It’s not Trump

So, I keep seeing headlines like “Trump is taking a wrecking ball to U.S. alliances around the world”.

No, that’s the American electorate, not Trump. There’s no excuse. There’s no “we didn’t know!”

The American electorate has decided that science, art, international alliances, the lives of marginal people in this country and around the globe, social justice, all of it, just doesn’t matter.

The only thing that matters, the only thing, is the price of food and gas.

You knew. You knew what you were getting. And you chose. Don’t lie.

Very Low-IQ Trump Too Stoopid to Win War

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/very-low-iq-trump-too-stoopid-to

This isn’t just Trump. We spent a decade or more getting ourselves into this position, including four years under Biden.

But Trump did take us over the line between tiger and paper tiger. And this just so much fun to read.

«For a certain type of MAGA, Trump’s performance as commander-in-chief is judged entirely by how many helicopter rides the Army gives Kid Rock.

But for people who prioritize winning wars, deterring adversaries, and protecting America’s interests, Trump has presided over the single biggest technological failure since Sputnik.

He did this. He did it because he is vain and stupid. And now we will all pay for his idiocy.»

The Spirit of the Twenty-First Century.

https://cassidysteeledale.substack.com/p/the-spirit-of-the-twenty-first-century

Wow. A stupid essay about stupid comics that’s making me cry.

«And a reminder that — in the real world — crises create energy for change among people who refuse to let emergencies and danger or brokenness rule the world any more.

And they’re a way to remind you that you were formed from the lessons and the final morals of the last century — the first really great one, the one that gave more-than-half-of-humanity and even-more-than-that their first real chance in the history of this world — and that we will make this century better than the last rather than let these shitgibbons write its story and make its future.

Crises aren’t just danger and death and doom; they’re energy for What Could Be. They’re dynamos.

But if you need the math on that, the formula is simple:

    The size of these enormous overlapping nonstop crises multiplied by the size of your rage and the size of your love and your brilliance are the size of the change we are about to make.

And by now — after all this and how much it’s spun us up in the dynamo — we are made of lightning.»

(Cassidy Dale is worth a follow. I may have mentioned that before.)

The Bulwark: Trump’s Tariffs Have Created an Economic Sh*tshow Beyond Your Wildest Imagination

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/trump-tariffs-florsheim-shoes

«The ongoing trade uncertainty—plus Iran war–related cost spikes, and various erratic market interventions from this president—suggest that the tariff refunds trickling out may be less of an economic tailwind than once seemed possible. Multiple companies told me they’re not planning to use their tariff rebates to expand or hire because they needed it to patch holes in their balance sheet. Or they planned to sock the funds away just in case their tariff rates surged again.

Ironically, this lack of clarity about the tariff landscape may also be discouraging firms from reshoring manufacturing—Trump’s stated goal—because they too don’t know what their costs will be.

After all, Trump has tariffed not only finished consumer goods (appliances, bicycles, bathtubs), but intermediate goods, inputs, and raw materials, as well. Think: steel, aluminum, industrial machinery parts, electronics components, textiles, wood, chemicals, plastics.»

And some other points they didn’t have the energy to develop into full articles:

«— Despite Trump’s insistence that immigrants are taking all the jobs, a new NBER working paper examining Trump 2.0’s ICE raids finds zero benefit for native-born workers: “We see no evidence that employers increase wages to attract U.S.-born workers to fill these jobs in the face of immigration enforcement. Instead, our results are consistent with employers reducing labor demand overall, including for jobs often taken by U.S.-born workers.”

— Most of the immigration-related harm to the labor force, however, is likely happening through new constraints on legal immigration, rather than enforcement against the unauthorized kind. Case in point: Just two days ago, the government announced a surprise plan to effectively eject from the United States hundreds of thousands of green-card applicants, including spouses of U.S. citizens.

— Big international athletic events are usually a money pit for the hosting country, but at least they have some positive spillover effect for the local hospitality and tourism industry. It’s unclear whether that will be the case for the World Cup. A new report from the American Hotel & Lodging Association says that up to 70 percent of rooms reserved by FIFA in Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seattle have been canceled.»