This article is based on a Facebook post from yesterday early morning — right when I found out that Trump did what I knew he was going to do. But since Frankly Curious has a lot of smart readers (that is: they aren’t on Facebook), I’m presenting it here. I’ve edited and greatly expanded it. –FM
Yesterday, President* Trump will did another stupid and cruel thing, primarily because he just doesn’t like Barack Obama. And the world will be worse off for it. I’m talking about walking out of the Iran Nuclear Deal, of course.
But my bet is that Iran will stay in the deal with the Europeans, especially if they sweeten it. Of course, the Trump administration is now saying that they are going to start a trade war with any European country that stays in the deal. But I don’t really see that happening. I think the Europeans know that Trump is not long for political office (and maybe even life outside a cage). And Europe can hurt us just as badly as we can them.
The worst thing is that the deal completely falls apart.
If the Iran Deal Can’t Be Trusted How Could a North Korea Deal?
Of course, the bigger issue for us is that the US will show in the biggest way it ever has that it can’t be trusted. This is right before a negotiation with North Korea!
My prediction on this is that there will be a meeting, because it will make Kim Jong-un look like a major player in world politics (which he isn’t).
But there will be no deal. Why in the world would he make a deal with the US?
To begin with, I don’t think the Trump administration is capable of making a deal because their idea of a deal is that the US gets everything it wants and everyone else gets nothing.
At least when Stormy Daniels got f**ked by Trump, she got a decent amount of money. What is North Korea going to get? Since Trump is, in fact, a terrible negotiator, if a deal did manage to be made, it would be overwhelmingly in North Korea’s favor.[1]
The Iran Deal on the Domestic Front
It isn’t just the North Koreans and other countries who shouldn’t trust Trump and therefore the US.
What are struggling whites who voted for Trump getting from anything he’s done other than a sense that they are pissing off people like me? They are doing worse than ever. Trump cares about them like he does bubble gum stuck to his shoe.
Why Was Trump Elected Anyway?
I would like to think that this is just a dark period for the US. But that’s not it. The US has been a fading empire for decades. Trump is just a darker shade of black. It might get a bit better after he is gone. But not much.
The reason is that about 30 percent of Americans are rightly pissed off about things, but are mad at the wrong people; they support the very people (eg, Trump, the Republican Party) who have made their lives worse over the last 40 years.
Then about 20 percent of Americans are just idiots.
Electoral College
And finally: we don’t live in a democracy. In the US, 7 percent of presidents got less votes than the “loser.”
As CGP Grey has noted, “Would anyone tolerate a sport where, by a quirk of the rules, there was a 7 percent chance that the loser would win? Not likely!” Then why do you put up with it in the much more important issue of presidential politics?
I’ll tell you this: if it had been Democrats who won two recent elections while getting fewer votes, Republicans would demand a change.
And Democrats — being somewhat rational and having a sense of fair play — would go along with it. But since it is helping Republicans, they are against changing it. Although their voters were for changing it — right up to the point that Trump “won.” Then they flipped. The Republicans are no longer a political party; they are a cult — and I’m not just talking about Trump.
We Continue the Struggle, But I Fear It Is Hopeless
I’m sad and embarrassed by my country. “Take Back Our Country,” indeed! (Where did they get the idea that it was theirs and not ours?) Our country is being destroyed by the people who use that phrase.
[1] Here’s a little advice: if you are negotiating with someone who talks about what a great negotiator they are, all you need to do is flatter them and you will get an unimaginably good deal. Trump is the ultimate example of that. Remember: Trump would have far more money today if he had simply put his inheritance in an indexed mutual fund. This is what’s known as an opportunity cost. If you have money, it isn’t hard to make more. The question is whether you are making as much as you could elsewhere. Trump has been a huge failure economically, even though his cultists believe otherwise.
The Trump “administration” wants war with Iran, and they’re going to get it. What degree of war is up to us. As usual, no Americans besides a few malcontents like myself will give a piss about the horror inflicted on Iranians. But Americans might care about potential US casualties. We shall see. Best-case scenario, this results in some dick-wiggling airstrike that doesn’t kill anybody. Worst case, invasion, and Democrats in Congress vote to support it, as has historically been the case.
Iran seems to be one of those countries that we loathe purely because they pushed back on our interference. Like Cuba. You can’t tell the United States to go fuck itself, we’ll always carry a grudge. There’s a bitter, bitter joke from 2002: how do we know Saddam has chemical weapons (used against Iranians, among others)? Because we kept the receipts.
South Korea effectively harshed Trump’s vibe on war with the North through an excellent diplomatic effort. None of our putative allies in the Mideast are going to do the same. (Saudi and Israeli politicians are some real charmers, aren’t they?)
I’m beginning to think the discovery that oil can be burned for energy might be the single greatest disaster in the history of humankind. Thomas Paine used to hang out with Washington at Mount Vernon; there was a creek which had bubbling oil. The two of them would toss lit matches in the creek and watch it go “boom” (boys will be boys). That’s about as far as it should have ever gone.
Trump wants a nuclear Iran. Republicans like tin pot dictators and Islamic radicals with atomic bombs. Trump is just following the same strategy Bush did with North Korea. Abrogate a treaty and send a message. North Korea stopped getting its fuel, so now they have nuclear weapons. Iran lost its access to the outside world, so they’ll have nuclear weapons in five years. These things can be prevented, but Republicans WANT a nuclear armed world.
There are probably some who do want a nuclear-armed Iran. We still pour gazillions of dollars into a “missile defense” program that will never work. And it’s hard to keep up public paranoia about the same enemies for ever, so new ones are handy. There’s also the John Bolton types, who really believe war is some big game of Risk. We could conquer Iraq, then Iran, Syria, Lebanon, etc. They consider themselves great students of history and ignore the reason all empires fail; they’re hugely expensive and the benefits of conquest only go to a few.
A lot of this will depend on our media. You know Fox will hype every “Peoria could be vaporized tomorrow” story. The regular channels should know better, but their track record is not great. About the only show on cable calling the 2002 propaganda dishonest was “The Daily Show” — and old DS hands Oliver & Bee have already started countering this building march to war. And of course you & I can attend rallies in our respective hometowns, if it comes to that.
The thing is, Trump has already given the North Koreans what they’ve always wanted and no American president would give: one on one negotiations. The fact that Trump is getting praised for this is staggering. But I don’t think Iran is necessarily going to go nuclear. Thus far, they are sticking with the deal. If Trump manages to bully Europe into backing out, they’ll have nukes within a year. That’s well documented.
I’m so tired of the hypocrisy of this country. I could see the US being friends with Iran and against Saudi Arabia. The fact that it is the opposite (when it was, in effect, Saudi Arabia who attacked us on 9/11 — but for so many more reasons), it shows this is all about corporate power.
Tennis is an example of a sport where a player can win more points, but lose the match. As the linked article states, 7.5% of men’s tennis matches end that way. So yes, people tolerate and love such a sport.
Okay. Change the analogy (which wasn’t central to the article). “Would basketball fans put up with the game allowing the the team with the least points to win 7 percent of the time? I don’t think so.” (That’s CGP Grey’s phrasing, not mine.) But what we’re really talking about is democracy. Being a republic pushes against democracy, but for a good reason: it is extremely inefficient to have everyone vote on every post office name change. But our country pushes against democracy in other ways that make no sense. I live in California and I think it is absurd that Wyoming and Vermont have the same number of Senators that we have. The US was revolutionary when it was founded. But now we are stuck with a system of government that is 200 years out of date. It’s a problem. But it will never be fixed. The US will just see its empire continue to decline, economic inequality continue to rise, and eventually become the equivalent of a banana republic. I don’t particularly care, except that it might all end in a war. But I’ll almost certainly be dead by then, even though I still mourn the theoretical pain.