Being the World's Boy Scouts

 

I like having been the world’s boy scouts. I like having a country that did so much good in the world. I like having a country that saved the world from fascist tyranny in World War II. I like having a country that rebuilt western Europe and Japan after that war and led former tyrannies to become stable, fairly liberal democracies. I like having a country that fought and won a decades long cold war with Soviet communism that led to the liberation of the countries of central and eastern Europe. I like our country being that last, best hope of which Lincoln spoke.

Donald Trump does not. He has no use for liberal principles, liberal societies, or the cause of liberty in the world. His ideas on foreign policy and international relations are closer to those of Putin or Mussolini than those of FDR, John Kennedy, or Ronald Reagan. (It is an interesting experience to listen to speeches by any of those three and then read one of Trump’s screeds on Truth Social.) In a very deep way his behavior is both anti-American and a repudiation of Americanism. In regard to Greenland it is also nuts. He is a disgrace, and he is doing his best to disgrace this country. Regardless of the various and conflicting things we are for politically, decent Americans need to stand up together and make it clear that this is something we are against.

HItting New Lows

 

It is hard for a man like Trump to hit new lows, but in the last couple of weeks he has managed. His decision to crush the hopes of Venezuelans who wanted their country liberated and side with the Marxist dictatorship instead of the elected opposition was execrable. I do not know if he did it because he was jealous that Maria Machado won the Nobel peace prize that he wanted (though that surely sounds like him), and it really does not matter. What matters is that it not merely shows but broadcasts that as of now the government of the United States is not on the side of freedom in the world, but just another grasping gang of international bandits out to steal what they can (oil in this case). The sleazy lawfare attack on Chairman Powell shows not only contempt for the legal status of the federal reserve, but a thug’s notion that the way to deal with opposition or resistance is intimidation. The whole fiasco with ICE, but especially not only attempting to justify the killing of Renee Good but effectively proclaiming that anyone else getting in the way might expect a dose of the same is simply something that should not be tolerable in America. The scheme to occupy Greenland by force, which legally would require all our NATO allies to go to war with the hostile invading power, us, is so completely absurd, so vilely un-American, and so manifestly harmful to our actual national interests and security that it is reasonable to wonder if it is the work of a literal raving madman who should be removed via the 25^th Amendment.

It is a hell of a mess. Republicans used to claim, and often back their claim up, that they were better than Democrats on issues of individual freedom, national security, the cause of liberty in the world, and respect for the Constitution. Well, that was then. This is now.

There are various definitions of a fascist. There is the formal one that a fascist is one who advocates a program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance while allowing the existence of nominally private property, and practicing rigid censorship and forcible suppression of opposition. There is the colloquial one that a fascist is someone who desires a government characterized by racial or ethnic bigotry, military aggression, suppression of dissent, and the glorification of the all powerful leader as the manifestation of the nation. There is the ostensive one that a fascist is somebody who wants to be like Franco, Peron, or the Duce. A person can take his pick.