Wednesday, April 9, 2025
D+154/80
1948 Massacre at Deir Yassin
1981 US nuclear submarine USS George Washington rammed the Japanese freighter Nisso Maru, sinking the civilian ship in the South China Sea
1984 Linda Hunt won an Oscar for portraying Billy Kwan in The Year of Living Dangerously
2003 Baghdad fell to invading American forces
In bed at 9, awake and up at 6, with an aching right shoulder and right hip.
Prednisone, day 354; 3 mg., day 13/21; Kevzara, day 8/14; CGM, dayA 7/15; Trulicity, day 6/7. 2 mg. of prednisone at 6:14 a.m. and 1 mg. at 5 p.m. Other meds at 10 a.m.
Morning greeting from my iPhone: "Your walking steadiness continues to be very low and you may be at high risk of falling in the next 12 months." How many of these messages have I received over the last couple of years?
A painting on a piece of plywood that I painted several years ago. It was my conception of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary by the Archangel Gabriel. The much more elegant and professional paintings of the Annunciation, showing Mary serene and obedient, her demure eyes either downcast submissively or upcast toward Heaven, could only be done by men ignorant of how the teenager would have felt, knowing what she was in for. My Mary is terrified. "And when she saw him, she was greatly troubled at his words . . ." Luke 1:29.
Cris du coeur. Tom Friedman's column in yesterday's New York Times and David Brooks's essay in The Atlantic would have been unimaginable during any other presidency.
Friedman's column is headlined: "Trump and Netanyahu Steer Toward an Ugly World, Together." Excerpts:
There was a time when a meeting between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel brought only pride to both Israeli and American Jews, who saw two democratic leaders working together. Well, I know that I am not alone when I say that pride is not the emotion that welled up in me on seeing the chummy picture of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu meeting in the Oval Office on Monday. It was disgust and depression.
Each is a wannabe autocrat, each is working to undermine the rule of law and so-called elites in his respective country, each is seeking to crush what he calls a “deep state” of government professionals. Each is steering his nation away from its once universal aspiration to be a “light unto the nations” toward a narrow, brutish might-equals-right ethnonationalism that is ready to mainstream ethnic cleansing. Each treats his political opposition not as legitimate but as enemies within, and each has filled his cabinet with incompetent hacks, deliberately chosen for loyalty to him instead of the laws of their lands.
Each is driving his country away from its democratic traditional allies. Each asserts territorial expansion as a divine right — “From the Gulf of America to Greenland” and “From the West Bank to Gaza.”
There was a time when a meeting between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel brought only pride to both Israeli and American Jews, who saw two democratic leaders working together. Well, I know that I am not alone when I say that pride is not the emotion that welled up in me on seeing the chummy picture of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu meeting in the Oval Office on Monday. It was disgust and depression.
Each is a wannabe autocrat, each is working to undermine the rule of law and so-called elites in his respective country, each is seeking to crush what he calls a “deep state” of government professionals. Each is steering his nation away from its once universal aspiration to be a “light unto the nations” toward a narrow, brutish might-equals-right ethnonationalism that is ready to mainstream ethnic cleansing. Each treats his political opposition not as legitimate but as enemies within, and each has filled his cabinet with incompetent hacks, deliberately chosen for loyalty to him instead of the laws of their lands.
Each is driving his country away from its democratic traditional allies. Each asserts territorial expansion as a divine right — “From the Gulf of America to Greenland” and “From the West Bank to Gaza.”
In mindlessly shrinking our own government and dissing so many of our traditional allies, “Trump is not just destroying careers and values, he is quite literally making America weak again,” the Stanford democracy expert Larry Diamond told me. That is about as “post” the America I grew up in — and aspire to see my grandchildren grow up in — as I can imagine.
If it is possible, David Brooks's essay, I Should Have Seen This Coming, is an even harsher, more damning, and more frightening assessment of Trump and the state of the union. Excerpts:
Charles de gaulle began his war memoirs with this sentence: “All my life I have had a certain idea about France.” Well, all my life I have had a certain idea about America. I have thought of America as a deeply flawed nation that is nonetheless a force for tremendous good in the world. From Abraham Lincoln to Franklin D. Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan and beyond, Americans fought for freedom and human dignity and against tyranny; we promoted democracy, funded the Marshall Plan, and saved millions of people across Africa from HIV and AIDS. When we caused harm—Vietnam, Iraq—it was because of our overconfidence and naivete, not evil intentions.¹
. . . Since January 20, as I have watched America behave vilely—toward our friends in Canada and Mexico, toward our friends in Europe, toward the heroes in Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office—I’ve had trouble describing the anguish I’ve experienced. Grief? Shock? Like I’m living through some sort of hallucination? Maybe the best description for what I’m feeling is moral shame: To watch the loss of your nation’s honor is embarrassing and painful.
George Orwell is a useful guide to what we’re witnessing. He understood that it is possible for people to seek power without having any vision of the good. “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” an apparatchik says in 1984. “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.” How is power demonstrated? By making others suffer. Orwell’s character continues: “Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.”
Russell Vought, Donald Trump’s budget director, sounds like he walked straight out of 1984. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains,” he said of federal workers, speaking at an event in 2023. “We want to put them in trauma.”
Since coming back to the White House, Trump has caused suffering among Ukrainians, suffering among immigrants who have lived here for decades, suffering among some of the best people I know. Many of my friends in Washington are evangelical Christians who found their vocation in public service—fighting sex trafficking, serving the world’s poor, protecting America from foreign threats, doing biomedical research to cure disease. They are trying to live lives consistent with the gospel of mercy and love. Trump has devastated their work. He isn’t just declaring war on “wokeness”; he’s declaring war on Christian service—on any kind of service, really.
If there is an underlying philosophy driving Trump, it is this: Morality is for suckers. The strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must. This is the logic of bullies everywhere. And if there is a consistent strategy, it is this: Day after day, the administration works to create a world where ruthless people can thrive. That means destroying any institution or arrangement that might check the strongman’s power. The rule of law, domestic or international, restrains power, so it must be eviscerated. Inspectors general, judge advocate general officers, oversight mechanisms, and watchdog agencies are a potential restraint on power, so they must be fired or neutered. The truth itself is a restraint on power, so it must be abandoned. Lying becomes the language of the state.
Trump’s first term was a precondition for his second. His first term gradually eroded norms and acclimatized America to a new sort of regime. This laid the groundwork for his second term, in which he’s making theyy to globe a playground for gangsters.
He goes on at length to narrate why and how he should have seen this state of affairs coming, to indict himself for not paying enough attention to the right-wing elements and drift in the Republican Party, especially since the mid-1980s and the emergence of Laura Ingraham, Dinesh D'Souza, and Ann Coulter. I have copies so many of their words here simply to reassure myself that I am not crazy in thinking that the country is in a death spiral, One of the most dangerous flight conditions a pilot may encounter is "a flat spin,, an uncontrolled, horizontal spin with minimal lift, making recovery difficult. We who believe that Trump and his followers have put the nation in a flat spin are not catastrophizers, or at least if we are, we are in pretty good company. How many times, in my daily, early morning conversations with my sister, did I say of Trump, we are heading to deep shit (not a word I used with her), explain why, and conclude "I hope I'm wrong"? I wasn't wrong and we are in deeper shit than even I could have imagined.
¹ I take exception to Brook's exculpation of America's actions in Vietnam and Iraq. He wrote, "When we caused harm—Vietnam, Iraq—it was because of our overconfidence and naivete, not evil intentions.¹ His take on our intentions is similar to that of Ken Burns' and Lynn Novick's in their PBS documentary The Vietnam War, in which the narrator Peter Coyote somberly intoned, "America’s involvement in Vietnam … was begun in good faith, by decent people, out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence, and Cold War miscalculation."
It's not just centrists or traditional conservatives like Friedman and Brooks who are shaking in their boots. Consider this editorial from THE NATIONAL REVIEW, "Congress Should End Trump's Trade War":
If it desires, Congress could take back as much of [tariff] power as it sees fit. It ought to do so - and do so now . . . . What has happened since last Thursday is hard to fathom.Based on an ever shifting series of ratinales, characterized by an embarrassing methodology, and punctuated with an extraordinary arrogance toward the country's constitutioal order, the Trump administration has alienated our global allies, discombobulated our domestic businesses, decimated our capital markets, and increased the likelihood of serious recession. This should alarms members of both political - and, in particular, it should worry the hundreds of Republican legislators who, in less than two years time, will be judged in large part on whether the president who share their brand has done a good job.
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times, "Markets to GOP: We Won't Save You From Trump's Folly":
The markets have hated Trumps views on trade from the get-go, which is a mjor reason markets have lost some $11 trillion in value since his inauguration . . . The makets are not merely saying that Trump's policies are bad for stock prices or corporate profits. They are saying to other politicians and policymakers, "We're not going to save you from Trump's irrationality." That realization is starting to dawn on some Republicans who bought the preposterous idea that Trump has a mandate to unilaterallly and irrationally bend the international economy to his will . . . [R]epublicans are starting to understand that their political solvency won't last longer than Trump''s irrationality.
Gerald Baker in the Wall Street Journal, "Trump Is Trashing America's Reputation:"
America's reputation, based on its ideals and burnished over centuries, is the greatest geopolitical brand ever created. But . . . we may be witnessing the greatest exercise in brand destruction in history. Brands have real value. It isn't always easy to calculate, but businesses from BlackBerry to Bud Light know when they have lost it. Destroying geopolitical brand value can be devastating too. . .. Mr Trump may find all this in-your-face diplomany satisfying now. But casting off America's reputation as a place that reveres freedom, dignity, and the rule of law will harm the brand - and not just in the long term. The Romans had a saying: let them hate us as long as they fear us. But part of our superpower has derived from being admired too. In the end, as the Romans discovered, you don't want to be around when they still hate you but they no longer fear you.
My biggest market worry. Banner headline in this morning's Wall Street Journal. "Trade war escalations spark bond sell-off as companies worry about economy." I assume that most of us of advanced age have their retirement savings allocated heavily toward non-equity assets, i.e., in bond, money mrket, and non-equity assets. The huge losses in the stock market don't affect us nearly as much as they do people heavilty invested in stocks. Rising yields in the bond market and sell-offs of even US treasury bonds, make me, and many others, shudder. Stock market declines, bond market declines = everybody loses, including Geri and me, and down the road, our children.
Surprise! Trump pauses tariffs on 75 countries, reduces tariffs to uniform 10%, & raises tariff on Chinese products to 125%.
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