The short answer is: Trump is an unmitigated disaster and his poison and malevolence is spreading and will likely pollute everything and everyone that it touches.
14
I just don't see how someone that mocked a journalist with cerebral palsy, molested women, was having affairs while his wife was pregnant, could not bring himself to condemn the nazi rally in Charleston, wanted the death penalty for teenagers wrongly accused in the Central Park rape, makes buddies with authoritarian leaders and lies about everything, all of the time could possibly have the moral and ethical qualifications to make the world better.
We are the richest nation in the world. We have more resources of any kind than anyone, anywhere. We have the power to lead the world. And we are now led by a stingy, money grubber, self-serving narcissist. He represents the only the part of america that keeps us small.
12
"They were crying over the fact that the America they had come to know and respect over the last 70 years — and whose generosity and security order they had come to rely upon and even take advantage of at times — had left the building."
Meantime, our allies have become fat a lazy and addicted to their welfare states, welfare states they can afford only because US taxpayers and US military personnel stand ready to defend them against anything that goes bump in the night.
Friedman is pining for a Jeb "Please clap" Bush or a Hillary "We came. We saw. He died." Clinton, both of whom received far more campaign contributions from defense contractors than President Trump (or for that matter, Sen. Sanders.)
It's a new world, Tom. We're no longer Europe's and Japan's and South Korea's sugar daddy. Neocons are like Hillary and Jeb lost that battle two years ago. Give it up.
1
All this Trump-iting reminds me of the part in the New Testsment where Jesus warns against false prophets who go around like wolves in sheep's clothing. Well, baa baa baa (to quote a Yale ditty) looks as if we have one of those in our corner of the world.
We should be forewarned enough to be cautious about following the wolf in the mohair coat or at least aware enough to remember another old quote: “That way lies madness.”
2
People love trump because they believe him when he says he will bring jobs back to the US by charging tariffs on imported goods. They believe in this so much that they are willing to disregard everything else he does.
Do people think Saudi Arabia would have killed a journalist had Hillary Clinton been president? Or that the North Korean leader would have killed his own brother in an Indonesia airport? Trump has given a green light to every dictator or aspiring one to behave in any way they see fit.
Trump keeps saying America is respected again. That countries fear our power. The truth is just the opposite. Countries feel empowered to behave in any way they see fit.
9
Ignorance of history will lead to a repeat of poor outcomes. Are we really ready for WWIII? Trump’s cult like followers do not seem to understand the complexity of international relationships and supply chains. They seek the simple tough man approach to the world. That will end in tears. My theory on this is that when Republicans lose congress and the economy is unwinding they are going to blame the obstructionist Democrats. However, it was the seeds planted by the Trump administration and Republicans that will lead to the problems that people will get upset about. The government will have few levers to pull in the next recession because they just passed a big tax cut in the 8th year of an economic recovery at full employment. There will be upward pressure on interest rates as the Chinese stop buying our debt which will drive up the interest on our debt and further pressure deficits up and squeezing out all discretionary spending. Rather than taking advantage of a stronger economy to get the house in order, Republicans decided to burn down the house. Something they always accused Democrats of. This is pathetic. Trump is giving permission to the world’s tyrants to kill dissenters . I have to wonder if that starts to happen here in the United States since Trump has identified the media as the “Enemy of the People”? The cult of Trump is a very dangerous cult.
8
Friedman has updated Thomas Hobbes's view that government is better than the law of the jungle, with Friedman emphasizing U.S. government power vs. the global jungle, with some anti-Trumpy added (a surefire crowd-pleaser at the NYT). Friedman's argument fails for the same reason that refutes Hobbes'-- the well-worn ethical issue of killing innocent Peter to save Paul. Saving Paul is good, but from an ethical point of view, killing Peter is a deal breaker. I would suggest to Friedman that defending justice is much easier than justifying evil.
2
There is a simple reason why Trump is not continuing America's role in support of democracy and globalization: he is totally clueless how to go about it. Easier for him to go isolationist, play to his base by looking like the "tough guy", and since he has always surrounded himself with lowlifes, he is quite comfortable hanging with dictators.
29
Unquestionably, Trump must be the most ignorant if modern Presidents. He is the first, and only, President to be laughed at by the world. He is also the most prolific of liars to have ever held the office. He spews lies even when there is no sense in doing so.
.
God bless America, we need Your help -- regardless of what name Your people call you. Regardless of their religious affiliation.
4
I wonder how journalistic leadership reaches Red State citizens COMPELLINGLY.
In the face of what we all face, why can't there be a massive conspiracy of editors who ensure that messaging on innovation (not just more cries of CRISIS) is relentless?
We need a conspiracy of intelligent life in every corner of every community.
9
Weak analysis.
1
While American democracy has been very successful in the global arena over the past decades, other countries ie Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany, to name a few, have also prospered and,in fact, have achieved higher levels of education, overall prosperity, health and citizen satisfaction. They also participate in the global community, assist in reining in bad actors, and have been active partners with the US in maintaining order, business relations etc. These countries face a huge challenge in the new world order as Trump's actions no doubt are hurting our relationships with our allies, contributing to chaos, and undermining the moral fiber of our country. However, I feel that blaming Trump for many of the events listed by Mr Friedman, is an overreach.
2
Not everyone shares Mr. Friedman's view of America's role in the world over the past 70 years. Were he still alive, I'm reasonably certain Chalmers Johnson would not be a Trump supporter, but his view of the past 70 years is the opposite of a Pax Americana. And President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, along with President Obama's tepid approach to world leadership, hardly improved the security of America and her allies over the sixteen years preceding President Trump. I don't support his policies, but it is a myopic view indeed to blame President Trump for our current situation. A miniscule percent of Americans are willing and able to serve in the military, while the politicians bankrupt our country buying defense technology to make up for our collective cowardice fill the void of our mendicant allies. Maybe it would be for the best if President Trump were to force a radical transparent change for all to witness and respond accordingly, rather than to slowly slip into permanent paralysis.
11
You missed the point of what Obama was doing: the rest of the world's countries were fatigued by George W. Bush's cowboy warmongering. When Obama took over, he vowed to work with other countries instead of just being the bull in the china shop. He restored faith in other countries who wanted to work with America--not just be dominated. He formed coalitions where Bush ran roughshod.
And that is what Trump is doing all over again. He can't "force a radical transparent change" because all they have to do is wait him out....and laugh.
5
Well boohoo, poor us. Victims again. This goes a long way in explaining the inexplicable loyalty Trump supporters show to this bully in a band shell. Standing alone, listening to his own echo and imagining the crowd out there is either cowed or loving him.
Sad.
Won't stand up to Putin, Assad, or Mohammed Bin Salman but Dr. Blasey Ford..... well, he'll show us mouthy women a thing or two.
18
@Donna Right on target, good one ...
3
@Donna
Good one, Donna. Right on target, 100% correct.
2
You know, people still read the Times. They still read Freidman. Many are not that well-educated or intelligent and depend on the Times to tell them what is right and what is wrong. What is good and what is evil. So, it is so disturbing to see evil articles like this one that continue the anti-Trump propagandizing. Liberals made the world wonderful and Trump is ruining everything that liberals built.
Let's see. The ecdonomy is booming despite Obama's miserable stewardship. Unemployment is at all time lows. People are making more money. Nafta has been renegotiated to our benefit. We are actually negotiating with North Korea. ISIS is a thing of the past and there have been no terrorist or as Obama called them, "workplace violence" events since Trump was elected.
Further, instead of working with Trump and Republicans, Democrats moved further left and have resisted everything. The result? Republicans control the House, the Senate, the Executive Branch, the Supreme Court, and 2/3rds of the states.
I don't think Republicans even need Democrats anymore. n The country certainly doesn't.
2
Mr. Friedman you say, "But hey, wait a minute: Does Trump have a point? International relations isn’t a knitting circle. Could it be that America is actually best served by having a lying, unethical bully at the helm, someone who squeezes the last drop of milk tariffs out of every ally or adversary, pushes back on China and gives the back of his hand to “globalist” multilateral institutions? As Trump declared: “I am the president of the United States. I’m not the president of the globe.” So get the hell off my lawn!"
NO he does not.
He and his international Robber Baron brethren want to destroy OUR lives and cause chaos. The vast majority of Americans and average people around the world do not agree.
Want to fight. Have duels. Leave the rest of us out of it.
14
there is no us nor US with trump. the focus with him is to have the loudest voice and the most money, and he doesn't care who he walks on to get those as long as they aren't his 'club'.
4
No, you do just mean military power. It was not a debate.
1
I want an Eisenhower again.
6
Possibly one of the most discouraging columns you've ever written, yet it's true. For Mr. Trump, the world is a zero sum game. He seems to be particularly harsh in his treatment of our traditional allies in NATO and the EEC. Authoritarian regimes are more to his liking. He's more chummy with North Korea than Canada.
53
@T Norris
Trudeau is courteous but doesn't play the toady.
Kim has nothing but scorn for Trump, but enjoys toying with him by flattering him, which Trump's strange little mind has mistaken for respect and friendship.
Trump doesn't know what's real, because he himself isn't.
1
This is what we get when we elect an ignorant, low class, vulgar person for President. It looks like the world is voting stupid, ignorant people to power as long as they are good bullying others. First the Philippines, the East Europeans, the US and now Brazil is trying it. (Have you seen the Brazilian candidate talk about raping a woman to her face on TV? How can he still have a chance to win?)
5
Puleeeeeze! Isn't this the Robert Kagan, the neo-con Bushie, who beat the drums for war and regime change in Iraq? As did Tom Friedman.
1
It doesn't take a genius to see that "Donald Trump Is the Jungle."
3
Trump is a bad actor- the sooner he leaves office the better for everyone. Getting pretty angry at the constant stream of lies and half truths. Vote!
4
Trump is right on global warming if for the wrong reasons. The point is the climate alarmists want the government to address climate change by raising taxes. But be sure of this, they are far more concerned with the raising taxes than they are of addressing climate change.
The vast majority of climate research is performed by scientists who work for the government, directly or indirectly, and the more government does in this area the more money will pores in to fund the scientists. Unbiased science it is not. Disinterested climate science cannot be performed by folks whose paychecks icome from Uncle Sam.
The absolute worst way to address the problems that may arise because of climate change is to allow government to put its sticky fingered hands in it. Look at the very worst damage ever done to the environment and you will find that sticky hand. Government, including government scientists, were behind these environmental disasters: World War I and II, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Fukushima, Rocky Flats, the Holocaust, the napalming Tokyo, American and Nazi experiments in Eugenics, Slavery and Jim Crow, the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, H-bombs and A-bombs in America's nuclear arsenal, and a thousand other catastrophes.
The recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the Kavanaugh nomination was proof beyond argument tthat those who govern are complete buffoons. Would you put the Senate in charge of the weather? Gimme a break.!
1
Trump (unconsciously) and the GOP propaganda machine have relied on the engaging the evolutionary baggage of the reptile portion of the human brain. A few slogans on the order of “the Dems climate change hoax is to create a new world order or they are taking away your freedoms or the Dems are a mob or are soft on defense or the MS13…etc.” and the thinking brain shuts down while the aggressive reptile brain kicks in. This works too well and the truth is lost.
The GOP will amp up such rhetoric as the elections close in. We don’t seem to be able to escape that evolutionary burden.
This is not to be confused with the “Reptilians” nonsense…although some similarities are evident. Just sayin…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilians
1
Carbon tax countries are only paying lip service to Climate Change and not doing much say recent news stories. So The Don and the GOP feel they have no obligations to the tree huggers either. Saying a carbon tax is just a very expensive feel-good exercise in ultimate failure. May as well party like a super-star now and enjoy the largesse while you can, before the ship sinks...Sad to say.
1
Anyone have some hope? Anybody?
I can do nothing but vote blue in November.
4
@Nancy, Thanks. Look at the crooks.
Lining up for a windfall into their greedy pockets at the expense of the health of the children to the elderly, to us all, and the world.
1
Mr. Friedman,
Respectfully, either your observations are a tad naive or suffer from cognitive dissonance. Throughout American post-WWII history, the US has always supported brutal dictatorships if these were anti-communist, or had vast oil reserves. Examples:
(1) Since mid-1940s the US has consistently supported the deeply corrupt, misogynist and archaic Saudi monarchy in spite of the Saudi monarchy's support for its Wahabi clerical establishment. The latter, in turn, funded the spread of radical extremist Salafism which culminated in the rise of al Qaeda and ISIS;
(2) Throughout the Cold War the US supported the Pakistani dictatorship against the world's largest democracy, India, because the latter did not join American-dominated regional alliances;
(3) US supported Saddam Hussein against Iran in spite of his use of chemical weapons against the Iranians;
(4) US overthrew the democratically elected government of Mossadeq in Iran, supported coup against the democratic government of Allenda, and supported fascist-like right wing regimes throughout Latin American;
(5) Under Trump, not only has the US supported the 32 years old prince who murdered 10000 innocent Shai Yemenis, US is supporting the lethal dictatorship of Sisi;
(6) US has supported Israel's in spite of its Apartheid regime in the settler- occupied in West Bank and collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza.
US policy should be driven by values rather than raw interests, it never was.
3
Robert Kagan-OMG please stop right there. Yes, we spent 70 years being Big Daddy, trying to spread our version of democracy to a world that mostly didn't want it. We sent our military all over the globe to fight wars that had little to do with protecting the USA at the cost of many lives and treasure. We also destroyed the Middle East and Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Chinese and others devoted their resources to building their countries and economies, much to our detriment. This is the system that TF loves and wants to perpetuate and Trump is the great destroyer in his eyes. It amazes me that there is any rational person who can still advocate for these failed policies but the neocons will never cease and desist.. Most Americans want to leave the rest of the world alone and take care of our own business, of which there is much that needs attention. That does not make us isolationist rubes. It just means that we have seen the light and we reject what TF is selling.
2
Trumps abdecatimg the role and responsibility of America on the global front, not be a watchdog but a leader are indicative of the character of this person. His habits are lazy and he has no curiosity or initiative. His big picture is me, mine, and me.
He does not care and has been pridefully vocal regarding this ignorance. Rolling back regs, pushing coal, turning a blind eye to corporations taking advantage without repercussions except a slap on wrist here on the home front- he really would be a disaster on the global arena. Now greed, twisting the screws on our allies, more power (his word for power is to induce fear) and more money for him and his croonies he's all in. If our allies believe in the values of America have modeled in past admins. and have watched American leadership for 70 years, I hope they will wait until this season of Trump pasts and we get back to being a team player for the future of our world.
1
Fact: Donald J. Trump is and arrogant ignoramous.
As much as I admire Tom Friedman and despise Trump ' He didnt start the fire '.
in particular, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, Mao starving his own people, US invasion of Vietnam, USSR invasion of Afghanistan, Russia invading Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, 9/11, US invading the wrong country afterwards leading to ISIS , Syria civil war, Israel and Palestine
- all of these happened before Trump!
frankly I dont blame the guy for saying 'America First'.
3
There is no doubt that global climate change will wreak havoc on the American economy in short order. But, Trump's administration is rolling back climate initiatives because "they are too costly to the US economy".
Excuse me, but I don't see paying billions of US taxpayer dollars to repair and rebuild cities/towns/infrastructure lost to now annual "storms of the century" as fiscally efficient. Just watch the next 10 days destruction dollar numbers generated by Hurricane Michael. No doubt the numbers will be greater than the cost of progressing toward climate stewardship.
This week the UN puts forth a dire climate change report, which should mobilize the smartest of world leaders. But, DJT can be counted on to ignore it.
At this crossroads in climate change, it is a shame Trump is a guaranteed "no show" for global leadership.
3
The thugs are the republicans in the present administration but they have roots that go back to the founding of our country. Those roots got stronger with the Powell memorandum and the rise of modern finance where short term gains are more important than human social advancement or community stability.
We are on the cusp of a new dark age.
1
Two Key Facts About Trump and Climate Change:
1. Trump realizes that manmade climate change (and its destructive consequences) is a Fact.
2. Given the chance to make money or curb the effects of climate change, Despicables like Trump will always choose money.
Moral of this story: The sage who said long ago that "money is the root of all evil" nailed it.
4
Calamitous climate change disasters lie ahead as predicted and widely discerned and discussed by 1st Earth Day 1970.
Once upon a time there were Republicans like Nixon or Barry Goldwater who didn't cave in to outside anti-planet pressures. President's fantasy is really Republican fantasy of 4 decades.
2
In case no one noticed, The Leader doesn't care about anything -- which doesn't benefit / enrich his family brand, or meet whatever 'I want' spasm dominates his attention in the moment. He doesn't care about you, Mr Friedman, or me, or anyone in this country he's "acquired".
The Leader has turned managing the government over to persons who, like him, simply want to use it to enrich and advance themselves and their friends. It was a hostile takeover -- now, assets will be sold off, resources squandered, employees fired... then the acquisition will be sold at fire sale prices.
The Leader's crew has gutted the capability of the government to act in benefit of the American people (as Michael Lewis just chronicled). It will take generations to repair the damage from The Leader and his crew to that institutional infrastructure. Putin, certainly, got more than he hoped for.
But, The Leader doesn't really care what happens. Not a whit.
3
Trump"s America builds concentration camps on the southern border to house kidnapped children and it doesn't even merit a mention. Sad!
1
POTUS, backed by stalwarts such as Sen. Mitch McConnell can ignore climate change, Russian interference in our democracy, and the dangers of increased use of coal, but when faced by an angry mob of American women protesters they squeal out in agony.
69
Somehow, the prosperity of the post-war II America has led many of our citizens to become fat and lazy--intellectually as well as physically, lacking vigor to understand uncomfortable complexities. So much more emotionally satisfying to embrace ignorance blame others. As a climate change denier, with a master's, told me not long ago: global warming was cooked up by Al Gore and his Harvard professor to get rich from carbon tax credits. Everybody knows that, he laughed.
2
There's no sense arguing about our place in the world and all the mistakes DJT is making in alienating our once allies. Here is the life or death subject we must concentrate on: In less than 50 years, our children and grandchildren will be trying to live in an unlivable world. So the worst thing our president has done has been to try to get us to stop believing in factual information, which scientists have seen coming true for years. Yes, Trump is on an authoritarian trajectory so it is to his advantage to keep pounding away at the media, even saying they are "public enemies," but not believing in what is becoming plain to scientists will kill us all. This fact of our world over-heating is more important than any other thing, and more scary to face. Nothing is more important than that we zero in on trying to solve this by making immediate changes in what we are doing to save ourselves. (I started to say, "and our planet," but earth will be just fine without us, but we won't be fine if we think we can just discard it like we do our other trash and jet off to settle elsewhere. Not an option.
1
The real problem is Trump supporters cannot read or understand logic. History is beyond their interest, as it is with Trump. All that matters is partisanship and "winning."
2
Tom, you do realize that Trump positively wants the jungle to win, right? That's a much better scenario for the already rich and powerful. His deluded followers think that means things will be better for them, too. And if all they want to accomplish is punishing whoever they hate, maybe it will.
2
After the two world wars, our commitment to spread the "Enlightenment principles" began to fall by the wayside till we got to overthrowing heads of state and on to Vietnam, which pretty much changed the way we operate in the world.
And even after sort of recovering from that, we then broke the status quo with the uninformed, embarrassing and stupid Iraq war and on and on. Vietnam began to solidify the hyper partisanship we now see bearing fruit, with our totally wrong and ill-informed president and his minions. Now our sneakier efforts to control what other nations do are out in the open and too many of our citizens think that is a good thing. One-dimentional thinking is not a good thing. It should be more about trying to get along, not trying to always "win" in our global relations. Respect allows states to talk and resolve problems/issues. Trump and his party apply schoolyard thinking and actions. Sad.
2
where do colonialism and imperialism fit into you concept of the enlightenment world order? same question for kagan. it isn't that the ills you cite need to be opposed, but you ignore the self-interested, militaristic side of the west, to the detriment of your argument
1
Trump has endorsed poor discretion, immorality, abusive treatment of our best interests relating to our allegiances and allies, endorsed a nation, Russia, that is historically a enemy of our nation, threatened the health of the earth through unfettered deregulation, supported white supremacy, worked toward abandoning aspects of our national safety net such as Obamacare, social security, medicare and medicaid.
This bumbling joke of national leadership must go.
1
Trump has introduced a new syntax for America’s foreign policy conversation. He has struck the word “we” and replaced it with the phrase “us and you”. Trump rejects multilateral arrangements which make the automatic assumption of a community of interest. Trump acknowledges the possibility of a community of interest among and between nations. However, it is not a community of equals and it is not of indefinite duration. For Trump, America comes first and foremost.
Mr. Friedman has my profound sympathy. He remains trapped in a kind of self imposed state of suspended animation in the Age of Enlightenment. I have a similar cage stuck there. However, the precepts of rational order are not empirically based and do not necessarily and universally apply to the conduct of foreign policy in the post industrial age. No matter how much it pains me to admit, Trump's foreign policy may be prescient. It may be a policy of contraction where America abdicates its post as leader of the free world and, instead, become a more local, smaller scaled nation in the new global order. Precisely because Trump is not president of the globe but only of the U.S., the U.S. may escape the fate of Rome and other empires whose incessant expansion of power ultimately led to their own destruction.
@Richard F. Kessler Trump IS the fall of Rome. I think your timing may be a bit off. The result of isolation is more chaos in the world, more thugs doing their thing while we watch the civilization we helped build fall apart.
Isolationism is not even an option for the US, not without major negative consequences for the whole world. Not to put a fine point on it, but yes, our leadership over time has come with costs. We did a lot of things because we could. The rest of the world remembers those occasions. If we go hide our head in the sand now, it leaves a large part of our anatomy vulnerable. And plenty of parties that would love to kick it.
There has always been a huge divide in this country between the college educated and those with a high school degree. The main difference is money with high school graduates having a lot less which translates to a more difficult life. The liberals of this country have never bothered to look at this disparity or do anything about it. Now they are getting a payback. What will it take to wake up these liberals. The real answer to Trump is to see the unfairness that we are famous for and correcting it. Alas no one even comes close.
1
I disagree.
Let's take all of Trump's "noise" and "unpolished" behavior out of this and discuss real policy.
Why does the world ignore Chinese massive human rights violations everywhere, unfair business practices, false claims in the South China sea, raping other countries of natural resources and carefree attitude about corrupt leaders they do business with?
Why don't other counties openly say that they only agreed to a bad deal with Iran because they were hoping it would bring them in from the cold and when that failed, they ignore Iran's bad behavior screaming "but we have a deal"?
Should the USA put up with a climate deal that simply has bad terms for us just because climate is a serious issue? Why can't we have BOTH a good climate deal and one with better terms??
Why did it take public shaming of Germany to get them to them to pay their 2% NATO share and to discuss their gas line with Russia that is not in line with our shared goals?
Why does the USA have to get the short end on multi-lateral deals?
Why is no one standing up to the abhorrent anti-Israel bias in the UN? I dare the UN to apply the same standards to its other members as they do to Israel?
Why is the world ignoring the crisis in Venezuela?
Are we seriously letting Assad who is worse that ISIS stay in power?
Real leadership is challenging institutions and not sticking with failed mechanisms.
I prefer a shift toward isolationism (not complete isolationism) rather that what we have now.
12
@David K: Why does China get no credit for the population stabilization measures that made its modernization feasible?
3
@David K
"Why does the USA have to get the short end on multi-lateral deals?"
That's the wrong question. It's not nations that get the short end. It's the workers of all nations that get the short end, while the corporate elites everywhere make out like bandits. As far as I'm concerned, the real competition that American workers face is not from their counterparts in China, Vietnam or Bangladesh, or even from immigrants, documented or otherwise. It is from Wall Street, and trump is doing nothing about that.
5
@David K -- What are better terms for us in a climate deal? Aren't they the ones that get us a better climate? Meaning we are the biggest offenders so shouldn't we change. Shouldn't we also help others to modernize without resorting to coal and oil when it can be done. We could invest heavily in renewable technology (jobs, trade balance) and become the leader in the world or bury our heads in the sand and stay with fossil fuels.
The deal with Iran was far better than no deal and certainly better than the no deal we have with N. Korea. Other countries would prefer not to have wars. Bringing Iran in to the marketplace of the world lessens the prospect. And we created the Iranian problem supporting Saddam Hussein invading Iran and looking the other way when he used chemical weapons. As for other countries we have tried to impose our will with horrible results for example Iraq creating ISIS as a result. Destabilizing the region.
Also as far as I know we didn't change Germany's behavior other than they continue to follow the same agreements already in place.
Trump is a bull in a china shop with a bag over his head.
2
Trump does not care. The people who voted for him and support him do not care, either. This is the type of leader they want for America, so this is the type of America they want. They don't understand the international situation nor do they care to learn about it - just let me wear red MAGA hats, refuse service to gay couples, and cheer on a sexual predator drunkard all the way to the Supreme Court. "Hey, if my President says he's a good guy and makes fun of that lady who lied about the assault, I'm good with it, too. 'Merica!! Land of the free, unless you gay, a broad, Latino, Oriental, Negro, or one of them Indians from India."
6
AMEN!
2
The following quote was from Kagan discussing US actions after WWII, but applies equally to our funding programs to eradicate tropical diseases, and to send money to developing nations to aid with climate mitigation and adaptation.
"“We did not do all of this out of an abundance of generosity, or the post-World War II statesmen saying, ‘Gosh, how do we make the world a better place?’” he added. “It actually came from them saying: ‘How do we prevent the world backsliding into the kind of world war we just survived?’” This was not charity for them, but cold, calculating self-interest. They knew any order they created would pay back a hundred times for the world’s biggest economy."
Our interests are served because every infectious disease in a world of airports is now a global disease.
Our interests for helping poorer nations prepare for the climate of this century - if people like Trump's xenophobic approach - will pay us back by making it more likely that people who live in the poorer countries can stay within their own borders.
Syria's population of rural farmers flooded into their cities due to extended drought, causing a crisis that became a civil war, spreading Syrians into Turkey, Jordan, Europe.
And for people who like the transactional approach - think about where the developing nations would be spending a lot of that climate adaptation funding - they want the newer, high-tech energy supplies that won't tie them to a cycle of pollution and of dependence on fuels.
1
My father fought during WWII in the 101st Airborne, Yankee Infantry Division and was awarded the Silver Star; I recall there were times when he'd be awake during the middle of the night from having a nightmare related to the war. Since he died when I was 15, I can't ask him to elaborate about the nightmare he had, but I suspect it was related to what he saw as he walked toward a Concentration Camp and then the stark reality of what he came to know as he walked into it and saw what was left of the remaining emaciated prisoners there.
That's what really angers me about this so-called president we have sitting in the White House right now - the audacity of quoting Mussolini during his rallies, his opportunistic nationalist rhetoric, his glorifying the military when there isn't one person in his family history anyone knows of who has actually fought in the military or made any sacrifice during any war whatsoever, and these rallies are of what campaign, exactly. Just what is Trump's "campaign", really. It certainly is not inclusive of anyone who has a respect for democracy - face it, he hates us.
13
@Jbugko
I think Trump really does hate us; and we have been merciless toward him from the start with our mockery, distrust, and contempt --- all unfortunately well-founded.
That has torqued his natural penchant for thin-skinned overreaction, "punching back ten times harder," thumbing his nose, and mocking all that's important to us.
He is so furious and caught up in a constant stream of invective, his and ours, that he can't even conceptualize long-term dangers we face, or the harm he is doing in his reckless drive to draw blood and get his own back.
These personality issues are just psych 101, but unfortunately on a global, life-or-death scale. Personally, I am so disgusted with him and his base that I can't dial back my own sarcasm and invective.
But we expect the president to be a bigger person than we are; wise and knowledgeable so he can guide us. To have a president with the mentality of an incurious, angry 6-year-old is tragically discouraging. I don't see even a tiny bit of insight or wisdom in this man. He is unteachable, indifferent to others, impulsively cruel, and disingenuous in his sympathies --- like I'm sure he is kept awake nights over the treatment of the poor, suffering Kavanaugh family that he keeps flogging us with.
His shell is so hard by now, that I see no possiblity of an olive branch from either side. I just want to shovel his whole stinking administration out of our lives and start clearing away the damage.
1
On international and domestic issues I am taking the optimist approach - the term is half over (almost) and while there is certain to be more self inflicted damage from this clueless 4 year old, there will be an end to it, but only if the Democrats can deliver a clear message to those who otherwise might not have rejected an abysmal Democratic candidate for President who failed to understand electoral voting and issues important to working class whites.
1
We’ve become just another hanger-on among a gang of authoritarian nations. We’re becoming scarier by the day. Our fellow gangsters: Russia ... North Korea ... Saudi Arabia ... Hungary ... Poland ... Philippines ... more and more China ...
Wish luck to the countries of the Free World. How long can they hold out?
2
Trump has always been a self absorbed man who seeks attention for himself. Never in his whole life has he had any sense of belonging to the human race. People are things that do things for him and when they no longer provide what he wants, he becomes indifferent towards them. He learned to play with people’s feelings long ago, which seems to those he is manipulating like someone who knows and understands them. So they trust him until they learn who he really is.
We face the greatest challenges imaginable. Fortunately, we were led by people who had found a way to reduce conflicts between nations by encouraging trade and resolving disputes without intimidation and force of arms. The likelihood of world cooperation in dealing with climate change and many other difficulties is pretty good. Unfortunately, people like Trump and Putin et al can’t see the value in this, they think that only intimidation and force of arms keep nations from destroying one another. For some reason they disbelieve history, that wars do not make winners of the victors, they just leave ruin and survivors.
5
This just in..."President" Trump has a pep rally scheduled in Erie, PA this afternoon and who cares if the Florida panhandle is getting wrecked by a hurricane. The thrill of hearing "Lock her up" is more satisfying to him than being a real POTUS. This guy takes "insanely self-centered" to a whole new level. Counting the days until he is gone. That day will be as if the Fourth of July and Christmas had a baby.
7
This morning’s emailed NYT headlined “Donald Trump Versus the Jungle,” thank you, Tom Friedman, also “Dystopian Fiction,” with dictionary saying dystopia “is an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one,” and I heard someone, guess it was me, saying sadly, bitterly, hey! look at clever us! We’re creating a state which is BOTH totalitarian AND environmentally degraded!!
Are we humans addicted to destroying Earth, the Gift we’ve been given to care-for, now, as it has long been with warfare at all levels ever-continuing and the lands, seas, air and space itself becoming a garbage heap breeding disease and death, each and all of us response-ABLE to change this, the question for me, not “Will we?” but “Will I?”
1
At least Trump is aware that his behavior makes clear he senses that Nature is the feminine aspect of all life ...and he has no intention of accepting Nature as more powerful than Patriarchal, Anti-Nature and violent fools. Unfortunately for Trump and his acolytes didn’t learn enough about Nature in school. But they did learn how to be arrogant, ignorant and misogynistic fools.
The rest of us need to side with nature by preparing, choosing positive mitigation of her earned wrath NOW, and acknowledging this planet is hers. We are only a temporary spot on the measure of time. She has proven she lives on forever and we...well we had our chance to live on forever too, but it won’t happen as long as we allow Patriarchal fools to lead and worship only our species while negating all others.
Even Nature understands #MeToo. Her count on our assaults against this planet are beyond our ability to count. So now she moves across the globe with great disappointment, anger and every intention of shrinking our footprints on land and sea. Trump is just another patriarchal fool unprepared for Nature’s wrath.
1
Climate change deniers are akin to holocaust deniers and are putting all of us at risk by putting ideology or expediance ahead of the science. As Richard Feynman said at the end of his report on the Challenger Disaster:
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
3
Let's call American era between 1945 to 2010 has positives: I agree that this has been the most prosperous era in Human history in terms of global scale. That alone is worth keeping alive this system.
In this period some parts of world also suffered from American Era, such as Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, some Latin American nations , that is also truth.
But after all as first hand witness of 1970-2010 period, world become more democratic, America was in the center , America didn't succeed this alone but it was essential element.
I agree jungle is taking back, worst type of dictators are literally multiplied in a very short time. For example , we have in 20th century Saddam, Father Assad, Idi amin, Pinochet and couple of military junta leaders. but their reign spread 3-4 decades.
Now we have Czar Putin leading the way, Erdogan, Sisi, Netanyahu, Orban, Duterte, Maduro popped up in 10 years and still multiplying ( see Brazil election).
Yes one thing is fundamentally changed sin the 1970-2000 period , dictators are coming back. This is happened because of people, yes we !!!.
We are not appreciating what we have what is democracy? expecting a divine flawless governing from democracy is irrational. Democracy has problems and needs constant gardening. But apparently people ( voter) would like to short change their responsibility for getting rid of boredom and lousy things. Democracy is air , never appreciated adequately.
2
Many millions in the country still support that man in the White House. A Nation gets the government it deserves and the United States we knew is dead.
3
Besides aspirations to be a dictator himself, Trump doesn't like the "liberal world order," because it has the word liberal in it.
2
It is not clear to me that the adversarial relationship implied by the title is justified. It seems that there is no effort being put forward by this administration to control the growth of the jungle.
2
Note that the Trump administration, led by Vice President Pence, was extremely vocal and forceful when it came to opposing Turkey's detention of Pastor Andrew Brunson. Is it cynical to think that only Americans of the correct religion will get such support from our government?
3
How can we Americans reasonably expect other nations to respect, admire or follow us when our own house is in such disorder? We may genuinely believe we deserve to be held in high esteem because we are so powerful and wealthy, but those qualities are not sufficient reasons for other peoples to adopt our values or ape our actions. That would seem especially true when our values and actions have frequently been steeped in hypocrisy and falsehoods. We can only hope and pray that no foreign leaders outside of the crudest, most brutal and disingenuous will feel inclined to follow a Trumpian America's example, and that their day, like Donald Trump's will soon end in ignominy.
2
Happily enough, the US while on temporary sick leave, is not the only possible warden in the international jungle.
Former US NATO- ambassador Ivo Daalder and James M. Lindsay, former member of the US National Security Council, are advocates of bypassing the Trump administration in order to save democratic global order.
The emergency measure they propose consists of (at least) the following countries: France, Germany, the UK, Italy, the EU, Japan, South-Korea, Australia and Canada.
In my view, India should certainly accept its responsibility for global rule of law and join this alliance of the righteous.
2
And with the departure of Nikki Haley, I fear that Trump will capitalize on the opportunity to give a blank check to Bolton to treat the United Nations with anathema. No matter who replaces Haley, she or he will be a Trump/Bolton puppet. Trump has already demonstrating a troubling penchant for fawning over dictators (Putin and Kim to name a couple) while excoriating allies. The tidings are dire.
2
Climate change is like the Titanic seeing an iceberg in the distance and taking the necessary steps to avoid it. If you don't start steering away as soon as possible there is too much inertia to correct the course to prevent a disaster. And we all know what happened to the Titanic.
3
Five days, a mere 5 days:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/climate/epa-trump-mercury-rule.html
September 30, 2018
E.P.A. Prepares a Major Weakening of Mercury Emissions Rules
By Coral Davenport
The proposal is designed to provide legal justification for weakening not only the rules on emissions from coal-burning plants, but also other pollution controls.
September 27, 2018
Washington Rolls Back Safety Rules Inspired by Deepwater Horizon Disaster
By CORAL DAVENPORT
New rules don't require oil companies to design gear for “most extreme” conditions, such as violent weather or heavy pressure within undersea wells — a key factor in the deadly 2010 blowout.
September 27, 2018
E.P.A. to Eliminate Office That Advises Agency Chief on Science
By CORAL DAVENPORT
It's the latest step by the Trump administration that appears to diminish the role of scientific research in policymaking.
September 26, 2018
E.P.A. Places the Head of Its Office of Children’s Health on Leave
By CORAL DAVENPORT and RONI CARYN RABIN
The unusual move affects an office tasked with making sure that environmental regulations adequately protect children and fetuses from exposure.
4
At election time, voters are presented with two bad choices, and try to choose the lesser of two evils.
Friedman argues that Trump's America is worse than earlier administrations in two fundamental ways:
"First, Trump’s America does not see itself as the galvanizer and protector of the liberal global order that brought more peace, prosperity and democracy to more corners of the world over the last 70 years than at any time in history."
"Second, Trump’s America is unafraid to engage in the raw exercise of power against any foe or friend to gain economic or geopolitical advantage...[and] is ready to overlook any human rights abuse or killing by any country deemed friendly...."
But the first point reflects a chauvinism of previous administrations. Obama appeared sanctimonious when he preached about democracy. It would have been better to focus on human rights. Thus America supported the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt, who was replaced by Morsi, who tried to establish a Muslim state that executed opponents who disagreed.
We should remember that for the poor, food is often preferable to the occasional right to vote.
But I agree with Friedman's second criticism of Trump. The killing of Khashoggi should have an impact on our relations with Saudi Arabia. And the poisoning of ex-spies in Britain by Putin operatives should have consequences.
The US should indeed be championing human rights around the world. Trump has been too cozy with abusers of human rights.
1
@Jake Wagner: Trump's backers seem to have a basic misunderstanding of which country contributes the most per capita to climate change. It is the US.
inspiredeconomist.com/2009/03/13/which-countries-have-the-greatest-carbo...
They do not play with full decks.
2
America has to strike a balance. We have Trump on one extreme and Obama on the other. We have to stop companies from giving away technical secrets to the Chinese and others for a few dividends. These trade secrets were developed by people like me: hard working engineers and scientists --- usually for no other reason than the pleasure of solving a difficult problem. Our middle class is a product of a government-administered system that is supposed to nurture talent, providing schools, a healthy environment and security. Thanks to the oligarch class the middle class has been under attack for 50 years. This has to change or America is ruined. Donald Trump has done much to make this happen. Obama and the Democrats also contributed but mostly by neglect rather than direct action.
1
@Rocketscientist: Where else in the world use imperial measurement units anymore? The US thinks it lives on its own planet.
1
Mr Friedman, great writer and thinker that he is, has it in this case backwards.
Increasingly in NYT opinion columns, the writers start out with the emotion and then get to the logic and the essence. For serious journalism the reverse should be the case. The speculation over UN diplomats crying inside is just that, mere speculation and its mention should have been saved as supporting evidence, not divert us into a head-nodding lead-in.
Secondly, state-sponsored killings have been going on for a long time and the historical record indicates that the USA has engaged in the same methods on multiple occasions, for example, the attempts on the life of Fidel Castro. Every state, democratic in form or not, has its reasons engaging in such activity.
But the most important thing is that in abandoning its traditional allies and adopting the "me first and dominant" strategy, the top echelon of the USA government has joined the ranks of the barbaric states and in the process is de-stabilizing world peace. While the EU scrambles to maintain some structural integrity, there are now four blocks in contention which can lead to global conflict: the USA, Russia, the conservative religious forces of the Muslim world, China. China alone has no history of invading other countries (unless one includes Tibet).
Unfortunately, Mr Friedman chose the least sharp knives to skewer his own government.
1
I personally am looking forward to a time when sea water is lapping at the foundations of Trump Tower and ebbing and flowing daily on Wall Street.
Sure many other New Yorkers and shore line city dwellers will also suffer but at least Trump and the other plutocrats will be graphically proven to be the wrong, selfish and short sighted.
5
In 2014, before the midterm elections, a poll was released showing 60% of US did not know which party controlled congress. (It was republicans.)
Had some media outlets occasionally led with this headline: "McConnell once again lies about......" we might not be in this predicament.
The false equivalence that was so prevalent before t rump led the way to people believing both parties were/are the same.
They are not and if you want proof just open your eyes.
6
Trump supporters are people with nothing in their minds but short term goals; gas in their suv, in their jet-ski, their atv; cheap stuff in the walmart, in their garage. What makes them feel good; what makes them feel like winners.
The trouble is, their definition of a "winner" is only framed in their personal self image; how big their house is, their manufactured home; their trailer, their rv. Trump supporters appear to have no concept of the "future."
So, they vote to enable people who they think will meet their expectations, and that is what we all get. Leaders who do not lead, politicians who do not think, business people who do not plan, for anything other than their next "cycle"; the election, the quarterly report, the stock price, the most recent polling
The rest of us stand around and wring our hands.
The time for hand wringing is nearly over, people. Perhaps it is time to start wringing some necks.
6
Excellent column, but it also needs to be said that authoritarianism may itself be a response to what people perceive as “the jungle ” – loss of control over their own lives. That was true in the economic chaos of the 1930s, and it holds good for our own time of global unrest and upheaval -- extremes of weather and geology, hordes of refugees fleeing scarcity and oppression, disruptive new technologies, rapidly changing sexual mores. Amid such instability many seek security in strongman rule and religious fundamentalism. One person’s jungle may be the other’s garden, and vice-versa.
I'm just waiting for the suspicious murders of activists and murderers to start here.
"That failing New York Times reporter, she had it coming."
"Maybe that loudmouth Latina congresswoman should have kept her mouth shut."
If this keeps up, it'll happen. Trump has already gotten about a third of the country to buy into his authoritarian ideology, fomenting hatred at his "rallies." That was about what Hitler had in 1933. Eventually, the rest of the country fell in line, out of simple fear. Oh, and those 1/3 at the rallies--they're armed to the teeth, thanks to the NRA. The rational 2/3--not so much. Very scary state of affairs.
6
Lately I've been wondering whether America is more aptly described as pre-Nazi or pre-Apartheid.
7
If Mel Brooks has one more movie in him, I urge him to skewer Trump and his cult the way he did Hitler and the Nazis in "The Producers." In the place of "Springtime for Hitler and Germany," perhaps with lyrics like
"Coal mines and high tides and great floods all year 'round,
Kids torn from parents and cages to pen them,
Nuclear winters that never see springs,
These are few of Trump's favorite things."
Truth is not just stranger than fiction, it is much scarier.
3
The respect and prestige of the United States as a global leader was severely wounded by a little thing called the Iraq War, brought to the world stage by George W. Bush.
Barack Obama brought some healing to the global image of the USA, but those attempts were weakened by drone after drone after drone and complicated by Republican obstructionism to Obama's policies.
I fear that Trumpism is the fatal blow from which the USA's global position will not recover.
4
It is Spring time for thugs and the beginning of a cold dark winter for the US.
4
Our country is in deep trouble. Period
5
I am blessed to have been born in the U.S. with the abundant opportunities presented to me during the last six decades, and the pride of being a nation of basically good people.
I learned as a teen that the U.S. was not only good, but also had a dark side. I am old enough to have seen segregated rest rooms below the Mason-Dixon Line in the early 60s and the difficult civil rights movement, as well as the tragic farce that was the Viet Nam conflict.
Under the scariness of Nixon in the 70s was my core belief that the nation was strong in its resolution to strive for virtues extolled by government and business leaders.
But, as an adult I rubbed elbows with the likes of Donald Trump during my decades in the institutional investment field. I saw good people look the other way and selfish and immoral choices were made.
Recently Max Boot wrote that Trump may not be the worst president, but he is certainly the worst person to be president.
How true!! Trump is the embodiment of the "Ugly America," smugly extolling the selfishness, viciousness and bullying readily seen in the world around us and in the media slurped up by users with little of no discernment, as long as it is wrapped in the U.S. flag.
I don't look forward to dying soon, but when death comes, I sadly believe that I'll be getting out while the getting is good because I really do not have hope that the America of the first 50 years after WW2 will return soon, if ever.
7
As others have pointed out, the United States has not always been a paragon of virtue, promoting peace. In case you have forgotten Mr. Friedman, there is still a war going on in the Middle East which we fomented. We have now been in that war for over 15 years.That war has produced nothing but misery, death, destruction, and a flood of refugees which the rest of the world has had to absorb. We have spent our treasure, and some of our servicemen and women have given their lives, or are broken in a way that may never be mended.
The money we have spent on a war that has done nothing but brought chaos and poverty could have been spent on combatting climate change, (which is upon us), healthcare, the social safety nets, education, fighting disease in third world countries, promoting economic growth in third world countries, and helping our veterans. That stated, the U.S. has managed to hang onto the respect of other countries for our nation. Up until now.
Trump has bullied other world leaders, disparaged the U.N., sought to isolate our country, and ruined decades of carefully crafted relationships with allies. He has sought to cultivate a relationship with the thug dictators of the world, with Putin being his BFF. We are now a laughing stock, (as many attested to when Trump addressed the U.N) our leader a buffoon, and certainly not to be trusted. We don't have to be the world's policeman, but we do have to do our part if this world is to survive dictators and climate change.
4
Other than momentary flashes of generosity following a cataclysmic tragedy, when have a large group of Americans cared about anybody but themselves? The midterms will provide the answer.
3
Mr. Friedman is right, but he makes his argument as if stating that the folks who brought you today's Republican Party don't quite get that they're bringing down the US-led liberal world order.
That if they and their supporters only understood what they were doing, they'd stop.
Isn't it time, after decades of relentless demonization of liberalism by the right and the actions they have taken to trash liberalism once they attained power, for "Establishment" analysts to process the obvious - that bringing down the liberal world order, and everything else liberal, for that matter, has been their agenda all along?
That they know *exactly* what they are doing, are gleeful at the prospect of succeeding, and have no intention of being persuaded to stop?
The time for restating the obvious is long past.The time to defend liberalism is running out.
4
Trump is the symptom of American self delusion, not the cause.
5
Trump is the symptom.
Over the past few decades, corporate forces have steadily taken control of most media. They have used that media to create the rage-driven and misinformed Republican base, which in turn has corrupted the Republican Party.
The Republican Part now controls all government, corrupting every agency with corporate lobbyists and lawyers. Laws have been changed to push money to the top, creating still more corporate power.
The courts are now being taken over by these same forces.
A democracy built on blood and sacrifice is being lost without a shot.
Trump is the symptom. He understands how to pull the levers of power and stoke the base's rage. But he didn't build the machine. The machine will still be there when he's gone.
4
Trump has spent 72 years of his life surrounded by money, luxury and servants and probably for his entire life he has blamed others for his mistakes.
Today many Americans believe that by adopting his views this country would enhance the power and the supremacy over the rest of the world.
A broader view of the real situation shows something different: we live in a divided country, an increasing international isolationism and a lack of empathy for our neighbor while a sworn enemy like Russia is creeping up on us disrupting the democratic values of America.
This president has no idea about poverty, subjugation or the horrors of a battlefield. He simply can't.
Trump's tunnel vision about the world, the fake world HE experienced, is now a time bomb in America's hands.
4
You and all Liberals who only target their ire at Trump, are missing the forest for the trees. ALL REPUBLICANS are enablers of authoritarianism. As are ALL CORPORATIONS. As is the military.
America is lucky it is still a Democracy and it's only because Liberals accept fascist Republicans as a valid party when it should be dismissed as undemocratic, especially since 2008.
5
The Left have yet to awaken from their worst nightmare: the end of their globalist dream, a hegemony where jet-set elites hop from capital to capital, indulge in five-star perks, inventing new crisis to control the masses. Climate control is the latest opium of this high-priesthood, and they were on the verge of crossing over into irreversible socialism when the bricks began raining down in Babel. The Plan is not only paused, it is on the verge of being rolled back at warp speed. The reason? The chronic disillusion of the Left that all human problems can be addressed with money and science--that sin and evil are primitive constructs. Enter Xi Jinping, MBS, Putin, who practice cloak and dagger politics with one hand and chair UN committees with the other. MBS talks a good line over savory lamb dishes late into the night, but you wouldn't want to meet him in a dark ally. Add to that a UN carbon tax the size of a king's ransom, and Middle America's darkest fears are confirmed. They have been pushed into open revolt, and they embrace coal and SUVs as political weapons against the global elite. This loathed class is to them a clear and present danger, and given a choice between a ten degree rise by 2020 and more Hilary, they would choose the former. Remember "better dead than Red"? This is the mood on Mainstreet. This is why the Left is on anti-depressants. They have no plan B, and The Plan is at a full stop.
The great unwashed or booboisie as HL Mencken called them prefer climate change to Hillary?? If in their ignorance they have a death wish I say good riddance but why should we decent liberals have to perish also??
3
"Middle America" (euphemism for voters who brought us today's Republican Party and Donald Trump) should be afraid of themselves, because *they* are the ones with no Plan B.
After they bring down every liberal institution and trash every liberal principle, what then?
What takes liberaliism's place?
Do they delude themselves that it will be them?
The seas are rising, the air is getting hotter, and the whirlwind they are reaping won't spare them the consequences of their own folly, nor will their contempt for liberalism keep them safe.
2
The problem is not that Trump has the wrong agenda, he has no agenda. Most of what his administration has accomplished is to destroy what previous presidents have put in motion. I believe this policy has been spoon fed to him by his right wing advisers in the white house. All he seems to want to do is speak at rallies where his faithful will cheer any despicable thing that comes out of his mouth. If he was actually forced to govern most of the time he would probably not run in 2020.
3
I don't buy the myth that Post-War America's foreign policy has been about spreading the Enlightenment. It sounds great, and there are a few examples of things the US did during this period that support that myth. But I don't think there has been just one foreign policy during the past 70 years. Foreign policies depend on who the policy makers are, what their priorities are, how good they are at diplomacy, etc. The US has supported murderous dictators, has fought deadly and destructive wars, has imposed damaging economic sanctions, has "disappeared" and "tortured" presumed enemies and others. I don't mind that Friedman and Kagan dislike Trump's foreign policy, but I don't buy the myth that before Trump the US was a pure beacon of light.
96
@Doug Bates You are correct. Trump is as bad as Friedman says, but Friedman does mythologize our wondrous selves before Trump. And Friedman was in his small way part of the problem--he supported the Iraq War, which violated those norms we allegedly upheld, and Friedman has little to say (nothing in this column) about the war in Yemen, which resembles many of the other horrific proxy wars we supported in decades past where our ally was committing massive war crimes and we helped them do it.
2
@Doug Bates
Agreed that human progress in the last 70 years is due to the USA led international world order is a myth.
The progress is mainly due to the end of colonialism, the rise of Asia-Pacific in the economic sphere and rise of India as a democracy.
The colonial order still persists in the UN Security Council. Once that ends the world will be truly free.
1
@Doug Bates No nation has ever had a perfect blameless foreign policy since Sparta and Athens sent emissaries to the other.
This nation sent Peace Corp workers to deprived third world areas often at some risk. We had a generous budget for international organizations of many interests and areas of concentration. We rebuilt broken destroyed parts of Europe after WW II, and then after the wall fell. Perfect, no. Noble intentions yes.
The United States has never been a Democracy. Our Constitution calls for a representative government, so the citizens are always at least one step removed. (Go ahead and try to talk to your Representative on the phone.) The Founders did not trust the mob, and put, among other things, the Electoral College in place to ensure that a qualified candidate assumed the office. Well, they failed. The United States left Britian over money. The rich farmers and merchants didn't want to pay taxes (they claimed they wanted "representation' - just a spin.) Businessmen and later corporations (when they were invented in the late 19 Century) always benefited from government handouts - we paid Coca Cola millions of dollars to build bottling plants around the world so that the "boys" could get their obesity causing sugar water while overseas.
3
One has to wonder why, if the liberal global order in place since WWII was so successful in bringing peace and prosperity to many, it proves to be so fragile? Nationalistic and ethnic forces often lie just below the veneer of seeming Democratic order, and break out violently repeatedly. Perhaps the supposed benefits of liberal democracy aren't clearly experienced by citizens of countries that signed up for the package offered by the US? The economic austerity forced on countries in southern and eastern Europe by the IMF after the 2007 recession alienated their citizens, and opened the door the current wave of anti-democratic demagogues. In the US the economic well-being of most of us still hasn't recovered from the recession, while the wealth of those who brought it about has exploded since 2008. Maybe it isn't surprising, after all, that the American model of liberal democracy is on the wane around the world.
2
A thought-provoking novel exploring the effects of a US 'isolationism' (albeit imposed by other nations upon the US due to its economic irresponsibility) is Lionel Shriver's "The Mandibles" - I refer more to the scenario that sets the stage in the novel than the narrative.
1
How true, Tom. I was dismayed in the primaries and in the general when the repub candidates and Hillary were unable to counter Trump's "America First" manifesto. The creation and sustainment of a peaceful liberal order IS an "America First" policy, just more nuanced and subtle than Trump's simplistic and short-sighted formulation.
3
I could not agree more with this commentary. The barbarians are not at the gate, they are in the Oval Office. I remind everyone of a great piece by Vox about Trump and Authoritarianism; the focus is on not narrowly on Trump, but how and why the authoritarian impulse in wakened in people. Just search for Trump and authoritarianism and Vox. The Times has also done excellent reporting and commentary. Our free press is the surest protection against tyranny. Thank you.
8
"Springtime for thugs." That's great.
The jungle metaphor is apt. My late father used to refer to humanity's struggle between evolving toward civilization and what he called the "law of the jungle." We do not judge the lion for killing the lamb, we say he is a wild beast living by instinct. We do not judge the chimp tribe that attacks and drives another group out of a favored orchard. We say it's just natural that the herd abandons the old and sick by the wayside.
But humans beings have tried to mitigate the harshness of nature by learning to live together, work together, care for each other. and cooperate for the common good. By and large we came out of the jungle and progressed toward civilization.
The election of Trump represents a backward slide in the progress of humanity. It says to the world that we want to return to a way of living where it is accepted that the predator devours the prey, the strong abuse the weak, and the rich exploit the poor. Might makes right and that's the way it is. To hell with anything else.
Let us rise up this November and get this country back on track toward leadership in a civilized world.
8
And the biggest thug of all is trump.
7
Trump and his family and his political cronies are a pack of morally bankrupt people. Those who praise Trump and follow him around are lap dogs who too are morally bankrupt. What has happened to America? I understand Congress being lackeys but the American people have become Trump's lap dogs too.
5
Hey, Tom.
Why do you make things so complicated? Let's just return to the basics.
America is growing weaker in the world's eyes. So America needs to demonstrate its continuing hegemony by attacking a country, any country, regardless of provocation or lack thereof. Let's destroy Iraq again even though they haven't attacked us. That worked well for the pious jingoists, yourself most certainly included, after 9/11.
Or since, frankly, there's not much left to destroy in Iraq, we should attack Iran instead. That would be a big win for the USA. It would reestablish our reputation as the world's lone great power. And it would be easy-peasy. Just combine the war with Jared's Middle East peace plan and it's a double win!!
I cannot read your columns without remembering what a morally bankrupt man you revealed yourself to be when the stakes were the highest.
So, yeah, let's just nuke Iran. That should fix whatever ails the world.
2
I am not surprised that the biggest cheerleader of the Iraq War is now plugging the most recent book by one of the architects of that war, Kagan. While nobody can argue that thugs exist everywhere in the world at all times, there are many ways to approach these problem people without killing thousands of innocent citizens and spending trillions of US dollars. It would be interesting for the author and his buddy Kagan to cite a single war waged by the US since the end of World War Two which was won decisively and created any kind of lasting peace. I would respectfully suggest that an effective leader has many tools in his toolbox that can be used for good. Let's not encourage the world's biggest thug (ahem, our own President) to start more wars just because he can----which is what I fear we will see before 2020 as the next step in our President's ongoing campaign to scare Americans to death.
1
Niki Haley is bright and clever. Her departure is signaling something in the wind. Could it be the end of Trump's reign and the crumbling of the Trump organization. No president can possibly survive the charges that are mounting against him and his. The is a great blow-up ahead. Those that understand the times are breaking free.
2
@Karn Griffen My guess is that Haley's move is primarily about money and the long game. She and her family have been living largely on a public salary for over a decade, and have at least one child approaching college age, reportedly with little savings. She and her husband are also reportedly in debt. If she wants to run for elective office again, or. accept another high-level political appointment at some point, she probably needs to position herself financially so that she will be able to do so. It may be no more complicated than that, and no doubt she can make a lot of money in the near to mid-term.
3
I agree. Ocam’s razor.
1
he's a 'privileged' wannabe thug, which masks his incredible insecurity. he isn't at all 'enlightened'. he exhibits the absolute worst personality traits to needlessly taunt those that he's insecure with: those that are intellectually, morally, and ethically more advanced than he will ever be.
1
It is not "Trump's America." We are becoming the "US of T".
That is, we are moving toward a "United States of Trump"
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
With Trump in power, we have become numb to suffering.
Trump flashes his "OK" sign, all the time, but I say numb is dumb.
Perhaps we can fight Trump, with slogans like "numb is dumb".
Maybe we can show Trump's "OK" sign in a funny way, with both hands, or show a thumb's down, with both hands.
I fear that is we do not find clever catchwords or symbols,
Trump will just keep taking us back to the jungle of numbness.
==============================================
3
Welcome to the jungle we've got fun and games
We got everything you want honey, we know the names
We are the people that can find whatever you may need
If you got the money, honey we got your disease.
1
The sad fact is that this tragedy could have been avoided if Democrats had simply rallied behind Hillary, rather than wasting their vote on a protest candidate or, worse yet, not voting. We are suffering under an authoritarian regime because people did not take their vote seriously.
Not exercising our civic duty in a responsible manner has consequences for ourselves, our children and future generations.
5
@Dlsteinb
This tragedy could have been averted if Hillary Clinton hadn't run. I voted for her out of necessity, but cannot understand why so many people seem to regard her as a goddess. But then again, for others Trump inspires the same kind of blind devotion.
Well, democracy is a tough row to hoe. We really aren't doing a good job; forget about Trump - tell me about the billionaires and poverty. What's all that about? Where's the real talk of a wealth tax and good, safe public housing? Nowhere. Equality's left the building. Now, the rich and kinda-rich are afraid of what the true madman in office may bring. Not so much because of the climate or humanity, but due to a real sense of fear that the whole thing may implode, taking the rich down with the ship.
So, yes, democracy for all; but, just as important, equality for all. Don't sell me righteousness in a bottle that merely keeps the current system working for the few. We're no angels, here; not Democrats and certainly not Republicans. Money's a poison we've drank for far, far too long.
Forgive me, but the vision that comes to mind from the headline "Donald Trump Versus the Jungle" is Trump standing in front of a podium with all sorts of vines twining up around the podium and his legs, with Trump looking outward and saying, "The jungle is not advancing."
Trump is unaware of the benefits of the global order he is shredding just like he doesn't particularly care about the general benefits of our legal system that he loves to abuse. He only cares how he can use them to advance himself and his particular agenda.
He's not against the jungle. He wants the jungle to swallow us whole, all the while saying it's only harmless shrubbery.
1
Thuggish actions similar to what you listed happened when Obama was President and under his predecessors as well. China has been a brutal repressor and no one cares because they want its money. Putin has been killing Russian dissenters for years. Myannamar has been repressing for years. We did a good job with Germany and Japan, it have had little success otherwise in taming bad guys.
This president is such a dinosaur it's inexplicable how he ever got elected.
4
@JM This paragraph in President's Trump speech on his inauguration summarizes the reason people voted for him:
Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.
The pipe fitter in Ohio, the welder in PA, the metal worker in Ohio, the shipping and receiving clerk in West Virginia were in economic despair for the last 8 years due to unreasonable environmental regulations.
1
Nonsense, environmental regulations save lives and protect public health they do not destroy jobs. Jobs are lost to automation and technology and globalization which unfortunately are irreversible and supported by corporate America
3
@Jack Kinstlinger If you believe environmental regulations save lives, be prepared to be disappointed in future elections.
While I believe the Clean Air and Water acts were necessary, they have devolved into instruments of punishment to extort land/money from private industry.
When was the last time an automated tool (robot) repaired your roof, your car? Skilled workers will always be neccesary.
Regarding globalization, President Trump is successfully reorganizing trade agreements to benefit American produced goods and services.
You really have to look at his business record and dealings over his lifetime. He "pushes the envelope" in his dealings with the expectation that his opponents will retreat. This happens in his world enough to make him successful. However, he has failed - in the business sense (and moral one too) by going bankrupt some five (5) times - leaving many of his stakeholders holding the bag of dung he left behind. One of these was a casino - it takes a real talented person to bankrupt a casino.
People who are truly successful in business don't go out of business and yet, this is who we have making policy and being the face of the nation. He is using his old playbook and winning at some things but failing at others - pushing the envelope - and not caring what carnage (domestic or international) he leaves in his wake. So long as it benefits him, his business, his family, and his loyal friends it does not matter.
But we all knew this about his and yet he was still elected.
4
Trump's attitude as expressed by his policies does not surprise me. They sicken me to the core of my being. I am the son of a WW 2 vet .My Dad did not talk much about the war but I do clearly remember some stories. Unfortunately most people do not have a clue as what history can teach us. People in general tend to focus only on the immediate concern{s}. That is to be expected because nearly everyone has a full plate to deal with. It is up to our elected leaders to enact policies that continue to commit our nation to its core principles of liberty & justice. The Trump administration is beyond the point of no return. Trump is a man enthralled by the legend of Trump that he created . There is no difference between how he ran his business & how he "governs" the nation. Trump and Bannon are poison. The extreme nationalism espoused by those two are nothing more than jingoism run wild. Trump has tapped into & released pent up frustrations that have been boiling under the surface . Instead of lifting us up to our better angels he drags the nation down into a bottomless pit of fear. US leadership is needed now as the looming climate crisis is reaching a point of no return. US leadership is needed to insure that the 4 Freedoms espoused by FDR remain a light to guide all nations. Instead Trump's actions and words are used as a path by his fellow autocrats
to justify their own behavior. We are going to pay a heavy price
for the Trump years when the bill comes.
1
When American security is discussed as paramount, we need to ask secure from what? And from whom?
If America is a nation with a future, we need to plan on future generations being able to enjoy clean air and water. They must be able to travel and be welcomed when they do. We must have others want to do business with us, not because they must, but because our products are the best and are well priced. Americans must understand other cultures and speak many languages, not expect all or many to understand our culture and language, but hope they will want to enrich us as well as themselves.
Protection of Americans does not come with the price tag of allowing or encouraging others to kill dissenters and reporters. It hurts our freedom when encourage others to murder dissenters. If we cannot tolerate the views of others, and simply chant nonsense about locking people up, we might find American security at home is diminished and disappearing slowly, impermissibly, until it is too late to appeal. Blind justice can also become deaf justice when purity of party affiliation substitutes for tests of reason and fairness.
Is Mr. Friedman whistling past a graveyard of ideals? I hope not. Hitler did not get elected to power; it was handed to him by some who thought it was a good way to control him. We cannot give power to those who do not have American ideals firmly in their firmament.
2
Just to rebut a little, mankind's history is brutal in part but also inspiring as a whole. From the Egyptians to Greeks to Copernicus to to Newton to Einstein and on and on, mankind has sought the truth through science and discovery. Mankind has been inspirational through art, drama, music and dance. Of course knowledge was often challenged by kings and popes and warlords but it marched on, as we will. Trump is just a symptom of ignorance, which he practices day in and out.
The world is like a 45-year son living in America’s basement. We gave them education, protection, food, money and Xboxes. They never learned to live on their own. Time to kick them out.
What usually happens to dictators? What does the end look like? I'm ready for the end, whatever it is and whatever it takes.
3
The Trumpanistas here want to return to the jungle because they believe that we are the biggest, strongest, most powerful creature in the jungle. What they don't want to understand is that living in the jungle means you have to fight for your survival every day, even the biggest animals have to fight to survive. The US, and the world, is far better off if the jungle is tamed. The Trumpanistas get angry that trimming the jungle benefits others in addition to the US and they don't want anyone else to do well so they, selfishly, think the jungle is better.
Imagine, if you will, a President such as Trump governing the US from 1935-1945. Let your imagination cascade over what the world would look like today, the day-to-day and year-over-year erosion of a more humane humanity.
Then, look at today and shudder in anticipation of tomorrow. Tomorrow is sculpted by today’s choices and actions.
5
As if we weren't the punch line of the worlds joke, now Trump is talking about appointing his daughter, Ivanka, to be the new UN ambassador. She can't even spell UN, and she couldn't find Turkey on a map, she thinks it's something that will be pardoned in November along with the rest of her family.
2
Kagan's defense of a liberal world order sounds persuasive. The pity is his neoconservative interventionist views had more influence under George Bush than "The Jungle Grows Back" will ever have on what the Republican Party has become under Donald Trump.
I have long wondered which Trump and his toady Republicans will start first: Civil War II or World War III. I bounce between those two unthinkable possibilities, but today am leaning toward WW III. Of course, there's always the "wild card," Environmental Cataclysm I....
2
A spring time of thugs indeed;and one of them is in the White House right now. No wonder Trump gets along so well with the leaders of Russia, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia,and so on. One feels the jungle has already taken over the entire Republican Party with the likes of Mitch McConnell as well. Thomas Friedman has once again offered a sobering and clear eyed assessment of where we are in terms of global politics. And it ain`t. pretty folks. At the end of W.W.2 it was realized that unless strong measures were put in place in creating NATO and various other organizations to keep in place alliances that would establish a global police force to keep rogue nations in check; then W.W. 3 would not only be possible; but rather probable. Such alliances have prevented that doomsday scenerio. But now along comes a fool like Trump and his dream of once again an isolationist nation. That is no way to make America great again.
1
Trump says he will "look "at which group wrote the report. That is most helpful. At least he didn't over-promise and say he will read actually read it. That would be perhaps the 5,000th lie. Let's hope there are lots of pictures and graphs.
I doubt the group will include any names with whom he is familiar. Perhaps if Hannity and Kanye sign their names, it will increase his potential to endorse it.
And if there is another World War, which each day with the Trump Administration looks more and more likely, it will make WWII look like a cake walk. The 1% will be affected as well, so the Koch Brothers and their ilk better reign this guy in, or better get rid of him. They have their tax cut, so get rid of this guy before everyone is dead.
I know of which I speak.
Vietnam 1969-70.
3
Glad you read that book. Glad you wrote about it. Citizens need to read rather than yell. Keep at it!
2
All of this may be solved by one of a variety of large events. Climate change rapidly accelerating, affecting other countries catastrophically more than the US, but causing global conflicts that we cannot ignore. Russia, China, India, Pakistan - the nuclear powers - may be forced to square off for survival when one of the many nuke nations experiences a nuclear mistake, obliterating a major city that initiates a response. A meteor hits the East Coast and over a short period of time 1/3 of the earth's population dies and we are forced to work together. Or what is happening now, the US succumbs to the baser instincts of humankind and gives the middle finger to any nation who cannot be exploited for financial gain or who is just basically "not American". Is this how we want to live? Even if we are living on borrowed time? We may have a checkered history with this experiment in democracy, and it may take many generations to actually improve that track record. But I would rather continue on a track better ourselves as a society. A shake up has been needed. Trump, perhaps, shows that change is possible. But values like integrity, being your brother's keeper, helping each other, working together, the basics of caring for each other have been squandered under his leadership. Can we have both a return to such values and again aspire to re-energize efforts to improve overall the human condition? I would vote for that.
The last 70 years have not been Americas finest. The liberal global order has been protected, Eastern Europe has been freed, but honestly, they freed themselves. The US did nothing deter the Soviet occupation. Our failures in Vietnam and Laos empowered Asian communism and Iranian influence in the middle east is growing in the chaos we created in Afghanistan and Iraq. I get hyperbole, but there needs to be at least a tiny bit of reality. Constant dissembling like this is not constructive. American greatness lies in the Constitution, our freedoms and our ability to improve as a nation.
1
@Kevin
Hey Kevin! Policy of containment!
You can look it up.
2
He's the equivalent of a guy who's never made a hamburger, doesn't know how to make a hamburger, doesn't want to learn how to make a hamburger, yet becomes CEO of McDonald's simply by yelling that he makes the best hamburgers.
2
@BKLYNJ: "He's the equivalent of a guy who's never made a hamburger, doesn't know how to make a hamburger, doesn't want to learn how to make a hamburger, yet becomes CEO of McDonald's simply by yelling that he makes the best hamburgers."
Friedman is in the same mold - he has no problem telling everyone else that they make hamburgers wrong, but he has no idea how to make hamburgers in the first place.
1
A jungle or swamp is a beautiful diverse biological environment, where Mother Nature creates the ingredients of the future survival or the worlds species including humans. Donald Trump views the world from his own self-created cesspool that he and his administration are creating day by day in Washington. Cancer is a malignant cell that rapidly spreads and crowds out life, leading to the organism's death. Trump is a cancer in our political body that is killing our democratic institutions. Republicans, either vote for Democrats or don't vote and return the Republican Party into an American institution that respects individual freedom and the rule of law.
Enlightenment? Principle? Democracy? Trump is, as far as these three principles are concerned, the anti Christ. He may think of himself as a disrupt er of a sometimes complacent country with at times, a tendency to over reach, but he isn't. He is a fraud. He has substituted his own brand of bravado, bluster and braggadocio for true leadership no matter what his ideological bent might be.( what does he believe in other than money?) . While pandering to his base and telling them what they want to hear on immigration, trade, the media, healthcare, energy and size of government he stokes their paranoia and further divides this country at a time we can ill afford it. This is a time of vast economic growth in the US...and we should be parlaying that growth into a broad set of policies designed to improve the daily lives of all Americans, repair our rusting infrastructure, and assist the less fortunate of the world. That's always been our mission...to be that beacon of light on the hill representing freedom, innovation and human rights. Instead Trump and his mob are trying to reap as many rewards for themselves as they can, while they can, with scant attention to our place in the world. Trump is the jungle. He comes from the jungle of slip shod construction, shady financial dealings and law suits. But he has succeeded with his hard bitten base of supporters in distracting them from their own interests by stoking their fears...When he is gone who will they blame?
The solution is rather simple: "Elections Have Consequences"
Provide a better argument and convince other people to elect a U.S. president who agrees to get involved in foreign conflicts. The U.S. have been involved continuously in armed conflicts in support and against regimes for the last 70 years. It's time other countries help in efforts to exorcise tyrannic regimes.
The U.S. has done more than its part in helping the world - generously I might add.
3
Two additional nuances:
1. Trump and what once were called neocons are not simply interested in destabilizing the system that has brought the US a relatively peaceful era (other than the wars we have started ourselves), they are actively casting about for the next big war in an attempt to cement their autocracy.
2. Trump has not only empowered the thug leaders, but has brought life to oligarchs world-wide. In the US it starts with his own family, spreads throughout his administration, and expands outside the official sphere via the Republican party to economic predators working a system where protections for Americans' health, environment and egalitarianism are rapidly being removed.
3
@backfull: Trump has promised to make Kim Jong Un as rich and popular as he is.
1
In the long run we are all dead.
We don’t have that much fossils left anyway, and the electrics/renewables are already closing in (Tesla, wind/solar power etc).
Let other countries tax and regulate their economies as they wish.
We will catch up when we are ready.
1
The USA is always caught asleep at the switch. That's why Pearl Harbors punctuate its history. Even the changeover to renewable energy will consume a burst of fossil fuel to make the transition.
2
@steve
What switch are you talking about?
So now it’s a race who taxes and regulates its country the most?
The us is only 5% if the worlds population, our carbon footprint per person is one of the lowest on this planet earth.
Enough with this outrage. Let Europe, China and the rest tax and constrain their economies.
1
@Brig. Gen. Frank Savage: The US leads the world in per-capita energy consumption, General, particularly to keep you in business. Is there a Trumpist whose interests are not conflicted?
All presidencies have limits on their ability to stop the barbarism of despots in other nations. Trump has his own moral compass and stands up when he thinks it is right and he is able to do so-- he acted right away on Syria when Assad gassed its people. In contrast, Obama found himself limited in his ability to act on Syria in a similar situation. Moreover, you'd be making exactly the opposite argument if Trump was trying too hard to challenge other sovereigns-- that we were "nation-building" or starting unnecessary wars. Right?
1
“Trump has his own moral compass,” is pure comedy gold.
1
First, people must realize that USA was not the most powerful country in the world after 2 world wars. It was the only country country with a viable economy and intact manufacturing system and military after WW2. It wasn't because we were right or more moral or that we esteemed to be virtuous. Rather, we just lived half a globe away where it was too difficult to war with the then-current technology.
Second, we didn't enter either World War at its beginning. We 'hmmm'd and haw'd' until we were the next victim to be attacked or were going to be. So we sent men and women to war in countries and cities they had read about as being the jewels of civilizations bombed to the ground and were horrified. The trenches in WW1 where nothing more than trapping men for baiting.
Americans still hadn't forgotten the civil war when WW1 rolled in. By the end of WW2 we understood what we had to do. We had to make everyone equal. The poor will always rise up. The dictators will always be taken down. But if we could somehow manage to make everyone have an equal share, we could prevent entering or engaging in more costly wars that served no purpose to the middle and poorer classes. In other words, we realized the signers of the US Constitution's real goal : to create a heavy or thick middle-class that the poor could aspire to and the rich could fall back into during troubled times.
The middle-class is essential to peace and posterity. Trump doesn't understand that. He's a dictator-in-waiting.
11
Trump is showing us the power of the dark side. It is, in fact, real power, perhaps in the short run more than a polite, generous America can deliver. The problem, however, is the loss of morality, trust and cooperation. This will inevitably lead to conflict and answer the question of how so powerful a nation as ours can fall. It has been so great that we haven't used our nukes since Nagasaki. It would be so nice to keep it that way.
4
In addition to his crimes against the planet we can never forget that hundreds of children are still separated from the parents and scores if not hundreds are subject to forced adoptions without the consent of their parents; a la Argentina. Truly a crime against humanity.
5
I don't mean to dig too far into now defunct sociopolitical typology. However, have you ever encountered the anthropological hierarchy for political organization? The concept is simple. As human societies become more complex, their political organization advances in complexity as well. The four standards are: Band, Tribe, Chiefdom, and State. A successful band grows sufficiently complex to require the more complex political organization of a tribe and so on.
If you look at Trump and other authoritarian rulers, you'll immediately notice a pattern. They are attempting to devolve complex political organizations into less politically complex ones. That's their objective. The problem of course is the world is not becoming less complex. Economics, technology, trade and so forth are only becoming more complex. So much so, the highest tier on that outdated list isn't capable of managing it all. A single nation state is incapable of managing the world order.
What the United States has developed instead was a tribe of nation states designed to manage global social complexity. A less complex structure piggybacked on top of more complex individual structures. Trump seeks to convert this structure into a chiefdom of chiefdoms where he himself is ultimately the head chief. Unfortunately for all of us, that political organization is incapable of managing modern complexity. That's why most authoritarian regimes end in disaster.
4
So Mr. Friedman, when the CIA engineered coups of democratically elected leaders in Iran in 1953 and in Chile in 1973 and installed military juntas, or otherwise backed brutal and corrupt 'strong men' in places like South Vietnam, Iraq, Panama or the Dominican Republic, was that spreading democracy to every corner of the globe?
I don't like what trump is doing any more than most Americans, but let's take off the rose colored glasses and realize that much of what he's doing in his foreign policy is merely a continuation of the status quo. He's just more out in the open about it.
4
I cannot account for Trump's attitude toward Russia, but he is doing the right thing with respect to China. That fight is not merely about the trade deficit. His fight against China is intended to significantly weaken China's hand on the international stage. If you weaken China's economy, you weaken the Chinese Communist Party, and you weaken their ability to push other countries (and organizations like Interpol) around. China does these things not because they believe themselves righteous and favored by the United States -- they do it because they can.
3
As a Trump supporter, I am sick of people like Mr. Friedman complaining that because Trump was elected, the world's problems have gotten worse, and that the America First doctrine that Trump espouses is too 'selfish' and that the world is not a better place than it was before. That MBS has people killed in Saudi embassies in Istanbul or that Putin has people poisoned in the UK is not Trump's fault. Kavanaugh's victory and NAFTA's demise are not Trump's fault. Nor was it Bush's fault that 15 of the 19 2001 attackers were Saudi. Nor was it Obama's fault that more Russians were poisoned three years ago in the UK. People like Friedman should embrace the fact that we Americans are not going to be the world's policemen, that we are not trying to push democracy all over the globe (Bush), that we are not pushing 'diversity and acceptance of all religions all over the world' (the present Bolshevik pope and Obama) and that we believe that charity begins at home and that Europe should pay to defend itself and that's just the way of the world.
1
@Labete you’re missing the point. And the world is more than just the US and Europe.
3
Sadly, I don't see any change occuring until the US becomes the full-fledged fascist country that Trumpists dream of. If more Americans actually read history (not the propaganda that passes for history in school text books), they wouldn't need to see this lesson close-up.
I know many good, decent Americans, so I write this with a sense of foreboding.
3
I hang onto the fact that the majority of Americans did NOT vote for the man currently running amok in the White House and therefore he does NOT represent the values of the majority of Americans - values and principles of civilized society, not brutish behavior.
4
@We The People Of course, you're correct, but that hasn't stopped him from running amok, regardless of whose values he does or doesn't represent.
6
Trump can't think past his last tweet. He has no regard for science while the evidence of climate change is all around us. More and larger wildfires and tropical storms are now the norm.
Today another hurricane strikes Florida, this one being the biggest storm in decades to hit the Florida coast. We will see the repeat of hurricanes Harvey, Maria, and Florence, all in the past year. Homes will be lost, people will die and the President will go golfing.
He describes the confirmation of Kavanaugh as winning like it was us against them, Americans in war against each other. He gloats in calling his political opponents petty names, lies without impunity, and relishes praise on the world's dictators while chastising our global friends.
We cannot stand as a divided country or world. As the author stated, the forces for evil lie just below the surface awaiting their opportunity to exercise their power in the absence of reason by what once was a caring and powerful nation.
9
Trump has taken us into such a state of negativity on every front. What is truly frightening is how usually “smart” people are willing to follow. There are times when I feel we are entering a new “dark ages” period in human history.
We need to get back to a balance of power, fast!
6
I've been trying to understand which decade or century Trump lives in. It certainly isn't the reality of now. He sits in his castle, plays golf on well groomed greens, flies from air port to air port and rants in air conditioned arenas. To my knowledge he has never taken a walk in the woods. One of the things that saved us in the past century was Theodore Roosevelt going West, then traveling in the jungles of Brazil and understanding the importance and power of the natural world. His awakening gave us National Parks, something many, maybe most, of us treasure.
As a person who has stood at the top of a 12,000 foot mountain and felt very tiny when viewing the vastness of Colorado, and driven across the Great Plains for hours and enjoyed so many other green places in the U.S., I weep that the President of the United States has such a myopic view of our country.
Is it any wonder that he has no regard for prophesies of climate change? When he feels too warm all he has to do is demand someone lower the temperature.
I am sure that he believes that getting a drink of water is to turn on the tap. He has no idea that when we pollute our waterways enough, that water will be undrinkable.
Then what?
7
Well thought out argument but in reality, who cares.
Trump's environmental mindset is blatant stupidity, you could call it "Murder by Arrogance" because he and his people/followers don't care. As long as were making money right now who cares about the future. Deep thinkers.
Lastly, as long as they feel they're winning, they could care less about democracy. To their tribe, this is like a football game. "My team is winning!!" HaHa! Putin? Bah! He's on our team.
You know Reagan is spinning around in his grave.
4
Watching Mr. Trump in Iowa on CSPAN's 180 minute free info mercial, I was struck by how much this is like watching any comedian. There is the dark part, where he calls Democrats the party of crime and the Republicans the party of safety and there are the "Lock her Up" and "Finish the Wall" signs. And there is the requisite "They want to raise your taxes and eliminate ICE and borders!"
But mostly there is a lot of laughing.
Hitler, too, we forget, brought smiles to German faces, with his talk of the beauty of the Aryan race, with his gleaming autobahn, his forest camps where beautiful, healthy children exercised and played and his thousands of bright flags.
Springtime for thugs is an apt description. Springtime is a season of ineffable beauty, after all. We can forget the thug and enjoy Springtime.
The question remains: Where is the charismatic Democrat preaching triumphantilism?
Until the Democrats have somebody you will not see the end of Trump.
4
No one mentions what seems to me a glaring fact: Donald J. Trump’s father Fred was the son of a right-wing German immigrant. From what we know, Fred was an advocate of the “America First” movement in the 1930s and 1940s that vehemently opposed the United States’ defense of the Allies in World War II.
That first iteration of the “America First” doctrine swept in right-wing Nazi sympathizers, isolationists, Klansmen, rabid anti-Communists who believed that socialism and communism represented a global Jewish conspiracy. When the U.S. entered the war to defend our European allies, these folks firmly believed we were fighting on the wrong side - and some continued to believe this to the bitter end, even after the horrors of the Holocaust were there for the world to see in close up.
Fred Trump was a dominating, authoritarian influence on his son Donald. And lo and behold, now in his dotage, “America First” still rings in Donald Trump’s ears. Trump repeated it like a mantra during his unusual, antic inauguration rant. As Bush the Second accurately observed, Trump was spewing was ‘some weird s—t.’
“America First” remains a magnet for the same far right fruitcake conspiracy theorists - the flat Earthers, birthers, Alex Jones/Infowars, Neo-Nazis, climate change deniers, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, “Soros global Jewish conspiracy” theorists...
America First hasn’t moved far from its roots - Trump knows it; our allies know it; and the world is horrified.
5
Dream on.
Donald Trump did not suddenly drag America from its pedestal as a virtuous champion of human rights, generosity, and the liberal world order.
The US has been a dangerous, opportunistic, invasive force for a long time.
We’ve been in bed with the repressive Saudi government for decades, at least since the 1980s, when we sold them a fleet of astronomically expensive F-15 fighter planes. They had money. Great! We’ve intervened in South America and helped destabilize it. Let’s not forget Vietnam,
OK?
Trump is a hollow monster, a wannabe dictator, but he hasn’t single-handedly dragged the US from the path of virtue into hell. Our government knows how to navigate hell.
We forget, and are now just being forced to remember, how difficult it is to sustain a functional fair democracy.
So let’s keep trying.
VOTE
5
"The president’s fantasy is that the U.S. can ignore the global forces of nature."
OK, Thomas, what would President Friedman have done in response to all the incidents you mentioned? Better still, what would President Friedman's foreign policy look like that would have prevented any of those incidents?
Climate will change. Global politics will change. Trump will not change. After it all goes to hell and we face economic and social disaster, Trump will be back to doing his imploding, overleveraged business deals and his successor will be left to pick up the pieces of his unhinged mismanagement.
10
Trump’s foreign policy is a primary reaason why I would not vote for him or the GOP. But the developments on the left are almost equally concerning. In his otherwise admirable article Mr. Friedman failed to mention the main reason why we had almost twenty years of relative peace and stability: the collapse of the USSR, and the transition of China from brutal socialism to market economy. Now with the historically amnesiac Democrats championing “democratic socialism” (an oxymoron, if there ever was one), are we to see the resurrection of the bloody battles between right- and left-wing radicals that devastated the world in the last century? I hope the Dems will come to their senses and embrace international engagement, capitalism, democracy and free trade. And since I’m sure to get at least one response about Sweden, let me get it out if the way by pointing out right now that the Nordic countries are not socialist. But they had their share of Soviet aggression - just ask a Norwegian or a Finn.
2
Yes, the jungle grows back, and thank you for an excellent article. However, Trump and the one percent do not support democracies and want to destroy ours and have minority rule.
Those with the biggest bucks win at their version of Monopoly and rule America taking away our votes, our freedoms, our rights as if 325M Americans are just members of a 'deadpool'. Women and non whites have absolutely no vote or power in Trump world.
We need to get the GOP and Trump out in order to save America and the rest of the world. Trump is the enemy within who needs to go. He only cares about having all the pieces of the game on his side of the Monopoly board.
He is incapable of feeling for others and transcending his own selfish, greedy needs. The red alert button verifying an attack on our democracy has been a steady red since he took office. We can't let him destroy America for us or our kids or future generations to come.
He only lives for today, we have to save America for we, the people who he only looks at as numbers in a political poll. He is a dangerous, man filled with hate for mankind.
2
Tom, we are all missing the real points here. Dump is good at making us look at the wrong things (like a magician). In the case of BK aka the Anheuser Busch judge we looked at Dr. Ford's testimony when we should have looked at BK's lying to cover up the possibility that he was so blind drunk that he forgot what he did to her. In dump's case his lying will make us unacceptable as a partner for decades on the world scene. It's not the tariffs and ridiculous ice raids that will kill our democracy; the lying and the supporters of lies will.
3
Dr. Kagan is absolutely correct when he says we did not create post-war world as we know it "out of an abundance of generosity, or the post-World War II statesmen saying, ‘Gosh, how do we make the world a better place?’” he added. “It actually came from them saying: ‘How do we prevent the world backsliding into the kind of world war we just survived?’”
I refer you to Justice Jackson's opening speech at Nuremberg: "The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."
In their minds, nothing less than the fate of the world was at stake. So, to their eternal credit, they set out, at great cost, to ensure its survival.
Only a man as profoundly ignorant and intellectually bankrupt as Donald Trump could fail to recognize this.
9
Friedman's piece focuses in part on on reportorial freedom and integrity, and in part on Kagan's "jungle" thesis about U.S. attempts to spread the Enlightenment theme around the globe. The first point is ironic. The second is point myopic. First, Trump is the one who is calling media like the Times out for lacking integrity, and he has plenty of good reason for doing so. Second, Friedman himself championed the Iraq intervention. Such a great idea, right?
1
If ignorance does mean bliss, then Mr.Trump is the most blissful person on the planet.
Maybe good for him, but terrible for the rest of us.
3
"So when Trump says that we are just going to look out for ourselves, he shows his ignorance of both history and economics."
Of course. But then most of us knew that. It shouldn't require the baying of those of us who can recall the Great Depression and WWII to understand that Western man has already done that nationalism/jungle thing, and that it didn't work out well. However, one must also understand that Trump plunges on not only or simply in ignorance, but, even worse, in greedy self-service. Ignorance, at least in principle, is fixable; all-consuming "Me" is not. Removal of the "Me" is the only remedy.
In short, analyze all you want, but you can't fix Trump.
2
If the world order that we initiated fails, what happens then? Probably we will swing back to the previous state of individual nations fighting each other over something, it is the natural order, right? Economic factors could cause revolutions, but it seems the privileged have risen up out of the long suppression of their birthright and have found a way to deflect anger toward the liberals who haven't gotten them enough, and who represent minorities who don't deserve. There are scapegoats, like Mexicans, Chinese, Muslims and liberals to hate worse than a meaner life without privilege, fighting the wars, doing the dirty work and getting paid less than what is fair.
I think it is not fare to put Trump as the cause of this inflection point - the inflection point emerged due to the play out of different forces of world orders, globalization, climate changes and cultural breaking points. Trump only said - old plan is not working and we need new plan. The question is, in this new context more of old plan is the solution or we need a new plan that is not biased by the old planners. In the surface, most of the turmoil is the Trump Twitter, under the background world leaders are trying to understand the impact of this tripping point. Trump is not main player - American administration is. So let us decouple from Trump blusters and American administrative policies. WTO has to relook to its old plan, NATO is reorganizing to secure Europe, EU is protecting the interests of EU countries, China is trying to restructure its economic forces with new reality, Japan defining new role of its military, India is trying to improve its tax and business friendliness, all countries are relook ing to their economic and security plans. These are transformative changes in a very short time in global history. All is happening because Trump became US President and started blasting his Twitter. This is a transformative change in global system. Question is whether these changes are good for humanity - I believe so.
Go to Netflix and do a binge-watching of "West Wing." You won't find a better-intentioned President than Josiah Bartlet. His cabinet and his fate undo him, though. So does Trump and his crew, save Haley.
Just as Rome fell, one day soon so will we. Don't forget the media's role in all this. While unrecorded, I'm betting there was a scribe atop the walls and telling the emperor he needed a new viaduct, and forget more well-trained troops.
As Vonnegut so wisely put it, "So it goes." No matter who's in charge.
3
A large portion of blame lies with US secondary education. For decades many school systems have slid into jingoism, indoctrination and myth-making about US history. We see an astonishing failure to train young minds in scientific principles, instead substituting false ideologies like 'creationism' in the biology curriculum, and a failure to teach critical reasoning so that global experts citing climate evidence can be dismissed as 'opinion'.
Kansas and other red states are preparing their children for a future as frightened adults huddled around trash can fires, well armed to protect against climate refugees from Florida.
But at least they will be able to comfort each other with Bible verses.
8
What we have here, plain and simple, is a slide into demockracy.
In the 60's we had a name for people who believed in isolationism and "America First" at all costs: the Lunatic Fringe.
They are not on the fringe anymore, but they are definitely still lunatics--or just willfully ignorant.
3
Unfortunately, the Republican party saw fit to make an incompetent, ignorant and corrupt man the most powerful man in the world which is the very definition of reckless irresponsibility. Is it any surprise that America is now behaving so irresponsibly on the world stage? Currently, America can only be counted on to exercise raw, petulant power just like the GOP. I wish Germany, Canada or France would step up. We need a grown up in the room.
4
"'...It will be springtime for thugs...'" [op cit (Robert Kagan)]
And in my opinion, Donald Trump, our President is, "the King of Thugs." [my caption]
--
And Donald Trump, the King of Thugs, wants to take over the World, as soon as he can. That's why "We the People," need to [constitutionally] remove him from office as soon as we and our representatives in Congress can.
"There is no way that the regime of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, would have dared to do that if it thought Trump would care."
Gee, Tom, I wish you would have cared this much, and blamed the then President for lack of caring, when WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered by Islamic fascists in Pakistan.
After all, Pakistan is our friend and ally, too. Isn't it?
1
No, Pakistan is not a friend and ally. Pakistan is a country with whom the US has a short list of common interests, among them stability in a regime that has nuclear weapons. UBL was captured and killed in Pakistan with no known collaboration from them - the Pakistani government KNEW they were sheltering him, and the US invaded their territory and disposed of him.
And despite both killings, we continue our strategic relationship with Pakistan. It’s called having an objective-driven foreign policy, something beyond the mental capability if the current resident of the White House.
1
Mr. Friedman I am truly amazed by how often you can be wrong and still qualify at a foreign-policy expert at arguably the nation’s eminent newspaper for the intellectual class. How convenient of you not make any reference to your article from Nov. 23, 2017, “Saudi Arabia’s Arab Spring, at Last”. I loved how you narrated your conversation while enjoying different lamb dishes and eventually ended with “He has his flaws that he will have to control... But guess what? Perfect is not on the menu here.” Indeed, you were right, the perfect was not on the menu, not so sure about “Spring at Last!!!”.
Here’s Trump, who took out millions of dollars of flood insurance on his golf course in Scotland against “sea level changes due to “climate change”
What an immoral hypocrite
12
@Steven
Are you talking about the same Trump that collected $17,000,000 in insurance money for 'damage' that Hurricane Wilma didn't cause to Mara-Lago a few years back?
What an immoral hypocrite.
trump claims he knows evil people, he finally has spoken a little truth, each day he looks into a mirror he see's evil looking back! it only took him 71 years to figure this out, and the rest of America the day he walked down those stairs to announce he was a candidate.
We are jungle dwellers now, cast aside as a meaningless relationship by your president. Our jungle is inhabited by principled nations standing together, embracing our integrity, our belief in humankind and our desire to inhabit a world where everyone is valued. We are doing fine.
,
Trump is a fool who listens to conspiracy theories about the end of the white race and climate change deniers. Germany and other leading world democracies need to wait out Trump's horrible administration because the old white guard is unlikely to win the next round. If democratic world leaders who rely on the US really want to see the world stay peaceful, they need to fill the void for a short time until the economic power of the US can lead again in 2020. They need to fight the extreme right in their own countries. If they don't, then they truly did not want peace anyway. They wanted constant chaos and it was only a matter of time before the roof blew off. Is it so hard to simply wait until 2020, or at least until this November when Trump's power will likely by hamstrung by losing the House?
America is not abdicating its world leadership because Trump wants to.
It is because Trump can’t.
As documented by Bob Woodward in his book, Trump is mentally weak to grasp the meaning of international cooperation. He would rather put the entire US at risk than be friendly with South Korea. He would rather put the entire US in a trillion dollar deficit than sign mutually beneficial trade deals with our partners. He would rather dissolve NATO than support it.
Trump is doing these things because his mind cannot process the complexities of security, finance, alliances.
Trump can’t even spell (covfefe) read a teleprompter (anomanous, anonamous) or notice a piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe.
It is just not right to expect a mentally weak person to lead the world.
Trump’s mental weakness, however, can be deployed for name calling—Sessions is a dumb Sotherner, Bush is lying, Rubio is little. And also for the worship of his idols—Putin is a good man, I fell in love with Kim Jung Un, Duterte is a great leader.
Asking Trump to lead the world is akin to asking an amoeba write an opera.
Both do not have the brains to do these things.
5
Dear Mr. Friedman:
Great salesmanship- For Mr. kagan¨s book.
Recomendation, ask him to donate excess income to nature improvements. regards
Dictators believe in raw, personal power. They don’t believe in bureaucracies (e.g., the UN), asking permission or asking for forgiveness. They create their own reality and are shameless about promoting it. They admit nothing; their usual response is a denial, demands to “prove it” and an attack on the accuser.
By any account, Trump’s behavior is similar to that of a dictator or dictator wannabe, like Putin, Ertogan, Kim Jung Un, Maduro, Duterte, Xi and the Arab royal families. They control all levers of public life. The two main things Trump cannot do that they can: he doesn’t control the media and he can’t assassinate people, like the Saudi Crown Prince Tom describes who, like Putin, apparently has no qualms about killing his enemies even on foreign soil.
Trump certainly tries everything he can to manipulate the media, given that his goal to control it is beyond his reach. As far as assassination, I don’t believe even a megalomaniac like him would go that far. But then again, if he got total control of Justice and the FBI, considering the GOP bootlickers who control Congress and a Supreme Court that now is firmly in Federal Society hands . . . .
5
Mr. Friedman states the obvious about the U.S. role in geopolitics, and about Trump's upheaval of that role. Perhaps you will allow me the leeway to bluntly state the obvious about Mr. Trump.
The idea that Donald Trump could grasp that there is self interest in America investing in global order is not just misguided, it's absurd. The circus of U.S. political life over the last two years has left Americans shell-shocked and seemingly incapable of cogent self-analysis. The truth is, your president, while possessing a tsunami-like obsession for self-promotion and a knack for pitching fear to the doltish rubes who attend his rallies, is an ignorant, lazy fool. He acts like a thug because he is a thug. His tweets read like the crayon tantrums of a child because Trump is barely literate. He feuds with everyone from Rosie O'Donnell to the Prime Minister of Canada because he actually has the emotional intelligence of a ten year old boy. The oft reported accounts of senior aides referring to him as childlike, stupid, moronic and unstable are oft reported because those incidents happen all the time. In their "wisdom", the American electorate chose Trump to be president. In doing so, they installed a man so deeply ill-equipped for the job that there is nothing even remotely like a precedent for it in American history.
It's painful to watch politicians and the media try to make sense of Trump's decisions. Nothing beyond naked self-interest and simplistic understanding exists there.
3
We cannot blame Trump for the stupidity, selfishness, and white grievance that elected him. That's on us, I'm sad to say.
3
Trump needs losers to feel he's a winner. He's destroying the world and creating losers so he convinces himself and his followers he's winning.
3
This article should be required reading for Trump supporters. Rats. Forgot about that reading thing. Can you please please turn this into a commercial to run on the Fox News channel?
It's always been a Hobbesian out there. And for reasons that go far beyond the ubiquitous poverty cited by TF - indeed, that have little to do with poverty and more to do with our animal natures that are driven by fear. The U.S. 'enlightenment-based' society survived due to geography. (BTW, not always so enlightened: ask the Indians - exterminated, the Mexicans - land stolen, the blacks - enslaved, etc, ad nausea). But in our modern world, the 2 oceans now mean nothing (by way of isolating us). So, expect reversion to our base natures - the basest now on display in the Oval Office). Fortunately - or unfortunately - there's always the hydrogen bomb to protect us (or seal our fates - or, failing that, global warming). Have a nice day.
I thought Donald Trump was of the jungle - like Kurtz in "The Heart of Darkness." Definitely a debauched man given to every appetite.
Why does the list of journalists not include the Bulgarian woman who was raped and murdered?
2
For heaven's sake. Does every liberal "journalist" have to take such license as to create the story of evolution out of whole cloth? Jeez!
Mr. Friedman I am 87 tears old and watching Trump at his rallies really frighten’s me.
I remember the Dictators of old and Trump sounds like they did.
I believe more importantly the Mob behind him as he talks looks like the Krystal Nach gang. We better wake up.
8
A reminder: as you continue to believe that the U S is a force for peace, look around you. What the U S has done and become.
The lies, corruption, and shear mendacity. Because you can.
War criminals, corporate criminals and cheats, no sense of truth or justice as we have just seen.
Originalism, textualism, original intent. 17th Century.
Remember also the Guillotine!
2
We have 28 days before we vote again. This is an intelligence test, a soul test, a values test, a test as to whether or not we love our wives, sisters, mothers, daughters; whether we love and adore our children and care a twit about their future. These issues - climate change, trump's predator nature and despicable sexual and verbal assault on women is so crystal clear that there can be no mistake that we have a low life criminal occupying our White House. He has stolen our treasure for 40 years, lies thru his teeth with the ease of a breath. The way out - VOTE, get everyone you know to vote, especially young people, women, working people, blacks, hispanics, Asian, white people under 50, anyone you know that has a brain and a soul and is not part of any cult. Vote for anyone with a "D" in front of their name. The Republican party must be destroyed and trump crushed like a cockroach, then all flushed together.
2
Inasmuch as Trump is no more than a self-indulgent idiot front man for a collection of wealthy wackos, there isn’t much point in asking what Trump “thinks” or “has in mind”. The real question is just what are the Mercers, the Kochs, the Adelsons, the Wilks, the Spencers, the Uihleins up to?? Besides installing an Oligarchy of “Christians” devoted to disinformation?
Why are these bonkers billionaires insisting Trump install idiots as agency leaders, promote disastrous policies ensuring pollution and global warming? Deliberately provoke trade wars?
10
This column reminds me once again: what would General George C. Marshall, one of the great heroes of the 20th Century and one of the principal architects of the postwar world order, be saying about all of this? And what he be saying about our current leadership? (Since Marshall was the model of a good soldier and a normally taciturn man, he would be saying practically nothing. But what would he be thinking? The mind boggles.)
1
The thuggery Friedman describes will not be limited to foreign countries.
When a US President calls the press “the enemy of the people”, we are on the cusp of jailing journalists, and seeing them murdered.
When a US President, supported by a totally silent Republican Party, says there are good people among Nazi and white supremacists, we are half a step away from seeing violence in the streets.
When a US President calls for locking up political opponents, we are on the verge of actually doing so.
As Paul Krugman has just pointed out, we are very near the authoritarian nightmares that Friedman suggests can only happen abroad.
It can, and is, happening here.
651
@Space needle
On the campaign trail in 2016 when a heckler was removed from the crowd Trump commented that "I liked the old days when guys like that were removed on a stretcher" At least once he suggested police "rough em up " when arresting suspects. That and the idea that the USA should not care about what other govts' do to maintain power as long as they don't interfere with " American interests" is what Trump seems to believe and the voters seem to agree. 2 conservative supreme court justices and a tax cut are major plusses along with a strong economy. He could still blow it but at present it seems to me big changes in the balance of power after mid terms seems small
1
@Space needle
I hope everyone reads and digests your comment, with election time coming up. Anyone who doesn't vote shouldn't think of him/herself as a citizen.
@Space needle
And when the president calls Democrats criminals..........
This opinion presumes that America itself has played no major role in "jungle" politics and aggressive power plays to degrade our earth and environment. Sorry, we are not so pure. We are racist, armed to the teeth, warlike, capitalist thugs. Trump is our leader. Welcome to the jungle....
1
" . . .the galvanizer and protector of the liberal global order that brought more peace, prosperity and democracy to more corners of the world over the last 70 years than at any time in history ."
Yeah, right. Chile, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo . . ,
116
@Richard
Yeah, all bad. We won't be able to tell if the world would have been better off, on balance, without the US in the past, but we will see how it does without it now.
1
@Richard Exactly! And let's not forget the Shah of Iran. If one includes, say, sending U.S. might into South America in the early 20th century to preserve the business of the Dole company, among other incursions, the case can be made that this country has practiced more international thuggery than any other nation. Trump is merely openly supporting such actions, which makes him not better or worse on that score than his many predecessors, just different.
@Richard Research your history and you'll conclude even with the areas you have listed, overall the statement from Friedman is accurate. We live is extraordinary times which the Trump Administration is throwing to the wind as if the past 70 years of hard work to achieve this level of peace and prosperity don't mean anything.
The political philosopher Hegel made the interesting observations that large events in history tend to repeat themselves. And that the first event was tragedy (the culmination of historical forces) while the recurrence was farce (a caricature of the first event). Which is not to imply that the farce is harmless or less destructive.
We can agree that Facism and Nazism were a tragedy leading to world war. Trumpism (including Hungary, Turkey, Poland, the Phillipines, et al.) is the farcical imitation of fascism; we must stop it before it goes further.
1
Yes, it's getting to be cliche. "As always, doing Putin's bidding.' That 'compromat' is still out there, and Trump never forget's it. He attempts to make us forget it, don't.
“It will be springtime for thugs,” Kagan concluded — and the signs of that are now multiplying.”
Whether it’s springtime for thuggery or just the end of summer... winter is coming, in more than one way.
Remembering that your Trump was elected by a popular minority of Americans gives the world hope that his ‘America First’ lunacy will be as fleeting an aberration as was Charles Lindbergh’s.
“I wasn’t there so I can’t say what they were actually doing on the outside.” Do you think for one moment that Stephen Miller wrote a laugh line into the speech?
The sad truth is that Trump is OUR president. We, the American people, created the system that created him. We are ALL complicit. It is both naive and irresponsible to imagine that there are "two Americas" - one consisting of educated, concerned, and fair-minded citizens, and another composed of ignorant and indifferent bigots. It is ONE COUNTRY. In fact, it is ONE PLANET, and until we begin thinking and behaving as such, things will only get worse.
Trump is just being himself and considering his life style and his financial history, you know, and you should have no illusions about what that means.
2
You can't blame one person for all these changes. Elections have always been fraught with the devious maneuverings of self interest. We are seeing a destroying wave of self reinforcing collusion: politicians who will say and do anything to keep themselves in office, not to serve but to be served, news outlets who value ratings above truth and the well being of the populace displaying their most violent inner selves, industrialists greedily grabbing everything in sight, heaping up value far greater than they could ever appreciate, and the most horrid of all is the hatred of ordinary people of the other like marauding troops of chimpanzee. Although Trump is a terrifying agent in these doings, he is actually a product of these trends. We need to see the world for what it is today before we can work to change its path from destruction to enlightenment.
I doubt Trump could find Saudi Arabia on a map nor could he describe what the world is.
I think Trump is way out of his league and the US and the world are at great risk because of it. I think Trump’s been lying, bluffing and bullying his way to hide the fact that he doesn’t have a clue of how the government works and what the job of president entails.
1
Mr Friedman, your article is absolutely correct in principle. Civilization is founded on the principle of tending the garden and keeping weeds out. But your article persists in the attribution of wrongs and misjudgements to Trump. I suppose this is good electoral technique for the Democrats because it is risky to say to half the American electorate 'you are a collection of ill/uneducated primitives (regardless of income or neighbourhood) who believe in a brutal system of dog eats dog" but the fact is that Trump, as Trump, is nothing but a dislikeable man with money. He is who he is because, sadly, roughly half of the American electorate wants an animal like him in charge.
America stopped being the world beacon of democracy (if it ever was 100%, many horrible regimes in the world were possible through American support) more or less in line with the rise of Reagan and the ultra-right in the Republican Party. Which again, would not have been able to rise if roughly half of the American electorate would not be happier with a Right-wing troglodite in charge.
That is the problem, how to reeducate half of a nation that is racist, bigoted, religious in a fanatical way and obsessed with money and guns, into something that resembles descendants of the Enlightenment. Not Trump.
The lack of consistency by the Left is truly amazing. For decades we have heard from Leftists about the horrors of America. The injustices. We’ve heard how we have no moral right to force our principles and cultures on others. In fact, the Left says we shouldn’t herald our Founding Fathers because some of them had slaves, even though they created the process to end slavery (13th, 14th, and 15). Yet now, we are to be the police (who the Left hates) without the right to end horrible things like socialism, illegal immigration and the end of global citizenship.
It is also amazing that you cite an article that claims we were purely calculating in our efforts for the last 70 years. Yet, you failed to read that Trump is also acting in our own interests. He just views our tactics and interests differently than the Dems after WWII. The claim we must accept the view of a prior generation is rich given the Left’s endless whining of our predecessors and their errors.
"It all depends just how far Trump goes with this."
The jury is in. Trump is an unmitigated disaster.
"So when Trump says that we are just going to look out for ourselves, he shows his ignorance of both history and economics."
Actually, it is worse than Friedman supposes. In addition to the constructs that are based on our principles of government, we have to deal with issues like global warming that impinge on the natural world.
The prevalence of bigger, stronger, wetter storms is a direct consequence of global warming, based on simple chemistry and physics. But Trump waves that away with the back of his hand, because it is inconvenient. Mother Nature laughs in his face (and ours).
Trump is an incurious, willful, liar who cares not a whit for anyone else's opinion or for scientific truths. He just wants it "his way," and nothing, not the rights or opinions of others, not the law, not societal norms, will stand in his way. Until they do.
This is not going to end well. One cannot just rewrite the rules to suit one's whim, especially when the rewrite is inconsistent with forces one cannot control. Whether it end badly for all of us, or for him, or maybe for everybody, only history will tell.
1
Thank you for your insight. trump and company are concerned with getting the most they can for themselves. They are not the least interested in us. trump considers us lesser Americans.
Vote Blue and bring civilization back to America. Vote Blue and pare back that Jungle.
Enlightened democracies are governed by enlightened leaders. You can call Trump many thing buts enlightened is not one of them.
2
The larger puzzle is not Trump who is a mere media clown who joked his way into the White House, but that vast ocean of American voters who idolize him for no other reason than he spits in the face of common decency. His fan base finds this exhilarating. Why?
Trump built his career in the media by insulting other people and he continues this trend up to, and including, his gratuitous ridicule of Dr. Ford last week. The destruction of other people's personal dignity has become Trump's method of operation.
The question yet to be answered is this: what do Trump's loyal supporters expect this unrelenting barrage of shameless sadism will add to the American Story? More than sixty million voters appear to be rooting for the destruction of civil rights, economic solvency, and world stability. What sort of world do they intend to leave for their children?
1
Trump, himself is the chief thug. Just look at kidnapping kids at the border. Originally it may have been for ransom--a wall, but it turned into just kidnapping with no plan to return the children to their families. Kidnapping is a crime! Why has no one, especially Trump, been charged with this crime. There should also be compensation paid to the families. The government should also fully reimburse relief agencies and legal teams, who have been trying to help these children and their families.
We don't pay taxes to our government for them to break the law in such an egregious way on our account. Is the purpose of this lawbreaking by Trump and his henchmen to distract us from noticing other illegal schemes they seem to be constantly trying to get away with? Certainly reversing the protections of the Clean Air and Water Acts is one of them.
1
Donald Trump hijacked the media then he hijacked the minds of those who have been taught, day after day, hour after hour, to hate liberals. I would bet that most people who say they hate liberal can't even clearly state the reasons. "They want socialism." What is socialism? Dunno. "They want higher taxes." Well, what does giving 1.5 trillion dollars in a tax cut, mostly to the wealthy, mean for the future? Higher taxes later, because, as the Republicans used to say, there's no free lunch.
How was Trump able to take over the media? First, by being interesting, which means outrageous, so that everything he did in 2016 got way too much news space and now, as a pretend president, he gets the media to jump the way he wants every single day. He says look up! The media looks up. Look down. The same.
Trump makes stuff up all the time but, sadly, we now know that a huge percentage of our population was not paying any attention in school. None. Zero. Zip. Still, they graduated and many also finished college without learning one of the most fundamental human skills: how to think. How to push away lies and embrace hard truths. We all want to see what we believe, but sometimes facts, screaming out in the dead of night, shouldn't be ignored.
The news media can't keep up with Trump's lies. He learned a very long time ago just to say anything and dare anyone to prove that it was not true. Until they stop covering his every burp, he will always, always win, at least with his core cultists.
3
"So when Trump says that we are just going to look out for ourselves, he shows his ignorance of both history and economics."
I could almost overlook these areas of ignorance if there were any other useful, productive subjects about which he wasn't ignorant.
The only things Trump can do really well are bullying, bombast, loutishness, and thuggery - and he occasionally fails at those.
1
While this is an eloquent column, as are most all Friedman columns, I disagree on one major point. Donald Trump is very much afraid; afraid of personal poverty (his dad understood this and worked on that fear by constantly bailing him out so he has never faced economic truths), afraid of failing; afraid of life (the constant lying, cheating, unfaithfulness, sexual Piccadilly’s - who is he kidding - these are all signs of great fear and anger). Therein lies his bullying and lying. He can’t get along with normal people, who have learned to face life. He knows he’s stupid but has to prove he’s smarter than everyone in the room - the “stable genius,” which he knows he isn’t. He protests too much.
In a democracy, people trust each other to do the right thing, to have good judgement, to life their own lives without interference. Republicans don’t trust anyone and with good reason - they know their own history. It’s been easy for them to accept Trump and his lack of moral compass or intelligence - not needed in this rodeo. This sham will end but it is up to us, the voters, to decide how it will end. If people do nothing, don’t vote or get involved, Trump gets to pick the ending, and it will be very ugly. If people vote, refuse to disrespect others, don’t let fear govern their lives and work for a good, honest kind of society, we can make it through this, but clouds are gathering.
1
We have become an idiocracy.
Democracies only work if you elect the capable leaders; wise, careful, decent, forward-thinking individuals who choose staff that can calmly guide the nation toward prosperity and peace.
The truth about Donald Trump is that he doesn't give a darn about the USA, its people, or the world in general. He cares about Donald Trump. He's old and he knows it, so he's grabbing everything he can while he can. And destruction is this nasty old man's idea of fun.
Our country elected Donald Trump. The 'jungle' is us.
1
Tom, a quote from Ulysses seems to sum up the Trump approach to World order known as, Thugs are US.
“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. - James Joyce
"Trump is pursuing “a great American fantasy. It’s a fantasy that we can be “irresponsible.”
It's not just Trump being irresponsible. Republicans in Congress are irresponsible. Voters for Trump and Republicans are irresponsible. Non-voters are irresponsible.
A responsible person would have dismissed Trump as a candidate when he said John McCain was not a hero because he was captured while carrying out the US mission in Vietnam.
A responsible person would have been appalled by Trump's disgusting mockery of a disabled NYT journalist.
A responsible person would have said "NO!" to Mitch McConnell disrespectfully telling a president he would not permit him to carryout his Constitutional duty to nominate a justice to the Supreme Court.
A responsible person would not support a political party which adds to the national debt and borrows from other countries to finance a tax cut for the wealthy while cutting human services to the most needy.
Responsible Americans are on the decline. Responsible Americans vote. Responsible Americans don't join mobs shouting "Lock her up!" Responsible Americans wouldn't support a nominee to the Supreme Court who has been credibly charged with sexual assault, who the least discerning viewers know that the applicant lied during his interview for the job and showed contempt for the interviewers.
Trump is boastfully grossly irresponsible, but he is not the only FOOLhardy, thoughtless hothead working to end the American experiment.
2
Pretty soon he’s going to say the current climate catastrophes are hoaxes staged by Hollywood, China, Jeff Bezos, whichever or whomever is his enemy du jour.
2
Mr. Friedman you have just laid out a most credible scenario as to why it's simply impossible for the world's wealthiest and most militarily powerful nation to act selfishly introverted as if *nothing else* mattered. The problem with your argument however is that to tens of millions of voters here in the US, *nothing else matters*. We live among those who cherry pick issues, real or not, which they place various values and vote accordingly. Where do you suppose these voters place Education in their value hierachy?
1
This is a short sighted and excessively optimistic look back on the world post 1945. You cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again. HD being the West in general. The physic wounds from 1914-1945 have not healed and never will. They were baked into the cake called “Enlightenment” “Improvement” “Progress.” Now the world looks like it is regressing but that is illusory. Nothing really changed.
Paradoxically your 45th president pushing for authoritarian rule actually has him losing authority all over the place. But how could the townsfolks of the City upon a hill fall for a jungle creature? Who just had to appropriate the fake claim "drain the swamp", it seems.
1
How can Americans lead in living small when we refuse to negotiate our global means of living big? When even democrats delude themselves that we can just plug green sources of energy into our fossil infrastructure, maintain economic growth, and somehow sustain our huge pull on the planet (aka living like Republicans), without permanently destroying the commons.
Living small just ain't in our vision. Any leader who promotes such would have his head handed to him. Our Trumpian ways brought us Donald. We are the natural jungle destroyers and the human jungle makers. Donald rose by selection of the least fit to live on earth.
1
Friedman's record is pretty good. It's a trying time in our country's history. Hopefully we will eventually find our way past the current insanity.
Mr. Friedman, when Trump says, “We are just going to look out for ourselves,” he doesn’t define the terms “we” and “ourselves” to include all Americans. He has demonstrated that by his tax policies that punish Californians and New Yorkers, he doesn’t mean Democrats or the majority of us who voted against him (see Bret’s testimony), he doesn’t mean Black Americans other than the Kanye’s that act as his sycophants, he doesn’t mean women unwilling to be groped, he doesn’t mean immigrants whether they are legal, illegal, naturalized citizens, or serving in our military, he doesn’t mean workers or the middle class, he doesn’t mean folks who need health care or have pre-existing conditions, he doesn’t mean Americans who insist on clean air, water and energy, etc.
Trump means by the “we will look out for ourselves” that his government, (from the executive, legislative and judicial branches now under his complete control) will only lookout for those Americans who “worship like dogs at the shrine of his lies,” i.e., the Fox News crowd, the white supremacist evangelicals, the Republican Lindsey’s that grovel at his feet, the alt-right, the donor class, the authoritarians, etc.
By words and deeds Trump and his totalitarian, minority government do not pretend to represent all Americans. The values and goals of “We the people” and “E pluribus unum” are clearly not on their agenda.
2
Mr. Friedman hits so many of our fault lines and sounds the alarm of how fragile and precariously positioned for a fall we are. In half a term this ignorant, narcissist (Trump) has ripped the country apart, while ignobling outliers of the planet to make their magic.
My principle beef is with the American electorate. They continue to deny, revel in their heroes misogyny and chest thumping, while enabling our worst demons to prevail. They celebrate ignorance and scoff at science. It appears Marx was right. Capitaliism is a self destructive entity.
Nikki Haley just claimed that the World now respects the US! Under Obama according to GOP talking points the world did not respect the USA.. Just the opposite! The Saudis and the Chinese and others are emboldened.
1
The world's thugs are showing us Trump has destroyed the power the US used to have and that our leadership in the world no longer exists. "America First" from trump means "GOP Only." He can strut around at rallys and be the big man. Meanwhile the world ignores us and becomes less safe.
CONGRESS WAKE UP! Vote Blue America.
Elections have consequences. Its looking like The Donald is heading for a second term.
I think the climate sgends is gonna be b ack burner until 2025.
I believe Mr. Friedman has quoted Chance the Gardener in Being There.
" THE SORRIEST SHOW ON EARTH: "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LIVE 24/7 FROM THE OVAL OFFICE (or a Trump golf course, at taxpayer expense), IT"S DONNY!
The show must go on. That is untill the end when the Big Top, holding us all, collapses.
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"Constant jungle-like conflict, protectionism, and strongmanship" is not the natural order of things. It's the disorder promoted by the poorly reflected primitive beliefs of the religions that emerged and took foundational textual shapes during the early primitive stage of our evolution (I'd say we're now in late primitivity), shapes and beliefs we stubbornly keep swearing upon, and allow to exert hostile external remote control over us with its plants in the unreflected sub-, semi- and mock conscious parts of our minds, feeding on our braincells and fears, feeding us TO the devastating consequences of our lack of courage to question and weigh sane replacements of them.
A vengeful and vindictive God has been heaved upon the throne at its core, and its most ardent proponents were duly given a tax cut by the folk who profit most from the primitively divisive hate this God incites in 'His' believers for those who dare to believe different things, or even think for themselves, or, worst of all, look like folk who believe differently than they themselves do, self-identifying as the chosen (by 'Him', the result of their projection, that they gratefully inherited from primitivity, never fundamentally reviewing it.)
We witness the last panicked efforts to stick to same same stupid stupid old old before it finally finally implodes. The serial rabid emotion explosions from Trump to Kav to their supporters are the signs of our times that late-stage primitiveness is imploding rapidly.
1
Aside from the fact that he is a corrupt thug, Trump is intellectually incapable of formulating and implementing policy intended to insure peace and prosperity on the global stage. The extent of his diplomatic engagement is to watch Fox News and play golf with his next best hope for escaping criminal prosecution, Lindsay Graham. He has consolidated power by inciting hatred in his White Nationalist Base at political rallies which are funded by tax payer dollars, not by his own or Republican Party funds.
Rather than trying to point out why this man is clearly unqualified and incapable of occupying the Oval Office, an eloquent and insightful journalist like Mr. Friedman should tell the 65% of Americans who despise this slob how we can limit the damage and get rid of him. I suspect that doing so will require street protests similar those that drove LBJ from office, masses of protestors that even Don the Con and his Republican co conspirators can not deny. But a Blue Wave in the upcoming elections would strike fear in the hearts of the Republican lackeys, and show Trump that the gig is up. Then Congress can conduct a real investigation into how a single corrupt, indecent, intellectually challenged grifter and his family could threaten the Democracy that so many Americans have died, and continue to die, for.
1
What was the quote from the famous American author "good luck trying to a man to vote against his pocketbook" well, we really need some luck in November 2018.
Like King Canute, Trump cannot hold back the tide, whether it be the climate change eventually drown Mar-a-Lago or the coming Blue Wave that condemns his party to the dustbin of history. His may be the worst presidency in the history of our country but that too shall pass.
2
The Real Problem:
As usual Mr. Friedman has produced another insightful, thought provoking article.
The only problem is that probably fewer than 20% of Americans will ever read it.
Education in America is rapidly becoming a rich person's endeavor. College debt is a growing economic catastrophe. 60%+ of Americans do not have a college degree, primarily because it has become too expensive, or they are simply too ill-prepared to enjoy the rigors of education. As a result, it becomes all too easy to scorn what you cannot achieve.
The real problem is that far too many Americans are poorly equipped to understand the dangers highlighted in this article. They do not have the historical, global, or technological perspective to understand that “Globalism” is not a dirty word, it is a fact of life.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that a well-informed electorate is a prerequisite to democracy.
Good luck.
2
The first target for the thug is information. From the moment of its inception, Fox News lied. Its motto--Fair and Balanced--was a lie. It was, in military jargon, preparing the battle space beginning a decades-long psy-ops campaign to condition Americans to believe only the radically conservative line.
Now, enter the demagogue Trump. By continuing to roil the waters and sow fear and division, he blinds us from his army or real thugs bent on dismantling the deep state. And their first target was removing the ability to use truth to effect change. Words like 'climate change' and 'poverty' have been driven out of white papers. Entire data collection and aggregation efforts were scrapped.
Now blinded, bound and gagged, the government of, for and by the people may be turned to a government only for HIS people and the wealth of the land will be swept up by the few remaining rich people. And the hordes of Americans who bought the con will inherit a new Dust Bowl as support and jobs vanish. And, if and when they try to storm the castle, the drawbridge will be raised and the moat on fire.
America, it will be said, was a nice place once.
1
The lesson in any MBA class in USA or the world is : it is a zero sum game. These MBAs now rule the giant industries that employ millions of people and make more money than God. Many of the same MBAs now rule the Govts across the world. This has all the makings of the Junngle Raj and Third World War.
1
So blame it all on Trump. That really works for you. In reality, DJT has realized, as no other recent US leader has, that the American people have paid dearly for this “new world order” with the loss of jobs and wealth. Mainly, he wants payback from other countries, both friends and foes, and he’s doing it in different ways through shaking up trade, diplomacy, and the military. After two short years he has shifted the entire perspective of the world - and in our favor. Those UN diplomats, whom you seem to admire, are mostly corrupt fat cats who have lived off American largesse for a long time but never miss a chance to vote against us.
The issue with climate change is not the science - it is the proposed “solutions” that, once again, place the burden on the backs of the American people. The Paris accord was poorly negotiated. China is by far the biggest polluter, but they largely got a pass. Trump’s rhetoric sounds anti-science because that’s the only way he can get your attention. The US has nothing to apologize for - this is a new style of leadership. Give it a chance.
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@Wildebeest
Actually, the western world order has generated a spectacular amount of wealth for the American nation. The problem is the American people aren't sharing in the prosperity anymore. I don't see Trump doing anything to rectify that situation.
Reducing corporate tax rates isn't giving you a raise. Even Amazon's recent pay increase was a net loss for workers as the company eliminated stock options and bonuses.
Starting trade wars with China is creating new jobs. A steel worker might benefit. However, every company that uses steel is looking at the bottom line and thinking about payroll cuts.
Meanwhile, the entire problem with disengagement from the western world order is there is always going to be someone there to step in and fill the void you left.
Like politics in general, the show is still going on with or without you. If you don't make the decisions, someone else is going to make them for you.
As much as Trump blusters about America getting a raw deal, wait ten years. You'll see how it feels for the world to boss America around.
Moreover, I think the point Kagan and Friedman are making is whoever fills the vacuum isn't likely to be a friendly western ally. When you leave the garden untended, weeds take over.
4
‘Beest, the US Is easily the world’s largest carbon polluter, having already emitted over twice as much carbon dioxide as China. It’s already put in a precarious situation, and can’t be ignored. The US got rich by emitting CO2; the poorer countries naturally insist on the same opportunity. This is why the US Is obligated to lead on climate change.
3
@Wildebeest- It should not come as a surprisde that some problems cannot be solved without cooperation and collective action. Climate change will kill us all eventually.
Your resentment is your Trump trait- that every problem has a blamee who needs to be scorned or vengefully attacked.
China has their own problems, but if they were not already feeding and educating 1.5 billion fellow inhabitants of earth, they would be a different problem and a worse global threat.
"Give it a chance"? Can't you see this man is dividing and exacerbating all of our most serious problems by preaching hate and resentment?
1
I think Trumps America First agenda is playing itself out and so far we don't know just how far it will go.
Kagan knows that the more towards freer movement of people, goods and trade have led to fewer wars. Much of the freer movement stems from having a grounding in the rule of law, not of just powerful persons, yes, mostly men.
After WWII Truman and Marshal help put the world on a trade and rule of law footing. We did our heaviest lifting not with the Dollars we sent or the debts forgiven, but we opened our markets, widely and without reciprocity to Germany, Japan, then Korea and other. The trading relationship gave those nations lots of leaway to rebuild and grow strongrer. They did. Now they are giants. But the trading advantages are now much more burdensome on American workers. And the biggest of all trading Giants who has benefitted from openings: China. And they haven't just taken advantage of legal means they have coerced firms to give up technology and methods: they have professional thieves going for secrets...to gain unfair advantage.
I suspect that the early minor modifications to those trading policies with Allies is also a step in building a coalition to stop China stealing its way to the top, not just competing but trade war by stealth.
So for me the jury is out. I am more hopeful that either Friedman or Kagan. Trump is fighting hard, not just with China but nationally by resistance to everything he does. Why? He Tweets to bypass hostile media.
Remember that Trump's fundamental point of interaction - with people, organizations, issues, and nation states - is always transactional. His mantra is simple: "What can you do personally for ME right NOW to meet MY needs?" Thus things that most people view as an ongoing and never ending process - international relations, economic systems, the fundamental manner in which actual governance occurs - are viewed by Trump and his acolytes as discrete, unrelated "deals" to be done and then move on. It is a childish and insular view of reality that reduces everything to a zero sum game which is PRECISELY the most short sighted and least effective approach towards achieving both order and stability. Trump will not, indeed cannot change his persona, thus the issues illuminated by Friedman will worsen rather than improve.
3
This Earth we share, its air, its waters, its soils, its bounties, is finite and just one of many possible Earth versions. Jungles and swamps have their place in the scheme of things, but human life depends on predictable temperatures, agricultural yields, preservation of fresh water resources, skillful production and efficient use of energy, safe disposal of wastes and prevention of disease, epidemics, man-made famines, and anthropogenic destruction of ecosystems.
From the earliest days of tool making and agriculture to the most advanced understanding of genetic modifications and chemistry, humans have learned to survive by doing things better than earlier generations.
Today, the greatest threat to human life is the Climate Change from Global Warming that we have collectively caused and which some of us deny and too many refuse to address.
The warming of the oceans, acidification of the oceans, rising sea levels, melting of the polar ice caps, and rising temperatures and changing weather patterns are in early stages. Knowledgeable people who have spent their lives studying these events tell us that things will get far worse and that we have little time to act.
To ignore their warnings, and fail to act now, places our lives and the planet we share at risk.
4
Our failure to police the world started several decades ago with our failure to restrain our capitalist culture. Being fabulously wealthy is never enough, they want more and more and more. They have been chipping away, first on restraints on their ability to obtain obscene wealth and then on the restraints on their ability to use their wealth to influence our government and ultimately society.
Now bribery of public officials is not only legal in the US, it is openly discussed by our leaders. They do what their donors want and make no excuses for it. why should they when there are no consequences for it?
International disorder, corruption and war are now good for business. At least for the few at the top and at least for now. Trump embodies this thinking: grab what you can now; nothing else matters; no one else matters. The future? If you accumulate enough wealth and power, you should be safe.
But history shows otherwise. Unfortunately history has shown the correction can come in a violent chaotic way.
We've tried the civilized way and it was successful in the decades after WWII but we weren't vigilant. Our world is crumbling before our eyes, not just politically but, just as obviously with climate change. We are poisoning our planet and ourselves at such a rate that international politics is only part of the consequences of our negligence as leader of the world.
4
Let’s stop pretending that some sinister plan was undertaken by Trump or his followers that have led to this. Our society’s indifference to impending environmental disaster is nothing more than a continuation of the consumerism that we created and cling to.
Our society is not ready to face the problems that will come from ignoring the environment. Why should it be? Living in the “ now” is all that has been preached for decades. We ignore the reality of environmental disaster like a child clings to a belief in Santa Claus, because it feels good.
319
One might add “Clinging to a belief in...”. The world suffers from too many believers.
1
@K. Corbin
The majority of the people who could make a difference, like Trump, don't. Like Trump, they'll be dead before the worst happens, so what do they care?
2
@K. Corbin Seriously? Trump started his presidential campaign by stating that global warming was a Chinese hoax. Did you ever hear that out of a president previously? Of course not. The planet is dying, our children and grandchildren are in mortal danger and we have waited for decades to do anything, and now it's too late for fixes, the best we can hope for is to mitigate the long-term damage of climate change. And we won't because the person in charge is a mentally ill toddler who doesn't even understand the concept.
1
OK! But what, Tom, do you propose we do about it? The answer can't just be "democracy." We're already governed by a President who lost the last election by more than 3 million votes, and by a Party whose majority in the Senate represent less than half of the US population, It doesn't seem that just getting out the vote is going to do the trick. We're going to need to change the thinking of the minority supporting Trump and his cronies--including Putin and the other monsters Trump so fancies. I'm afraid that it's going take a national disaster of catastrophic proportions to get those people to stop blaming Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and George Soros for our troubles and start blaming themselves. The price will be very high, but the present condition of our Republic is not sustainable, and will need to change or it will collapse.
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@Skeptic: "...and start blaming themselves." Perhaps it's all of us. We're faced with conditions that are unprecedented: the most people the world has ever had; a climate that limits food production where the poorest live; and grotesque consumption in an economy that demands more consumption. The headlines elsewhere tell us that we are facing crises of mental ill-health and suicide (800,000 per year globally), while the wealthiest among us vie for the dollars of those who would be the first space tourists. Climate refugees threaten to strain European democracy to the breaking point, while American atavism causes us to retreat to the protective cave of authoritarianism.
7
@Skeptic Like you, I wonder if there is anything that can be done. Plenty of descriptions of our current condition are available in print such as this article, which is essentially a book report, but it lacks any suggestion. So, what do YOU propose we do about it? I propose organized and targeted disruption of the economy as it serves the purpose of Trump's America. That could mean targeted boycotts, or work stoppage in specific areas to instantly gain the attention of business and congress. A small group of people have taken over the US government. A larger group could perhaps put them out of business. Yes, it would disrupt our lives, but so will global warming.
4
@Skeptic
The GOP majority in the Senate actually represents about 25% of the population.
We're definitely not a 'democracy'. Heck, we barely qualify as a 'democratic republic' at this point.
On just one issue there is a certain irony about Trump's immigration stance. As our guiding influence fades in the world so will stability. With problems caused by losing valuable time in addressing climate change we will see massive movements of people. America and other nations will see more desperate immigrants fleeing a more dangerous and less hospitable world. We can either help or spend billions on the boarders with barriers and a shoulder to shoulder army presence. This type of policy is one of Trumps many failures of world leadership he does or does not understand. And as far as laughing with him as he claims, after crowing about his being one of the greatest president's in history, just what was he laughing at.
49
@Dave Yes! I don't think many people are talking about global warming in the context of refugees who WILL find their way to America. Are we prepared to shoot them all? To let them die at our borders? Or to help them in some way? If we think we can sit serenely on a huge piece of lightly populated land while others see their countries go underwater, or burn up in drought--well, we are just plain naive. Large groups of desperate people aren't good for anyone.
@Dave
Laughter, such as what we heard at the UN when Trump spoke, is often caused by embarrassment. Although I wasn't laughing, I definitely was embarrassed.
There seems to be a large cadre of Trump supporters who believe that the US has been 'soft' and has been unfairly treated by the world--taken advantage of, serving as a host for parasitic nations. To them, this new sheriff is just what the US needs. (Frankly, I don't understand that view).
Because of the warp of that lens, everything that Trump is doing that rectifies the perceived former ills is a good thing.
The end justifies the means for this bunch.
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@Leisa
you hit it on the button. the ends justify the means for alot of the republicans - including anti-abortion supreme court judges - as well as short term transactional advantages with other countries.
I just hope we don't need a favor from any of these counties in any time in the next decade.
2
Could it be that the term “liberal world order” is at the heart of America’s withdrawl from international leadership? Only a simpleton would sacrifice decades of progress just to avoid doing something deemed liberal. But, consider the leader.
@Leisa
Don't forget how much Trump loves the uneducated, not to mention the incurious.
In other words, WWIII is just around the corner, thanks to the return of the repressed.
The SCP embodies the worst instincts of human kind, The "thin veneer of civilization" has eroded, and made worse by electing this man.
42
@Marc What's the "SCP" ?
Robert Wright, "Nonzero - The Logic of Human Destiny". If you haven't yet done so, I urge you to read it. Zero-sum thinking will lead to the destruction of the planet and, as the UN science report told us last week, we're already much farther along that path than we realize, or will dare admit until it's too late. In fact, many climate scientists have already concluded that it's likely too late to avoid catastrophe, although most are not saying so publicly. Yet Trump is entirely zero-sum, and now so is the GOP. We're in deep trouble. The ostrich approach is going to kill us. MAGA - what a colossal disaster.
17
I'll just concentrate on the climate. I don't think most people understand how optimal earth's condition is for sustaining civilization. Human life is one thing; even with drastic changes in climate, it will survive in some form. Human civilization is quite another.
Climate change could cause civilization to collapse in a remarkably short time.
There are already huge population movements, largely due to food shortages or depleted water supplies. Even the most willing host nations are ill equipped to cope with refugee numbers far beyond the relative handful that the US claims it cannot handle.
More of a threat to food supplies than mere drought is how climate change could affect microorganisms and insects that sustain agriculture and horticulture. In the extreme, we could see a large-scale collapse in food production and its ability to sustain modern civilization and social order. Institutions like government, education and law would break down. Within a generation or two, civilization's institutional memory and history could be gone, and any possible repair by a residual population could take millennia.
The message is that the effects of climate change at the severe end won't be gradual and manageable. They will be drastic.
And it doesn't help that the world's most powerful and influential nation is led by an ignoramus, who fails to understand that Mother Nature will always have the last laugh.
606
@mancuroc - Excellent comment covering everything that is on-topic correctly. This off-topic addition because the Times will not touch the subject of "what other countries do" as concerns renewable even though recently the Times has done very well as concerns other subjects.
As far as I know, NY State continues its commitment to landfills, illustrated most recently by the Seneca Depot seen as a site for solid-waste incineration, but vetoed by the governor and perhaps locally. When at the UR and knowing nothing about Swedish and Danish solid-waste incineration I signed a statement against a planned incinerator far south of Rochester.
But now that I live in a city entirely heated by solid-waste incineration, the most advanced plant in the world, I know better.
However, I do not know anything at all about the Rochester company that proposed the Seneca Depot incinerator. If it was not SE DK quality then I would have opposed.
If you know anything about that would like to hear, reply here or at my blog or Gmail at blog.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
3
@mancuroc "Climate change could cause civilization to collapse in a remarkably short time." With the election of a creature like Trump and his continuing cult of supports I'd say we are now half way there and in a remarkably short time.
@mancuroc - This is why Syria fell into civil war; it started via sustained drought and water shortages for farming. We obviously have not given that much thought. A window into the future of sensitive areas?
Fans will make the argument that to make an omelette you have to break eggs. But what if the eggs have lots of money and don't want to be broken? China will stop stealing intellectual property when the Russians stop trying to hack our elections. When will that happen? When the Republicans expose hacking even when it benfits them in an election. And all this will take place when North Korea surrenders it's nuclear weapons. And Jared will make peace in the middle east. Then, even the liberals will have to admit Trump has made America great again.
46
@JR and I would be happy to. But as you state so subtly and elegantly, that ain't gonna happen.
@JR
I'll be honest, I can't tell if you're joking or not, particularly about Jared solving peace in the middle east (LOL!).
@JR I am curious to know which Chinese company has stolen US intellectual property and got away free. I read many news about this subject, but none bother to provide one single example. Even if it were true that few companies suffered, why there are still so many our companies continue doing business there and new one continues eager to join. It is a free world. We have the option to leave if our rights being compromised.
Kagan is right that the US created the current world-order out of enlightened self-interest. He is also right that the jungle is growing back. However, I doubt that we will return to an age of great power conflict. What we will see instead is massive nuclear proliferation.
Of course that raises the chance of a global Armageddon. But a shooting war between great and/or middle powers is extremely unlikely.
The main challenge for the next generation of world leaders will be to keep nukes out of the hands of countries like Saudi Arabia, which are run by mentally unstable and petulant boy kings, and which lack a well-educated establishment that understands what nukes are and can do.
I think the US has also mostly been incredibly lucky even in spite of itself and our mis-moves. Surrounded by oceans, our temperate climate and abundant and fertile soils, our flawed but awesome founders, immigrants from everywhere. But the modern world has become hotter, flatter and more crowded...I read that somewhere...and even we can’t eat our own seed corn.
2
As far as "the jungle" goes, geopolitics, climate change, and all those annoying foreigners, that stuff is only interesting to this administration to the extent it will generate profits. What has the environment ever done for us? Nothing!! Coal is where the profits are. The Republicans, and to a lesser extent the Democrats, have for decades now been employed by the wealthy to help them move beyond the limitations imposed by a government of, by, and for, the people. We're well past the tipping point. Maybe it was about 1980?
https://themarketmogul.com/income-inequality-graph/
2
As near as I can determine, Trump and his supporters think a) the Jungle unchecked is the proper, necessary state of affairs, b) that constant competition, red in tooth and claw, is necessary (a kind of "unregulated free market" sort of fantasy, in which a divine, invisible hand will only move things in the perfect direction if humans allow rampant competition to shine forth and "select the fittest," and c) that the US is now and always will be the "fittest." That we have only to growl and flex our claws for the jungle to bow before us.
I believe none of these three things. I think the entire point of civilization is that mankind does better working together, in a balanced state of both altruism and self-serving ambition, defying the jungle and moderating the competition to expand the ecosystem. I have no semi-religious belief in the divine hand--in the market or the globe. Random predation allowed to run rampant is neither divine nor optimal. And, so help me Hannah, I am not arrogant or delusional enough to think all we have to do is wag our naked "Manifest Destiny" in the face of the world, and watch the world fall over.
Needless to say, I do not trust Trump's vision, or want to see us follow his lead.
5
So here's how the post-war-prosperity deal looked to those other countries. It wasn't that those countries imposed on the US for our leadership. It's that we imposed our leadership on them - pay homage to us/US as the greatest democracy ever, buy our products, accept our rules and dominance, put up with what we tell you to put up with and let us run the global economy first and foremost in our own interest and accept the consequences (oh gee, like the 2008 bank/world economy collapse that we - yes, we - foisted on the world)-- and in exchange, we won't be super-jerks, we will let you win sometimes on small things that we don't care much about, we will try to keep the peace (unless we decide not to - e.g. our 20 year debacle in the Mid-East), and we will share the prosperity that our global dominance made possible. In real-politik terms, that's the foundation of the American century. It was a bargain. We got to be the shot-caller for the western world in exchange. Well, I would say those days are pretty much over. The Trumpian view that we were doing the world a favour is "exceptional" to say the least.
1
We are split by philosophy and the split is nearly half and half of our populaiton.
The old time philosophy, widely mocked, could be summed up as "It takes a village" or being "my brother's keeper." It is a communitarian outlook.
The other philosophy is that "I am me, I am responsible for me, you are responsible for you. What's in it for me?" It is an individual, libertarian outlook.
In a successful nation, those two philosophies play a tug-of-war keeping us both present in the global community, and with our eye on what is important for US interests globally. We get into trouble when we slide too far to one or the other extreme. We are unsuccessful at nation building and unsuccessful as isolationists.
I expect Trump's positions to backfire because he cannot see nuance or any viewpoint other than his own, nor does he care. He is both extreme and incurious, with a colossal ego. The idea that a group of nations run by a group of "what's in it for m" thugs won't use Trump's vainglory and ignorance against us is laughable.
256
@Cathy
According to Trump he is 100% right 200% of the time.
If something is a negative against him he'll just lie about it - the UN laughter against him, he claims, was with him.
The Emperor has no clothes.
1
@Cathy It is already being used against us, from Putin praising Trump and denying election meddling to Kim praising Trump and continuing to make weapons.
@Cathy
Much of what you say is "spot on". But I don't agree that the split is 50-50. I think it's more like 30-30. There are 40 percent who would like us to abandon Left/Right ideologies and get back to making our government effective for the people. But with all the noise, this 40 percent doesn't have a voice. I like Bloomberg. A rich guy who has his head screwed on straight,
Trump has never had to pay for his mistakes. Therefore, he has no notion of the damage he causes. Coddled from birth, rich by age three, an eight-year-old millionaire, bailed out of bad decisions by his father, how could he be otherwise?
Other people have paid. A string of contractors and unemployed casino workers all paid for his mistakes and callousness. He has more than a dozen women who live with the pain of his sexual assaults. Taxpayers had to take on the burden of $500 million in lost tax revenue because his family schemed to cheat us. Trump never suffered for these and many other transgressions.
How can a man who has never felt privation or insecurity understand a world still filled with too much of both? Trump’s life experience is all about him. He seems to view the world in a mirror where he fills the view and leaves only a little margin of other things around the edges. Of course, such a man will abandon systems, relationships, and even alliances on a whim if it suits him.
Trump’s indifference to others and focus on himself is a prime factor in his actions and now his policies. If he were still a reality show grifter the world would not much care, nor would it need to. But he now sits at the Resolute desk. Aided by the Grumpy Old Party, he has changed the course of our nation for generations.
Well, it’s high time he began paying. November is coming.
5
Given that the wealth in the nation has risen grossly disproportionately to the top, these folks have no worries in ensuring their futures and those of their children in the environmental disasters ahead.
3
What makes Trump even more dangerous, then say a Tony Soprano, is Tony had rules, yes, they were certainly morally questionable rules, but they were rules---e.g. family first, honor your deals, no unnecessary cruelty, etc. Trump has one rule---me first. After that rule, there are no rules---any person or country that endangers his fragile personae is thrown under the bus or publically mocked. Thank god for what institutional constraints are still left, without those, Trump is more than capable of mirroring his authoritarian buddies.
5
I generally agree but am struck by the fact that the Enlightenment is highlighted but that no mention of Europe is otherwise made regarding current responsibility for holding back the non-democratic jungle.
Yes, quite a Neo-Liberal prayer to American Exceptionalism.
I believe, every day at the School of the Americas opens with
such a paean to American Spread of Democracy and Freedom.
(Although, in our no longer flatlanders world, i believe the School
of Americas in not in American Georgia anymore, but ONLINE
Worldwide.
1
Two persons are escaping from a tiger. They realize that the tiger is stronger than their combined forces and that it is faster than them and thus, in the long run, their fate is concealed. Then one stops and put on a pair of professional running shoes. "Why do you bother?” wonders the other, "in the end the tiger will catch us both". "Well", answers the first one while speeding away, "for the all-important time being, I have to outrun only you" – it’s not the Jungle; it’s the Tiger.
The tiger tale embodies the foundational logic of Realism -- it presents the global situation as an “ideal” Hobbesian State of War: immanently fragmented, shaped by the perennial forces of the anarchical order, depicting international relations as a global arena full of crises and wars and posing a survival predicament from which only State-Power provides a provisional refuge.
Since WWII Realism’s harshest historical manifestation were put in relative check not by “certain made-in-America norms and rules of commerce and geopolitics, buttressed by the U.S. Navy, Air Force and Army”, but by the fear of nuclear Armageddon and the emergence of competing visions of World Order as Liberalism and Universalism (which triumphed for a while after Gorbachev’s anti-nuclear Revolution).
In his unique way, Trump is pursuing the ultimate Realist interest of making America the first to escape the Tiger Logic (as do his mirror-image global rulers) – taking humanity to the brink of annihilation again.
Oh, so nothing to do with the EU, or the UN?
What we need is globally respected international law, representing ALL the citizens of the Earth, not Pax Americana. The US has never respected international law and the Trump mob actively attack it. The US Constitution expressly prohibits the US from being subject to it.
We are all sick of being treated as second-class citizens to your citizens, while we are all living together on the same rock. Isolationism is dead. Either we all work together, or we all die together.
245
@Anthony Flack when you pay your fair share, rather than leach off us, you can ask for the same voice.
@Anthony Flack
Stephen Covey, in his bestselling book 'The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People', describes the process of gaining maturity as going from complete dependence on others, to independence, to interdependence; realizing that we need each other as you said, that we are all on the same rock and we can either work together or die together.
Unfortunately, the US mindset has been infected by Money, which retards maturity and narrows one's scope to me, my, mine. How best to innoculate the American mind against it? At its root, travel and education would do the trick. But again, we need leaders who would favor the enlightenment over religion, and that's always been a struggle over here. This side of our common mudball is all knackered it seems.
The thugs were always part of America. They rebelled against the Union, they were beaten in a civil war, but they survived. Now they have taken the government, and the rest of the world came back to where it has been in the past: Empires ruthlessly going at each other. Recall that the France that helped the US gain independence from England was a monarchy. It helped the US just to weaken England, only to see itself begin devoured by a revolution.
Hard to tell how this will end up, if America will revive its Lincoln, Grant or Obama side, or if it will let the jungle thrive. The gardeners are the voters.
1
Just look at Trumps life style his entire life. Insulated from ordinary people, how can he have any knowledge or interest in the way they live? Trump lives in his own world and never cares to look out except when he goes to one of his self glorifying rallies. How can a person like Trump possibly care about people of other countries ?
Simply put, he does not care about anyone but himself.
3
An astute and complex analysis, Mr. Friedman. But I think we're all overthinking the Trump Presidency:
1.) Trump never intended to be President, doesn't want the job, but loves the accolades at his rallies. As long as he maintains the Trump brand for his family - as the NYT expose on his sources of wealth reveals he has +always+ done - he could care less about the job - as long as he's not fired, er, impeached.
2.) Mike Pence and his gaggle of Dominionist Christians (I'm looking at you, Betsy DeVos and Ben Carson!) are really running the show. Pence is an expert at gathering donations from the donor class and keeping Trump in check until he can take the reins of power.
3.) The donor class ONLY care about one thing: Not losing power and being assailed (or eaten!) by us in the 99.9%.
4.) The ONLY solution is to VOTE on November 6th and to throw out the Republicans who are enabling the donor class to keep their tenuous control.
As Orwell presciently said in 1984: "Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
1
When we responded on 9/11, we called in our worldwide accumulated goodwill to form the “coalition of the willing.” Flash forward to today...who are our friends?
Meantime China is building relationships in southern and western Asia and Africa via investment framed as aid. Give and get. Invest and prosper.
Last week the Times wrote about trade and how we seek to cajole trade partners to line up against China. This strategy from the group that walked away from the non-Chinese Trans Pacific Partnership. So force is the better strategy?
Trump’s ironic Obama gripe that “people are laughing at us”...yes, now they are laughing and, indeed, crying.
So much of this reminds me of a fearful, ignorant A Bunker holed up and spouting in Queens, NY.
1
Trump is the jungle. He's a "follow-the-money" guy, with familial tax evasion in the billions of dollars in his DNA. Responsibility for others, or respect for any law, we're not part of his upbringing.
His dad, an expert tax dodger and racist landlord, overlooked his "too soft" oldest son in favor of the attack-and-crush tendencies in Donald.
His dad rewarded him by bestowing the bulk of his largess, and talent for crookery, bigotry and ignoring laws on him.
Trump learned that "doing good" was being dishonest, disdainful of government and getting more money in any way possible.
He's always followed the money, and
ignored tradition, democracy, principles and law to get it. This very narrow worldview precludes considering who or what is destroyed in the process.
The U.S. sits on the world's largest coal deposits. Other countries, mostly China, India and other Asian countries use coal and import it.
Likewise, America has a rich supply of petroleum and natural gas. Other countries want it. Petroleum is not just for energy. It makes plastic, and the artificial dyes in make-up, clothes and food.
Trump wants to exploit these markets. Global warming is unimportant to him.
He will stop at nothing to help tax evaders, coal and oil barons, and himself to more money. He won't change.
What's surprising is how many voters admire his ruthlessness, even though most will lose--money, healthcare, education, environmental protection--through his stewardship.
428
@Lilou I'm just wondering... I know quite a few people that make money off government contracts and families that have become wealthy in part due to the Government. As they look down on you, and they do, what makes them different? They probably make fun of Donald or are disgusted by him. After a social event, they go back to making money off the taxpayers and believe their use of the US gov and their private lawyers that they are better than you. They think you are small for not finding a way to accumulate wealth and the awesomeness it provides.
@Steph--I'm not against people working for the government, per se. If the people you speak of have disdainful attitudes, my comments here won't change their minds.
But, the government should support the greening of America. Government employees should be working to clean and protect the environment.
Instead of that huge tax reduction for the wealthy, funds could have incentivized factories to convert to cardboard or glass packaging; to help property owners install solar panels or wind generators; to support manufacturers and buyers of electric vehicles.
The disdainful government workers of whom you speak would still have their jobs, but in service to Americans, not the fossil fuel industry.
@Lilou, very well said and SPOT-ON accurate. Most people vote against their own interest in the USA I think because they are truly ill-informed and usually prejudiced themselves and susceptible to the Republican Party's dumbing down and lies.
We have a Category 4 hurricane descending on the Gulf coast after picking up speed and power from the warm ocean.
The ocean temperatures are warmer than ever, leading to the more powerful storms hitting us. The causes can be debated if you want analysis leading to paralysis, but the results cannot. If the so called leaders in the US ignore these threats and send thoughts and prayers instead of planning for the future, the US won't have the power nor the resources to manage what's left of the civilized world.
1
Great article, but the real questions are how did we reach this point and what can be done to save democracy? The originalists forget that the democracy we have today is not the same system envisaged by the nation's founders. In 1789, most leaders were extremely well educated, spoke several languages, read the classics and treatises on government. These men (unfortunately all were men) feared the masses. They did not think that the ignorant were capable of determining who governed. In fact, the majority of Americans (a misnomer) could not vote! Their fear is why we have the electoral college. We now see what can happen with universal suffrage. How many Trump core supporters know anything about government or the world? Would they know how many representatives there are, or even how many Senators, even after the Kavanaugh charade? They are often uneducated, uninformed, fact denying limited people, residing in the most rural areas. They are guided by emotion, believing that their "gut" will guide them when electing leaders, frequently voting for the individuals who are most like them- ignorant, fact denying, religiously focused candidates. We all recognize that these voters are influenced by fear, racism, religion, homophobia and a reluctance to change. They now know that they have power, power far greater than their numbers because of our crazy republican, small r, system. How do we address this mess? There is only one solution- vote, vote, vote!
1
With a troglodyte at the helm, how can we possibly navigate the complexities of a world spinning towards ecological collapse? It will require true leadership, of the kind we have not seen since FDR. It will take educated, motivated voters going to the polls to say "Enough!" .
1
>
Until the deplorables' henchmen are voted out, which is uncertain, nothing can be done.
At bottom, it boils down to a head count between decent people and deplorables. HRC was right.
“The idea that a pessimistic philosophy is necessarily one of discouragement is a puerile idea, but one that needs too long a refutation.”
Camus
1
Trump and all the authoritarian leaders in Europe are a reflection of failure to do the educational and social systems work that democracy demands. If we can’t learn to acquire the skills of democracy and acquire the social systems of democracy, we cannot be functional citizens of a democracy. Although Trump lies about everything pertaining to his ego and sense of privilege, his mere presence is a clarion truth that is vital to the democracies around the world. Who’s listening?
1
Forget about Trump. He’s a goner. There is hope.
Global change is on the way. We may be about to enter a new age. Encouraging signs are appearing on the horizon. A new generation throughout the world is becoming more and more aware of the need for a new world order. Advanced forms of communication are speeding the process. Among the seven billion plus citizens; at all levels of age intellect and income, as well as religious or other belief, there is deep sense of frustration. It will become the worse as the biosphere continues to cave in on us. And the most powerful planetary destructive force; innate human psychopathic depravity (That dark side) in its multiplicity of forms has begun to be fully understood. Many are aware of this and are actively searching for solutions; many governments too. Additionally, feminists are openly challenging a past and present world order long dominated by patriarchy and male privilege. They are challenging the lack of balance between a masculine and feminine perspective.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
2
The thing about Trump — it runs through his life — is that he plays the zero sum game with every relationship he has. For him to “win” in politics, governance or global affairs, the other side must lose, and lose big.
The quintessential essential example of this attitude is Trump’s trade policies. For him to win a trade talk, soybean farmers must suffer a total dislocation of their markets. His tax policy, personal and political, is that he wins obscene rewards while those who support obedience to the law and fairness must look like fools for paying taxes. For white men to preserve their status, women must be put down as confused and unworthy of respect.
None of this makes America great again. It helps Trump gain new riches in public office, while the nation he supposedly governs sinks into bitter, divisive paralysis.
1
'“It will be springtime for thugs,” Kagan concluded — and the signs of that are now multiplying.'
Even though foments within the mind of Donald Trump are hard to analyze because there are so many tangents - it's clear by now that he was born into a totally corrupt family, whose M.O. he never had the will to abandon. That he is anti-social, and wants to congregate with like-minded brutes, is undeniable. That Canada is his future Poland is already revealed. I'm not sure he wants to ignore the world, I think it's more that he is forced to follow Putin's game plan of undermining the West, at the expense of the United States. He's in so deep now with this project of destruction of the world order, that he seems to have at some point lately thrown himself into that willy-nilly, probably reasoning that only if he chokes off the rule of law in his own country, while establishing relationships with dictatorships around the world - in other words, if he gains enough naked power, will there be no one left standing with enough authority to: a) put he or his family in jail, and b) to recoup the hundreds of millions his family has stolen in unpaid taxes. His fantasy is total control to save his skin. Doesn't care what happens to anything, anybody. He is a hardened sociopath and nothing will change that. He has to be curtailed because it will get worse and worse.
3
The end of the world as we know it if Republicans stay in power in November.
1
Another ridiculous Friedman essay. Only through hyperbole and extreme characterizations can you make this case against Trump. The “Liberal World Order” hollowed out American manufacturing, stole our intellectual property and expects us to militarily police the world with our money and blood. Trump did not start the anti-globalist movement, it started because many in the western democracies recognized their countries were under assault from globalism, destroying their wealth, way of life and traditions and robbing a future for their children. Anti-globalism can take extreme forms on both the left and right, but America First is not an extreme form. To stand up and seek more balanced trade, more money for defense from our allies and ending our participation in global and unenforceable treaties like the Paris Accord that hurt our economy differentially is common sense. It does not mean America has abandoned our allies, or is promoting repressive regimes, or does not want free and fair trade. Your attack on Trump and America First requires absurd accusations that lead to even more absurd conclusions.
@Mark V Sir, your thesis is quite possibly in the minority in trumpeting any, well, trumpisms as it is apparent you have missed the points being made by the writer of the piece.
1
Trump's willful ignoring of the facts of climate change is a prime example of mankind's choosing beliefs over reason and common sense. This has a destructive effect on human behavior. In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof of how we have tricked the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about just what is supposed to survive. In this case, it's corporate profits over the survival of the human species. When we see what we have done to ourselves, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity. See RevolutionOfReason.com
2
Pax Romana lasted hundreds of years.
Pax Americana looks like it will last less than 80 years.
Just as Trumps ignorance of history, and the overall lessons of World War, are causing international problems which will eventually blow back to the US, his ignorance about pretty much everything such will cause other powerful blow backs. Ignorance of climate change, ignorance of sound income distribution principles, ignorance of the health affects of more pollution, you name,the list goes on and on. The eventual blow back blowup and damage to America will be immense.
2
In a way, Trump might just be the dose of bitter medicine our country needs to bring it to its senses.
We have just emerged from a Presidency unprecedented in its graciousness, thoughtful administration and careful politics into a dumpster of unprecedented filth, greed and distaste for good governance. Perhaps the contrast will bring true change to the powers in Washington. I hope so.
6
@Mariposa841 As responsible human beings we have to do more than HOPE...The dumpster of unprecedented filth, greed and distaste is not just rotting... it is burning and it's a radiating fire emitting huge clouds of smoke. We need to VOTE. Trump is extremely dangerous. He is symbolic of the GREED & SELF-INTEREST that is the cancer that can and will destroy us all if we don't ACT and change our path.
1
I'm sure there must be a thorough vetting process to get on the UN panel making it a no brainer to turn the economic fate of the world over to a handful of actuarial scientist (90?). That would be like putting economists in charge of the economy. 240 dollar carbon tax on a gallon of gas. Must be done. Ban Chlorine. Absolutely. That's alot of power in the hands of unelected officials who's scientific knowledge seems limited to belief. It's getting hard to handle. Twice weekly reports explaining the world is going to end sooner than we though and the only way to save ourselves is by voting Democrat.
1
@JoeG Climate Change has absolutely nothing to do with being a Republican or Democrat.
1
@JoeG
Well, you convinced me! Why trust experts in the field: we should trust corporate CEO's* and Trump et al. They know what's going on! It's all a worldwide plot by Democrats, and Trump and friends know this! After all, Trump is the one who proved Obama is Kenyan! Coal is clean!
*Forget also that oil company CEO's accept global warming, base upon internal documents over the past 20 years. Those documents were created by this same Democratic conspiracy
You can add to this that rapidly accelerating climate change, which is already creating massive displacements of people and the destabilization of democratic institutions, creates ever more fertile ground for tribalism, corruption and, consequently, authoritarianism. It's not necessary to point out Trump's place in this.
5
@Frank
Climate change is a logical consequence of the massive growth of the population of the world through basic improvements in public health and agriculture and the republican repudiation of publicly funded birth control..
Climate change people never discuss population growth because "climate change" is a growth industry for them.
120 years ago the population of the world was 1 billion. We no longer have famines, crop failure, war and epidemics to control population.
The UN never discusses this because population policy is a national or sovereign issue.
Now we are pushing 8 billion people in a closed ecosystem and the all want cars, air conditioners, TVs and American style prosperity.
Capitalism and climate change are the same.
Vietnam Veteran and Retired Army Officer.
3
@Michael Agreed on population pressure. However, the other side of the equation is how you address these forces, and whether you do so at all. Renewable energy, contraception, more energy efficient technologies, for instance. Our current administration seems to oppose all of these in favor of fossil fuels, a war on family planing and the reduction of efficiency standards for cars by way of examples. BTW, we do have famines, crop failures , wars and epidemics, although, as yet, they are occurring primarily in Africa and the Middle East.
We're refusing to submit to strong-arming by NGOs on issues that don't directly benefit the U.S. populace. We're demanding that nations pay their fair share of defense costs. We're reordering trade rules so the U.S. middle and working classes aren't robbed by mobile capital. All are sensible responses to a vast deficit in the "effort" level of our allies in maintaining world order. If others are acting against our interests, either directly or indirectly, we need to respond. End of story.
3
"And it is not a fantasy that we can be 'isolationists' and we’ll be O.K. It’s a fantasy that we can be 'irresponsible' and we’ll be O.K."
___________________
I know this article is about foreign policy, but I like the two sentences quoted above because I think they sum up the attitude of American conservatives about all policy—both foreign and domestic.
"America First" in foreign policy could easily be mirrored by "Me First" in domestic policy. Conservatives like to claim that they promote a doctrine of "personal responsibility," which means taking responsibility for oneself while letting other people (or countries) take responsibility for themselves. Really, however, this form of personal responsibility isn't so much an acceptance of responsibility for oneself but a denial of responsibility for anything or anyone else. It is, in fact, almost the opposite of what it claims to be.
A far more powerful—and far more demanding—ethic is the one Dostoevsky proclaimed in The Brothers Karamazov:
“Every one is really responsible to all men for all men and for everything.”
If America is truly to be a great nation it must hold itself—in the world and at home—not to the diluted concept of responsibility of today's American conservatives, but to the much more rigorous standard set forth by Dostoevsky.
26
"The U.S. can’t always make the world better, but we can, by what we say and do, give foreign leaders pause about exercising their darkest sides. And we’re not."
Another excellent analysis of whatever "philosophy" drives Donald Trump, which on and under the surface isn't much.
He's trying to apply to countries and the world at large the tactics he learned at his daddy's knee about the rough and tumble world of NYC real estate.
Those tactics include what he's pretty much done all his life--pursue success by conquering his rivals, on all things great and small, cooperation, trust, and honesty be damned.
But the world isn't a real estate empire--real people are involved, and suffer at the hands of the very dictators Trump gives a pass to.
What makes it explainable, but not acceptable, is Trump's morality, or lack thereof. When amorality rules, anything goes as long as it suits the parochial needs of the leader or the country.
Does anyone doubt that Donald Trump would wage war in order to save his hide?
Does anyone doubt he will encourage anarchy abroad if he feels it gives him more personal power at home?
When an American president deep down wishes to do what despots do, he most he will do is withhold praise.
"Springtime for thugs," real or coveted, indeed.
12
The long goodbye for a soon to be bygone era has begun and is ratcheting its way to warp speed as the Trumpian tactical juggernaut steamrolls its nonstop path to 2024. This country's resources and its institutions are being auctioned off, piece by piece, to the highest strategic bidders: The wealthiest of the wealthy, global corporations and foreign governments. That may not be a pretty sight, but it's always how the sausage gets made, regardless of the aftertaste it leaves behind. Preparing ourselves for this type of future may not be palatable, but it must be practical. While many in this country and the world may welcome such a scenario, many others dread it. Either way, it's right here, right now.
Vote.
10
The overwhelming majority of people in the world, in all socio-economic classes or however you wish to categorize them, are focused on their short term goals. They are not inclined toward the authoritarianism and tribalism. The Wall Street wheeler-dealer is focused on his or her next big score and the single mom or dad is focused on packing lunches and getting kids the help they need to be healthy and whole. Their notion of the world Mr. Friedman describes is fuzzy and sparsely populated at best.
There in lays the problem. The predators he describes realize this and pursue their dreams or schemes within that fuzz. And unless those consumed with pursuing their smaller, life-size ambitions realize that they must be aware of the jungle, and protect the civilization they have come to take for granite, the predators will crush them.
It is a bother, but the common person must come to understand Mr. Jefferson's maxim, you cannot have civilization and be ignorant of the larger world around you at the same time- that never was possible, and it never will be.
32
With each passing day, the Trump degradation continues and we can be pretty darned sure he will ignore the environmental warning we have been given. How frightening is that? The coal industry isn't improving. The fact is that very little in the quality of life domain is improving.
What lies before us is the opportunity to vote in a Democratic House and maybe even a Senate, but if we do, "getting even" must not be the first order of business. The repairs before us are more than daunting: they can be titled, "undoing Trump."
30
On the topic of 'backsliding', it's clear that that Friedman is regretting that premature paean he wrote for M.B.S. last year. Anyone with even a mildly critical eye would have understood the article about the new comparatively "open" Saudi kingdom to be an absurd fantasy. But since Friedman thinks market-friendly governance can always cover for venial sins like systematic human rights abuse, he was willing to look away and send the implicit message that "neoliberal economic policies don't really need legitimate democratic institutions to forge the good society."
8
Trump is not the president of the United States. He is the president of the 35-40% of Americans who voted in 2016 who constitute his base. He steadfastly refuses to be the president of everyone in the United States. His my way or the highway approach to governance is anathema to democracy.
96
@Susan
Susan, his base is far less than that: they were only 19% of the entire US population. Those were the ones who voted for him for whatever reason. The true believers in Trump are probably only 10% of our entire population. It's the press that continuously makes them front and center, but they are by no means 35-40% of us. Vote, and get all your neighbors to vote next month. Ohio is really important in this struggle!
9
By your logic, neither was Barack Obama, not Bill Clinton, nor anyone else who fails to get 100% of the vote. False logic
2
As so often I'm left wondering in what universe Mr. Friedman finds this benign US policy of nurturing liberal world order. In fact, his assertion that "the conversion of Germany and Japan from aggressive dictatorships to pacifist democracies" is evidence of this, is not. German denazification was halted because it became too uncomfortable and, much more importantly, getting and keeping the Bundesrepublik on side and into NATO was way more crucial in the nuclear armed bi-polar world. The same goes for Japan.
Also, whereas his view of the benefits of American stewardship may be somewhat rue in Western Europa, I very much doubt that many in Latin-America feel the same way. Since before WW2 to quite recently the US invariably supported the oligarchies and the military juntas in their fight against the people. This was easily justified. Anyone who sought social justice was automatically labeled a communist and therefore a legitimate target for the death squads.
In Asia, too, the US intervened covertly and overtly to prop up right-wing dictators, from Indonesia to Vietnam and the Philippines. It didn't always work ou as planned, but claiming that spreading prosperity and pluralistic democracy for all was THE common thread in the US' approach to geopolitics is, well, nonsense.
In the same vain, unremitting support for Israel and for the theocracies in Arabia don't exactly convey an impression of balanced inclusion. And let's not mention Africa or Afghanistan...
21
The rapid destruction due to climate change will soon be the only issue worth mentioning. Politics, governments, everything else will fade into the background. It will be a great plantory crisis that will galvanize the whole world's population. Hopefully that will not happen too late. It is far better to work together now to try to slow it down. That was happening, before Trump. But maybe Trump will stand up say he alone can fix it.
19
That’s not his fantasy, but a very smart policy.
Let other countries limit, constrain and tax their economies and business at the expense of growth and development.
3
@Frank Savage
The greater constraint to growth and development lies in placing as much money as possible in the hands of the smallest number of people. That's the Republican policy in a nutshell, and the Republican Party found a willing (and unstable) figurehead in the person of Mr. Trump.
A rising tide lifts all boats. That's the policy that set the world on a straight course, post-WWII. An enveloping chaos will sink us all.
To what extent has Russia helped to engineer all of this? What an historically immense foreign-policy triumph! The post-mortems will show how they've interfered with the Brazil election.
27
@Frank Savage I had to read your comment twice to ascertain if you were actually serious, because if reflects an attitude that defines short term thinking. Pure self interest always has a way of blowing back and smacking one in the face.
The world does not stay stagnant, because one chooses to ignore it. A country does not prosper by ignoring large swathes of the population so that one group may profit. Demonizing those who refuse to succumb to one's point of view does not create safety or "law and order".
3
@Frank Savage Yes, let's dig up, burn, or cut down all of our finite resources in as short a time as possible so a very few people can get very wealthy. Let corporations and businesses do as they see fit, crushing their competition, bribing our elected leaders, and run unchecked over working people. Frank, taxes are the dues you pay to live in the (previously) world's safest, largest country. Unfettered economic activity is always going to end up in monopolies, and extreme boom and bust cycles (we actually have historic proof, read about it). Countries don't run themselves, people do, and it takes a huge effort to do so. Free Marketers are as naive as libertarians, and it is tedious and exhaustive to keep explaining the facts of life to them.
3
The general welfare clause promotes putting the interests of everyone over benefits to a select group. What should the nation do to promote welfare? Provide great schools and facilitate attendance. We must support Americans in training, education, retraining and ongoing education. Now. Within twelve years drivers, farmers, postal workers, fishermen, cashiers, telemarketers, publishers and manufacturing workers will be out of work. No American should be homeless. No American child should be hungry. No American worker should become bankrupt to stay alive. Every working American should earn a living wage. Every school should be equipped to provide outstanding employees. Every citizen,over eighteen, should be required to vote.
30
The problem is that the old model of Pax Americana just doesn't work any more in the modern world. Just look at our sorry record of military interventions.
Meanwhile, billions of dollars of military hardware are useless against the problems we are facing, like Russian hacking and climate change.
We are overdue for a complete rethink of what we are doing to defend our democratic society. Nobody is doing it. There will have to be a reckoning and a revolution in the global order at some point. It is folly to think that we can just keep doing what worked fifty or seventy years ago.
17
McConnell and the Federalist and Heritage Societies are more dangerous than Trump and at core more anti American in their distortion of the Constitution. Trump's danger could be removed without their co-opting of balance of power. It is not just voting but the people taking back the country aggressively. We do not have a functioning country and our health, safety, and financial well being is in danger now, not just in the future.
40
Friedman quotes Kagan and his book, titled about "the jungle."
That is telling. Kagan is one of the hardest core of neocons who did the Iraq War and much else of wide destruction. He uncritically supports any abuse by Israel.
That reference to the jungle is a plain reference to the Israeli theme, that their MidEast neighbors are all the jungle encroaching on the Israeli villa, needing always to be cut back. Kagan is only too willing to have the US do that for them.
Friedman has been only to willing to sell that, as with his "Friedman Unit" that the Iraq War will come right in another six months. He's at it again.
7
"There is no way that the regime of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, would have dared to do that if it thought Trump would care. And so far, Trump hasn’t. But history will, and the stain on M.B.S.’s reign will be lasting."
How long until Friedman's next article sucking up to MBS?
"They learned. They've reformed. They won't do it again." That's what he'll say.
He might even believe it. After all, he seems able to believe a lot of other really incredible stuff from America's allies, and even the Saudis on Yemen even as he protests murdering his buddy.
6
"pushes back on China"
That is how Trump sells it. Those who have other motives are remarkably quiet.
However, there is another motive on display, shown by US conduct.
The US simply could not confront China, contain it, while also having it as a dominant part of the American economy. In order to fight China, we must first cut ourselves off from them, cut them out of our economy.
That US is doing everything else it can to isolate China, contain it in classic Cold War style, and set up possible fights. The economic actions must be seen in context.
The US is not pushing back for a better deal. The US is cutting off, the better to fight with China. Doubt that? Look at the team doing it, pure neocon, led by Bolton.
14
This was a reasoned argument. The question becomes, when or at what point does intervention for cause become meddling. Second, the vast majority of "interventions" in the history of our country have been for commercial reasons, not human rights abuses. So I really think, for the most part, we can stow the moral indignation. We didn't bail out Kuwait because of human rights abuses by Iraqi soldiers any more than we intervened to bail out the Brits and French in WWI because German soldiers were bayonetting babies (they weren't). Gulf War I was a crass commercial venture to delay the nation making choices about fossil fuel use. The ag boom from entry into WWI set up the ag bust of the 20's. So yeah, projecting morality and defense of the human right is important. However,I think the ratio of commercial to moral intervention ratio is at best about 10 to 1. When that moves I will fade.
3
Although Trump is a standout in America's profile abroad, his decisions are only a part of a long line of such in the foreign relations sphere. However the good outweighs the bad by far and America's stands well when compared to the batting average of its most recent competitor, Great Britain.
3
“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” -- James Joyce, 'Ulysses'.
The most relevant excerpt from a work of fiction to qualify our moment in history. I fear we are approaching a time when the living will envy the dying and the dead for a variety of environmental and geopolitical reasons.
14
American foreign policy today?
If I were to take these facts, namely world overpopulation, desperate need to prevent war due to WMD, advance of technology to point of internet and possibility of entirely controlling communications systems by powers, increasing environmental problems, impossibility of extreme far right and left wing political impulses from having large spheres in multipolar world, I would conclude that we are entering an age similar to ages of at least concentrated wealth at top of society and probably even ages of aristocratic mystique.
In our multipolar world today increasingly it's great wealth/political power at top of society which is visible, and cultural and scientific power which is invisible for a number of reasons. And wealth and political power increasingly cultivates mystique regardless of being left or right (take Obama and Trump as examples of left and right elite). Power at top of society is increasingly a new aristocratic outlook, wealth/political power even intermarrying across societies and certainly conducting business, building bridges across tops of societies.
Strange how science-fiction novels which oddly juxtaposed archaic political views (monarchy/aristocracy/oligarchy) with astounding technology/science seem now prescient. Whether Star Trek or Wakanda or spheres of political/economic/cultural influence today, it's crowd encased in technology overseen by elites. What revolution can possibly exist in this world?
2
The US was instrumental in establishing the liberal world order and the institutions resulting from the last world war. This not only benefited the US, Europe, but, the entire world.
The US was often nicknamed as the policeman of the world. In reality, the US was one. Because, the US was in a position to question, and check abuses, ranging from human rights violations, drug trafficking and other issues in various parts of the world. Countries followed our example and implemented democratic systems and practices.
Today, we are moving away from our involvement, working with countries to promote economic and foreign relations. We are telling these countries to take care of themselves, and the US can no longer guide them.
We have provided the leadership in many areas, bringing countries together to promote and achieve a common cause. Of the many such associations, we removed ourselves from the Paris Climate Accord. We were able to convince almost 190 countries to sign the agreement. A recent UN Report has already issued a warning that we would see real results of climate change in the next 12 years.
The problem here is that there is no other country to replace the US role on the world stage. Whether this augurs well for the future, is a concern to be taken seriously, and a subject that deserves a continued debate and discussion.
9
Let's work this one through. It's not just the U.S. closing-off from the rest of the world; it's happening all over the world: Hungary, Poland, Italy, Germany, Austria, England and on-and-on. This is what Michael Klare was writing about in his book "The Race for What's Left." Climate change equal resource-depletion in a world that's overly-saturated with material goods and many, many scholars who still do not understand either Jevons Paradox or the fact that all development requires the destruction of the environment (think extraction of anything). Why else move to financial shenanigans and perpetual war: Keating Five, Enron, dropping Glass-Steagal/the Commodity Futures Trading Act; Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan ?? Gotta keep the wheels-of-the-beast turning. The five other woman, Republican senators that voted for Kavanaugh knew as much, so it's not just Susan Collins. And if one thinks that this wealthy horde of stock-buyback artists and Harvard-educated financiers don't care about their children and progeny going forward into a you-haven't-seen-anything-yet climate disruption, think again. They're moving towards protectionism themselves in gated-communities and well-heeled circles, grabbing as many shekels as possible so they're ready when demand is high. There's your denominator for the unequal distribution of wealth around the world. Trump's surrounded by sycophants on both sides of the aisle who know an amendment to repeal Citizens United means their jobs. Wake up.
32
@JD
Thank you! When discussing climate change, I often hear/read people ask, "Don't these people (wealthy/elite/conservative) care about their children and grandchildren?" This assumes they will be subject to the same forces as everyone else's. Not true! Sealed compounds, domed cities, possibly floating covered islands - these will be the future for their progeny.
3
The biggest threat in the world is not Trump but China. Dictators of Chinese communist party were so confident about their mesmerizing dictatorship and they opened their economy to the western world while trying to preserve their incredible machine of dictatorship unharmed. And they have been extremely successful. Before Trump appeared, many people suspected that China would become super power stronger than America sooner or later. And before Trump, many people believed China was one of many normal countries participating free global markets like others.
Now, thanks to Trump, so many people in the world are realizing how much outrageous and threatening Chinese dictators are.
It is war time now : Silent World Word III between Chinese communists and the liberal World and Trump is the commander in chief of the latter side. No betrayal is allowed during the war time.
After the war is finished by defeating evil enemies, and America becomes great again, real global village based on democratic values and human rights can be established again.
However, first thing is first. Be patient.
4
Sorry, I'm not willing to see the U.S. to turn into a Chinese-style dictatorship so it can combat Chinese dictatorship.
2
@YHan
Putting aside, for now, the vast evidence of liberalization of, and growth of the middle-class in, Chinese society, the war notion you're positing is actually a face off between Communism and Fascism. Liberal democratic ideals and institutions lose either way.
Simply stated, those of us who hold dear the concepts upon which this country were founded reject your overstatement of the Chinese "threat" as a rationalization for authoritarianism.
1
Why should we expect this president and his enablers to be any less logic-proof about global issues than they are about domestic ones?
25
Fortunately I have no children.
At this point, given how humanity behaves, I feel badly for the innocent animals who will suffer because of man’s greed and selfishness.
I do hope Trump’s children and grandchildren enjoy the weather in a few decades.
34
How fragile that world order turned out to be, that one man and his minions could unleash so much havoc so quickly. . Trump has given tacit permission for other regimes to murder and imprison journalists, suppress political opponents and violate human rights. And now with the release of the UN climate report, we see the pernicious effects of climate inaction. Yet Trump pulled out of the Paris accord, and Brazil may soon follow. I miss my country, and yes, the world weeps.
40
Yes, it will be springtime for at least some thugs, those who Trump believes support his own thuggery. It’s not just tolerance. It’s not just ignorance or indifference. It’s a positive affinity for his fellow thugs that motivates Trump. And for any Americans who doubt what kind of a future Trump would prefer for our country, look at the countries and leaders he supports. And look for a slightly different lesson in the countries that he opposes.
22
Donald Trump may be the most tactical thinker who ever has served as president. He has his plate full with very impactful matters, and they’re all tactical – the economy, illegal immigration, immediate national security issues related to nuclear proliferation by North Korea and Iran, the extermination of ISIS, trade (which nevertheless has serious strategic implications). The federal court system, which is nothing if not strategic, he has basically outsourced to conservative stalwarts.
Don’t expect him to immerse himself in ecology along with all the other priorities he’s seeking to drive tactically. He was elected for other purposes. Despite having invited the world to come together to negotiate with us a fairer and more practical approach to global climate change than the Paris Accords he exited – which the rest of the world has done nothing about – this won’t be a major priority of the Trump years.
Those U.N. delegates who may have been crying by Tom’s conviction at Trump’s recent address were doing so because the America they had relied on for over 70 years to be Uncle Sugar to them while basically leaving them alone to kill their own people while contributing practically nothing to the forward march of humankind … was telling them that the gravy train was in the repair yards and was no longer making regular runs. That necessarily must be very sobering to parasites, worthy of a good cry.
Tom makes a good point that the success of the rarest form of governance …
4
… in human history, democracy powered by a “Western liberal order”, has depended largely since the latter-half of the 20th century on the might and resolve of the U.S. (but note that Great Britain and France DID have a lot to do with that before then). However, one also should acknowledge that our might depends almost entirely on our internal prosperity, and that for some time that has been degrading alarmingly. Again, Trump was elected to Make America Great Again, AFTER which the likelihood is high that we will rededicate ourselves to helping an unruly world manage itself more productively.
Trump is what he is, not strategic but elected to address tactical issues that bear on making us great AGAIN, and ABLE to beneficially affect the course of human history. Let’s not be making Tom’s mistake, however, by failing to see the critically important tactical role that Trump plays in a strategic framework. If he does his job successfully, over 4-8 years, the NEXT president can start thinking about how to get all those parasitic U.N. delegates to start cheering again.
4
@Richard Luettgen: Oh dear. Here we go again. You may be right, Richard. But what we need is strategy, not gut tactics. Oh, and the gravy train is headed west to save those hurt by Trump's tactical tariffs.
9
@Richard Luettgen: You write as though you believe Trump was elected by God. Trump probably believes he was too.
Nothing has changed about the theatrics of war since Thucydides wrote about it, except the props.
"They knew any order they created would pay back a hundred times for the world’s biggest economy."
It has paid off 10,000 times for the 1% and not a whit for anyone else, and therein lies the problem.
19
It has certainly paid back for the wealthy handsomely with Trump.
1
Every old white man that disregards the stunning and imminent importance of climate change will get theirs, one way or another. Trump is no exception. They will run coal-fired power plants until every last coastal city is inundated or destroyed, every coral reef eradicated. It makes no difference to them; coffers will fill, and so will coffins.
God help our children and their children.
35
"The president’s fantasy is that the U.S. can ignore the global forces of nature."
President Trump has been living in a fantasy world. When he was a private citizen, such fantasies got him into financial troubles. With the help of his father and some luck he managed brand himself as a big rich man, though far too many people didn't acknowledge him to be anything bust a buffoon.
Under the stress of the presidency, he began to fantasize loudly & unabashedly, reflecting his hypomania. People around him recognize his (more than) borderline insanity and operated under that assumption, as the NYT piece reported.
I thought it would be a lot better, if under the threat of invoking the 25th amendment, if he were to be coerced into taking a modest dose of a mood stabilizer, for his hypomania, he may act less hypomanic, would seek and adhere to counsel. That would do the trick.
What can you do? He is the legally elected president. Unless the Mueller investigation produces reasons for impeachment, which may not be unlikely, we are stuck with Trump!
If the Congress flips next month, that would help a great deal. But impeachment shouldn't be considered unless an appreciable number of Republican lawmakers are ready for it.
9
I certainly agree with the mood stabilizer, we might even see a more normal Trump attitude to a lot of things. Funny how stability makes such a huge difference. Their even might be a simple solution to all this chaos. Imagine that.
2
@joyce
Thank you, Joyce. I am so glad you agree with me there. You maybe a psychiatrist/mental health worker, or just an educated person.
I happen to be a psychiatrist, now retired. He has most of the characteristic features of hypomania, which are more pronounced since he took office, I think. He had it since his childhood days. He was angry & destructive. And his parents sent him to a military school. Surprisingly, he thrived there.
Apparently, he never experienced any depressive swings. I couldn't see any sociopathic tendency either. He's indifferent and extremely narcissistic.
What people who admire Trump and his ruthlessness do not seem to know is that all of his intimidating behaviors towards other countries have all been tried in the furtherance of states attempting to achieve power over all others. For a while they seem invulnerable, destined to achieve superiority and to retain it forever. But it never works out that way. No people are inherently superior to any other people and when whatever advantages enabled them to achieve great power are no longer, so is the greatness.
Our people are 5% of the people on this Earth and our power is as much due to their trust in our generally peaceful relations and interest in having a peaceful world order and willingness to spend our treasure to help it be achieved as being due to our military power and economic power. That trust is genuine, not something achieved by deceit and intimidation’s as Trump seems to think would be more reliable.
15
As the climate heats up, the tropical wet zone will widen and the dryer zone further away from the equator will shift north. The great temperate growing zones will dry up. While areas further north will be warmer, they will not receive any more sunlight so their growing seasons will not make up for the loss of temperate zone productivity. The great northern forests are already being affected by pests from southern zones against which they have no natural resistances. So it goes. It’s not a matter for debate anymore. Global warming is happening and it’s not going to find an equilibrium point before our world has been changed so drastically that our modern world will just disintegrate before our eyes. It will take centuries to restore all that will be lost. Yet, if we act with care and deliberation and determination we can still limit the damage by arresting the process before it progresses all the way to a natural equilibrium state. But we cannot rely on people like Trump nor the Republican Party leadership to help.
61
The fact that the weather seems to stall longer than usual in one place has made weather lethal. One thing is sure, the uncertainty that weather will be stable enough to ensure localities are able to produce vegetation as expected. Trees, crops, forests, all affected. if we lose ability to produce vegetation as before, we rapidly become a functional desert. Acid rain from increased emissions will also make the earth unproductive. Certainly, this is all happening faster than life on earth can adapt. Meanwhile we try to go on as before. This is not going to work. Trump thinks it is all a hoax, his favorite word for what he does not try to understand. We are going into this planet -wide crisis without preparation. Without cooperative help. This is the usual Trump approach. What we need to do try with all our ability to work together to slow this down for the sake of all life on the planet. No other issue is as important as this. Everything pales in comparison. Trump is way back in the 19th century, alone.
Vote.
5
There are a lot of people who think that the U.S. is a power that needs nobody else to remain wealthy and powerful.
It’s never been at risk of invasion since the war of 1812, it fought in two world wars and emerged the only country untouched an economically stronger than before each one of them.
The only times in recent memory which it seemed to run into problems were the wars it fought in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Since it’s big businesses moved into the world economy, the majority of the people just have not prospered as when all the big businesses were focused upon making everything here.
The conclusion is that the U.S. would be better to pull into itself and to ignore the rest of the world. When Trump treats allies like useless adversaries and lets tyrants prey on other countries and individuals, they just want to not get involved.
Of course, there were good reasons for establishing the liberal world order after World War II. To prevent World War III. Now its to prevent predators leading nations from doing what Russia et al have been doing more and more. Saudi Arabia may have kidnapped or assassinated a critic in their embassy in Turkey. This kind of behavior could become the norm unless a big powerful nation steps in, the United States. Despite all the little wars which seem never to result in clear victories, we still live in a relatively peaceful and prosperous world, because of our countries endeavors. Without us, the world will become chaotic.
5
Tom,
Thanks for your and Robert Kagan's insightful identification of the "dots" that reveal a trend that could reverse the progress that the U.S. and the World have experienced for 70 years. This thoughtful essay pinpoints the huge flaw revealed in our government's failure to respond to the civilization threatening global warming crisis.
This cite 'When the U.N.’s top climate body issues a report — as it just did — that says our weather, our ocean levels, our agriculture and our ecosystems are going to be disrupted, so much more than people realize, unless we take huge steps now to mitigate climate change, and the U.S. president ignores it, we are failing in our task to stabilize the liberal global order and are paving the way for disorder." was profound and reveals the decline of the U.S. It clearly signals the failure of the U.S. government to respond to a threat of this scale: Manhattan Project, Marshall Plan, Apollo Program, etc.
Most Presidents pray for a crisis of this scale that will assure their place in history. But for reasons that baffle me the Trump government has not seized this crisis to exploit the tremendous power in our technology community of government and private labs to develop technologies to mitigate the crisis and potentially prevent the runaway release of greenhouse gasses triggered by a thawing Arctic permafrost.
With your skills and network, I hope you will put this critical issue on the agenda of voters when they go to the polls on 6 November.
13
Am I the only one who's surprised that Trump hasn't tweeted something in admiration of MBS, wishing he could do the same to those who question him?
8
@Oren He's savvy enough to keep his wishing to himself.
Now Florida and Alabama, right after the Carolinas. Their Republican officials from Gov. on down focus on Hurricane Response, as does FEMA.
What about hurricane reduction? This is what climate change looks like, folks
The hotter the mid-Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf get the worse the storms get. Simple physics.
Their beautiful, plentiful coral reefs die from that heat. Those corals build their homes by capturing CO2 from the sea, just like oysters & clams do.
Deny climate change and ye shall inherit the wind(s). Cat 3 tonight. And their rains and floods. 947mb right now.
29
I know the jungle grows back, even when covered in agent orange. But it is not without a scarring, even in the jungle.
6
The metaphor of the "jungle coming back" is inapt. Climate change and unchecked development are ushering in desertification all over the world, and that is something that we do not know how to undo. If only the jungle were coming back -- the real jungle, that is, not this political circus.
14
Here on America’s “Third Coast”, the Great Lakes, most citizens are aware that the environment is critical. We have 21% of the world’s fresh water and 84% of North America’s fresh water.
As water resources diminish in increasingly hot and overpopulated regions elsewhere in the USA, as shorelines on the East and West Coasts erode with climate change, the resources of the gorgeous Great Lakes becomes more precious.
Canada has been our critical partner trying to protect the Great Lakes. It is a sad day when an American President cannot get along with Canadians, of all people.
120
@Jean
I have been a fan of the Great Lakes since high school when we would go swimming off The sea wall at the Foster Ave Beach in Chicago.
The states and Canada have cooperated to contain pollution and maintain fish habitats on the Lakes. I remember the Alwives, sea lampreys, and zebra mussel infestation that were somewhat mitigated against.
Later I experienced the hidden gem of the west coast of Michigan. Spectacular dunes and late summer warm water for swimming sailing and boating. Now plastic particles have been found in the white fish of Lake Superior and in other fish.
We are killing ourselves. Unfortunately our wealth is been based on the over utilization of our natural resources. How we extricate ourselves from that conundrum is yet to be seen.
I thought that maybe the US would perform a Manhattan, and Apollo project on developing renewable energy sources that would help the environment and create new industries and new jobs. Kind of like going from buggy whips to pneumatic tires and the internal combustion engine.
Let us wise up and challenge ourselves to save ourselves.
3
@Jean,
Yes, and every time Charles Pierce (Esquire) describes our state as "the wholly-owned subsidiary of the Koch Bros." I wonder whether that water is the undercurrent (sorry) beneath the last decade of political turmoil here.
Privatizing it is one of the many concepts that used to be unthinkable, or the unbelievable creation of a paranoid political thriller novelist.
On climate change, I have a very simple question for GOP politicians. Whether climate change is real or not, the rest of the world is going to spend trillions of dollars over coming years on renewable energy. So my question is this - do you want that money to go to China or America? China has embraced climate change while America denies it - who do you think the world will view as the go-to nation for their renewable energy needs?
And a question for liberals - why do you insist that conservatives admit that climate change is real? That will NEVER happen, so put on your big boy pants and move on. What matters is saving the planet, not childish arguments over who is right.
17
@Frank
Frank, I agree that what's important is saving the planet, however how can you do that if Republicans are opposed to saving it?
That's what has to happen, the majority of Americans need to agree to do the work to save the planet. You can't do that in a 2 party system when one of the parties doesn't want to participate.
You are correct, America is missing out on being a leader in green technology, this will have serious economic and social consequences.
Frank, sorry, but you have it backwards. If anyone needs to "put on their big boy pants" it is the Republican science deniers. In addition, they need to be challenged loudly and often on their refusal to accept reality. These are not childish arguments. The time for treading lightly on the issue of climate change is long past.
1
Fact is that China has been the greatest civilization on Earth from any perspective for millennia - they succumbed to Western Europe due to greater arms for about three centuries and now are again ascendant. There have been other great civilizations come & go, but China has endured. Their population is five times ours and (especially since the collapse of TPP - thankyou Trump) they are making much better use of alliances to access world-wide resources. Trump's isolationist approach would doom us anyway - but Climate Apocalypse will likely make this all moot.
30
Its a broken voting system. We read about california races being very important to the mid term elections. Early voting began here on monday october 8. But they haven’t even mailed out the ballots. On the radio they said ballots are being mailed out this week. How does it make any sense to have early voting without ballots ? Then we have all this noise in the media about trump, russian and chinese interference, voter suppression, gerrymandering, low turnout etc, What about slow and inefficient government bureaucracy, and election officials not caring ?
Is it any surprise we end up with trump, a minority gop controlling both houses of congress and the supreme court ?
11
Much of the world order was created in reaction to the almost total cataclysm of the Second World War. The world was left shattered and most countries were convinced that cooperation and unity were the preventative to more wars. It was not perfect, but certainly better than what came before. 70 years later most people in the US have little understanding of history, scant empathy for the other and no interest in creating a better world. We display the same isolationism, jingoism and ignorance that held sway in the 1920´s and 1930´s. It seems we never remember the lessons it cost so much to learn.
56
"Thugs" is the key word. Might makes right.
There's a certain kind of mind that looks at a world where wealth is shared, where conditions are improving for the majority of people through cooperation, and thinks "How do I grab that for me?"
It's the mindset that sees the world as a zero-sum game, where someone can win only if somebody else loses. And we know Trump is obsessed with winning. So instead of building things up, he's obsessed with tearing them down and profiting from the pieces. It's the vulture capitalism model applied to governing as looting.
58
Unfortunately Donald Trump has always been rewarded for his "irresponsible" behavior. There were his corporate bankruptcies; each time his vendors were injured, but he went on to get more loans. There were his many boorish acts and statements; he denied them and was elected president. There is nothing in his history to make him consider that he won't continue to be rewarded; from his perspective, he's right.
19
As a man in his fifties, I will most likely miss the catastrophic events brought on by Trump's ignorance on climate change, but I can't for the life of me understand why people with children and grandchildren are not more terrified for their families. Kavanaugh stood there with his two young daughters on Monday and he could care less about the environment or the EPA. But he loves his children! (sarcasm.) All the people beating their chests at Trump's rallies - do they really believe this is all a "hoax?" Don't they love their children? Don't they want them to live passed forty with breathable air above the flood waters? I'm not a woman but I seem to care more about women than Republican women. I'll never need an abortion but I seem to care more about women's reproduction rights than women at these rallies. I don't have a preexisting condition that prevents me from getting health insurance. All those individuals with histories of health problems who are cheering the president on right now? Do you not realize you are going to die without health insurance? Is stupidity and the inability to think for oneself a preexisting condition? Kavanaugh is on the Court for generations? Not really, maybe just until 2040. In the words of REM: It's the end of the world as we know it - and Trump feels fine!
258
@Ulysses Americans are short run hedonists. Pleasure for pleasure sake, NOW! The future to them is now and forget anything more than day away.
Again and again, America sees the staggering ignorance of Donald Trump — in his understanding of history, of geopolitics, of science, of negotiating.
And still his followers think that he’s a great leader because he embodies their anger toward the “establishment” and their hatred of anyone not like them.
Trump is our nation’s drunk uncle, who knows nothing but insists his black-and-white thinking can save us from a complex world. And his tribe can’t see the damage he’s doing, and they won’t acknowledge that he’s a hate-filled, adulterous autocrat who hurts democracy, justice and truth every day he’s in office.
129
Democrats: America last.
5
@M Is that sarcasm? If not get educated. You folks love"freedom". Free to live in poverty, free to be without medical insurance, free to drink polluted water, free to breath polluted air, free to drive on failing bridges, free to ingest opiods, and free for corporations to own you. North Carolina, South Carolina, Miss. ,Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, West Virginia. How's all that freedom working for them. Last or near last in quality of life issues. Hope they enjoy their "freedom".
1
@M What does that mean?
The problem is rooted in electing a candidate not only without political experience, but who sold himself to the nation as virtuous because he lacked all experience of politics, and that the nation would be better off without such knowledge or familiarity. The emptying of the collective knowledge of the Dept of State, the withdrawal of all ambassadors or international ties, and the failure to fill foreign relations seats in the Trump era has allowed the jungle to creep in with amazing rapidity on all fronts, while team Trump has focused the nation’s attention on our southwestern border as the source of all danger, disrupting one of our deepest and strongest alliances.
16
I believe the song is: "Springtime for Hitler". There is no morality in the law of the jungle. The spoils are divided up amongst the big predators. Remember, Hitler started WWII after he made a deal with Stalin. It's amazing how Trump's personal immorality mirrors the immorality of his Immigration policy, his environmental policy, his policy on international trade, and his cozying up to murderous dictators.
23
Friedman's comments echo what the rest of the world fears of the current American administration -- however what they don't understand is why American citizens don't fear what the rest of the world does. There are just so many reasons why this "Trumpism" is not sustainable , which ultimately affects the US and its friends and foes. The real question is not the damage that's been done, its how to get back into a situation where at least a working level of respect is again established. As for trust in America -- that will take years, as the American word is worth about as much as a Zimbabwe dollar under Trump and the Republicans.
22
Maybe the fantasy isn't that the U.S. can ignore the global forces of nature, but that it's the U.S. - meaning Trump - can control the global forces of nature. After all, he sees himself as the center of all universes, the only one who knows the answers. He is the master builder, the master negotiator, the master strategist. His enablers in Congress, the toadies he appoints and his Fox News propagandists all just feed this fantasy.
This fantasy will come crashing down in flames, of course, because it is built on ephemera and the rest of the world will not allow it. I'm afraid the world is sitting on a bigger tinderbox than was there before both World Wars, and I am wondering what little thing will set it off.
16
I’m sorry about your friend, Jamal Khashoggi.
20
@Wendy Winslow
It is astoundingly barbaric that the Saudis murdered and then dismembered him in Turkey.
It is even more astounding that an American President has nothing to say about that brutal killing that sounds like something terrorists would do.
1
Having a con man, an admitted hater of the truth and the press and someone who has admittedly abused women at the helm only encourages everyone's worst natures and instincts. That 40 percent of our nation defend him and by extension approve of his actions only our vaunted values worthless in the eyes of the world and a majority of our people. What kind of man boasts about the ability to shoot someone on 5th Ave. and still become president with the approval of his supporters? Or boasts on tap to sexually exploiting women? Or threatens the press for reporting facts or publishing those who do not agree with him? Or ignores the brutality of autocrats who he would seek to emulate?
The diminishing of our nation is complete as the GOP enablers of this man control all three branches of our government. We are alone and isolated in the world except for the sharks who seek to use our new found depravity and this is as it should be as following us into this hell of our own making will only bring down the ethical level of everyone. And here we are pretending that everything is peachy which if things continue will become more evident as just a sham.
21
Well Trump spent his entire life evading harsh reality within a protective bubble. He saw it as his family’s money but it was the liberal world order provided by the U.S., but he was too self absorbed to notice.
15
I wonder what the middle class who voted for Trump will experience in this brave new world? Does anyone think they will do better, by ignoring the big picture in favor of the short-term band-aids?
7
Trump is a the John Gotti president. He even dresses like him wearing that long overcoat. Trump runs the country the way he ran his business- hiding his earning from the IRS, not paying taxes, using laundered cash to buy properties, bullying, intimidation, lying, and attacking his competitors are some of his tactics. What he lacks in grey matter he substitutes his street smarts. He has no morality. Power and money are his idols. The Republicans have sold their souls because Trump with the help of McConnell enable them to stay in power. Eventually, Trump will be impeached for the seling of America to Putin. And he old, white power elite misogynists will end up at homes for seniors. That is their legacy. Trump will end up in Mar Lago tweeting away in a rocker end eating KFC with a fork
64
I think many "elites" like Friedman and Kaplan still don't understand that while they have been focusing on whether the jungle will grow back overseas, the jungle ALREADY HAS grown back here in the United States.
If it hadn't, we wouldn't have a gorilla like Trump as our president.
18
@John Chenango
A gorilla is known for intelligence, kindness, passion and respect to all living creatures including humans. Your conclusion could not be further away from reality.
4
Like my back yard. If anyone has a way of getting rid of bush honeysuckle for good, please publish it!
1
10pm 10/9
The world order was collapsing before Trump came along. Trump is the answer to that collapse.
The world order is collapsing because of overpopulation. Go back and watch videos from the 60’s when Ehrlichs the population bomb was taken seriously. Listen to the vocal prophesy’s about future clashes over limited natural resources, the rise of dictators, the massive migrations of people, the extinction of much of the diversity of life and hints at global climate change.
Our politically correct commentators and interpreters show themselves to be gutless when it comes to challenging the intellectual straight jacket that it is leading us down.
Throw open the borders let the billions of overpopulation come here; we are told that will solve everything.
The Gates foundation cures every disease in Africa but can’t manage to underscore population issues; that would be racist.
That there might be difference in abilities between individuals we can accept, but between genders – ask the former President of Harvard university Laurence Summers.
Differences between races; ask the Nobel prize winning co-discover of the double helix Watson where that will get you.
Trump is there because he opens up discussion – something you Mr. Friedman with your censorious scowl for example at reservations by religious people over same sex marriage, wish to quell.
The ultimate despots the PC police.
4
@Ben Ross
No serious person advocates opening up our borders and letting in "billions." Your assertion to the contrary is a red herring and also a straight up lie. Yes overpopulation is a serious threat, but it could be brought under control if it were not for the runaway greed of the big investors and the absolute ignorance of certain "religious people." Trump is in no way a solution to any of this. The current modest rate of immigration to the US is not a threat; and it is bringing in large numbers of talented people. China, with four to five times our population has far more smart people than we do. So does India. In the long run we are better off being connected to the rest of the world, not as a fortress.
6
The world can support 1 billion people without leading to the extinction of most other living species –
How can you possibly call a legal immigration rate of 1 million people into the USA each year modest.
Our population currently has over 40 million people living here, who were not born here.
We have about another million a year coming here illegally.
Our population is over 320 million and fast heading to 450 million people. We are the only first world nation with a rapidly growing population. All others work hard to limit its growth.
People who live in the USA consume more resources than anyone else in the world- the largest carbon footprint.
China’s population increase has greatly slowed – ours just speeds up.
The biggest problem China has is its population. Which is why it instituted a 1 child policy.
You must know very little or have very little empathy for other living things to have such a disregard for other living things – do the words ‘factory farms’ mean anything to you?
You blame religious people – and for sure religion is encouraging some groups to have more children –
But it is a total lack of mercy for other living things that disregards population – and it is pure greed and ignorance that puts a bigger GDP over common sense and promotes a never ending ponzi scheme –
But you have put your finger on why we can’t discuss exploding populations - that is immigration and that is the cause celebre of the PC police
Trump loves,admires and would love to emulate the behavior of the world’s great dictators. Russia, N.Korea and China come to mind.Certain Constitutional restraints do limit Trump’s dictatorial tendencies. Would he not love to lock up certain members of the media right next to Hillary. In the mean time Trump will continue to impose his narrow world vision and Americans will suffer the consequences. Only in Trump’s imagination will America be great again.
10
The problem isn't with America, as it is with a president who only sees the power part, but not the democracy. Somehow he equates American greatness with raw power led by "winners" and everyone else in the global game as losers.
3
I enjoy Mr. Friedman’s Columns. I sadly and meekly must differ with two points:
1. Why there has been no major World War.
2. The USA as a democracy.
1. Why oh why hasn’t there been another world war? I think the only answer is the reality of the mutual destruction scenario.
2. With all the strings of real power in the USA held by the unbelievably wealthy class (UWC) (once known WASP progressives), do you really see the USA as a Democracy? Does anyone remember citizens united? Haven’t the UWC’s always maintained there is too much democracy? What the UWC says, the government does. That’s it - period.
I think Chomsky explains the USA and its democracy quite well in the documentary “Requiem for the American Dream”.
9
For Republicans the urgency to save the Planet is not part of their DNA. They are mentally incapable of grasping Climate Change. They want a Wall ! Build the Wall ! Build the Wall ! That is the depth of their intelligence. Basically a Cave Man level of brain functioning. Or even more basic, Reptilian Brain.
15
“Let's bungle in the jungle
Well, that's all right by me
I'm a tiger when I want love
But I'm a snake if we disagree”
– from Jethro Tull’s 1974 song, “Bungle in the Jungle”
In essence, this is Trump’s “Jethro Tull” philosophy of international relations. The problem is that when Trump wants love – it’s with dictators like Putin and Kim. But then, he behaves more like a puppy with its tail between its legs and not like a tiger staking out its position. He admitted as much recently, when he said of Kim Jong Un, “We went back and forth, then we fell in love. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they are great letters. We fell in love.”
Also, per that Tull anthem, Trump is like a snake when he disagrees. But again, he disagrees mostly with our best friends, including our NATO allies and the EU, which in of itself is not a bad thing – if only he could avoid the venom that accompanies it. Early in his presidency, Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and more recently, Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau were stung by Trump’s serpentine behavior.
So, when Mr. Friedman wonders, “Could it be that America is actually best served by having a lying, unethical bully at the helm…” the problem is the bully has his tiger and snake roles mixed up – sucking up to enemies and dissing our friends.
11
Last night my 11-year old neice recited Emma Lazarus' poem and I wept.
My country champions dictators. It supports rule by torture and instigators of warfare targeting civilians– as long as its leaders fete the Trump family.
Trump's goal is short term. It is that the next press conference be favorable to him, e.g., North Korea.
My country leads the destruction of the environment for which it will rightly be blamed in years to come as millions suffer, die, lose their homes and endure famine and war brought by climate change encouraged by us.
My country's leaders abhor democracy, cheer minority rule, repress voters and subvert democracy for personal gain. The Republicans revel, they actually celebrate a minority imposing laws, the repeal of legal and environmental protections and Supreme Court Justices against the will of the majority of Americans.
My country's "conservative" leaders bankrupt the country for small, short-term gains. $1.5 trillion– $27,000 in new debt for joint filers to give Don Jr. a tax break to continue the same rate of economic recovery established by Obama, squandering the means required to fix the Repubs' next economic debacle.
My country separates families and casts blame on immigrants and refugees.
The greatest country in the world does not even pretend to champion freedom, democracy, the will of the people or the health of the planet.
What stupidity to spend such hard earned honor and the trust of the world to benefit a few old oligarchs.
41
@JT I agree with you completely.
I suggest you leave the USA, as I did. It was the best decision I have made in my life. Take your family with you. They will be safer outside as the US convulses through its transition to Empire.
It's not easy to do, but it is certainly possible. Be not afraid.
1
spot on
3
No mention of the spineless, enabling Republican Party. Trump alone couldn’t cause such global devastation. It takes a Stephen Miller, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo along with a spineless Congress. Oh! Almost forgot the hidden genius who will deliver Mideast peace: Jared Kushner!
56
If our current president believes we can revive fortress America, he might want to know there is no fortress that hasn't been taken or failed from within over time. We are not alone in this world and to deliberately cut us off from our friends and neighbors is to seal our doom. We are currently sailing on a ship of fools being captained by the biggest fool of all.
41
Before we make the world better, we must first make (or remake) ourselves better and, for obvious reasons, that's gonna be close to impossible. Too late for now, perhaps 2024, if we're lucky.
We're still stuck in playing the same games that may have worked for us then, but are totally inadequate for where we are today and where we're planning to be for tomorrow.
We might as well write off 2018 due to gerrymandering, voter suppression & Russian interference into our sacrosanct election process.
Vote.
4
I was brought up in the UK in the sixties to be deeply grateful for American leadership and blood.
It is my hope that America can also better lead the democratic world by example at home. Its democracy is distorted by big money, gerrymandering and old well intended aspects such as the Electoral College and two senators per state.
I also hope and believe that America can and will produce future leaders who bridge divisions and unite people around what truly makes America great.
51
Trump continues one foreign policy trend Obama initiated. From Truman to GW Bush, Presidents used U.S. economic, military, political, and ideological dominance to manipulate and control international relations. Two things have changed in the last couple decades—the United States’ share of the global economy has shrunk as other countries rose, and its military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya failed. Obama recognized this and adopted multi-lateral agreements, drones instead of boots on the ground, realpolitik with Iran instead of ideology, downsizing American power. Trump’s economic, political, ideological, and military nationalism also downsizes America’s global footprint. One-on-one, the U.S. is still the Yankees of the 1950s, and he is likely to win short term economic gains with China and pressure NATO to pay up. But if Trump faces a major international crisis such as a financial collapse, Iran shutting off the Strait of Hormuz, or a climate driven global agricultural food security collapse, he will not only get no help from allies, he is clueless how handle it. As things fall apart, will Trump turn toward authoritarianism? Be prepared.
21
I agree with what you are stating in this article, especially with reference to POTUS Trump not facing the reality of climate change. Also, he has taken the U.S. backwards as leader of the free world.Undoing environmental programs, and not being part of the Paris Accords anymore are among his worst mistakes. He has bullied Canada and verbally abused our Prime Minister Trudeau among things he has done to other western democracies.
Thank you, Mr. Friedman, for this enlightening article.
12
Much of Kagan's thesis is nonsense, except for the idea that the US did what it did out of self-interest. There are a number of obvious ways in which Kagan is wrong - the US order only extended to Western Europe, North America, Japan, parts of Southeast Asia, Australia and NZ for most of the CW period. The rest of the world was largely left out; it had a relationship with the US but it was not part of the order. After the CW ended, American power extended further, but that has been a short time. Typically the US abused its position, frequently making it clear that international laws and rules applied to every other state but the US. Still, all of this being said, the US did create an international trading regime that generally raised economic development around the world. Even if this was done for selfish purposes, it did have a positive effect in many ways. However, the end of the CW also allowed the US, especially Republicans, to become more radical. George W. Bush was every bit as dismissive (and far more damaging) to international law as Trump. The US used to realize that the benefits of trying to control the world through institutions and subtlety was far more effective than blatant bullying. The conservative discarded this lesson as fast as they could. They will, eventually, pay the price.
15
@Shaun Narine You expressed much of my sentiments, so well. You as our Canadian and North American neighbor may provide the perspective, our national culture sorely needs.
For us, USA citizens, who appear among the majority of voters but who did not prevail ...due to the idiosyncratic electoral college system, we are being dragged into the cess pool of Trumpster's making.
Why the Congressional Republicans do not stand up to Trumpster and stand up for all their constituents I do not know nor understand. But, the consequences of his misbehavoir and lousy judgement may stain the USA internally and internationally for decades to come. I hope that the USA culture will recover and progress forward after Trumpster's administration is gone.
5
We chose to elect a demagogue and a thug as our president. Now he supports demagogues and thugs, just like himself, all across the globe. What is so hard to understand?
What I don't get is why we aren't focusing more on getting millennials to the polls. They represent 31% of voters in the United States. Four out of five of them did not bother to vote in the last midterm election.
We are in a terrible predicament, to be sure. Conversations are important. Proactively working to change our course is crucial.
What will progressive voter turnout be on November 6? That's what I care about most right now, because that's the only way we can make things better.
21
Trump intends to remake America from It’s post war position as a world leader to an isolationist state which can pick friends and enemies at will and insist that America doesn’t need allies.The fact that he admires Putin and is in love with Kim shows how fickle this shabby policy is.His disdain for journalists , both nationally and internationally is mean and short sighted. He loves to be the center of press attention when he wants to brag, which is most of the time.His inability to read and analyze is a severe handicap and dooms us to the tawdry disaster de jour.Hyperbole, chaos and threats are no way to run a country.We will soon not recognize the America we have known unless the November elections change the calculus.
26
"Trump’s America.... is ready to overlook any human rights abuse or killing by any country deemed friendly to Trump..."
Then Mr. Friedman names a few instances of abuses by Russia, Saudi Arabia etc. What's missing though is the internment of refugee children in camps in the desert of the United States with little hope of a future or return to their parents.
We're no better than some of those countries named. Trumps America now is part of the jungle.
45
@cherrylog754
Who is this "we?" The internment of refugee children is Trump's doing and is part and parcel of his overlooking any human rights abuse. Him, not us.
"But history will, and the stain on M.B.S.’s reign will be lasting."
To misquote another historical authoritarian, "How many divisions does history have?" Trump, and his followers care nothing for the stain on America's reputation, much less Saudi Arabia's. If, in fact, the Saudi's carried out a hit in a foreign country against a critic of their regime, Trump probably applauds such a show of "strength." International law, the norms of civility, human rights, that's all "cuck" and "snowflake" talk.
Power, to them, is the only currency. There is no morality, and there is no future. There is only hegemony, today.
"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
11
My father and his brother joined the Air Force in 1941 and went to England to fight against Germany. He came back; his brother did not. My father knew exactly why the Marshall plan was needed, why foreign aid was needed, and why you settle problems in the conference room and not the battle field. So you don't have to write your mother and tell her one of her sons is dead. Trump's road is leading to disaster.
232
This bizarre human being has been utterly detached from the natural world all his life. All he's ever known and admired is concrete, asphalt, and sod.
18
It's taken Trump less than two years to destroy 70 years of mostly consistent policy. Totally ignorant of history, he can be described as 'incurious' as best. His best 'buddies' are his role models - all murderous dictators or wanna-be murderous dictators - Putin, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud, and Duterte. When Recep Erdoğan represents a 'moral' voice, you know things aren't good.
155
Whether the world will be more threatened by too little order-making by the US or by too much is indeed the question. For seventy years we have been driven by the cheerleaders and apologists for the latter and the results, to put it kindly, have been decidedly mixed. I am happy enough for a time that we should err on the side of too little. Let us tend better our own garden. We needn't always and everywhere seek to be the reform school for the world's thugs
2
@Frunobulax But we need a better lead gardener, one less enamored of poisonous plants, indigenous and imported.
6
My neighbor has made fun of my reading the NYTimes and now I don't want him in my house. It's Trump versus neighbors, liberals, global order, climate issues, education, children, families, gun control, women, African countries, people of color, the Paris Accord, allies and trade, healthcare, immigrants, migrants, civility, national parks, air, and water. I'm sure there's more. And I'm sure he's quite happy about what I just wrote. He's probably getting ready to throw paper towels to those facing the new storm surge with Hurricane Michael.
I agree with the commenter Mr. Rozenblit. "Trump is the jungle, the me first, the I eat, you don't, the I win, you lose, the I don't care what happens to you so long as I come out on top."
119
The Trumpian entropy effect is not limited to the disorder he has accelerated in the post world war two order. Cold comfort to our allies, but it's not even his focus.
Trump is dismantling the norms of American democracy and along with a complicit and cowardly G.O.P., he is making a mockery of constitutional checks and balances.
His tax cuts with it's trillion dollar deficits and accelerated income inequality are unsustainable economically and socially.
Race relations? Partisanship? Scientific consensus? Progress against sexual violence? The pattern holds, for Trump is nothing if not consistent:
Where there is order, dismantle it. Where there is hope, crush it. Where there is hate, increase it. All in the service of a malignant narcissist too lazy to build when breaking is so much easier.
November 6, 2018. Time to start beating back the jungle. Pull out some of the noxious vines and weeds that have taken root in Congress.
They'll make good compost.
16
Have you looked around our cities and towns lately? We’ve got millions of homeless addicts and the mentally ill roaming the streets across America, begging for handouts, sleeping and defecating in public. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of poor foreign migrants crossing our borders illegally every year, permanently parking themselves on our soil to take advantage of services intended for our own citizens. Our middle class is shrinking and our infrastructure is falling apart. These are just a few of the local/national issues that require our full attention now.
Policing the rest of the world while neglecting our own problems is how we got to this point in the first place.
9
@Shenoa If you think that pulling back from "policing the world" (as you put it) is going to give Republicans a chance to solve and of the problems you list and not line their pockets with the savings, you have another think coming.
18
@Shenoa, it's not an either/or argument. America can be strong internally and externally if it wishes. The wealth that it has created is second to none in the world. Remember, about 1/4 of the world's economic activity is American, and with just 5% of the world's population. A pittance of the wealth redistributed to America's most needy is literally a drop in the American wealth bucket.
On the international stage, remember that a tremendous number of Americans have come from abroad -- surely setting foot on American soil does not make one immune to the issues of their homelands. However, if it's isolationism that American's want, then be very careful what you wish for -- if you think things are bad now, wait for how much worse it will be if America is isolated from the rest of the world.
9
The American economy cannot simultaneously support the World Order and fund the massive costs of boomer retirement and all the other freeloading. The American people have zero interest in leading the world, and we cannot even get enough quality young people to sign up for military service while we have wars raging around the world. The American people have turned strongly against what is in fact is too much and too fast total immigration. The American people will not even fund its current government, depending instead on massive borrowing while simultaneously fearing growing deficits and unfunded retirement plans everywhere. Willingly putting massive financial bills on their grandkids to make life easier today. The Americans people mostly do not even vote.
So why would anyone think the American people will make any sacrifice to save the environment for future generations? Or do anything but spend every single penny on themselves. What evidence is there that they even care.
Trump is not leading Americans. He is simply giving them the fictionally cushy life they all want. We want to be great without effort or sacrifice. Imaging ourselves as a continuation of the greatest generation.
Not a chance!
7
The word 'work' and Trump are rarely used in the same sentence. Same goes for intellectual, charitable or truth teller. That being said, you cannot expect a deficient man to rise to the occasion. DJT won't be around forever. The beginning of the end for him starts November 6th. And after that, the Mueller Report will surely get him impeached if he doesn't slink away with a pardon from Pence first.
11
The headline over DN reporter Björn af Kleen’s interview with Salman Rushdie 10/6:
“The USA is just one step away from fascism.”
Beneath that Rushdie explains that the first step, already taken, was to erode people’s belief in truth. The second step is for the leader to say, “I am the truth, listen only to me.” That is the step before dictatorship. We (USA) are there at step 2.
Add to that a more fully scholarly approach presented in NYRB 10/25 by Christopher R. Browning under this headline:
“The Suffocation of Democracy”
Browning opens his essay by noting that he, historian specializing in the era between the wars is often asked about the similarities between the current situation in the US and the European interwar period and the rise of fascism in Europe.
He makes a compelling case for “troubling similarities” and an equally “troubling difference”. He writes: “If the US has someone whom historians will look back upon as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell.”
He closes with these thoughts: “Within several decades after Trump’s presidency has ended, the looming effects of ecological disaster due to human-caused climate change – denied by Trump – will be inescapable…no WALL will be high enough to shelter the US from these events. Trump is not Hitler and Trumpism is not Nazism.”
Similarly, Trump’s “race laws” are not Hitler’s but fuel racist beliefs, just as US-SE actions fueled Hitler’s.
Democracy is gasping for air.
Citizen US SE
95
@Larry Lundgren - Explanation of race laws paragraph. NYRB 10/25 has important review - American Deviltry by Adam Hochschild - of 3 books on American racism. The 3d Hitlers American Model - The United States and The Making of Race Law by James C. Whitman explains how Hitler built his race laws in part by drawing on American race laws and views. Even closer to Hitler was Swedish physician Herman Lundborg who in 1922 founded the Swedish Institute of Race Biology whose beliefs were essential for Hitler. Sweden learned from this sorry episode and does not classify people by politically created "races". Unfortunately, the US has not learned and plays into the hands of Trump and neo Nazis by still assigning people to races. Read if you can and then consider the position taken by K. Prewitt, D. Roberts, me and others: End the USCB system, replace by collecting only SES data.
Mr. Friedman, as a complete anti-Trump citizen, I think it's good to pause and recall that America's hands are not entirely clean in the matter of democratizing the global order.
Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Central Intelligence Agency (Allen Dulles, Director), America helped stage a coup d'état and ousted Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. The issue was not diplomacy nor democracy; it was greed for oil, and the British were in on it. The CIA-installed Shah lasted a generation until his corrupt regime was demolished by the ayatollahs.
Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Central Intelligence Agency (Allen Dulles, Director), America undermined the Congo's internal political dynamics. Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the Congo who expelled the Belgians from his country, one of the pointed stabs of black Africa in the eyes of the Western colonial powers. In a quotation attributed to Dulles (but later denied by him), "We conclude that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under existing conditions this should be a high priority of our covert action," he noted in August 1960. Lumumba was assassinated three days before John F. Kennedy's inauguration.
So, Mr. Friedman, while I agree that this president is absurd and exquisitely dangerous because of his unpreparedness and general ignorance, he is seen in America by the Right as necessary to the build-up of the military industrial complex.
Trump is in office for nothing more.
17
@Soxared, '04, '07, '13
Very well written, Soxared. I did not know about Congo but did know about Iran, which is an example I mentioned often to my interlocutors. BTW, correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't it the very Eisenhower expressed concerns about "contractors" (which I interpret as the military industrial complex)?
9
@oam
in re: Eisenhower, you are exactly correct. In fact Eisenhower actually coined the phrase 'military industrial complex' during his farewell address. The more you look, the more you will realize how under rated Eisenhower is as a president. And I say that as a progressive democrat.
While there is some truth to Friedman's viewpoint, it is too America-centric. Much like its predecessor "white man's burden", it now believes in the doctrine of "America's burden" or perhaps that's just a more PC way of saying the same thing. It forgets that the growth and evolution of rest of the world was stunted because imperial powers colonized rest of the world and that dictatorships were often installed to benefit colonial powers. There is no evidence that rest of the world was more violent (in fact, its probably the contrary- the reason for their loss to European powers) or that they wouldn't have developed democracies in the natural course of evolution. While Trump is doing damage to America and empowering his dictator buddies, Mr. Friedman, have no worries, the rest of world will learn to ignore and move on. In any case, if the currents of democracy are sustainable, they cannot rely on America's burden to last!
4
After just coming off the gut-wrenching Kavanaugh debacle, I am struck by how consistent across all issues Trump is about his "believing" versus "the facts" or even the likelihood that the facts bear out a truth he doesn't want to accept. We have a president who doesn't "believe" climate change is real or caused by human activity, all facts to the contrary. His "belief" is equal to the facts gathered by thousands of scientists worldwide and even the reality many people are living ("Don't believe what you see and hear"). Climate change is increasingly a set of facts that will affect all kinds of relationships among nations. Even the Pentagon has counseled that. We know that the poor countries are and will suffer the most. Those countries produce the most refugees to our borders and the most terrorists too. It will also affect the nature and stability of governments worldwide, their militaristic ambitions, and global trade. Economies and energy use and sources will have to change. You would think that if Mr. Trump's interest is in "America first," he would see that leadership in reducing carbon emissions really is in America's interest because stability is always in our interest.
13
@abigail49 ~
"You would think that if Mr. Trump's interest is in "America first," he would see that leadership in reducing carbon emissions really is in America's interest because stability is always in our interest. "
But, djt is not a long range thinker and he most definitely is not concerned about reducing carbon emissions. He has young grand-children and yet he is only concerned about the short term and making more money for himself and his cohort. He doesn't give a hoot about anyone but himself.
2
Excellent perspective. The question is, will this be unique to Trump, or will the next president -- yes, there will be someone else eventually -- reassert America's role in the world? A related question is whether the next Congress will back that role, or will it be wedded to Trump's inward-facing myopia?
This does not seem to be an issue in the mid-terms; it's just too global. But let's see about 2020.
9
The average American has not benefitted from globalization and mass immigration, the two defining tenets of the u.s. policies over the last 40 years. Combined with "supply side tax cuts" and the influence of special interest money warping every aspect of the business environment and you're left with a public that doesn't trust anything Washington does. You can still, sort of, sell tax cuts to the masses even though they don't benefit, because "tax cut" just sounds nice. The rest of it, not at all. Trump is just taking advantage of the ground work that the left and right have laid down without asking for or getting the permission of the people most affected by it.
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@Al I disagree. The average American HAS benefited from both globalization and the level of immigration we've had. Some Americans, a rather small minority, have lost out. The stagnation of middle class wages is NOT due primarily either to globalization or immigration. Far more important are automation and corporate greed, the latter of which resulted in destruction of unions and transformation of high wage jobs in the North and Midwest into lower wage jobs in the non union South...long before globalization became as extensive as it is today. It is also true that the main opposition to NAFTA and other trade agreements that cost some people jobs came from the left, from union leaders and Democratic politicians that supported them. These are exactly the politicians that Trump and his Republican lackeys are viciously and falsely attacking now.
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Trump is the jungle. Me first. I eat, you don't. I win, you lose. I don't care what happens to you so long as I come out on top. That's Trump's idea of making America great. And the crowd roars! Yeah! Give us more. Then they go home and watch a MMA fight where two guys try to beat each other senseless.
The world isn't an MMA fight. It's been over two generations since WWII. That is enough time for many to have forgotten its significance and absolute devastation. After an MMA fight, most viewers don't switch to PBS and learn about historical events like the two great wars.
When I was a boy, every man I knew served in WWII. My dad read every book on the war he could get his hands on. He wanted to understand how and why seeking comfort for the murder of his family, my family. As a boy, I understood the war.
Most today do not. They rally around Trump, the dictator mini-me, who stokes their anger in the same fashion as the mid 20th century dictators did.
As a boy, who understood the significance of the war, I had tremendous peace in knowing that the post WWII order we built would never falter and that the world we built would prevent the absolute horror we experienced. Never again. Europe had been saved and us along with it.
Enter Trump and my comfort in the permanent peace has faltered. Trump is attacking everything that has kept the peace in an effort to dominate the globe. Every MMA champ gets beat eventually. So will we under Trump.
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@Bruce Rozenblit Well said!
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@Bruce Rozenblithis , this is a very moving perspective. It's so much easier to stoke hate to gain power than to inform, guide, and enlighten voters about interrelated issues. Hence, minority rule by the Hater-in-Chief and his Fox propaganda machine. If only more critical thinkers would vote. Elections are truly the only path to power, but even that's being corrupted by the hateful minority.
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@Bruce Rozenblit
Bravo.
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For a half-second I thought Friedman was actually addressing Trump's moronic poo-pooing of climate change in relation to today's U.N. scientists' warning of global climate disaster if we don't change our ways within 10 years. "The president's fantasy is that the U.S. can ignore the global forces of nature." No, Friedman was just talking about Trump's ignoring (and ignorance) of the global post-war order. But guess which is far more important than the other? If the world starts burning up because of climate change, nobody's really going to care about whether America is leading the post-war order.
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@Bob G.
Bob, read again.
' "And when I say “power” I don’t just mean military power. I mean also convening power. When the U.N.’s top climate body issues a report — as it just did — that says our weather, our ocean levels, our agriculture and our ecosystems are going to be disrupted, so much more than people realize, unless we take huge steps now to mitigate climate change, and the U.S. president ignores it, we are failing in our task to stabilize the liberal global order and are paving the way for disorder.'
In other words, one (abandonment of leadership in addressing climate change) is one symptom (and disastrous consequence) of the other (abandonment of leadership in maintaining global order).
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@Bob G.
Lenin's Bay Area "science" at work--"within 10 years", not 9, not 11, but 10 and it's all over? Right. War of the Worlds greater likelihood. But more important--Kavanaugh still on the court and Ginsburg gone in 9, 10, or 11--for certain.
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Fascists tend to be isolationist in their modus operandi , and Donald Trump IS a neo-fascist .
Sometimes we have to call the behavior by its name in order to truly recognize and understand it. And make no mistake about it we are dealing with a president in the White House who is a full blown fascist . He has negotiated the political terrain not unlike the way Joseph Goebbels or Benito Mussolini had … and like memorable fascists in past history he shows little empathy or compassion for his fellow citizens. How much less compassion would he then show for foreigners ?
The question voters need to ask themselves at the midterms and beyond is : do we really want someone like this in the White House? And if we don’t, what are we going to do about it?
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@RD That's the point: he doesn't have any compassion. He is a narcissist. You may notice that it's all about him. And what we will do about it, hopefully, will be to vote in November.
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@RD "How much less compassion would he then show for foreigners ?"
That depends...is their name Vladimir?
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@RD
“Fascists tend to be isolationist.” Huh? Couldn’t be farther from the truth. Fascism’s ethos was war and violence to acquire territory for the fatherland.
Brilliant insights from Friedman and in turn to Kagan's ideas that he uses to illuminate his column.
The breadth of Trumps profound ignorance of History and Science are mind boggling and threaten us all. He tries to cover this black hole of his mind with his never-ending con game, which he has used his entire life to mask his insecurities. The powers that be in the Republican Party, in their craven quest to keep their ill-gotten power, just never look at the world the way Friedman and most knowledgable experts do. And Fox News and the right-wing power bolster his power at every step.
Nov. 6 will be a decisive day in our country's history. Make sure you act accordingly.
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I’m a gardener. I own three acres, in a Wichita suburb. I do ALL the yard work, year round. It’s my major form of exercise and stress relief. This is prelude to saying a gardener must be ruthless in pulling, cutting back and destroying Weeds. If not, the jungle takes over, or at least, the Kansas version. If you want something worth having, you must WORK to shape and maintain it. OR, you must pay a hefty premium to “ outsource “ the work.
WE need to get our collective Garden in shape and protect it, for our Children and Grandchildren. Plant the Seeds: VOTE in November.
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@Phyliss Dalmatian Excellent example, Phyliss! I can relate 100% and you are absolutely correct.
And if I may add to your analogy: if one waits too long to do the necessary work, the weeds take over, and you have to rototill it all up, and start all over. The re-growth takes time, so you have lost quite a bit of productivity if you have to start all over.
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@Phyliss Dalmatian Fellow gardener here supporting the ruthless pulling of weeds. I would also add that the soil needs to be continually fortified with fertilizer and nutrients and mulched so that the plants we want grow better and the weeds don't come back.
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@Phyliss Dalmatian
So true. Great comment once again, I always look for yours and find them extremely well said and pertinent, now I know why. Most of the fellow gardeners I know embody common sense and decency. . Thank you.
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One of trump's problems is that he is unable to admit he is or was wrong. I'm sure he sees being wrong as a deficit instead of a springboard to go better.
Climate change? He already has declared he is not a believer and therefore nothing needs to be done. To drive that point home, he withdraws from the Paris Accords and undoes Obama's environmental policies. He views this as a success. I doubt he'll never admit he is wrong. Likely he will blame democrats or foreigners and declare a conspiracy to undo his lust for money.
30
His dream of making a country great again is a reality that politics had consumed him from the very beginning.. The techniques he adopted are the same techniques used mostly by leaders that usually favored a one sided point of views that well?, most of them all over the world never had a chance to really understand the very root of what is causing the misunderstandings, a never ending loop system where only one side are being heard. Everyone has the Rights to be a leader so as a leader they should have an open mind that will give those opportunities to everyone, politics is limited, but a loving leader makes new leaders out of everyone. That's the america the world had known ever since so it was great before he got into the highest position.
2
After the catastrophe of the Iraq invasion which Friedman supported where our government tried to shove our values down the throats of other citizens of the world telling them that "you're either with us or against us," I find Friedman's protestations about Trump truly pathetic. After the disaster of NAFTA which led to the decimation of manufacturing jobs in the United States and other policies which enriched other nations at the expense of our own, Friedman's protestations seem silly. Trump is simply sensible. He knows that by strengthening our country's economy and spirit we can lead the world by example rather than by force. He plays fair with other countries such as China...he is simply leveling the playing field which was out of whack and hurting ourselves. He doesn't shove our values down N. Korea's throat with military force...he encourages them with possibilities of peace and prosperity. He knows that once they get a taste of it they will slowly embrace democracy without bloodshed. It seems to me that Friedman is generally wrong about everything.
6
@rpe123 Nonsense. NAFTA and other trade agreements were NOT primarily responsible for the decimation of manufacturing jobs. That process began far earlier. The main drivers were automation and runaway corporate greed, which took many forms, only one of which has anything to do with globalization.
It is really sad that you and so many others have bought the Trump con. Friedman has made some mistakes but is an astute student of history, and a broad and deep thinker, which you and nearly all other Trump supporters obviously are not.
The notion that North Koreans will "slowly embrace democracy without bloodshed" is absurd and ahistorical. Look at China. Peaceful and incredibly prosperous. Far from being on a course for democracy, the authoritarianism of their government is deepening, much to the surprise and consternation of many.
To understand the present situation it is absolutely essential to know history.
6
Motivating a coalition to fight fascism or Saddam Hussein was not that difficult, but building one to fight global warming is. Unfortunately, there is no way to "win" against global warming by "going it alone" or creating an adversarial and unpredictable atmosphere with lax or nonexistent international moral standards.
This could easily be or become the greatest international challenge of our times, and the president has chosen this moment to shred faith in our alliances and forgive the worst behavior of other rulers. In doing so he has made building the trust necessary for the collective, persistent and good faith sacrifice necessary to remedy global warming a challenge so daunting that it may require another "greatest generation" to overcome.
18
"Springtime for Thugs" would seem to be the musical comedy of our times. The reviews so far have been pretty scathing. Let's hope it closes soon and then we can start counting all of the investors' losses.
44
Just because an idea was right in the past does not mean it has to be right in the future. We are talking here about world affairs, not physics. World conditions change, when they do our policies must change. In the 'golden' 70 years or so after WWII the U.S. was the leading world power--in the period after the fall of the Soviet Union it was the only world power--that's changing. We're moving forward into a world in which the U.S. will be first among equals, it's time for us to start looking after our own interests, not everybody's interests. Mr. Trump has seen this, his methods and style may be a little rough around the edges but his main direction is correct. We cannot go back to 1945, people who yearn for continued U.S. world hegemony are living in the past--Mr. Trump is dragging all of us, some kicking and screaming, into the future.
2
@Ronald B. Duke. What future? A future where we alienate our allies and embrace dictators? A future with a crumbling infrastructure and mired in too much debt to fix it? A future of polluted air and water?
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@Blackcat66: You combine foreign and domestic. The world has, perhaps, 20 or 30 players (nations), we have to deal with them even if we don't like them, sweet liberal tut-tottery won't be enough, sometimes we have to be tough guys recognized by all as strong in pursuit of our own interests. If we are preceded by a reputation for toughness it will tend to forestall a lot of adventurism on the part of adversaries. On the domestic front I shall now put forward a very unpopular idea--get ready: Maybe an important reason our infrastructure is crumbling and we can't afford to repair or replace it, and our debt is too high, is that too much money is being spent for the advantage of the feckless layabouts in our population; maybe it's time to get tough with them, too.
@Blackcat66. The "future" you describe is pretty much the last 40 years.
On diary: 3.6% of Canada's market is no where close to the last drop--but close enough to for Trump to declare his tariffs and threats worked. But foreign countries watch domestic activities as a gauge of what to expect.
Passing unnoticed, underneath the partisan noise and media loops about SCOTUS, are absurd ideas: one, a federal appeals court judge offered before the Senate Judiciary Committee, a Clinton conspiracy--a partisan whole cloth without proof or evidence, no line of reasoning (beside a lost election), without an interlogic of facts, with no material ties of this conspiracy.
This partisan assertion in the judge's opening statement went entirely unaddressed through the rounds of the hearing by a prosecutor and 21 senators!
Now give me evidence, emails, executive orders, witnesses, participants of this conspiracy; show me the eye of the needle and I'll change my vote. But if you can't or or won't, I can reasonably if not absolutely conclude: you're lying.
The judge offered no evidence or facts, no logic or proof, no material ties about his claim. He later lied about the legal drinking age, it was 21 when he was 18; took a near hit for the July 1st calendar entry; and lied about teenage slang.
He lied before he cried, before he turned bellicose, talking back defiantly to a female senator with a bombastic rhetorical question.
Judges know the importance of proof! Show the cause of action!
Without it, foreign govts can only conclude the US is lying, in all things.
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@Walter Rhett I don't disagree. But we've heard all of this before. Where is the movement -among Democrats- to seek term limits for Supreme Justices? And term limits for the Congress, as well.
“Democracy is the rarest form of government". It certainly is and according to the 2014 Princeton Gilens Page study and several other reputable analyses it hasn't existed in the US since the late 1970s. The US has been a plutocracy with a foreign policy directed by corporate interests enforced by an increasingly off the leash military industrial complex for decades. We used to have wars for General Motors, Exxon and the United Fruit Company. Now increasingly we have wars, covert and overt military interventions and endless meddling because increasing tensions and prolonging conflicts benefits the career interests of the military and the pocket books of the war profiteers. The sorcerer's apprentice is now running the store. The US needs a long look in the mirror.
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@Belasco: Agreed! It seems that the last time we had a leader who wanted the US to be a force for good, who valued human rights, who stared at Americans and said that we had problems that we needed to work on, Americans voted him out for Ronald Reagan, whose message was that we are great, how dare someone say we are not great and that the world revolves around us. And we apparently continue to install leaders who sing the same song. Not that Jimmy Carter was perfect, but he led from humanitarian values, which is a great start. The polar opposite from Trump.
4
I can agree that Trump is a particularly dark and malignant force in this world. But Friedman would be far more believable if he didn't sound so hopelessly, well, American himself by childishly suggesting that the US was never anything more than an earnest boy scout promoting democracy around the world during the post war era. Puh-leaz.
Yes, the US did some great things. Sometimes. And in some parts of the world. But be honest with your readers Mr Friedman--many of them are more sophisticated and worldly than you give them credit for. The US has often been a malignant force with the evisceration of democratic impulses in societies around the world as much on its mind as earning its next boy scout badge.
403
If you read Friedman’s column carefully he acknowledges that we have made many mistakes and on occasion did not live up to our own ideals. But take care not to fall into the trap that we are no better than the Russians or other dictatorships. We are better. Much better. And we have lead the world with our ideals and vision for a better humanity, if not always with our actions. Trump would have you believe we are the same as the dictators he so admires. He uses this to justify his actions. But we the people of America aspire to so much more. A sad few of us have lost the meaning of real America values. This is largely due to the greed of the wealthy. But the tide will turn - is turning. One day soon a new FDR will step forward and take us back to the values and vision that made this county a shining light upon the hill. Vote in November if you believe in that America.
7
@Bobby - I'd appreciate reading your list of the times when we lived up "to our own ideals". Examples of large actions - national or global, truly altruistic, no strings attached - that represent the "values" we claim.
@Jason
actually he mentioned this. said the u.s. uses its "power to spread and maintain [democratic] principles — not everywhere and always, but in many places a lot of the time."
If the Saudi's and MBS continue to dissemble about Jamal Khashoggi the U.S.should immediately suspend all military sales and military co-operation with the Kingdom and demand a full accounting. Unless of course, the American President is Donald Trump, who understands the seminal irritation caused by truth telling journalists, and after a wink and nod video conference with MBS, utters a few meaningless platitudes,before attending another Red State rally.
51
Trump commits what George Soros identified as the Post-Modern Fallacy: one can ignore nature if it does not correspond to one's ideology. Because the Enlightenment never really happened and we are a eusocial species---like the ants, bees and wasps---the strongman psychology will resonate until it ends in collapse (think postwar Germany).
The only solution is confrontation on every front. Perhaps enough Americans will think if so jarred.
15
300 million live souls
With children, grandchildren who’ll pay,
And most of them working class proles
Thrown under the bus every day.
Organic fuels that are our bane,
Bring profits valued more than lives,
And those who purport to be sane
Sacrifice every offspring that thrives.
Stone Agers who love Donald Trump
Share ignorance with a buffoon,
Whose brain is a cortical dump
And whose ego swells like a balloon.
The Party whose values he knew
Is complicit in his ghastly role
Of money making for a few
Doom the rest to anguish on the whole.
The rest of the world also doomed
Repubs care but little about
And all the disasters that loomed
Will in time wipe living creatures out.
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@Larry Eisenberg
So sad, so true. Thank you.
2
Everyone knows the old cliche from Spider-Man, but some cliches last because they contain truth: "With great power comes great responsibility." It's stated even better in a recent Marvel film: "When you can do the things I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you."
Our last President, who was a Spider-Man fan, understood this. What a tragedy for the world that this President (who is not a Spider-Man comics fan, nor a fan of any reading material whatsoever) does not.
71
The “thug” is currently in the White House. He is complicit in the degradation of democracy throughout the world, and has allowed the tigers from the cages both domestically and abroad. We are in trouble.
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@Nedro
If I believed in the paranormal or stuff like that I would make the case for history's "deciding" to teach us a lesson. And to do so by making everything as bad as possible (short of nuclear war) and forcing us SOMEHOW to make a new beginning.
2
@Nedr
There are also thugs running the house and the senate. In fact the majority of senators and the congress are complicit as well. Not one of them has stood up for the people and against the ignorant buffoon in the Oval Office. And yes, we are in trouble, deep trouble.
10
Be afraid...be very afraid...where is the once greatest nation heading...and where oh where are you taking the rest of us ?
76
@Richard
There's lots of fear in the U.S. and it's causing our citizens to hand over their brains to the bad guys. I beg Canada and Mexico and the great democracies of Europe to stand-up and lead---for the American people are no longer self-governing and have lost all sense of history.
8
NO,Richard. Do NOT be afraid. That is exactly what the Robber Barons want.
Instead take one action today to preserve/restore the one thing you love most about democracy in OUR United States of America.
4
@Richard
No, I will not be afraid. Fear is what got us in this mess in the first place. Fear is what makes unthinking people vote against their own interests. Fear enables unscrupulous people such as Trump to exert control over the GOP. Fear has its place but not here. Action is the antidote to fear. Be active, not afraid.
1