Chinese Chicken Salad

Posted on April 9, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 09, 2025

Today’s big news was that Trump backed down from his bullying bluff on tariffs. His supporters will spin the whole debacle as a brilliant negotiating tactic, but don’t be fooled. He backed down because our major trading partners, particularly China, made it clear that weren’t going to. Their reaction was believable because they had more invested in the game than Trump. Trump’s tariffs could have done irreparable damage to some of them, but Trump was simply playing a narcissistic game.

If you want to understand why Trump backed down, ignore the hype and really look at the issues. There’s some truth on both sides of the tariff argument, although leading economists from every major trading nation were nearly unanimous in condemning the heavy-handed bullying approach taken by Trump and his trade advisor, Peter Navarro, a no-compromise, toxic hard-liner who was one of Trump’s strongest defenders after the January 6th insurrection. His loyalty to Trump played out in court, where he refused to answer questions and did jail time for contempt.

Trump’s pet billionaire, Elon Musk, seemed to be giving cover to other Republican billionaires who supported Trump but were shocked and nervous about the magnitude of his tariffs, more so, at the belligerent way Trump treated our allies. Musk and Trump strongly disagree over trade and globalization. Open global trade made Musk the “richest man in the world,” and he wasn’t likely to bend to Trump.

Musk tried unsuccessfully to change Trump’s mind, but Navarro held sway over the president’s tariff policy. Musk, who seems immune to either criticism or public outrage, tweeted that Navarro “is truly a moron.” We can’t know what was said behind closed doors, but Musk’s opposition made Republican donors and House members holding seats in competitive districts feel safe breaking with Trump. Never underestimate the craven self-interest of an incumbent office-holder.

We disregard our tariff history at our peril. Trump claims the  whole world is ripping us off, but that’s a gross distortion of reality, like a parent telling their children that when they turn eighteen they’re on their own, and any child who expects to continue living under their roof has to pay their fair share. Like the tariff argument, that point of view has some merit, but it’s not reasonable to expect a kid graduating (or not) from high school to instantly transition from dependent to self-supporting adult.

After World War 2, our European Allies were devastated. They struggled to feed their people and their cities needed to be rebuilt. Americans were all on board when President Truman endorsed the Marshall Plan and the creation of the NATO alliance. We felt proud and virtuous taking on the role of savior. And our allies didn’t forget. For decades, America was revered all over the Free World.

It’s also true that our generosity was very much in our self interest. A strong Europe was good for everyone. What Trump calls a rip-off started as an incredible outflowing of good will to shore up our allies. The Soviet Union and China were powerful nations bent on expanding both their territory and their economies. In the 1960s, American economists and politicians believed that expanded trade and using tariffs as a necessity only in targeted situations, was the best way to both enrich everyone and avert nuclear war. The theory was that the more countries’ economic futures become inextricably tied together, the less incentive they have to destroy each other. That may well be why we’re all still alive.

The loss of our industrial base to China and other developing nations was an entirely different situation. The serpent in this story is Greed, and the apple is the promise of higher corporate profits. When Adam accepted the apple, he did so knowing he might bring the wrath of God down on his descendants, but human nature being what it is, our leaders went for the low-hanging fruit, pretending there would be no consequences. Cheap, virtually slave labor in China meant more goodies for us and huge profits for corporate stockholders.

We all sat idly watching our manufacturing capacity wither and die. We did it to ourselves. China repeatedly took advantage of our trade agreements and violated international norms on intellectual property, but Trump’s attempt to make China the villain ignores our own complicity.

I support ending our dependence on Chinese factories. I avoid buying anything made in China, and I support putting a tax on American companies that manufacture their products in China. Our history with tariffs proved that they simply don’t work when used as a blunt force economic weapon.

The stock markets’ sharp declines reflected investors’ beliefs that Trump and Xi Jinping are two leaders who will never back down unless they are compelled to, which risks plunging the world into a Depression and greatly increases the risk of nuclear war. Once that was clear, Trump had to back off to avoid a revolt within his own party.

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Tariffs, Bullying, and Intimidation

Posted on April 5, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 5, 2025

Serious presidents who believe their country’s policies need a major overhaul and care more about their constituents than their own delusions of grandeur surround themselves with the smartest people they can find. The surest sign that a president does not have the best interests of the country at heart is surrounding themselves with zealots and yes-people instead of experts with diverse points of view. Yet, that is exactly what Donald Trump has done. Two of the loudest voices in his White House, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Vice President J. D. Vance do not inspire confidence that the administration cares about anything but destroying things they hate.

Diversity has become a dirty word in Trump’s White House, even though every competent leader, whether a corporate CEO or president understands that facilitating a solution by considering every relevant point of view is the is the most likely route to success. The Wharton School of Business surely teaches that. But even the best business school in the country can’t change the impulses of a sociopathic narcissist.

Curing our nation’s economic woes with tariffs that are bashed daily by virtually every prominent economist and financial manager sounds suspiciously like drinking bleach to cure COVID. The main difference between those situations is that COVID presented what a majority of world health experts considered an existential threat. It was a real menace that demanded a real solution. Trump’s love affair with tariffs is more like inventing a problem to fit a solution.

We can be angry at Democrats for failing to be honest about President Biden’s mental state in 2024, but that should not color our view of the effectiveness of his fixes to our post-COVID economy. Biden handed the Trump administration the strongest economy in the world, one as strong as any America has seen since the Reagan administration. Its only major failing was the only thing Trump and his donors care about: it didn’t increase the income gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else.

In order for Trump’s ego to be satisfied, and that’s really the only thing that matters in this White House, he needs to posture himself as a knight on a white horse charging in to save the country from catastrophe. In fact, however, the only catastrophe facing America last Election Day was a dysfunctional Democratic Party that did everything wrong and conceded the election to the fantasy world of MAGA.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the world’s reaction to Trump’s tariff war, yesterday. That in itself was bizarre. Wouldn’t it be better for an economist or the Treasury Secretary to be out front defending a dangerously radical economic policy? He said the financial markets, which lost ten percent of their value in two days, weren’t really crashing. They were simply adjusting to Trump’s new reality. He suggested that that was a good thing, that in selling at rates not seen since the COVID lockdown, and before that since the market crash of 1987, business leaders and billionaire investors were demonstrating their ability to react quickly to changing circumstances. He then absurdly asserted that the stock markets accurately reflect the state of our economy.

Wow! Is that the best they can do? If Rubio was correct, a fifteen percent drop in the last week should scare the hell out of us. More to the point, Rubio doesn’t understand that markets aren’t about the current state of corporate health. The investors who drive markets are interested in future prospects. Stocks rise when corporate earnings are expected to increase, usually by double digit percentages. They fall when investors expect earnings and revenue to drop.

Trump’s mantra is that it’s all about making deals. If that were actually true, the idea of massive tariffs as an opening gambit would at least have some merit. But Trump made it clear, yesterday, that he has no intention of changing his policies, and that’s something we can take to the bank. He didn’t count on the rest of the world fighting back, and now that they have, Trump is uniquely unsuited to fix things. His extreme narcissism makes it nearly impossible for him to compromise, because he interprets anything that suggests backing away from a decision as a sign of weakness, and that will never fly with him.

The reality is that Trump has thrown the economy of the world into chaos, and he is probably the worst possible choice of a leader in those circumstances. All his instincts are about intimidation and playing chicken, and other world leaders understand that when dealing with an ignorant bully, the worst thing they can do is back down. Economists, therefore, are using the R word (recession.) How long before they dust off the D word?

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The Loyal Opposition

Posted on April 3, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 3, 2025

The phrase “loyal opposition” is normally used in describing parliamentary systems of government. It refers to parties not currently in power who oppose the policies of the ruling party or coalition, with two important understandings. The loyal opposition must seek common ground by negotiation, and is loyal to the country’s leader and its Constitution. In the context of present-day America, the loyalty referred to is not the blind loyalty that Donald Trump requires in his attempt to expand the power of the presidency. It’s what most of us naively thought was obvious until recently: that country and patriotism always come before politics and personal ambition.

Regardless of how naïve that notion may be, the preservation of democracy requires a loyal opposition. The alternative is what we saw in Europe when Fascists outlawed opposition parties, and today in places like China, Russia, and North Korea. China suppresses opposition by shooting people or locking them away in prison, Russia poisons them, and North Korea makes them disappear. Even Iran tolerates opposition in the form of political factions – not exactly democratic, but at least autocratic leaders don’t go unchallenged.

Is that why our most dangerous adversaries were spared in Trump’s trade war, which began in earnest, yesterday? Trump seems to believe that cozying up to dictators makes his quest to destroy the protections in our Constitution okay, since in his view, those leaders understand how essential strong leadership is.

Strong leadership is critical on both sides, but there’s a lot of space between autocrats and strong leaders who take their oath to support our Constitution literally. At a time when our democratic norms and traditions are under attack by Trump’s MAGA movement, it’s difficult to see how our system can survive without an equally strong leader organizing and speaking up for democracy. The most serious problem America faces today may be the lack of that leadership.

Without it, our only hope of surviving Trump-2 is the Supreme Court. I’m confident that in the end a majority of Justices will uphold the Constitution, but as expensive as eggs are, these days, we shouldn’t put them all in one basket. It’s appalling that among Democrats, centrist Republicans, and Independents, all of whom are horrified by Trump’s actions, not a single person has emerged to seize the mantle of  leadership of the opposition, despite the fact that the opposition are the majority of Americans.

In 1992, following twelve years of Republican presidencies, Democrats faced a similar leadership void. Out of the blue, a relatively unknown Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, rocketed to prominence and seized that role. Sixteen years later, after ruinous tax cuts and misguided wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, another leadership void was filled by another shooting star, Barack Obama. We’re waiting with baited breath for a new savior to arise, but scan the horizon in every direction, and you won’t find one.

If it were up to me, I’d follow Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. If Joe Biden was the perfect antidote to Trump in 2020, she could fill that role today. Smart, eloquent, somewhat, but not extremely left of center, and someone who understands our heartland, she’s perfect if she wants the job. But the only two people speaking out loudly against Trump are both extreme Progressives, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The loyal opposition needs a leader who can inspire a wide range of people.

Far too many people in Congress who disagree with Trump have chosen a different route. Rather than oppose MAGA and risk being primaried or having their families and careers threatened, they’re quietly scurrying like rats living in the walls, searching for some way to placate Trump so he doesn’t target them or their districts. But if the opposition continues to play the self-interest game, and the Court falters, we’re going to wake up one day soon and not recognize our country.

I can’t leave this subject without mentioning Cory Booker, the New Jersey Senator who delivered a 25-hours speech on the floor of the Senate, to demonstrate that one person has the power to freeze our government. Was Booker just reacting to his frustration or was he seriously offering himself as the leader of the opposition?  Perhaps Booker is trying to resurrect the Obama coalition that won the White House twice. I hope so, but even more important, I’m waiting to see who else emerges to inspire us to act.

Since the election, we’ve heard very little from the Clintons, Obamas, or Harrises. Their silence is deafening at a time when leadership is critically needed in America. If no one else emerges, I’d support Booker, but I fear he’s too much of a risk, given the things MAGA stands for.

This isn’t the first time we’ve faced a leadership crisis. When the country was reeling from Watergate and Vietnam, the rock group Chicago sang:

America needs you, Harry Truman
Harry, could you please come home?
Things are looking bad
I know you would be mad
To see what kind of men
Prevail upon the land you love

America’s wondering, “How we got here?”
Harry, all we get is lies
We’re getting safer cars
Rocket ships to Mars
From men who’d sell us out
To get themselves a piece of power

Was that a prescient reference to Trump and Elon Musk?

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Special Elections in Florida and Wisconsin

Posted on April 2, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 1, 2025

In yesterday’s three special elections, we saw the predictions James Carville made a few weeks ago begin to bear fruit. Carville expected support for Trump’s policies among Republicans and Independents to rapidly tank, and that that would throw fear into the hearts of those in contested districts in next year’s midterms.

In Florida, Republicans won the two House seats vacated by Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz, but those two districts were bright red to start with. Republicans vastly outnumber Democrats on the voter registration rolls in both, and Trump won them by 37% and 33%, respectively, last November.

Republicans won, yesterday, but the results reflected more voter disaffection with the Trump administration’s first ten weeks than support for them. In both Florida races, the Democratic candidate raised far more money than the Republican, and the Republican margins of victory were less than half of Trump’s, last November. In Florida’s 1st district, Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s former Chief Financial Officer should have breezed to victory in his Pensacola-based district, but his margin of victory was only 15%. That means 22%  percent fewer people voted for Patronis than Trump.

In Florida’s 6th district, Randy Fine, who was running to replace Waltz, Trump’s National Security Advisor, should also have breezed to victory if voters supported what Trump and Waltz have been doing. But when polls showed Fine in a tight race, only a massive, last-minute get-out-the-vote effort by Republicans allowed him to win by 14%, which was 19% less than Trump won by in November. What these two results tell us is pretty clear. Trump’s MAGA base stuck with him in these House races, but Independents and people who voted more against Harris and the Democrats than for Trump last year did not.

That does not bode well for Republicans in contested districts. Those Republicans generally won by smaller margins than Trump, last year, in an election Democrats lost more than Trump won. We’ve seen, ever since Trump crashed the Republican Party, that the first priority of the Republicans who hold those seats is being re-elected. They’ve been cowed into supporting Trump’s agenda by threats that Elon Musk will spend whatever it takes to primary them if they’re not sufficiently loyal. But they know that Trump’s base, while large, is not sufficient to carry elections by themselves. If they see voters angry and distressed by Trump’s words and actions, they won’t continue to support him.

In Wisconsin, where a seat on the State Supreme Court was on the ballot, a potentially far more important race was won by Democrats, despite the election being technically nonpartisan. This election should terrify MAGA Republicans. Wisconsin has been described as the most purple state in the country, yet, its House delegation contains five Republicans and two Democrats – a three seat edge for Speaker Mike Johnson. The reason for this is gerrymandering. Under former Governor Scott Walker, who presided over a Republican majority in the legislature, Wisconsin’s voting district map became one of the most egregiously biased in the country. With that gerrymandered map in place, Democrats received 61% of the vote, but won only 49% of the seats in the following statewide election. That map is also responsible for the 5-2 Republican majority in Wisconsin’s House seats.

Wisconsin’s gerrymandered districts have been challenged in the courts, and the case reached the Supreme Court, which has been extremely reluctant to overturn state legislatures’ maps. But Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion, which upheld the gerrymandered map, also reflected its unfairness, but it was impossible to accurately quantify. He suggested a better way to present the case.

That’s why yesterday’s victory by Judge Susan Crawford is so important. With Crawford on the State Supreme Court, a re-submitted challenge to the district map will receive a far more favorable response. In her victory speech, she promised to put fairness ahead of other considerations when she is on the bench. If Wisconsin’s voting districts more fairly represent the state’s population, the Democrats will gain at least one seat in the U. S House, and probably two. That should give Trump and Johnson sleepless nights as they see time running out to pass Trump’s radical agenda.

This is what Carville foresaw in his New York Times Op-Ed. In Carville’s view, voter dissatisfaction with Trump’s agenda among federal workers and veterans is likely to throw Virginia’s gubernatorial election next November to Democrats. That would surely stop Trump’s blitzkrieg attack on the Constitution in its tracks. Since Virginia’s present governor, Glenn Youngkind, is all in for Trump that should ice things for Republicans running in swing districts..

Another thing Crawford said last night may be even more telling. She said she never expected to be running against the world’s richest man. She proved that money can’t buy elections when voters can clearly see the country moving in a dangerous direction.

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Elon Musk’s Obsession with Mars

Posted on March 31, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 31, 2025

Elon Musk is a complicated individual. He’s a genius whose self-confidence knows no limit. He has bold ideas and an impressive record of accomplishments. He also suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, which he revealed when he hosted Saturday Night Live in 2021 in his opening monologue: “I reinvented electric cars, and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?”

In 2022, during an interview with Axios, Musk talked about how growing up with Asperger’s shaped him. He is aware that his inability to recognize social cues makes communication difficult for him, and people are often offended by his remarks or tweets. On the other hand, his disorder also enables him to focus with an obsessive intensity most of us cannot match, enabling him to do things like spend entire nights studying advanced physics, because he is determined to understand how the universe works.

To the rest of us, Musk is a guy who appears single-mindedly fixated on getting what he wants and who seems incapable of feeling empathy for other people. He is pragmatic in everything he does, and his autism enables him to take cold-blooded actions in ways most of us couldn’t. In his role as the driving force behind DOGE, a fake government agency created by Donald Trump as a fundamental challenge to the checks and balances in our Constitution, he appears completely insensitive to the collateral damage he causes. When thousands of people lose their jobs and millions lose access to critical services they depend on, Musk chalks it up as the cost of progress without batting an emotional eye.

When most of us act in a way that causes others pain, even when we feel justified, we still pay an emotional price. People like Musk and Donald Trump don’t. Lack of concern for other people is equally characteristic of Musk’s autism and Trump’s sociopathy. But while we know Trump is primarily driven by greed and lust for power, what drives Musk is complicated. And it’s important to acknowledge that autistic geniuses, even when they believe they act with good intentions are prone to committing colossal errors.

Musk seems to revel in wielding his chainsaw when he trashes government agencies. He’s clearly having fun, although we also have to remember that fun doesn’t mean the same thing to people with Asperger’s as it does to the rest of us, and assuming we know what’s in his mind is a mistake. He loves being characterized as “mercurial,” but that gives his image a playful aspect that’s patently false. There is nothing playful about Elon Musk. He is deadly serious about everything he does.

The question is, what is his real motivation? I do not believe Musk is evil, but that doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. He doesn’t think the way we do, which means his real intentions can be easily lost in translation. Despite all that, I  think Musk’s motivation is pretty clear, although his multi-tasking brain surely has more than one.

Many cosmologists and astrophysicists believe the long-term survival of humanity depends on finding another place to live. There’s a consensus in the scientific community that the possibility of a catastrophic astronomical event that could destroy life on Earth is more a matter of When than If. Such events are rare, but we know they have occurred in Earth’s past, and on an astronomical time scale, they appear inevitable.

Many scientists and visionaries like Musk believe that colonizing Mars is critical to assuring that humanity will not be wiped out the way the dinosaurs were. That’s a very real thing, not just a sci-fi story line, although it seems impossibly remote and unlikely to most people. And while many, myself included, share that belief, Musk has the singular ability to act on it.

Musk’s motivation, beyond accumulating wealth, is his belief that he will be humanity’s savior. He is not a Trump loyalist – he is every bit as transactional as Trump is, and he is using Trump’s dependence on financial support to take over NASA and redirect its focus away from anything that doesn’t support his goal to colonize Mars. To do that, he will have to monopolize NASA contracts worth billions of dollars. That will reinforce his status as the world’s richest man, but for Musk, that’s almost beside the point.

Musk couldn’t care less about government efficiency any more than Trump does. For Trump, dismantling government agencies is about killing things he despises. For Musk it may simply about believing he’s capable of saving humanity from destruction. He may destroy the lives of a lot of people in that quest, but he believes he’s doing the right thing.

Musk isn’t entirely wrong, but he cannot be allowed to enable Donald Trump’s efforts to transform our government and undermine the Constitution, even if he believes he’s responding to a higher calling.

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Trump’s Economy in Crisis

Posted on March 29, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 29, 2025

If we look at the facts and avoid partisan spin, it’s clear that the Biden administration did the heavy lifting required to restore our economy to its pre-COVID vigor. The runaway inflation that began in late 2021 was forecast quite accurately during the COVID lockdown. Farmers talked about having to destroy crops and herds of cattle and hogs, which would have to be rebuilt. The incredibly low food prices during 2020 resulted from agricultural products being dumped on the market.

Manufacturers warned of severe supply chain disruptions which would adversely affect production and raise prices, and because so many businesses failed during the lockdown, unemployment began to spike. The University of Michigan’s Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) had reached 96 in 2019, but COVID caused it to drop to 81.6 in 2020, 77.6 in 2021, and 59.0 in 2022. All this is well-documented.

With Republicans determined to prevent him from accomplishing anything, Biden and the Congress had to enact partisan legislation. The inflation rate was reduced to pre-COVID levels, and unemployment dropped to the lowest value since Ronald Reagan was president. By Election Day, 2024, financial markets were at all-time highs, and the CCI was in the 70s. But Trump and the MAGA spin machine kept sayng our economy was failing and countless bad actors on the internet, including Russian and Chinese bots, reinforced that message. Millions of voters believed the lies and elected Trump, who promised to “fix” the economy and make life better for his supporters.

During his first term, Trump touted booming financial markets as a sign that his economic policies were working. In doing so, he showed a basic lack of understanding of the economy. When he took office amid a raging bull market with the best CCI since COVID, he claimed the robust economy he’d said was failing was due to his efforts. To some extent, he was correct, but the reason says more about his ignorance than anything he accomplished.

Neither the CCI nor the financial indexes measure the strength of the economy. They both reflect what people hope the future will look like. CCI surveys ask consumers how they feel about the future based on their personal circumstances. Financial markets reflect how large corporations, wealthy investors, and conservative managers of retirement funds see the future. In December, with voters having spoken and no one attacking the Capitol, investors projected what a future in which Trump kept his promises and understood what drives our economy might look like. Both the CCI and the markets spiked upward.

But Trump’s Cabinet nominations made it clear that his administration would be a road test of Project 2025, which advocated a “hard restart” of our government. As one pundit pointed out, that’s a sci-fi reference to rebooting a starship’s engine, knowing everything might simply blow up, and it’s a perfect analogy for what the MAGA people are doing. Voters began realizing Trump’s claims that he had nothing to do with Project 2025 were lies, and he intended to do everything he said he would during the campaign: make a show of rounding up and deporting undocumented immigrants, re-start a trade war with punishing tariffs, destroy the Deep State, by which he meant the structure of the federal government, and take down everyone who had ever opposed him.

Then Elon Musk started using his chainsaw to eviscerate the government with no logic or plan, and hundreds of thousands of government employees, nearly half of whom were veterans, were targeted without cause. Trump disregarded the checks and balances in our Constitution and ignored Congress. He threatened judges who ruled against his illegal actions, and tried to control what universities teach. Overall, he demonstrated that his primary goal in reducing the size of government was killing agencies he hated: those that protect consumers and the environment, FEMA, and Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, which take money from billionaires and give it to freeloaders.

Most economists warned Trump’s policies would lead to more inflation and higher interest rates, and likely cause a recession. When that started getting through to voters, especially Trump voters, his approval rating began plummeting, and the CCI and financial indexes crashed. Trump’s Executive Orders were being reversed or delayed by the courts, and he was verbally assaulting federal judges and threatening to have them impeached (which he does not have the power to do.) The unsecured group war chat over our attack on Yemen enraged active duty troops, especially fighter pilots who felt exposed and compromised, and in nine weeks, Trump is already in crisis with his base.

Trump may have misunderstood how the economy works in 2016, but he understands that yesterday’s market crash and the announcement that the CCI dropped to 57 spell jeopardy for his plans to become a dictator. He pulled the nomination of Elise Stefanik as UN Ambassador, because he desperately needs her vote in Congress, and if the special election to replace her were won by a Democrat, his effectiveness would be ended.

Politicians who fail to heed Jim Carville’s warnings usually wish they had.

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Take a Step Back and Enjoy the View

Posted on March 28, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 28, 2025

Whenever the Weather Channel covers a massive hurricane, I’m fascinated by the different ways they present It. Their bread and butter is sending people in waterproof bodysuits out into the storm. Viewers love chaotic scenes of meteorologists with microphones being blown around by 100 mph-plus wind gusts and ducking flying debris. Viewers also love high-tech color-coded maps accompanied by phrases like “bomb cyclones,” “occluded fronts,” and “temperature inversions.” For me, however, the most impressive shots are satellite photos that show a mass of roiling energy that resembles a giant behemoth in a horror film encompassing half of North America.

It’s all about perspective. We can get lost in the fog of war, drown in never-ending analyses and predictions, or we can be awestruck by the massive power of nature. All three aspects are valuable, but we often let ourselves be overwhelmed by details or hang on the words of experts eager to explain what’s happening instead of taking a step back and looking at the whole picture for ourselves.

The storm I’m thinking about today is the torrent of Executive Orders and DOGE-inspired mayhem of chopping up government agencies – before anyone shouts “exaggeration,” remember that their self-selected symbol is a chain saw. We see the chaos and confusion that are the intended results of the Trump administration’s strategy every day, although more and more people seem to be tuning out. This weekend, millions of us are directing our attention to March Madness or the opening of the baseball season to preserve the illusion that life goes on as usual. Imagine the damage Trump and Elon Musk may have done by Monday while none of us was looking.

My favorite historian, Heather Cox Richardson, whose career focused on the Republican Party and its founding principles, took that step back for us today. Richardson understands that focusing only on specifics like the horrific security breach around our attack on Yemen or the dismantling of the Department of Education is like watching a battle scene in a war movie. Lots of noise, destruction, and personal tragedy but no context. She also understands that the fabric that holds all this madness together is Project 2025, whose principal author, Russell Vought, is now Donald Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought’s position arguably makes him the most powerful person in government, because it controls how funding authorized by Congress is disseminated or held hostage.

It’s obvious that Project 2025 is Trump’s blueprint for the future of America, although he repeatedly lied about having no knowledge of it. He still doesn’t acknowledge it, despite the fact that almost every action he has taken in the nine weeks he’s been president comes directly from that thousand-page manifesto, and much of his support team were involved in writing it. Richardson makes that clear in simple terms, just as the satellite view of a massive storm gives us a better understanding of its power and extent, but her words took on greater significance when I read Hilary Clinton’s Op-Ed in today’s New York Times.

Clinton, appropriately, focused not only on the cynical nature of the Trump administration’s actions, but how stupid they are in terms of the objectives Trump campaigned on. Clinton pointed out what many others have: that Trump’s actions in cutting government services are hurting his voting base more than the rest of us; that his trade war is likely to seriously damage our economy; and that firing talented generals and ignoring security rules greatly weaken our military. Clinton concluded that those actions are dumb. Richardson had a different view.

She pointed out that if, in fact, Trump’s intention is to cut waste from government, strengthen our military, and improve the lives of his devoted base, most of the things he’s done, including the majority of his Executive Actions, make no sense. But what if his real intention is to destroy the power of the federal government because in his delusional universe, it’s controlled by the mythical Deep State?

She makes a strong case for this, and it’s an easy one to make. The perspective her satellite view shows us is that the apparatus of our government is not being improved or made more efficient – it’s being dismantled with no plan for which governmental services will continue or how the ones that don’t will be replaced. Or, more importantly, how the millions of people (non of whom are Trump’s billionaire donors) who are seriously hurt because of Trump’s actions will survive.

Her most convincing argument centers around Curtiss Yarvin, a reactionary intellectual who was heavily involved in Project 2025. She quotes extensively from Yarvin’s speeches and writings from 2021, which lay out how to replace a democratic government with an autocracy. In the context of today, Yarvin’s words read like a crystal ball predicting Trump’s agenda. I urge everyone to read Richadson’s Letters From an American newsletter on Substack to see for yourself. It’s free, no account necessary.

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Conflicted Loyalties

Posted on March 27, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 27, 2025

Suppose one of our vital allies – maybe the UK, Germany, Australia, Mexico or Canada – suddenly went rogue. After decades of cooperation and a shared sense of purpose, they suddenly switched gears and began flirting with our enemies. Their leaders began referring to us in insulting, derogatory rants, making it sound as if nearly a century of common purpose was really just transactional, a Ponzi scheme to rip them off, until someone else offered them a better deal.

To make matters worse, our hypothetical ally adopted economic theories that have been shown to be unworkable, either for their own population or the stability of international trade and its consequent effects on inflation and complex supply chains. In addition, their new populist leaders were pushing their country toward oligarchic, religion-based Fascism that was tearing our once valuable ally into warring factions that threatened their viability as a dependable nation, especially if they possessed nuclear weapons. Unlikely as that seems, bad economic policies and internal chaos caused the Soviet Union to implode in 1991, reminding us that large, powerful countries remain so only until they’re not anymore.

In recent years, we’ve seen similar trends in NATO allies Hungary and Turkey. That was disturbing, but while both nations were of strategic importance in defending NATO countries against Russian aggression and radical Islamic terrorism, they were neither major trading partners nor large stakeholders in our domestic economy, so most Americans didn’t feel particularly affected or threatened by what they did.

But suppose they did. Suppose our rogue ally was heavily invested in American assets, and was a country we depended on for scarce resources or military support. If we saw our own economy or general well-being threatened, what would we do? Our government would attempt to use all its diplomatic assets to resolve growing conflicts and avert future ones. But what if there was no one listening at the other end of the phone? What if, despite warnings and hand-wringing, as when the UK decided to break from the European Union, our entreaties fell on deaf ears?

It’s not clear how we would react. The only thing that’s certain is that months or years of chaos would ensue which would threaten the security of individual nations as well as increasing the prospect of major military conflicts. Regardless of what our government did, we’d have our own personal reactions. Remember after nine-eleven when Americans directed their anger at every Muslim country and wound up supporting a twenty-year war with the wrong enemies? As individuals, we’d all be rooting for a revolution like the recent overthrow of Assad’s government in Syria, and our intelligence services would likely be working covertly to support that end.

Those are the thoughts that trouble me when I imagine what our former allies think about Project 2025, which is blindly driving the Trump administration in an uncertain, dangerous game of chicken with the entire world that looks very much like the tantrum of an angry child with a loaded gun. It’s also clear, from Donald Trump’s history and the fact that he filled his cabinet with unqualified  amateurs who have no respect for diplomatic norms and procedures, that they are being herded along a path most of them, includig Trump, do not understand. It’s the natural evolution of a nation that allowed political rhetoric and an unregulated, hack-vulnerable internet to destroy the meaning of truth and facts.

Unlike the hypothetical scenario I presented, our closest allies are looking at the possible dissolution of a coalition they’ve depended on and rebuilt their post-WW2 economies around. They don’t see the possible loss of a valuable ally; they see the toughest kid on the block who used to be their friend suddenly turn hostile. As a patriotic American, this appalls and terrifies me. I find myself wishing for what the rest of Europe and North America are wishing for, not a coup or revolution, but responsible opposition that can stop Project 2025 in its tracks.

Unfortunately, the opposition to Trump’s policies has no leadership, and I find myself greatly conflicted. In truth, I’m hoping for the Trump administration to fail miserably and quickly before it can inflict further irreversible damage. That I feel that way shocks me, but when I see reckless, irresponsible, dangerous behavior on the part of leaders who are drowning in waters they’ve never swum in before, I find the interests of Americans far more aligned with those of our horrified allies than the Trump administration’s.

I expect that more than half of America is experiencing a similar conflict. When the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate cannot agree on whether to pass a budget resolution, when we have to choose between shutting down our government and giving Trump a blank check to destroy whatever personally offends him, our country is in serious trouble. No wonder I feel conflicted.

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O Canada

Posted on March 18, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 18, 2025

To Americans like me who have always loved Canada and considered our Canadian neighbors our best friends in the world, the actions of the second Trump administration are especially damning. Imagine that one day you found out your best friend since childhood was publicly bad-mouthing you, calling you a leech and a parasite who steals from you. Imagine they’ve been making up outrageous lies about you like knowingly allowing Fentanyl to be smuggled into your neighborhood, and they even questioned your right to exist as an independent entity.

I admit I’m biased. I have twenty-two aunts and uncles, and from the time I was a young child, my favorite uncle, who was always nice to me even when I was a pain in everyone’s rear end, was from Alberta. In 1965, he bought one of the first Ford Mustangs, and of all things, he gave it to me for a month and let me drive it from New York to Ithaca and keep it at Cornell while I finished my Masters Degree – who does things like that? He didn’t have to, but when my father and millions of other American men were drafted to fight in World War 2, my uncle enlisted in the U. S. Army and fought alongside Americans. (I learned, many years later, that he was actually born in Brooklyn and moved to Canada as a toddler, but he was still my Canadian uncle.)

He was only one man, but I’ve known many Canadians, and they’ve always lived up to their reputation of being “just like us only nicer.” It infuriates me that Trump is treating Canada the way he is. He even threatened to destroy their automobile industry after decades in which Canada and Mexico have partnered with American car companies to create efficient, affordable vehicles, we couldn’t have made alone. Our interests don’t always align perfectly – sometimes we’re competitors. Have you ever known a family in which siblings never bicker or disagree?

According to Trump’s (and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s) policies, Canadians are no different from our thieving allies in Europe. When we forget who our real friends are we diminish them and ourselves.

Canadians own roughly 500,000 homes in Florida. They pay several billion dollars in real estate taxes and patronize stores, restaurants, and amusements. For years they have been a consistent source of demand in the real estate market, helping Floridians maintain the value of their homes. They make up a significant portion of the snowbirds who spend every winter in Florida, fitting seamlessly into our population.

In the last few years, however, severe hurricanes and high inflation have greatly increased the cost of having a second home in Florida. Insurance rates have skyrocketed, and Homeowners Association fees and special assessments resulting from Florida’s new structural integrity laws are doing the same. This hits all of us, but it hits Canadians harder. The average household income in the northeast and middle Atlantic regions of the United States, where most American snowbirds live, is about $86,000 US dollars. For Ontario and Quebec, where most Canadian snowbirds live, the comparable numbers in US dollars are $68,700 and $52,440. In addition, the exchange rate between American and Canadian dollars is US$0.69 = CA$1.00. As a result, many Canadians have been finding it too expensive to own and maintain properties in Florida. The news media are full of comments by Florida realtors who see an accelerating trend of Canadians selling out.

This began well before Trump took office, but the White House’s policies toward Canada seem to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. The administration has proposed new rules and restrictions on Canadians crossing the border, particularly for those who plan to stay more than thirty days. Moreover, Trump’s on again/off again trade policies make the future extremely uncertain for Canadians. The result is that more and more of our northern neighbors are divesting their Florida properties.

You don’t have to be an economist to see that dumping thousands of properties into an already tight real estate market could have a devastating effect on home prices all over Florida. It’s another clear example of what happens when zealots take a chain saw to our economy. I wonder how Governor Ron DeSantis feels about what Trump is doing to property values in his state.

I see Canadian friends who have wintered in Florida, propping up its economy for decades, finally deciding that Canada’s relationship with the United States is too uncertain to risk their investments. I’ve approached a number of them to participate in a Focus Group with me. I intend to interview them regularly and listen to their views on Trump and United States policy toward Canada, and I will publish everything they tell me in future articles.

Stay tuned. It should be very interesting.

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Gangsters, Dictators, and Presidents.

Posted on March 16, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 16, 2025

When Jimmy Carter was president, things didn’t go very well. The cost of Vietnam and the sharp increase in energy prices left over from the Arab Oil Embargo had led to record high inflation and interest rates, and when our puppet dictator, the Shah of Iran was overthrown by the Ayatollahs, our embassy in Tehran was ransacked and taken hostage. Our government was in terrible disarray. America’s love affair with the Godfather movies had people suggesting that we ought to let the Mafia run the government.

It was an interesting hypothesis. According to a recent research study published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, gangsters, specifically Mafia bosses, consistently display the same sets of traits: “self-centeredness, [a] sense of grandiosity, incapability of feeling remorse, empathy or compassion towards others as well as emotional coldness and parasitic behavior. These traits result in their violating the law and social norms and undermining society structures.” Is that who we want governing us?

The American Psychiatry Association defines the traits associated with people who suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, a serious mental illness, as:

  • A grandiose sense of self-importance.
  • Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
  • Belief that they are “special” and can only be understood by other special or high-status people.
  • Need for excessive admiration.
  • A sense of entitlement (i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment).
  • Taking advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends.
  • Lack empathy, unwillingness to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.
  • Envy of others or belief that others are envious of them.
  • Arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

When I noticed that the personality traits of Mafia bosses are nearly identical to those of extreme narcissists, I thought it was interesting if not terribly surprising. When I looked further, into the characteristics of autocratic leaders, a light of epiphany went on. Many scholarly sources discuss such traits. One describes them as:

  • Making decisions without input from others
  • Not listening to different points of view
  • Not being open to change
  • Being inflexible
  • Having a “my way or the highway” approach
  • Expecting others to follow without question
  • Having a very rigid, structured approach

The same source acknowledges that some situations, like wars, economic depressions, and natural disasters can benefit from autocratic leadership. An autocrat with good intentions can produce rapid results and operate efficiently. But autocratic leadership also contains the seeds of its own destruction. A leader whose values and ideals are inconsistent with democracy or concern for the common good will produce catastrophic outcomes like abuse of power, poor decision-making, and suppression of dissent. Autocratic leadership  also causes subordinates and group members to feel unmotivated and uninvolved due to nepotism, favoritism, intimidation, and iron-fisted control.

Do you see what I saw? I’ve listed the traits typically associated with Mafia bosses, people who suffer from extreme narcissism, and dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. When I look at them in combination, I see a frightening portrait of Donald Trump.

If you voted for him thinking he was going to reduce your taxes, reverse inflation, and make it easier to raise your family, think again. He only cares about any of those things when he’s trying to buy your vote with false promises. If you’ve been ripped by Elon Musk’s chainsaw, you already know this. If you’re a veteran who is underserved or unemployed because of this president’s callous disregard, you understand what more than half the country knew all along.

Trump only cares about the nation’s economy because if it crashes, so do his wealth and power. He claims to care about the Ukrainian and Russian soldiers who are dying every day, but he doesn’t recognize that killing USAID is resulting in the deaths of countless innocent children in third world countries. He claims to care about antisemitism, but he’s really only interested in the money Jewish billionaires contribute to him. He has no ethics, no moral center, no sympathy or empathy for anyone but himself. Many of his supporters say that’s all right because they love his policies, but except for tax cuts, xenophobia, and arbitrarily slashing agencies he disapproves of, no one has articulated what those policies are.

People who voted for him are realizing they’ve been scammed. Farmers, factory workers, government employees, and all the people likely to lose their jobs when Trump’s tariffs force American companies to reduce their costs will soon see how little he cares about them.

Our president is an insensitive narcissist with the mentality of a gangster. Rationalizing his hateful, vengeful behavior and disregard for anyone who doesn’t help enrich him can only make things worse. That’s why Republicans in the House of Representatives have been told by Leader Mike Johnson to stop holding Town Halls. Communicating with constituents can’t be much fun for House members once voters figure out that they’re complicit with the madman in charge.

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