Dear News by Nature readers—and yes, you are dear, all six of you—the editorial department at NBN is pleased to announce we are returning to publishing with a piece titled Leadership in MAGA America. Making money is the reason we’ve not indulged our biting wit and searing sarcasm in what is clearly the golden age of political satire, if not the waning hours for curbing consumerism before it destroys the planet. For any new readers, the only theme you will find among the aforementioned indulgences is this: We Hate Waste.
With the election of a president who personifies the buy-stuff-and-throw-it-out culture that made America gluttonous, NBN now resumes its semi-cyclical publication of aggressive alliteration, occassional typo and heavily hyphenated run-on sentences espousing common sense approaches to balancing the needs of the planet with middle America’s aching desire to own jetskies and mcmansions. This week, or month, we write about a year-long email exchange with a highly educated fellow we’ll call Bubba, whose faith in free markets portend much the same future for this country as Trump’s deconstruction of the administrative state.
Bubba calls himself a Classical Liberal yet, like all this country’s conservatives, he discounts completely the planet’s growing need for conservation. So NBN strives this week—or month—to set Bubba and the rest of our small-government readership straight regarding the role of leadership in a world being consumed by 7.6 billion people and counting. But be forewarned, dear readers, NBN dismisses Bubba’s rather respectable academic credentials and thoroughly thought-out arguments in favor of a we-gotta-do-something-radical-now approach, the same sort of impulsiveness that got Trump elected. It’s a 10-minute read or, if you’ve not got the time, munch on Our Musings at right to sate your sarcasm needs. Now, without further ado, NBN introduces Bubba in our Spring 2019 Blog.
Leadership in MagAmerica
Dear Bubba,
For 18 months NBN has argued in our email exchange that the Tea Party Movement-cum-Trump presidency has photo-bombed this country’s Barry Goldwater Conservative faction by promising the nation’s bible-thumping, beer swilling, camo-clad football fans, a return to a 1950s Middle America utopia. In response you’ve offered up endless academic articles aiming to credibly counter our “liberal-elitism” with evidence that Trump is a product of deep-seated disaffection and distrust toward government by a far-flung electorate disgusted with decades of dysfunctional two-party leadership.
At first blush, it’s kind of hard to disagree. How else to explain so many Obama voters switching to Trump, who would have lost badly to Socialist Bernie Sanders if only the Democratic National Party had not loaded the deck in favor of Hillary Clinton, the poster child of the dysfunctional system you decry. But Bubba, as you so often say to NBN: here’s your problem. You refuse to recognize the possibility that the diffuse, disaffected and distrusting—let’s call them The Deplorables for brevity’s sake—are being corralled into a potent, unpredictable, possibly dangerous political force so hell-bent on changing the status quo that what, exactly, the status quo is changed into is a secondary consideration. You seem to scoff at the risks involved in having a uniquely unconventional, unpredictable, inexperienced–one might say unhinged—person in charge of this incredibly complex, powerful and dangerous machine called the United States of America. All at a certainly interesting, if not pivotal, time in world history. Perhaps NBN needs to tell readers a bit more about you Bubba, because you are, if nothing else, interesting.
Readers, Bubba does not like Trump at all. He dismisses Trump as a “Carnival Barker.” Bubba is an admitted “globalist” who passionately backs the distribution of free market rewards among all risk-takers, meaning management and labor. Perhaps most important, he thinks the rising hatred among liberal elites of Donald Trump and his supporters is every bit as wrong as the man himself, as it only further divides the country and cements Trump’s support with the Deplorables. Bubba is a patient, disciplined academic with complete faith that the country’s electoral process will right the ship. In short he’s a true believer in the Good ‘ol USA. What’s not to like, right?
These recent remarks by Bubba to NBN in our email exchange did the trick for us: Bubba says Trump’s tariffs are, “actually doing something stupid rather than just blowing gas out his piehole,” and “Trump is not in control of anything more than his twitter feed.” Lastly, the coup de gras, “The beauty of all this is that market signals are the things that enable people to change their behavior immediately.” To that last remark we simply say: Global Warming. The rest will have to wait for another issue of NBN. In the meantime, as this is an environmentally focused publication, NBN will just focus on related matters and ignore Trump’s enthusiastic deconstruction of the administrative state in education, finance, the judiciary, the media and pretty much every other aspect of civilization with the notable exception of the military. (The military can be considered part of civilization, can it not?)
Here is a list Harvard maintains on the regulatory rollbacks undertaken by Trump. Why is a man, elected by a broad reach of a disaffected electorate, focusing so much administrative effort on gutting environmental policy and promoting the fossil fuel industry after decades of widely popular support for clean air and water? The answer is so simple, yet it seems to escape tens of millions of Trump supporters, and Bubba.
From Day 1 Trump has advanced biggest-bucks-for-your-bang policy that focuses on immediate returns designed to staunch the inevitable flow of defectors as the novelty of his election invariably yields to its absurdity. And as this Yale University initiative makes clear, no other country shoulders nearly the economic cost per capital for environmental protection as the U.S. Stripping the “administrative state” of environmental protections has almost zero immediate downside while allowing everybody to make more money and run out and buy more stuff. What’s not to like, right? Global warming is just an abstraction right now, drowning polar bears no one ever sees and an island town in Maryland no one ever visits, and where the good God-fearing mayor is ironically heaping praise on Trump in hopes of getting a wall built to keep the water back.
Yes, Florida may one day be an archipelago, and about the same time lower Manhattan will be an amazing scuba diving site, but none of us will be around to deal with that problem. Heck, we won’t even know the people who will, despite the fact they will be our descendants. In the meantime we are making America “Great” again in the proudest tradition of the 1920s, 50s, 80s and 2000s. McMansions, jetskies and Hummers for everyone! Hmmmm, where have we seen this scenario before?
NBN has often argued that Ronald Reagan was the country’s worst president. Instead of taking Carter’s lead and continuing a drive toward greater resource conservation to achieve sustainable prosperity, the Gipper hit the gas on resource exploitation, ushering in an age of unprecedented consumerism: a.k.a. buy stuff and throw it out so everyone can keep working at making more stuff to buy and throw out. After, of course, they have shown it to their envious neighbors. Conservatives hold Reagan up as the country’s greatest leader, despite his disdain for anything that resembled conservation.
Which brings us to the question the entire country now needs to answer, including Bubba: What is leadership in the U.S.? Is it, as Bubba argues, responding to the will of the people as manifest through their duly elected representatives as per The Constitution? Let things run their course and we’ll fix everything at the polls, secure in the knowledge that market forces will correct aberrations in time to prevent calamity. The problem with that is, market forces are driven by individual reward and this isn’t the 1920s. Today we face an existential crisis with global warming, if not also a geopolitical crisis with immigration. We need patient, cautious—most important—sustainable leadership recognizing the need for there to be a planet for those descendants to inherit, not just an estate.
NBN has argued with Bubba that a century of the world’s most affordable energy has made Americans fat, lazy, greedy, and more focused on the estate than the state. When things go south, they want them fixed yesterday, quick and easy, just like Trump promised. How else to explain the election of, quite literally, a game show host to the planet’s most powerful leadership post based solely on the audacity of a mountain of promises, any one of which would have cemented any previous president’s place in history for decades to come. For generations raised to believe fortunes are reversed in 30-minute TV time slots and $2 lottery tickets, Trump is the magic bullet. And he knows it.
Bubba says it’s disgust not stupidity that got Trump elected and that we’ll all sober up in 2020, or 2024. As is usually the case in political arguments, Bubba’s half right and NBN is half wrong. Anyone saying 62 million voters are all red necks, has an ax to grind. What can we say: mea culpa. But Bubba is wrong to say the problem will solve itself as soon as Americans stop blaming each other and focus instead on the real problem: the nation’s leading political parties’ perennial promotion of Manchurian candidates selected by, and beholden to, their party patrons.
For that to happen, we need to change how people get elected in this country. Social media’s ability to sway millions of unsuspecting voters with a single paragraph, aggressive post-2010 GOP gerrymandering, the Citizens United court ruling and a realization by absurdly wealthy conservative corporate interests that they really can purchase public opinion has effectively turned the Electoral College into a vehicle for side-lining the US electorate. We are no longer governed by the will of the people, we are once again a government of land-owners. Talk about Constitutional fundimentalism. But this column is not about the electoral college. That also a subject for another issue of NBN. Today we’re talking about leadership and lack thereof in the age of Trump and “America First.” And as the leaders of record of the free world, the U.S. is responsible for much more than its own interests. When you assume a responsibility, as we did following WWII, you can’t just walk away from it. That’s what Trump is trying to do and he’s telling millions of Americans it’s now ok to abandon the world order we’ve built simply because we’re losing money on the deal. We’re still the world’s largest economy and nickle and diming our business partners abroad risks an awful lot of another very important asset: international good will. That’s the same as good credit and when you’re $21.6 trillion in debt, you might want to be a little more cautious in your dealings with those who have loaned you that money.
Thus U.S. leadership today has to be global. The world cannot build walls enough to keep poor people out and, despite the Maryland mayor’s wishes, the good people of Florida will tell you walls are worthless against rising tides. This planet needs true leadership, and after Brexit there is nowhere else to turn but the U.S. In that respect the timing of Trump’s election could not have been worse. Trump is not a carnival barker, he is something much more dangerous: A Manchurian Candidate who is going rogue. The most improbable coalition of carpenters, coal miners, Christians, Confederate sympathizers and white collar opportunists put Trump in office. Entrenched corporate/political interests feasting on the rapidly dwindling share of public resources Trump is handing them on a silver platter, keep him there.
But something happened to those corporate/political interests on their way to the trough. Trump subverted the country’s political plurality into a cult of personality. Now leaders elected by a minority of the voters represent the president’s interest even before that minority’s. The majority is now called a mob. Leadership is being consolidated into the hands of one man whose only skill is exploiting human greed and fear. And he’s really good at it. We need leadership once again willing to say greed is not good. Yet, the simple fact of Trump’s election at such a pivotal time in history has NBN rather pessimistic on that front.
| Recently the editorial board at NBN watched a wonderful documentary called “Pilgrims”. Sadly, it illustrated all too plainly that this country germinated from the highest ideals of freedom-seeking individuals only to be hijacked by commercial interests that moved in and killed every tree and beaver they could find as soon those high minded individuals had cleared them a path. From there, those interests moved onto whaling, coal mining, oil drilling, commercial fishing, corporate farming and just about any other opportunity you can find to maximize personal profit from a bounty of untouched public resources regardless of future costs. |
Wait, we’re leaving out a critical influence in the early economic growth of our country…oh yeah, slavery and cotton farming.
Forgive our sarcasm on a very serious issue. Our point is that this country’s history has been one of high-minded pioneers being followed by low-browed populists aggressively prowling for any opportunity to cash in on the hard work of those before them. Should we really be surprised to be on the downswing after our first black president rescued an economy plunged once again into the abyss be champions of unfettered free-market forces? Or, should we be disappointed that so many people in this country openly embrace the “screw you, gimme mine,” mentality that failed to “Make America Great” so many times before.
So, dear readers, Bubba is correct in that this country does face an intractable problem from decades of dysfunctional leadership, and we must find a way to be civil to each other, lest those same leaders talk us into killing each other wholesale, again. But we have to fix how we choose our leaders as well as the leaders we choose. According to Bubba, gerrymandering, campaign finance free-for-alls, a $30 billion lobbying industry are just to-be-expected aberrations in a process that has stood the test time and is our best means of withstanding Trump. NBN argues those problems are proof this is not the same country our constitution was designed to guide. Clinton’s winning the popular vote by more than 2 percent, but losing 85 percent of the nation’s counties is not a system working as planned, it is proof positive that something is deeply wrong with how citizens are represented in this country.
Trump is dividing this nation like no-one before him to pursue the gimme-mine agenda which has darn near killed this country too many times before. We have no greater lesson as to how blood-thirsty and ruthless free-market interests in this country can be than the Civil War. It’s what those same commercial interests have done since the Pilgrim days: protecting personal interests under the guise of protecting personal liberty, while hacking away at the latter by manipulating public resources for personal profit. Bubba, is correct that fighting among ourselves is a very serious problem. But sitting on our hands while the Don’t Tread On Me flag is once again raised by those securing the future for their kids at the expense of our shared future is treasonous. This country right now needs all the help it can get to stop that. Most importantly from well meaning, articulate folks such as Bubba.
Spring 2019: Our Musings
Trump: Bigot or Businessman. It’s easy to be both in The Big Apple
NBN was recently taken to task by a very articulate, liberal-leaning Facebook friend for saying we don’t think Trump is racist. Since FB is not a place for nuanced argument we’re attempting an explanation here. Trump is not a racist because he is a New Yorker. He grew up bumping into blacks on the streets of Queens and he quarreled with Hispanics on community action committees opposed to his schlock developments in NYC neighborhoods he hoped gentrify. In short, it’s hard to be a racist in NYC because race is what New York City is all about. So, how do we explain Trump’s long, storied history of racism? NBN thinks Trump’s bigotry is better described as classism. He hates poor people and as most urban poor are minorities, there ya go. Trump is also a ruthless businessman who exploits human weakness and fear to maximize profits. In the 1970s and 80s there was little that struck more fear in the hearts of house-hunting wealthy New Yorkers than having minorities for neighbors. Keep ‘em in Harlem and Morningside Heights and your condo will sell for a pretty price. Trump’s father Fred, on the other hand, was a stone cold bigot.
Autocracy: The Secret Sauce for Higher Living Standards.
The president gets a lot of flack for his ambivalence toward autocracy and NBN thinks he’s getting a bum rap. After all, there is a lot to support the notion that through servitude to strong leadership all citizens can eventually enjoy a better standard of living. For example: Have living standards improved one iota for the average South African since the end of apartheid? And who better to lead the Palestinians out of grinding poverty than one of the planet’s most technologically advanced countries? Even that darling of confederate sympathizers everywhere, Robert (Don’t forget the E) Lee argued quite magnanimously at the time, that only through slavery could the black man truly be set free. And despite the largest wealth gap in the country’s history the latest job earnings numbers have average Americans once again believing that trickle-down economics may actually improve living standards of for all. Whoda thunk? NBN thinks the answer lies in what those living standards are, and more importantly, who is setting them (please see video above).
Masters or Missionaries?
A little more about the Right Honorable Robert E. Lee. This Twitter post by State Senator from Mississippi and unswerving Trump acolyte Chris McDaniel is as Orwellian as politics gets, and these days that’s saying something. The good senator from the Magnolia State says Lee was a leader of unimpeachable integrity who opposed slavery and secession. Even while he owned 70 slaves, whipped them and poured salt in to the wounds. By McDaniel’s reasoning, and millions of others still clinging to The South’s lingering post Civil War victory known as Reconstruction, Lee sided with the South reluctantly, leading the insurgency that slaughtered 620,000 young men and women only out of loyalty to his home state. It had nothing to do with bending to the political and economic power of wealthy landowners reaping legendary profits from the enslavement of millions of hapless humans. It’s all about loyalty. What a swell guy. Here’s the irony, Senator McDaniel, or perhaps the inhumanity: it took NBN about 3 minutes to thoroughly discredit this little snippet of your political poo. Yet, you refer to the illiterate left while representing the people of a deeply conservative state that ranks 46 out of 51 in education level. You can’t have loyalty without some level of ignorance, so your re-election should be a snap.
Pope Pans Fossil Fuels
Pope Francis tells top oil executives world ‘must convert to clean fuel Here we have Pope Francis calling on oil company execs to speed the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, saying it’s the poor who will “suffer most from the ravages of global warming.” Hey, Your Holiness. Don’t you know this is the age of Trump. Even the poor hate the poor. You don’t inspire people by telling them something’s good for the future, you tell them what’s in it for them right now. You need to explain how transitioning from fossil fuels will open opportunity for everyone to become fabulously rich. Perhaps focus your efforts on the lavish lifestyle of solar powered mcmansions, or wind-powered mega yachts. That’s how your message carries further in MAGA America. Wait a minute…Wind-powered boats! That could work.
Conservation Capitalism.
NBN has often said there is enormous money to be made in resource conservation such as recycling and renewable energy. Now we have Business Insider magazine saying it’s worth $26 Trillion over the next 10 years. That’s $5 trillion more than the national debt, which just topped $21.6 trillion thanks to the man who “digs coal.” NBN does not like to just take such stats and run with them because, well, figures lie and liars figure, right? But like so much of the sustainability logic NBN embraces, it’s not hard to see how such an enormous windfall could come simply from conservation, particularly in mankind’s most wasteful society. The U.S. throws out 7 pounds of garbage per person per day. We throw out half of the food we produce, and after an Obama inspired flirtation with efficiency—and humility—we are once again rebuilding our fleet of SIVs—supremely inefficient vehicles—keeping us atop the heap of the planet’s energy consuming countries. Just plain common sense says the savings opportunities in each of those areas could easily reach $26 trillion in 10 years. But there is a catch. After we’ve generated $26 trillion building the infrastructure required to live as affordably as possible, there will be no market—thus no jobs—for the buy-it-and-throw-it-out economy Trump glorifies. What can we say? Maybe we can all start spending a little less. After all, a penny saved is a penny earned.
