By Marc Jampole
One of the many things that Donald Trump doesn’t seem to understand is that sometimes merely saying something can be hurtful. The classic case is Trump’s outrageous lie months ago that he knew a child who had gotten autism because of a vaccination. It was a bold-faced lie, the telling of which in and of itself hurt other people, to wit, those children whose parents later used it as part of their case for denying them vaccinations.
One of the many things that Donald Trump doesn’t seem to understand is that sometimes merely saying something can be hurtful. The classic case is Trump’s outrageous lie months ago that he knew a child who had gotten autism because of a vaccination. It was a bold-faced lie, the telling of which in and of itself hurt other people, to wit, those children whose parents later used it as part of their case for denying them vaccinations.
Trump just said something else that should disqualify him as
president. He said that he would finance his program on debt, and if the
country couldn’t pay, he would negotiate new terms with lenders. If Trump were
to make such a statement as president, the dollar would sink in value and
interest rates would skyrocket. Lenders would be reluctant to loan money to the
United States. Other countries would look for another currency to serve as the
base of the global economy. The likely result would be a decline in the stock
and bond markets, followed by a deep recession. Such a scenario would cause
pain and suffering to millions of people.
All because countries and business all over the world have
lost faith in the U.S. dollar. All because the president of the United States in
a fit of rage, pique or frustration lost control of his emotions and threatened
not to pay off our debts in full on a timely basis.
I know that a large number of business operators, and in
particular developers, send companies into bankruptcy as a way of life. They
always walk away with some money, but the investors are left with losses.
That’s the way Donald Trump has always operated, sending three real estate
organizations into bankruptcy. We often see the litany of his failed
businesses—Trump Airlines, Trump Steaks, Trump Mortgage, Trump Vodka, Trump
Magazine, to many of which he merely provided his name. He walked away with
licensing fees and the business failed, leaving employees and investors holding
the bag. The New York Times analysis
of how Trump destroyed the U.S. Football League by insisting that it compete
head-on with the National Football League instead of fielding teams in the NFL
off-season is an eye-opener. In failing, Trump University has attracted a
number of lawsuits, and the evidence vetted in the news media suggests that
Trump himself broke the law in overpromising what students would experience in
classes. Other news reports have alluded to the low respect with which long-timers
in the casino industry view Trump; they consider him a buffoon. It is true that
Trump has found success on reality TV and as a brand licenser, but the
foundation of both these accomplishments is the false premise that he is a good
business person. Months ago, Forbes
did an analysis that demonstrated that if Trump had passively invested the
fortune he inherited from his father, his net worth would be twice what it is.
But even if it were good business advice to spend a lot of
money, knowing that if things don’t work out you can always go into bankruptcy,
it just doesn’t work for a country, and certainly not for a country whose
economic well-being depends in large part to being the currency of choice
around the globe.
When a company goes into bankruptcy, it will hurt creditors,
and often hurts vendors, employees and customers as well. But it doesn’t have
to hurt the chief executive officer and other executives. We know many
instances of a CEO raiding and raping it, and then sending a company into
bankruptcy. But what does a president get when a country defaults on its debt,
at least in a democratic country with strong laws against political corruption? We know what happens in kleptocracies such as
Russia and the Ukraine. If we assume Trump is a rational human being, building
an authoritarian kleptocracy makes perfect sense as an explanation for Trump’s comment about renegotiating with creditors if the
United States couldn’t pay its debt. Of course some would say that there is
little difference between what happens in Russia and the kind of crony
capitalism Bush II practiced in the Middle East and tried to practice after
Hurricane Katrina.
That Trump might enter into negotiations to revise bond
terms is scary. The fact that he is willing to say it may be even scarier,
because it suggests, once again, that the Donald will say anything and break
any deal.
Trump has revised his stand on a number of issues, acts that
many who voted for him may consider betrayals. He now is okay with
transgendered people using the restroom of the sex with which they identify. He
talked hard about tax cuts and put out a plan that gave massive tax cuts to the
wealthy, but now he says taxes may rise for the wealthy and businesses. He was
adamantly against raising the minimum wage in several debates. Now he says he wants
to raise the minimum wage. I agree with his current stands on all these issues,
but it must be pissing off all the Republicans who think otherwise and voted
for him or now are boxed into supporting his candidacy. But these right-wingers
should fear not. Donald Trump is like the weather in spring: He will probably
change his mind again on any and all of these issues.
Trump is trumpeting his own duplicity and lack of a moral
center as a major selling point. Everything is open for negotiation and
everything is on the table, even a first-strike use of nuclear weapons. The
horror at his pride at not having political ethics is exceeded only by the
horror evoked by thinking about what dropping a nuclear weapon would do to its
immediate victims and the Earth’s atmosphere.
Part of Trump’s inconsistency results from the off-the-cuff
nature of his campaign and his speeches. He makes it up as he goes along, and
then either spends copious words justifying what was a misstatement or changes
his mind, sometimes in the next sentence. The fact that he doesn’t mind lying
about the facts makes it easy for him to substantiate any statement he makes
and therefore say anything that he wants to—at any given moment, for as long or
as short a time as makes him feel good.
When we mix Trump’s political and ethical flexibility and
his propensity to lie with his fomenting of violence, advocacy of hate politics
and love of authoritarian solutions, we get fascism run by an erratic
narcissist. It looks like and sounds like the democratic nation of Germany when
Adolf Hitler took it over. It’s a good thing that unlike Hitler, Trump does not
have the support of his own party.
No comments:
Post a Comment