This in not who we are!" they need to take a second look. This is EXACTLY who we are, now made manifest in Donald J. Trump. An historic fall indeed.
2
today the display of lies and justifications for the abuse of children from trump & Co. was astounding. i think republicans are too used to softball FOX news and are less and less able to deal with real journalists. real journalists that are finally riled up enough to not let them off the hook with the easy dodge. riled up enough to demand actual answers to their questions. all i can say is FINALLY! these bullies are going to go down big on this one and it is about time. stand up to a bully and he will fade..... you might take one on the nose but he won't be looking at you the next time he needs an easy mark to make him feel BIG..... and our president is always looking for the easy mark.
2
Our democracy died long ag in Dallas. Since then some truly evil people have been running the show with endless wars, coups, assassinations, overthrows of democratically elected leaders we did not like. The chickens have truly come home to roost.
2
I thought Trump was merely carrying out Putins plan to divide and conquer. Remember Putin planned this years ago to disrupt the European Union that was cramping his invasion plans.
Smash all treaties with allies. Insult them enough. Embrace dictators. Start trade wars. Turn logic into chaos.
At home divide the country, encourage racism to do this. Give voice to fringe hate groups. Get more guns into the population to help with the chaos. Mess up the US government by not employing enough people so it's ineffective, silence Congress by dominating them with tweets. Destroy the branches of government by upending tradition, norms and customs. Criticized constantly the FBI CIA the department of Justice.
Top it off with a daily constant barrage of lies and gas lighting techniques to confuse and distract the press, the population, our now non allies.
Speak only to his base, serve them red meat and propaganda through the state television station Fox News. Encourage paranoia and conspiracy theories
Never give us, the rest of America a decent thoughtful policy driven press conference.
Continue making scads of money with the family business. Encourage thinly disguised misuse of power and influence, not just locally but worldwide.
Oh and take children away from their parents, just to keep the cruelty and racism flowing through the country.
I think Putin should be very happy so far!
4
Again, preaching to the choir. What are the democrats doing to penetrate the "despicable base" to make them see how this foul thing is jeopardizing and demeaning America and them? It's lovely to write, but at this point, this country needs action. Decent people should stand up for decency, a rare commodity these days and becoming rarer each second.
2
To many, perhaps most people in the world, the "fall of the American Empire" must be a relief. Paul Krugman may view the U.S. role in global affairs as essentially benign, but try telling that to the millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians victimized by our bombs and bullets. Or the untold numbers of Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Chileans "disappeared" by our proxy death squads. Or the millions in the Middle East killed, maimed, and displaced by our 25 year reign of terror in that region. Trump has merely ripped the mask off the monster and showed Americans what they truly are in the world's eyes. Predators and parasites.
1
This is not about differences between Republicans and Democrats any more.
It has become clear that there is a minority of our citizenry who for whatever reason hold fundamentally different values on some very basic elements of our society.
To the extent that they support Trump, to that extent they are fundamentally opposed to the things that make this country a decent and livable place for everyone.
It's time to draw the line. We who understand that our basic values are being bulldozed under by a man who has the values with little more worth than those of a Mafia thug have to understand something.
There is no compromise between ignorant, bigoted and xenophobic attitudes and those of a decent and diverse society.
This is an existential battle for the soul and the very existence of our country as we know it.
Muster every drop of strength you can muster and act accordingly.
This country can NEVER be allowed to fall into these cretins hands again. The Republican party is no longer a party of those with conservative views who held to the honor of respecting the basic values our country was founded on. The Republican Party no longer exists. There is instead a cult of a single person with no more moral imperative than a torch carrying mob.
THIS IS IT!
The battle for the soul of our country.
Enjoin the battle.
1
Paul Krugman is correct in his analysis of the state of America but the one thing he fails to emphasize is collapse of the moral fabric of the American people. Unlike the holocaust and the internment of Japanese Americans during WW 2 which were hushed up by our government, the separation of children from their parents and placing the children in cages is being covered daily by the press and yet the majority of Americans sit in their living rooms ignoring the atrocities. True Americans of every race and religion should be writing their Congress persons and marching in the streets. Moral complacency allowed the election of Mr Trump and the moral complacency of the American people is allowing Mr Trump to drive us toward the fall of America and all that our fathers and forefathers fought for.
1
Considering that Trump is a product “made in America”, the fall of America can’t happen soon enough for the sake of the world.
2
I live for the day when the State funeral for Donald Trump is announced. Then this country can heal the wounds inflicted on it by the worst President in the history of the American Republic.
1
And still, the republicans are silent and complicit.
3
America’s Great Corporations have outgrown America and went Global.
Thanks to the invention of the internet they can manufacture their goods at a much lower labor cost anywhere in the world.
Thanks to the invention of the 401(k) they were able to eliminate the cost of their Defined Pension Plans and get an added bonus by having 401(k) Plans invest in their stocks.
Thanks to their investments in Lobbyists, they were able to buy a majority in Congress that will do their bidding and rewrite the Laws.
So here we sat, wondering where all the good jobs went while gullibly voting for our Savior.
The problem at the border runs much deeper than described in this otherwise cogent editorial. The Trump Administration, including its advisors and Cabinet Secretaries, have turned the country into a Criminal State, the Russian "sharashka" (a sinister enterprise based on bluff and deceit), very much built on a neo-Nazi construct of values. It is a system of governing principles that is morally bankrupt and contemptuous of laws and principles that don't suit its immediate objectives of promoting the primacy of the State, its officials' self-serving interests and racist philosophy above all else. We have seen this movie before in the Germany of the 1930s and the Stalinism of the mid-20th century. There are so many frightening parallels that we can safely predict this will not end well; the perpetrators and those complicit through silence will have no-one but themselves to blame for the consequences that will inevitably befall them. One can only hope that when the next Administration takes office there will be proceedings akin to the Nuremberg Trials in which those responsible for the atrocities now being committed at the border will be held to account.
2
This paper is wonderful. The author is wonderful. The commenters are mostly wonderful and the ability to hear your opinions is wonderful. But with respect, you do not get it. The opinions, and more importantly the feelings, of the Trump supporters are not influenced by these comments. They are influenced by local vile right wing talk and TV shows and the churches all over the place. To date there has been no attempt to answer the local talk radio and TV with something like the Fairness Doctrine. Come on. Most of you are smarter than I am. Get it. Come up with some ideas, please.
As is typical of Professor Krugman - I see much Sturm und Drang but very little in the way of workable solutions. So - how many illegal and uneducated aliens should we admit every year - a quarter million? Maybe a half-million?
Maybe we can emulate Germany and go for 890,000? It is easy to toss grenades - it is harder to propose workable solutions.
It would seem obvious that Putin backed Trump to systematically tear down our "American Values".
Whether on orders from the Kremlin or on some personal psychopathic mission, Trump has been damaging the US's relationships with our allies, gutting civil rights, sabotaging trading partnerships, gutting the civil services and debasing the Presidency in the process.
After decades of stealing any chance for raising Russia's future economic and political prosperity, Putin has his puppet chopping the United States of America down to his level.
Oh come now. We could have become permanent occupiers, and/or installed subservient puppet governments, the way the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe. And yes, we did do that in some developing countries
SOME developing countries? Like practically all of Latin America. The CIA murdered people like Allende and ran all the countries now sending people over the border. Krugman has lost all objectivity in his justified disgust for Trump. What is happening now is the ripping off of The American imperialist mask, not a repudiation of its values.
Must be nice to live in Prof.Krugman's rosy bubble of American Exceptionalism.
Since WW II alone the United States most likely has been responsible for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world.
The faux Pax Americana has basically meant perpetual war by the US to further its interest with zero regard to international law or respect for other countries' sovereignty.
The US spent those decades to expand the empire, threaten and bully the world into submission by its military might and spread poisonous neoliberal corporatism around the globe.
It has lead to a world of perpetual war, a planet in peril, obscene consumerism and levels of wealth and income inequality not seen since 15th century absolutism.
As the Soviet Union collapsed, Americans celebrated their unrivaled military power and unilaterally proclaimed themselves “the indispensable nation.”
Anybody that still believes in "Pax Americana" after US 'leadership' brought us unprovoked wars, illegal coups, regime changes, shock and awe, ultra-right wing or jihadi proxy armies, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, agent orange, CIA backed mujahideen, death squads, torture, assassinations, extraordinary renditions, black sites, Guantanamo, drone wars, big brother and the surveillance state, etc. is either utterly delusional or purposefully propagandizing.
"American goodness" is a myth and the "Fall of the American Empire" is long overdue and welcomed by the rest of the world.
2
Never in my life could I have imagined that my country, the United States of America, would be called out by the United Nations and its High Commissioner for Human Rights as violator of the rights of adults and children, just like the most horrible pariah nations on Earth, ones we condemned for their immoral actions. We cannot let one deranged man bring us and our model of human decency down. Vote this November to take back both the Senate and the House in Congress so we can put a check on Trump, because the current GOP leadership is too cowardly and too self-interested to do so!
2
Finally, someone noting that the Iranian problem started with the illegal overthrow of their democratically elected leader Dr. Mossadegh in 1953 by our CIA at the behest and cooperation of Winston Churchill, all to protect British Petroleum interests in that country.
Thank you Dr. Krugman.
Our prestige is in rapid decline due to the ignorance that prevails in the current Republican administration in D.C.
Trump praising a murderous dictator in North Korea while demeaning our closest ally in Canada.
The great tragedy is that billionaires in the U.S. stoke the flames of hatred and bigotry by their support and overt lying for our liar in chief and the ignorant proletariat falls in line.
Trump and his spineless lackeys enrich themselves at the expense of our security and environment and getting the word of truth out over the fixed mindsets of the misinformed seems virtually impossible.
Our only hope is that the majority of Americans, who know this, will overcome the gerrymandering, voter suppression and greed of the Murdochs, Adelsons, Mercers, Kochs and Trumps. Otherwise we are toast.
7
Krugman is absolutely right... and it's horrifying.
But Krugman' respect for, and adherence to, facts stops him from saying what Trump's actions makes implicitly clear: Trump is acting like a foreign agent for Russia.
Because in whose interests is isolating America, starting a trade war, and undercutting the Western alliance? Only that third-rate regional power Trump is accused of colluding with. (Trump is in a time-wrap, circa 1959. He still believes Russia is a superpower.... although one in which bread and consumer goods are hard to come by.)
Why is there not a federal recall option?
Are ALL Republicans -- except those leaving office -- really ready to let this clown destroy the country? Are they really so gutless?
(It is clear, they have no decency, after all...)
Trump lost the popular vote. And many that did vote for him did so just to "give him a chance." Well he's had his chance and the world is clearly the worse for it.
Separating children from their families?
Caging them?
In America?
Whose America is this?
3
I like the comparison drawn between America and Rome. I see McCain as the last example of the old senatorial caste that would never pay traitors, while we are now in the imperial age, rid of independent, free-thinking Congressmen that made the life of the great Augustus Obama more complicated than he deserved - unfortunately gret emperors are always followed by Neros, Caligulas and Donalds.
Watching events unfold in the US since Trump was elected is like watching a train reck. It is with a mixture of discust and disbelief, one thing after the next. All I have to say is a country's leadership is a reflection of those who elected them. If the people of your country continue to look the other way and not stand up and put a stop to the increasingly disturbing actions of you government then you are allowing yourselves to travel down a similar path to many countries have in the past that ended up in ruin with dictators in charge.
12
“And yes, we did do that in some developing countries; our history with, say, Iran is not at all pretty.”
Have you read the history with Iran?
And since when is Iran a “developing country”?
Trump has come out as a puppet of Putin.
He no longer hides it, doesn't feel he needs to.
He has tries to renounce the NATO alliance, attacks our closest allies, yet lauds North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-un for gaining power through assassination, torture, and prison camps than span generations.
Tearing apart child from parents on Father's Day while Jeff Sessions quotes the same verse in the Bible used to justify slavery in the day.
As he berates other western democracies in the G-7, he asks aloud why isn't Russia in the G-8?
Forget the Crimea invasion, the desecration of American US Presidential elections, or the attempted assassination of a Putin detractor on British soil with a nerve agent.
Trump still wonders loudly why isn't Russia there?
He is out of the closet and wearing the Putin t-shirt.
The exact reasons for Trump's Putin fealty is as yet unearthed, but likely connected to his breeze through the financial Crisis while his offspring boasted of Russian investments as far as the eye could see.
There he could witness that immense wealth comes from corruption while in office.
If Trump wasn't a billionaire before he entered office, he and family will be when they leave.
They have already drained the US Treasury of trillions just before the Social Security fund runs out.
They likely won't even leave a stick of furniture in the White House.
But more importantly - this grifter, con man has defiled the nation, the people and the office once respected.
11
As we write these comments there are jack booted thugs at the boarder following orders, tearing families apart. Does anyone have a guess where this ends or how. I wonder what is going on at the NRA headquarters, are they swilling booze declaring victory is close at hand. The President has shown his cruelty and I don't see the recognition of a man gone mad. We will not make it to November unless other branches of government can pull together and do something radical even include the military.
I know most will not take my comment seriously but did anyone believe they would see Trumps policy attacking our European allies causing a major rift in the hard fought balance that PK describes.
The President is glowing in power and he knows it, he is mad.
No matter if all Republicans are thrown out in November that may just unleash the suicide pact all madmen possess.
We have been living in the fog of peace for to long this might have been inevitable anyway.
Things fall apart. They have to in order to make way for something so totally new, so totally different, that it changes the very foundations upon which we rest. Trump is a jokester, a fool, a bully, a fanatic, a lunatic...all these things. But this is what a changemaker often looks like. He is the end of the dream.
All of us grieve for the loss of the dream. Yes, it feels like evil has been unleashed in the world. But the truth is, we are simply seeing what has always been there, waiting to arise. It is within us all or it wouldn't have arisen in the first place. Can we end dichotomy? Can we rise above the us vs. them mindset? Can we all become more inclusive and less judgmental? That is the only path forward. Can we at least agree upon THAT? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Until we do, things will fall apart....
I agree, I agree and I agree. I have been stating for months this same song, but with the treatment of the immigrants and their children, the U.S. has sunk to a new low. I thought we might recover from this four year period of the coward in chief, but I am beginning to wonder if I am wrong, for I am reading how Republicans support this immigration stance, yet wonder, where did they come from originally? Weren't they too immigrants? Weren't we all a one point? What has happened to the soul of America? Are Americans that shallow, the ones who follow Trump, that they would really think America is great, without allies and a trade war which it will lose, things are great, and separating parents from children is great? I am sickened by those who support Trump and those who think this behavior is okay, the same behavior that allowed the internment of the Japanese, the upholding of slavery in the south and its counter part, segregation. We have fallen as a nation for a shallow imbecile who did sound bites, "you're fired." If only we could fire him. Impeach him.
3
I no longer have to watch any comedy shows. The comments from liberals, some that seem to emanate from a form of hysteria and delusion, who are predicting the end of this country because Trump is President provides more than a sufficient amount of laughter. According to these people, six months ago we were about to be nuked by North Korea.
Trump 2020.
There is a very real danger that Denys Arcand’s 1986 film “The Decline of the American Empire” is already well underway. Just as the Romans poisoned themselves drinking from cups with lead bottoms, Americans, and many other groups in the Western Alliance have lost touch with community values in favour of consumerism, self pity, and greed. Check out the movie and see if you recognize any of the characters in today’s world!
1
Krugman's observation, "Trump is delusional if he thinks that other countries will back down in the face of his threats," would be even more accurate if it were a little shorter.
As in, "Trump is delusional." Period. Full stop
1
I hate to float this theory out there, but it's been bugging me for a while and the good Doctor's column pushed it out.
I'm afraid that Trump may not be the outlier we'd like to think he is. Perhaps he's the payment demanded by the darker aspects of the Pax Americana. From secretly ousting democratically elected gov'ts, to decrying violence while selling weapons to whomever has the cash, to our tacit acceptance that the poor are less and deserve to suffer, to our adulation of the rapaciously greedy. After 150 years, a significant number among us are still contesting the war to end slavery. The richest country the world has ever known has poverty rates and infant mortality that rival the third world. Still, the most common cause of bankruptcy is that a person got sick.
None of that started with Trump's election. It's decades of moving in the wrong direction with brief flashes of inspired reform, generally seen as our greatest moments.
Our president is a greedy, duplicitous, manipulative liar who sees nothing wrong with deceit as a means to an end. (Like it or not, from the Maine to the Iraq war, it's been policy.) Even his willful ignorance of the entire world that is anything but what he sees every day is a base quality of the Ugly American trope.
Maybe this period is making me even more cynical, but I'm afraid the current president is truly American made.
2
I feel like I’m on the Titanic ... witnessing this country splinter in half. This is obscene and terrifying.
4
Trump is weakening America so that it can be managed by a very small and weak man employing nothing but hatred and lies. It is like a malignancy weakening the body so it can take over and consume the host. He will try to do America, and if successful, the world, exactly what he has done to the GOP: Take it over, turn it into a weapon, then destroy it. It is his nature, just as it is the nature of a tumor to spread. When therapy doesn't work, there comes a point where surgery is necessary.
Bottom line American Blinked and elected a reactionary clown. Faced with the challenge of rising Asia (China and the balance of Asia), we could have embraced the future and poured more resources into eduction, infrastructure and technology. Developed a comprehensive trade package (TPP) with Asian countries to help control the narrative. Instead, we are doubling down on dying industries fossil fuels, closing up shop around the world and shrinking into of our little closed minded 5% of the world container while blaming all our problems on others. This will not end well. Good old Herbie Hoover tried the same thing in ‘29 and much of the same was tried in Europe in the 1930’s with Fascism. We won’t make out to good with just 30% of the country earning a degree and vast portions of country having no marketable skills regardless of how high you build the wall. More troubling is the Fascist take over of the GOP. Not a peep as the party’s principles are trampled.
2
The Separator-in-Chief and his anti-immigration storm troopers are destroying the very fabric of our nation -- our humanity, our democracy, our economy, our judiciary, our law enforcement, our trade, our international alliances, our reputation abroad. And Congress does nothing to stop the never-ending nightmare.
3
Trump and his base do not care about others. They are unencumbered by historical memory. They recognize no moral, political or strategic commitments. They feel free to pursue objectives without regard to the effect on allies or, for that matter, the world. They have no sense of responsibility to anything beyond themselves.
Donald Trump and his base are just about the most crass, selfish people that have ever lived.
It is amazing how low these people can go.
1
Every empire, is by design, is organized to project power, and many—including Rome's and Britain's—used self-serving myths about their own virtue to get the job done. We're no different in that respect. One can look at Trump's actions as simply stripping away the civilizational veneer of Pax Americana and revealing it for what it's always been, if it weren't for the fact that's he's too stupid to understand what he's is doing.
1
'So Trump isn’t making America great again; he’s trashing the things that made us great, turning us into just another bully — one whose bullying will be far less effective than he imagines'
Amen!!!! and those voting for him will more than likely be shocked when they see their paychecks drop, prices inflated, their healthcare disappear, their schools bankrupt, college loans untenable, and on and on... unless they are in the top ten percent... never mind morals....
Trump, that person who will be this country's savior and help save us from ourselves, stated he will not allow the country to become a migrant camp. Well, I'm so glad he has locked up those kids so they don't go camping.
But, Trump has done one thing-he has allowed the country to be a camp of nativists, racists and grifters (meaning his family). The winning is astounding.
He may be trying to prevent the nation from becoming a migrant camp, but, he is very successful in turning our White House into a, well, the word ends with hole. Disrespectful? No more than the disrespect he shows this nation with his "me firstitist" affliction.
He has vindicated Nixon as our worst president in the last century. We have a new Winner.
2
Paul for once why wouldn't someone write about legal immigrants from india and China. does it always have to involve drama he is playing you , he did the unthinkable now sending indians back to country and anything else would be acceptable since he has done the most unthinkable
1
Out last great hope is either Mueller or the mid-terms.
Please US citizens, lets make America great again. The whole world is depending on it.
Please VOTE !
Do your part, make it an assignment to get your friends and family to vote out this immoral and disgraceful administration.
2
I was born in 1942, and raised on a steady diet of American Exceptionalism, which is to say, propaganda. Do victims sometimes show an equal and opposite reaction to propaganda?...like bouncing off.
1
We must help our Central and South America neighbors .
The most important aid is to give funds to non religious organizations providing family planning , education and training .
The current administration is doing the opposite and now it is ripping children away from their mothers and jailing them in cages .
How far and how long can this cruelty go on ?
Is there any conscientious soul in this inhuman GOP ?
Don’t disagree with anything except the first word of the essay: it’s not a ‘fall’; it’s a collapse.
Trump is an exposition of what capitalism practiced without an ethical foundation and moral core looks like. He is the canary in the coal mine - a wake up call shouting loud and clear that the existing paradigm of prosperity for the few at the expense of the many - and the commons that sustains us all, is a doomed proposition.
3
Under Trump we have moved to the Pox Americana. It's a pox upon our allies, our trading partners, our immigrants, our justice system, the FBI, the Special Counsel, the Democrats, Clinton, Obama, Muslims, Hispanics, African- American professional football players, and most of all our Constitution and the rule of law.
1
Good riddance to the American Imperial Empire. Sorry to disagree Paul but this empire has been about money, war, weapons, invasion of other countries and domination not democracy. Consider all the anti democratic coup d’etats the
U.S. has orchestrated.
The American narrative is based on fabrication and fantasy. I know it’s painful but please come to grips with it.
M
1
Not to be trite but even American's fear not being able to maintain what we used to be. It is a real fear. Probably an innate biological religious thing. Evolution as progress and evolution as survival are meeting in a political battle. Money is trying to buy what you think, feel and believe. It is not new, so did the myth of Eve and Lucifer lead us to morality. If you think Trump will not eventually come for you, you are one of a very few.
We have not fallen yet. Vote!
Donald J. Trump is the most dangerous man in the world. His support for authoritarian leaders and every right-wing party in Europe is part of the vision for a new “New World Order” consisting of a loose alliance of authoritarian, oligarch controlled nations whose internal support comes from the aggreived, frightened, racist, and authority-worshipping parts of their various populations.
His daily spew of lies about , say, “high crime rates in Germany”, coupled with his daily attacks on journalists as purveyors of “fake news”has neutralized any chance to erode his hard-core supporters that will, no doubt soon start floating conspiracy theories about “faked” recording of crying Salvadoran and Guatemalan kids.
Look to Russia and China as countries Trump would love to emulate: self-dealing, oligarchy controlled authoritarian states that brook no dissent whatsoever. Unless and until Republican Senators and Congesspeople assert some pushback against this existential threat—we are right on schedule to be just like Russia.
The delusion of the moral superiority of the US empire knows no bounds.
The United States of America is NO longer united around the core PURPOSE, to protect all people, PRINCIPLES and VALUES created by the Founders.
The new PURPOSE is to protect CORPORATIONS!! If you don't believe that just Google ALEC.
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I'm sorry Mr. Krugman: America has always been about money and guns. From day 1.
OK....and the Bible. As if that makes it better.
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Bad, but not worse than James Buchanan who gave us the Civil War.
I don't think we needed Mr. Trump to turn America into a bully. Our willingness to carpet bomb south Vietnam to support an unpopular puppet dictator and crush a popular communist uprising put us in that category.
Our support of Saudi Arabia, who tacitly supports the extreme Wahhabism sect which produces most terrorists was started long before Mr. Trump came to office.
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I never thought I’d see the day:
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights slammed the separation of children from their parents at the US-Mexico border as “unconscionable” on Monday.
Coincidently, this same week it was announced that the U.S. is expected to withdraw from the UN’s Human Rights Council.
I am just dumbfounded that this argument for "benevolent" American Empire is still being made with a straight face. And not by some retrograde neocon warmonger but by a liberal icon, Paul Krugman, no less. How times change. What a blinkered world view it is. Just because Donald Trump is against the Pax Americana doesn't mean that it is good, Dr. Krugman. What's next, advocating for decease-carrying bacteria because Trump is a germaphobe? Donald Trump is not killing American Empire, it is dying a natural death because people (both in US and its colonies) have had about enough of that "paradise". That's why they elected Donald Trump.
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America has now reached a new low. Many others have written it more eloquently, but we are better than this. Perhaps what infuriates me the most is how the White House and Evangelical Christians are hiding behind the Bible to justify ripping children from their parents' arms and calling the parents who are simply seeking a better, safer life--criminals. I'm not a religious scholar, but I do know that the Jesus that the Bible depicts would NEVER in a million years support what is happening in those border towns right now. Some of the scenes that are playing out down there bring to mind that awful scene from the movie 'Sophie's Choice' in Nazi times. What we are watching on television is a nightmare for those desperate families, and it's so disheartening for those of us who have no power to do anything but pray for them to be reunited safely with their babies. We are better than this.
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As an Independent I have only three words to say how I feel: “Vote for Democrats.”
"Committing atrocities at the border, attacking the domestic rule of law, insulting democratic leaders while praising thugs, and breaking up trade agreements" ... are exactly what the governments of Russia and China love to see. America tearing itself apart.
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Sometime in the 1970s the international system of trade began to be coupled with a system of global austerity and institutions that were supposed to guarantee global liquidity and investment instead became collection agencies for global finance. somehow that is not working out nearly as well as the generosity that characterized our policy immediately after WWII.
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Trump's border policy regarding families with children is having it's desired effect. No one is talking about the Russia investigation.
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Paul, all that you say is true. The most worrisome fact, we elected him.
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Not really. He was elected because of the quirkiness of our electoral college system.
You guys do this all the time: use nice writing to praise yourselves and your commitment to, peace and democracy, yet since the end of WW2 you have bombed or invaded more countries than any other country - all in the name of protecting American interests. Trump is the result of that approach - American interests, oil and trade, always above everyone else's.
3
TOUCHE!!!
Is our exceptionalism so thin, so fragile, that one administration can unravel it? Maybe. But if that's the case perhaps we aren't so exceptional after all. Trump will soon be gone. The more permanent danger will remain: the American ignorance that elected him to begin with.
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Rose colored glasses impair clear seeing. I used to depend writers like Krugman on the liberal left for American self critique, but it seems Empire works for the benefit of pundits now, to the detriment of compassionate understanding of why so much of the world would like to control their own lives. Values are just opinions writ large. Some folks don't share those of the liberal corporate capitalist establishment. And, one has to wonder just how sustainable globalism is in the long run, anyway.. Rome fell with overreach and lack of concern for the hometront. That's us. Beyond the grand abstractions: Guns, opiate suicides, the end of public education, higher education completely out of reach, medical care the costs too much and offers too little, continuing racism, partisan politics which breed hate for each other, the end of ecological sanity......that's the real America now...
American soft power is dead. There is no more "shining city on the hill", to stir the aspiration of other countries. We see the values once shared with allies, like Canada, are now the minority position. With American disengaging from the international order it helped create, its (former) allies, out of necessity, are looking beyond the American era, at new arrangements. Empire no more, indeed.
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I think it’s possible that Trump is trying to divert attention away from the Russian investigation with his immigration policy. When was the last time the Russian investigation made headlines?
Of course the immigration debacle is inexcusable and needs immediate and utmost attention. But the fabric of our country is being ripped to shreds in several other ways. Outside of the Trump “cult” violent dictators like Putin and Kim probably can’t be happier with Trump devolving our country into chaos.
Russia maybe did us a favor in exposing the hatred embedded in the soul of too many Americans. Now we know. What are we going to do about it? Like in 1861 but without guns (hopefully) there is now a battle for the soul of our country. But unlike 1861, I'd be happy to split up America and would look forward to being part of the progressive northeast or West coast and welcome any like-minded individuals from Kansas and Wyoming.
"We could have become permanent occupiers, and/or installed subservient puppet governments, the way the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe."
Actually, we tried the puppet government thing in Vietnam - it didn't work out too well.
Dr. K, you wrote: "...turning our back on the ideals that made us different from other powerful nations."
Let's take off the rose colored glasses for a moment.
This is the same country that allowed slave children to be sold off, effectively being ripped from the arms of their parents.
This is the same country that kidnapped indigenous children to ship them off to boarding schools where their tribal identity was beaten out of them.
This is the same country that rounded up Americans of Japanese descent and shipped them off to internment camps.
And this is the same country that left behind hundreds of Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghanis, and others who aided our troops in war ...after promising them and their families asylum.
This is not new to We, the People. And truth be told, we are exactly what this government shows to the world. It's long past the time to change that forever.
https://wifelyperson.blogspot.com/
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America was never the paragon of ideals that it suddenly seems in Krugman's rose-tinted memory.
- What about Vietnam? Didnt hear the term Ugly American, as a kid?
The world has always looked at the US with admiration, yes, but mostly disguised as open envy and vituperation.
While most of the world was riven by religious, nationalistic infighting - American stood as shining example of creativity and economic growth for all that resulted.
All that Trump has done, all the people who voted for him have accomplished is make America a nation just like any other. Sad days indeed.
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Trump's recent tariffs (both real and threatened) have me concerned; but given Krugman's poor track record of predictions at least I can rest a little better.
Professor Krugman, your columns frequently educate me, often baffle me, and occasionally are incomprehensible to me, but this is the first time that one has made me cry.
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"Of course, we often fell short of those ideals."
What an understatement!
All true.
Plus, Trumpism is leaving a yawning gap in world leadership that China will no doubt fill.
It would not surprise me if my grandkids and great-grandkids grow up in an American dictatorship.
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Thank you for your informed perspective. rather than just penning letters playwrights & actors are penning plays & attending protests. specifically The Playwrights Sanctuary Directed by Dr. Larry Myers (retired after 30 years as St. John's University professor) is mentoring newer & younger dramatists in
writing works about human rights. Myers' own informed take is "Immigration Braille" Myers participated in early December in Washington DC with the DACA Dreamers. Art & outrage must coalesce now.
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You have to hand it to Vladimir Putin, he has been amazingly effective. His operative continues to do his bidding, and the Republicans continue to support his policies...
As long as we're given the Roman Empire a shout-out here, we can go further. Trump and his administration of kleptocrats are the barbarians within our gates. They don't know or care about running an empire - just looting it.
The fact that they were able to take power with a minority of the vote and run rampant over our institutions and the rule of law with impunity (so far) shows how deep the rot has gone.
The US has had a nice run - the question is, is this a temporary state of affairs, or a transformative one, as the Civil War was?
Interesting times ahead.
While I'm not happy about our country going down the tubes I must say it's fascinating to watch it in real time. I think it will end badly and I hope I'm still around to say "I told you so" to family and friends who support this evil piece of work.
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Yes, Trump is the worst person to ever hold the office of president and hasn't a shred of moral fiber. But we also must realize that relatively recent changes in America are largely responsible for the rise of Trump. Namely, crony capitalism and economic unfairness.
The overbearing greed and overly powerful role of capitalism in politics and in the global economy is, in large part, responsible for the rising rejection of capitalism's status quo around the world. We're seeing the rise of nationalism among capitalist countries everywhere. Unless we can fix the problems of crony capitalism, and the severe economic unfairness it causes, we will see more radical nationalism. This is surely a prescription for a global disaster.
We're already headed towards other global disasters (for example, the consequences of global warming) and certainly don't need any more.
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But Trump thinks of the United States as just another country on the long UN list. Nothing special. Rather ordinary.
Trust me, I have seen this before in my old country. That’s why I was forced to flee and came here as a refugee.
It’s not the politicians that are dangerous to any society but the incompetent, biased and intolerant free press and media outlets.
The massive indoctrination and inflammation of hatred, bias, intolerance and animosity is purposely accomplished by the sleazy journalists, columnists and editors.
The life is always gray. The media outlets portray it as “black versus white”, as one side being perfectly bad and another perfectly good. The problem is that both sides are brainwashed exactly in the same way so you have two groups that simultaneously believe to be absolutely right, thus unwilling to compromise or negotiate.
I tried to explain this problem over the last couple of decades but none of several dozen newspapers would publish such an early warning.
That’s why the situation constantly deteriorates and why the future is worse than the past.
Our media outlets portray the same behavior as good if “our side” is in power and bad if the other party acts in identical way…
When the moral code is broken everybody pays the price.
Those believing that the faith is useless don’t understand that exactly the faith creates balance, tolerance, trust, synchronization, team spirit and love for our neighbors…
After the millions of victims suffered terribly in the civil war in my old country, none of the journalists was ever found guilty.
One of those comments I read from a Krugman fellow traveler was that the current world order was something my father fought for and that it was being torn apart by Trump. Ha. My father was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne who had to kill many Germans to ensure America's freedom. He would roll over in his grave if he saw how we are being taken to the cleaners by Merkel and by the Japanese. He would shake Trumps hand for fighting our enemies, again.
Umm, Trump says that we're also being taken to the cleaners by the English, Canadians, French, Chinese, in fact everyone in the world except Russia. I wonder how your dad would feel to find out that Trump's closest friends are Russia and North Korea.
Ah, well, maybe if he was watching Fox News 7x24, he'd have come around to having "good relationships" with ex-Commies like Vlad Putin, too.
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Heinous crimes are being justified as just following the law, obeying orders, doing Christian duty. How did we wake up from a beautiful dream to find ourselves in the 1930s.
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What he gets right in this article is that the US had ideals, however imperfectly realized, and was never known for corruption. We have never had to deal with the top-to-bottom institutionalization of bribery, for example, so common in other places. But our president is leading us into the truly multicultural world of just expecting everything and everyone to be as corrupt as he is.
Just read that 27% of Americans support the policy of separating assylum-seeking parents and children at the border- just 3% shy of the solid 30% that support everything Trump and the solid 30% of disenfranchised nationalists that buoyed the 3rd Reich into dominance in Germany in the 1930's and the same magic number that other totalitarian regimes have catapulted them into supreme authority. We don't want to believe it could happen here, but the dynamic is right and our zeal to fight for right has been dampened by the good life, I'm afraid.
Unfortunately it has become "all about dollars and cents."
Once money is your god, nothing else matters. This is proven over and over everyday. We put money above Health Care for All, above sensible Immigration laws, above Russian intrusion into our elections, above a just Justice System, above Clean air and Water, above Housing for the low income and poor people in this country, above free and fair elections, and on and on and on. Oh and of course above abuse and inhumane treatment of innocent children.
Between the Republican Congress and the Supreme Court's Decision on Citizens United we have gotten to where we are now.
When the Supreme Court made this decision, that is when Money was truly crowned the Leader of our Country.
No surprise that we are falling fast.
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The real question is what can be done? I keep getting flashbacks of historical events leading up to horrific occurrences and hope my knowledge of history is working against me here.
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Other countries will certainly not back down, nor will individuals. Our news is full of stories of people cancelling vacations in the US, and of small businesses cancelling orders of US products. Hey, one can only be the target of cheap insults and be polite about it for so long.
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I seem to recall a few years ago that peoples south of the US border were deliberately sending their children to the border to take advantage of those American values you say Trump is trashing. The border was flooded with unaccompanied children.
I stopped smoking marijuana decades ago so my short term memory isn't so affected as you would would hope.
Sorry folks, but I am going to intervene and break up the echo chamber once again. America was never supposed to be an "empire", instead we were supposed to be republic focused on making our country the best. We stayed out of WWI until absolutely necessary. We stayed out of WWII until attacked directly. Following that, we have made a series of mistakes with Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan that have cost us dearly. Only a bombastic loudmouth like Trump can take us back to where we need to be.
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So now Trump wants the USA to "dominate" space? His world view is not only narcissistic in the extreme, it is dangerous for the entire planet. Because of his character disorder, Trump is incapable of seeing life as anything more than a battle for dominance. Never mind helping other human beings or making policies for the good of all - it's all about Winning. We need to get him out of office before he does even more damage. Unfortunately, his supporters are people who have the same kind of world view. Heaven help us!
America is a country with a good heart—that has been our story to ourselves, in spite of everything. No longer. America is a taker—that is the story of Trump and his “base.” They will want to call this “winning.” It is heartlessness—moral bankruptcy—and in the end, a kind of spending that will bankrupt democracy here and everywhere on the planet. Imagine a world without an American dream.
Does Krugman actually believe what he is saying? I tend to think he does, but it is hard to believe that a Nobel Prize winner could be so ignorant.
The US alwas demanded that other countries be open to US investment. If they weren't we would overthrow their government, as in Iran and Vietnam and Cuba and Chile. Krugman might take this for idealism but our victims never will.
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Trump and the Republican Congress bring an end to the post WW-1 American century as well as the Rule of Law.
1918-2018... It was great while it lasted.
My mother told me the story about American troops marching down the street in front of the house she was living with her large family just outside of Linz/Austria. It was Spring 1945 and she was 13. The Nazis has surrendered and they were anxious to see who would arrive first, the Soviets or the Americans.
They were horrified by the thought of the Red Army. It was the Americans after all. She remember the kindness of the soldiers and that they were trading fresh produce from their garden for chocolates that the US soldiers had with them.
I was born in 1964 at the very end of the Baby Boomer generation. Everything that came from the US attracted me. Movies, Music, especially Jazz. Like most european countries the Jazz musicians touring seemed the most appropriate representatives of US values and character. Jazz and character, what about that?
Eventually I decided to organize Jazz concerts myself and send US musicians to Europe and other parts of the world. I am a US citizen now and as I write those lines one of my bands is about to perform in my old hometown in Austria.
Strange that this presidency puts me in the position to defend the America and it's values I have always believed in and that made me become a US citizen.
There is no monetary value to measure the loss if we continue going down this way that the government wants us to go down to.
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In the century after of the American Revolution, we invented for ourselves a mythology of national benevolence as expressed in the unofficial motto, "God, we're wonderful!" (which often included a lot denial and back-patting). After 9/11, our motto suddenly became: Oh No You Don't, No More Mr Nice Guy!"
Fact - all living organisms eventually rot. America is no exception.
Separating children from their parents at our southern border created a policy TILT, that the President's supporters will not be able to overcome.
Your criticism is appropriate and our thinkers need to start figuring out how our fellow humans can legally immigrate to this country as refugees from economically, environmentally, or war distressed areas. America is great because we have a universal sense of humanity.
Even the most fearful and anxious Americans, who have been led to believe that their standard of living and inability to get a living wage job is due to the very cheap labor being hired from the immigrants who come here from the poorer countries south of us, are ashamed of caging up and separating children from their families.
We all know shame and this is shameful.
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An extremely well though out piece from Mr Krugman. It is heartening for those of us who have always looked on America as a beacon of order, hope, unshakeable decency and real values, to see someone so clearly articulate what is happening. Over here, we have the little island ship sailing off into Brexit which has followed the insanity that is happening in many places. The worst crime that Mr.Trump and his followers have perpetrated is making lying normal. But the real crime is pretending they are not lies. When history looks back on this time the theme will undoubtedly be "Era of Shame." We wish you luck. Wish us luck too please.
Come on, Mr. Krugman. America "stood for" values but never embodied them, in the years after World War II or anytime before or after that. Yes, it's true that Donald Trump is far and away the worst of the worst to "lead" this country. But what about the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953, to mention only one of many many criminal actions by a power-mad nation-state. This is the real truth we've inherited and until we face it we're only patting ourselves on the back by condemning a cynical monstrosity like Trump. It's still now and always has been "America first." Trump was not the one who installed upwards of 800 military bases, secret and not secret, that exist across the world today. What gives us the gall to pretend that our self-interest is to the benefit of everyone else? So that everyone else is expected to swallow empty words about democracy and the rule of law spilling out of the mouths of those in power? Either face the facts or go back to writing your next book.
With Trump (and Pence) in the White House and Republicans increasingly being afraid to oppose even the most atrocious White House actions, there is little hope for America to regains its greatness.
Trump's tweets and actions do NOT reflect thought-through policies, but the knee-jerk reactions of an impulsive bully with little analytic brainpower. The only hope for corrective action is voter action sharply focused on changing the majorities in House and Senate. That will be the patriotic thing to do, irrespective of liberal or conservative leaning.
As bad as Trump is, I think some things that are being stated as facts are overblown. Trump supporters allegedly hate big government, large corporations, they are barely making ends meet. Yet his average voter made $71,000. There is real poverty in America, but they didn't vote for Trump. Trump voters are motivated by fear, selfishness and greed. They live far better than most humans on the earth but it's not enough - they bought the idea that everyone can be rich and they are enraged that they aren't, and they need someone to blame. They are also older and uneducated and are on their way out, and people 40 and younger are much more liberal and educated. Trump and his supporters will leave the stage fairly soon and in decades to come Americans will get over Trump like they've gotten over other disasters.
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Much of this destruction of whats been good about America does not seem to directly serve Trump's interests. How does he gain if we lose influence in the world? The primary winners are in fact Russia and China. To make sense of this you can assume Trump really has been groomed by Putin for a long time as a Russian asset.That Russian asset, US President Trump , is delivering the good to Putin big time. We need military help with this treason.
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America is no longer the benefactor to the world and should not try to be as it has led to being taken advantage of. But there are better ways to right the balance then by insulting your allies and praising dictators. Trump's approach risks the collective values that bind us together; it is an extremism that recalls the German reaction to the Treaty of Versailles. He is leading into dangerous waters and is the wrong helmsman.
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Anyone who lost a relative in the two World Wars should be incensed at the way their sacrifice has been trashed over the past year and a half. Flawed as it was, the system of alliances and treaties built with blood in those wars has been trashed, in service of the ego of a small man whose malign narcissism and lack of understanding of either history or power relationships has allowed him to exploit the assumptions of the founders that no one with his level of mental illness would ever reach the Presidency.
Contrary to Mr. Trump's inflated belief in his own personal power, the world does have the ability to go on without American leadership. It also has the ability to wage endless wars for national advantage, as it did in earlier centuries, but with weapons capable of far more destruction than the tools that were available then.
The November elections are about far more than petty domestic issues. We can affirm the sacrifice of the last few generations, or reject it and live in a world of counterproductive violence. We have seen the level of depravity that this president enables on a national scale. We must vote in a government that will limit his power as much as possible.
In a word, and acronym, by personality and policies, Donald Trump is MEAN. That's Manipulative, Empathy-deficient, Attention-challenged and Narcissistic. Now, the confluence of two grotesque examples of his feisty, fabulist self have caused
substantial reason to believe that Trump's surefire destructive behavior -- on marriages and businesses; employee, contractor and tenant relations, charities and higher education -- may soon work its wonders on, yes, his base.
Punching our allies in the face with tariffs (then crying that Trudeau stabbed him in the back!) and staking out a new low in manifestly un-American border enforcement in his family separation actions (then blaming non-existent legal mandates), Trump may see a growing number of wary supporters not buying the idea of having to destroy America in order to save it.
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Hey Paul, you said the economy would crumble.
We’re about to grow at 5%.
What gives?
All of the fallout from Trump's idiotic tariffs will be framed by our boy-king Donny as the fault of the Democrats, even if there is not one fingerprint from a Democrat to be found.
Trump's trade war(s) with China and our Canadian and European allie has several unintended consequences.
First, China is the lynchpin in negotiations with North Korea. If Trump gets Chinese leaders wrapped around the axel over his tariffs, forget about Trumpian negotiations with NK over denucleariztion of the peninsula.
Yet, ironically, it is a fact that China is masterful at stealing U.S. technology through hacking by their military agents. They have been digging into American technology — both commercial and military — for years. Copyright infringement has been a mainstay of Chinese culture for more than a generation.
So Trump needs to tread carefully between commercial and military objectives with China.
Then there is Canada and the UK and European Union. From the Baltics to Southern Europe, aging air force figher jets are up for replacement. If Trump continues to rattle our allies across the pond, they may opt for advanced fighter jets made locally, instead of America's over-priced, over-ballyhooed, fifth generation fighters like our F35 and F22. Boeing is pushing more practicle versions of their popular F/A Advanced Super Hornet as a more cost-effective option over the aforementioned aircraft.
Trump is on the verge of costing millions of American jobs over a pique of madness.
In trashing the allies, playing up to the European right and fanning the populism in Europe (even having an ambassador in Germany publicly supportive of the rightist opposition to the government!), Trump is doing Putin's bidding. Is this the true secret of the Russian blackmail? Is this the historic achievement of the power of kompromat? Is the deal with Russia essentially: we'll help you cripple your democracy at home, sow chaos and stay in power; you'll help us dismantle the Western unity and liberal order. (And BTW, we have the video).
Despite the constant corruption and atrocity demonstrated by Trump and his minions, I fear he’s winning the media messaging. He has an entire cable channel to amplify his propaganda and the main stream media breathlessly reports every tweet, thereby amplifying his cowardly messaging rather than demanding he hold press conferences. Democrats continue to lack hard hitting sound bites to cut through the daily onslaught by Trump.
Emergency measures need to be taken by the media and Dems:
1) Stop reporting tweets. Focus on his actions. Demand press conferences.
2) White House press core needs to stop being polite in the face of constant lies and verbal abuse by Press Secretary and minions. Give examples that counter lies. Read statements by Sessions, Kelly and Miller that refute “no policy” lie. Ask: “Who’s lying?”
3) Dems need to find words to brand Trump republicans as corrupt, anti-American, greedy, and deceitful. Stop letting Trump take credit for the economy he inherited, for example: “Trump puts his name on things he doesn’t build.” Then detail the ways he’s hurting Obama’s economy: tax cuts/$1.5T deficit, tariffs, etc.
It’s time to sharpen the knives in the street fight. Trump’s anti-social. Manipulating people is his super power. His cult can even defend him on this atrocity at the border. We need a messaging army on the airwaves with repetitive messaging to fight through the propaganda. NOW!
Trump’s version of America is a time machine stuck in reverse, bringing back themes not of the 1950’s but the 1850’s. The modern “American Party” (Know Nothings) of Trump espouses the xenophobia of it’s ancestor along with the same commitment to workers as the Robber Barons that he emulates. It’s America First isolationism will return us to the second class world status we enjoyed at that time. Bring back child labor instead of wasting money on public education and legalize prejudice based on ‘religious’ beliefs and we can really Make America Second Rate again!
1
Trump may be delusional but no more than his supporters.
Several things however about which he and his advisors are not delusional is the gullibility of their base.
It appears his incoherent message, consisting of fear wrapped in bombast, resonated with a much larger percentage of our citizenry than most suspected for regardless other nations response to his faux anger he only has to stand up at the plate for his supporters to cheer mighty Donald.
He knows he is not popular with anyone who bothers to think beyond the immediate gratification of words, but has no concern as he has never listened to any voice other than his own which has thusfar propelled him to the top of our political dung heap.
He is the voice of a large segment of our citizenry who suffer under the illusion that might makes right.
It doesn't appear we as a people are in any hurry to learn and as long as he buys enough of us with his verbal feast of empty promise his legacy, like that of every other bait and switch con artist, will be passed down with reverence.
Like it or not I guess it is who we really are.
Excellent, well put! It is impossible to stress how ignorant number 45 is about history in general. He is laying the foundation of our future demise and his minions are loving it. How can any critical thinker embrace a leader who only knows how to lie is beyond me. I pray that those who are being deceived wake up before the damage is so severe it becomes irreversible. We need a leader not a demagogue.
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We as a culture are far more committed to the cult of personality than to any messy set of systems that apply to everyone.
Trump's reign will be seen as the end of America. What's coming isn't impeachment. Trump CAN get away with murder. The cult of personality survives. It is far more embedded than any institutional process. Americans do not understand what is going on because they have never understood how their government works.
The cult of personality is all that's left. Going underground is the only option. Trump wins the day.
Trump doesn't educate himself because he knows it's not necessary.
Dictators get it.
He plunges us with him (he barely knows we exist as he swims through turmoil) as he meanders through His own personal darkness. Most psychotics are only tuned in to their own internal, failed constructs, and they become focused on different sets of self-defeating behaviors. Can we withstand the assault of a full-blown psychosis. No.
Do we comprehend that a mutiny is evolving. The ideology of the concentration camp where the powerful get to SHOW us lesser people that we are powerless to resist. The American people love Dear Leader. As the North Koreans starve, none of them are wondering about their value. They have no value.
Either do we.
We are victims of the cult of personality. Can your culture be retrieved. Empires Crumble. There are always the hopefuls. The hopefuls contribute to a cult that has already won while we wring our little indifferent hands.
The problem of this dying empire is that in its death throes it may resort to any weapon at its disposal and that includes nuclear weapons, to bring the rest of the world down with it.
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This is the best boiled down to the essence of our current situation that I have yet read.
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No use talking about history when, for the Trump people, history began Jan 20th 2017.
Trump is burning down the house so he can rebuild it and call it his own. Already less than 2 years in, I can feel the past fading, the founding fathers and their principles calcifying and Trump's dog eat dog world making more sense.
Helping women find refuge at our borders no longer makes us better people. Rather punishing them to scare other women from seeking help is considered smart policymaking.
A sociopath is training us to accept his world view. Today Lucifer is winning. America has officially fallen from grace.
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I remember when the Soviet Union disintegrated basically in a matter of days; the internal rot, corruption and abuse had made it impossible to reform. Our story is somewhat different. We are needing a couple of years to collapse. Our rot has also, like Russia's, been happening for a while. Lyndon Johnson said at the time of Civil Rights Act that the Democrats would lose the south for a generation. He was, it turns out, unintendingly optimistic. The Democrats have lost the south so far for at least two generations, and lost much of the north as well. In fact, the only reason the Democrats had the south at all was that the Republicans - so unimaginably long, long ago! - were the party of Lincoln. Russia's rot was corruption and tyranny. Our rot is racism.
I am Indian. I always looked for meaning of Ideals of liberty and freedom, humanism and free trade, and liberal democracy towards America. Now I find that ideals built assiduously over the years by people of Americas to live by ,can be destroyed by one man in less than 3 years time. These ideals of liberal democracy and humanism are the strengths behind the Americas mighty economic power to lead other countries to democratic form of government and to better world order. People of America, I believe, know it that after the cold war era was over, their country is ,The Superpower. I , therefore, fail to understand why the Americans allow one man and his coterie to malign every ideal, they hold dear and break every institution, they repose faith in. Are institutions built with purpose not to allow power to get concentrated in one person ,failing ? Have they outlived their utility? If that is the case where should we people of developing world to look for ideals of humanisms and democracy.
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The Republic is in peril and it is up to it’s citizens to save it. Long live the American Republic, “the last best hope of man.”
Jon K below presents a partial portrayal of China. China has a history of brutality that makes the Russians look like boy scouts. Their unscrupulous methods of trying to take over the world require thorough evaluation-now, not tomorrow.
Turns out the American Dream is a nightmare. Greed is the national religion. There is no collective spirit anymore, as there was at the close of WWII. Insidious narcissism is eroding families and institutions. Is it a wonder that a rapacious man, hung up on himself and acquisitions is the leader. J.R. Ewing of Queens is in the WH overseeing a nation in which millions dream of having billions of dollars as their life goal. Money has corrupted politics, eroded family values, left too many without adequate means as too much has ended up in the portfolios of too few. The scariest fact is how many people idolize the valueless king of conspicuous consumption and give him a free pass to ravage us.
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If the "American Empire" meant the carpet bombing of a Southeast Asian country into oblivion -- and failing; marching into the Middle East guns and drones blazing -- and failing -- to the tune of trillions looted from our treasury -- for what? To make the world safe for American Prosperity? Our days of reckoning are still ahead of us.
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Trump represents the beginning of the end of Patriarchy, in America and around the world. What a perfect example he is of an alpha male without constraints. This is meant to sound sexist so let me say this plainly. The majority of men are too shallow and ego driven to lead this world forward. Give them a bit of power and they come apart at the seams. Take a look around and see where our fathers and father figures have led us. Yes, I think women can do it better.
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It seems to me that 70 years isn’t even remotely close to “long,” at least when compared with the length of humans civilizations as a whole.
I guess “Live hard, die young” is a motto that some people live by.
In one manner or another, Trump destroyed all the businesses he touched, both those he ran and those he worked to swindle. It is no surprise that he is now destroying our country. What is sadly surprising is the extent that the Republicans are helping him.
As a none American I get amused every time I read articles like this. Not only are they reflective of America's arrogance, they also reflect a constant preoccupation with seeking simple solutions to complex problems that require serious introspection.
It is what all runaway capitalist countries do-they privatize every issue, even those that are obviously social.
Here os the simple issue:
The last time I checked Trump had over 62 million votes. Those supporters have not shifted signficaltly, otherwise congressmen and Senate would have gained enough courage to impeach Trump.
Two thirds of Senators support Trump, although they publicly pretend to disagree with him-we can tell this from the key voting moments where the Senators needed to stand with the rest of Americans. The same applies to Congress. In every election since Trump, the issue has never been about Trump policies, but who is on his side. So Senate band Congress are acutely aware that you disregard Trump at your own cost. In short, it is America, not Trump, who are rotten. Trump is merely the cheer leader, the public face of the rot we call America.
If Americans accept this simple fact, they can rebuild their country.
But as long as they keep privatizing it and blaming it on one man, who by the way has a whole machinery at his disposal , a machinery that is comfortable with what we are told is "deplorable", America can as well continue to sink!
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The English Empire survived the mental illness of George III . They lost a huge territory across the Atlantic Ocean , but survived it did . There is nothing wrong with the USA but everything is wrong with the Donald .
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If you don’t have the faith you cannot see the truth!
The former is indeed the light for the darkness we live in.
I previously thought too that those phrases are just the poetic exaggerations but after witnessing over the last three decades on two different continents more than 100 million voters (all of them superbly scientifically educated compared to the Old Age) making the catastrophic logical mistakes and believing that the hatred for the other half of a country could solve their problems, I learned to reexamine my own foolishness, conceit and hubris.
The faith is teaching us that we are not perfect.
If you cannot recognize your own mistakes and change the course then you lack the faith.
Why do the people disparage the faith? For a simple reason - the clergy, the religious people and the atheists are failing in the same way.
Why?
They don’t understand the essence of faith. It has nothing to do with the clergy, the churches or the ritual prayers.
The faith is the system of values and guiding principles training you how to recognize own mistakes.
If you can’t do it then you can’t improve.
If you can’t improve then you sooner or later end up in the bloody conflict with your first neighbors…
Trump is probably not a conscious agent acting on behalf of Putin. Instead he may honestly believe that he was selected to eliminate messy democracy and to cooperate with other "strong leaders". But of course his actions are rather erratic and in anyone else would be reason to doubt his mental health.
A government gets the government it deserves.
The United States we knew is dead.
His guts, my soybeans.
It is tragic, and funny, to think that soon republicans , and some others, will believe that Trump will be ,with Reagan ,the most enlightened American president. We could die laughing.
"The man occupying the White House (is) surely the worse human being ever to hold his position." And he, surely, surrounds himself with ruffians of utter ignorance spreading hate, threats and insults.
Think of Stephen Miller, John Bolton, Scott Pruitt.
To add insult to injury, the US Congress is failing its responsibility of betting nominees, approving unqualified candidates for the courts and government agencies think of Ben Carson, Betsy De Voss and most of the Cabinet.
These characters are doing a tremendous damage to the country and its institutions: rolling back decades of progress, negating science, adopting the 1920's protectionism. Unthinkable!!
It had been said: Democracy is fragile; I guess we just didn't know fragile!
The crippling and dismantling of America continues apace. Great time to be alive!
No, in fact, a great time to become active in the effort to bring this shameful story to its ignominious end. Reach out with vehemence and determination every elected official who is silent or complicit in Trump's megalomaniacal machinations. Vote in November to end our long-coming fall from grace. We can't shame them out of office.
Doubtful Trump will stop until the planet is destroyed. What better show of strength for the birthday kid who has always thrown the cake at everybody?
As a general sense of who we thought we are, Paul's thesis is comforting. In a sense it was an anchor - holding us steady from the winds of what we also are:
A nation of self righteous religious wing nuts who view women as chattel - heaven sent hypocrites - still thinking like their narrow minded Puritain ancestors
A nation that went to war several times to defend the assets of the Oligarchs and ideological nonsense - not people in need
A nation that has a long history of hating the other, until the other finally settles in to hate the next other. Irish, Italians, French, Poles, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc......
While I like the tone of this piece, it is as much fantasy as it is wishful thinking. That "shining light on a hill" sounds great but it can be a really dark place if you are not an older white male with the right sounding last name.
Of course, wouldn't it be nice if our leaders at least pretended to follow that concept that Paul described. At least try to fake it - like so many before.
I thought that I would not be able to survive (emotionally) the "W" years - when we invaded countries for all the wrong reasons. But this total package of hate that is now are country causes me even more shame and sorrow.
Trump and his supporters have damaged, tarnished and vilified America. The stain will last for generations. Long after this monsterous sociopathic twisted president is gone, we will not be trusted (or forgiven).
In regards to the incipient Trump trade war: It may very well end the reign of the dollar as the world's currency. If that were to occur the American standard of living would fall like a rock. Trump lashing out at the world as a power drunk narcissist can have dramatic negative consequences which we all would feel. Think about it America.
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Hearing talk about trade wars and futures markets on the failing NPR made me wonder. Is this just a futures market grift for the few in the know?
I hate to think it and I hate to write this even more, but: What if this is the rise of the American Empire? The former allies do not, at least not so far, kick back even the slightest. They just turn the other cheek. An American ambassador in Berlin that openly say he wants to empower Europe's alt-right and Merkel say nothing? Trump lies repeatedly about the political situation in Europe, invent statistics and basically humiliate the G7 leaders?
No blowbacks. It's amazing. It's depressing.
What is really going on here? For how long has it been going on?
And the most important question: Who is pulling the strings?
With all due respect, your article on Trump is ridiculously elementary on reflecting on the alleged democratic values Trump is apparently destroying. America has been in a downward spiral for more than a decade and you have been highly vocal of the assault on democratic freedoms and common sense under Bush the Younger. If anything, Trump is only accelerating that spiral already begun in the last years of the Clinton Administration. Trump isn't the first president to mistreat migrants, deport "illegals", praise murderous dictators, and undermined democratic governments in parts of the world we felt would threaten America's transnational economic system.
I have no love for Trump, but this article is little more than clickbait.
Sorry, Mr Krugman, but American Exceptionalism is a myth. It’s a notion we arrogantly comvinced ourselves was true, but that much of the rest of the world knew was not. Yes, Americans have done some good and even great things, but America is a nation founded through hideous and brutal ethnic cleansing of its Native population, followed later by hideously and brutally treating a race of people as less than human, enslaving and indenturing the men and raping the woman. Our occasional good deeds cannot outweigh those foundational soul-destroying evils. And we are again allowing that underlying evil to emerge. Nations do indeed get the leaders the people deserve.
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Trump won by using illegal personal data profiling conducted by Bannon, Mercer and Cambridge Analytica with the help of the Russian hackbot army. This finely targeted propaganda machine stirred up enough misogyny, racism and anti-Hillary hysteria to game the Electoral College and make him president, against the wishes of the majority. In this way American democracy was defeated in 2016.
You can't measure his behaviour by the usual standards because he is illegitimate from inception. It’s a paradigm shift. The destruction, discord and instability that Trump embodies are precisely what the unholy alliance that backs him wants and have achieved beyond their wildest expectations.
They knew better than we what Trump is about. Is this not perfectly clear by now? And they will continue to back Trump and the GOP by any means. They know useful fools when they see them: Manafort, Flynn, Page, Kushner and the Trumps were all ripe for the plucking, a dream team. And the GOP has a veritable larder-full, like Nunes, on the take and primed for sleaze by the Kochs, the NRA and worse, Putin. All to build their phoney little Ayn Randian Utopia.
Defeat is very hard thing to admit, but that is exactly what Trump represents; every day that goes by without facing the fact that America lost when Trump won makes matters worse, because it is still going on. Our pride is blinding us. The biggest scam and cover-up in American history is underway, full steam ahead.
"Trump isn’t making America great again; he’s trashing the things that made us great, turning us into just another bully — one whose bullying will be far less effective than he imagines."
Please replace "Trump" with "G.O.P." He exists because they allow him to exist so it's only fair to hold them accountable for all of "his" policies.
Wow! This is a stunning evaluation that makes sense to me.
Donald Trump is totally unfit to be president, and he is proving it every day. Do not forget, however, that he is the logical result of a systematic strategy of the Republican Party going back decades. Since the end of WWII, the Republican Party has intentionally recruited the worst of America with appeals to their bigotry and fears and made them the Party's base. Newt Gingrich finished off civil politics, and Republicans have treated Democrats as illegitimate since. Even with narrow majorities in Congress, they are attempting to rule with no input from Democrats. Donald Trump is more a symptom than a cause, and the failure of the Republican Party to step up and stop him is proof of that fact.
Trump would rather be absolute dictator of a weak, insignificant nation than president of the world's most powerful one. This is a man who meets with Kim Jong Un and then tells the world that he envies Kim and looks up to him. In Trump's mind, the ultimate goal in life is to be just like his hero Kim Jong Un. America's position in the world is a worthwhile sacrifice if Trump can become all-powerful in the exchange.
Unfortunately for America, Trump is well on the way to achieving his goal and there is no longer any force on Earth that can stop him. The question now is when will America's best and brightest start fleeing the country en masse, and when will Trump be forced to build a wall for the same reason East Germany did?
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All you have to do is read ahead a few chapters in the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" to see what happens next. It's not pretty. And Caligula and Nero didn't have nuclear weapons at their disposal. But maybe it's a good thing that the only person that Trump knows with the name Cassius is Muhammad Ali.
We already have the Antichrist, isn't it about time for the Apocalypse? Reading the news every day, I for one am getting tired of waiting.
*Sarcasm.* I'm not religious. But reading the news reminds me of when I had a terrible job among terrible people, and the few of us who were decent would console ourselves by looking up at the sky and saying, "Come on, asteroid!"
Well, I'll keep donating to the Democrats and I'll vote come election-time. Let's hope that enough people will join me to make the difference. Otherwise our best hope may be that asteroid.
I was on a transatlantic flight to London in 1994 accompanied by my cousin who is an American citizen. Nelson Mandela had just been inaugurated as President of South Africa and a few Brits were in the aisle discussing this momentous event. When my cousin and I went back to our seats she asked me who Nelson Mandela was, initially I thought she was kidding. When I began explaining Mandela's story, she interrupted me and said,
“when you live in the most powerful country on earth you don't need to know this stuff”
So, now you have the perfect foil as President, a man who who fully supports a narrow world view while the rest of the world, (well, except Russia) are not worth knowing or caring about. Trump is all about having the power to make a single country superior to all others. You may have a great economy, low unemployment, a booming stock market but what does any of it mean when you are losing your soul? When I watch Trump's rallies I often wonder if his supporters who are chanting USA, USA, ever wonder about the bigger world, the bigger picture, somehow I think not. I would rather struggle along than live where an economy is being created by a craven dictator in the making.
Thankfully, so many Americans know the truth and will not be distracted by shiny objects. They may be pleased about a flourishing economy but they are hanging on to their morality tighter than ever.
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I think you've hit on several essential characteristics of the Trump outlook here--- parochialism and cultural arrogance. And I agree that the majority of Americans are not defined by these characteristics. Unfortunately, the minority is large enough to keep Trump in power and is absolutely sure it is right. I'm afraid that things will have to get much worse before the majority rises up and throws these bums out.
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I disagree with the idea that the Pax Americana was “a remarkably benign empire.” We should never forget that the American military has killed sixteen million people since the end of the Second World War and that it dropped 26,000 bombs on seven Muslim countries last year.
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This is what it says on the Statue of Liberty:
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! "
This is what Trump said yesterday:
"The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility. It won’t be. If you look at what’s happening in Europe, if you look at what’s happening in other places, we can’t allow that to happen to the United States — not on my watch."
I have never held someone in so much contempt in my entire life.
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Thank you, Paul Krugman, from the bottom of my heart, for this column. I have read your work for thirty years. I had the privilege of seeing you struggle with what to say to the group of us at the Robert B. Silvers lecture on 3 December 2016. Your final words, as I remember them were “We may be doomed. Resist.” I have done that as part of my local Indivisible group, which is part of Indivisible Chicago.
With each passing day (newscast, NY Times column, tweet) I become more discouraged. Why can’t Republicans be branded traitors to their country when for fear, money, and power they are selling us to Putin, etc.? As long as we have a “free” press and before we have a total police state, why can’t Republican propaganda at last be met with brutal truth?
Thank you again for this column. Historical perspective is all too lacking in America.
I agree. Trump is about as un-American as it gets. And he seems to be guided largely by malice:
-Muslim ban
-Denigration of Mexico, Africa, Haiti, Central America & Canada
-Sexism, misogyny & bragging about sexual assault
-Pulling the rug out from under the Dreamers
- Verbal abuse of the press
-Threatening & demeaning political opponents
-Racial dog whistles
-Demonizing peaceful football player protesters
The list is longer than this. But these latest acts of barbaric cruelty at the border are the most terrible manifestation of his malice to date.
My only hope is that the destruction of our American values of tolerance, hope, rule of law and human rights can be reversed. Eventually.
Meantime, Paul Krugman is right on target, our standing and influence worldwide are greatly diminished. And Putin, Xi and other dictators are smiling.
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I think we have to assume everything Trump does is because Putin wants it. What those Trump hats should have said is make Russia Great Again by destroying America.
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"... a remarkably benign empire, held together by soft power and respect rather than force." Huh?!? We've been at constant war since 1941, paving the way (quite literally) for American business.
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Paul Krugman is my favorite commentator precisely because he is never intellectually lazy. He checks things out and bases his precisely delineated arguments on the best information. The most recent article is a painful exception, founded on a mythological idealization of a history as problematic as any. Stick to your genre!
Everyone "ashamed" to be an American today should go adopt an illegal immigrant from Texas. Problem solved!
NOBODY asked these people to come into this country. In fact they were warned and threatened to stay out. They chose to come here, they knew the risks.
"Leaders" who are focused on illegal immigrants and not American citizens won't be leaders for long.
We are paying attention Joe Kennedy et al.
A good article about a terrible self inflicted wound that will take at least a generation to heal. As a citizen of one of your (still) close allies, who has spent considerable time in the USA, I weep.
I was born in 1936 and I have experienced the Pax America decades of goodwill that balanced an otherwise turbulent world. I know what is being lost to humanity.
Unfortunately, a younger generation of world citizens, who haven’t experienced the generosity, sacrifice and moral leadership that the United States of America has displayed for more than seven decades may not necessarily sense the dangerous vacuum that is being created.
The vacuum will be filled rapidly by powers that will want to dominate rather than lead.
I think that the situation will eventually be righted because I am confident that the soul of the USA is better than the rhetoric and the actions of its executive.
I am confident that American men and women of goodwill will use their democratic power at the ballot box to reverse recent angry, illogical and dangerous executive orders.
It’s going to take time and it won’t be easy. The world may look back in the future and remember 2016 in the way we remember 1914, 1929, 1939, 1941 and 2001 as years when dark periods commenced.
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I may not say that fall of American empire, but I agree with Krugman about one thing, if our political course follow what we are doing now becasue of Republican part of America wants , there is no way to save USA to become one of those nations which you can clearly state that we had good days behind us.
This is the road to perdition.
I cannot still comprehend how Republican can switch their minds so short after Ronald Regan to Donald Trump .
These part of republicans reminds me only one ilk, khmer rouge mentality which created 1976 oen of the most devastating state regime in the world. Anti science, education, elite, europe, establisment , liberal what ever you call. They did wreak havoc on Cambodia , Republicans are doing same thing America.
Reagan: benign(?) racist and Iran-Contra and voodoo economics. How different is that?
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