The New Regime's Zero for Two

I've been more than a little grouchy this week.  I think it has to do with the regime that is currently infesting the U.S. Government (on account of which I have been avoiding reading the news, lest I read something that might make my grouchiness worse).  But today I read something that put a long-absent smile on my face.  What I read also confirmed certain hunches that I've been harboring concerning the short-term future of the relationship of the United States to the rest of the world.

The first thing I read is that Trump seems for now to have lost his bid to ban refugees from seven Muslim countries from entering the United States.  It's more than a little amusing to see him belch forth his frustration over that loss.  (May he choke on it.)  In covering this story, several journalists have also shed light on the incoherent character of Trump's administration to date.  (I mean incoherent as in, a bunch of psychotic people who forgot to take their meds.)  I think it's safe to say that what normal people would correctly regard as a teaching moment will be utterly lost on Trump and the regime he represents.

Which leads me to the second thing I read, namely, that on at least two key foreign policy issues, Trump has been forced back into compliance with treaties and diplomatic approaches adopted by earlier U.S. presidents - namely, the treaty between the United States and Iran negotiated under President Barack Obama, and the "one-China policy" negotiated between the United States and China under President Richard Nixon.  This happened after Trump's bombastic promises to bully China and Iran by American military force.  I think what has happened is that Mr. Trump has been forced to realize the following:

1. America is in no position to carry through on its threats to bully China or Iran - militarily or otherwise.
2. Should Trump actually try to follow through on his threats, he will find that Iran and China can inflict catastrophic losses on any American forces that attack them.  Even Iran is in fact unconquerable.
3. Threats against China may well cause that nation to administer a righteous thrashing to the U.S., a thrashing that need not require the firing of even a single physical weapon.  For China is one of the world's three biggest creditor nations, and the United States is China's biggest debtor.  Although Japan holds more U.S. debt than China, a trade war (or any other kind of war) with China could still yield disastrous consequences for the U.S.  Can anyone say "currency crash"?

I think the future of American domestic and foreign policy therefore lies in another direction.  Trump has been set up as a convenient point person to lead his regime in that direction, as well as being set up as a convenient scapegoat to be blamed when that direction turns out to lead to disaster.  So it is important to recognize that the current deranged direction of the United States is not the fault of Trump alone, but rather, in the words of Professor Dennis Etler (cited in the link in the third paragraph of this post), "It should be clear to one and all that Trump is not a free agent. He is, in reality, a front man for a faction within the US deep state and ruling elite that wants to impose an extreme right-wing agenda domestically and a balance of power regime geopolitically. This is seen by his handlers as the only way to maintain US imperialist rule both at home and abroad..."  (One note on the quote from Etler: In addition to the so-called American "deep state," we must not ignore the role played by the global far right and especially by Russian President Vladimir Putin in helping to install Trump in power.)

Therefore, having threatened both China and Iran, and having been told unequivocally by both of these nations to quit that mess, he and the regime he represents will search for easier prey to terrorize.  This is why I think that despite his recent legal loss regarding his travel ban, he will most definitely try again to impose such a ban.  It is also why I think he is serious about renegotiating NAFTA - because he thinks that by doing so, he can terrorize Mexico.  However, what he has succeeded in doing is to motivate Mexico and China to forge deeper trade ties, while threatening revenues of American farmers.  (By the way, his abortive travel ban cost U.S. airlines $185 million while it lasted.)

In other words, the actions of the current regime in charge of the U.S. are causing nations far and near to begin in earnest the process of "going No Contact" with the U.S.  You see, No Contact can be done even when it is employed against a national government.  And it imposes costs.  Those who supported Trump as some sort of "anti-globalist" were disingenuous in not discussing those costs, as they were also dishonest in their reasons for hating globalism.  What they would have liked is the sort of situation which British Prime Minister Theresa May is trying to negotiate in the aftermath of the Brexit - namely, a situation in which a nation that has exhausted its own resource base, and therefore its ability to earn things by manufacturing, is able by gunboat diplomacy or by providing "financial services" to continue receiving something for nothing from other nations while excluding the citizens of other nations from entering its borders.  What such people will find is that they cannot create such a situation - either in Britain or in the United States.

As for those of us who live in the U.S. and who are potential or actual targets of oppression due to skin color, language, religion or national origin, we too can go No Contact with an oppressive regime.  In fact, going No Contact is the necessary first step in a campaign of nonviolent resistance whose purpose is to impose the kinds of costs that bring down a dictatorship.  In future posts I will have more to say on this process, as well as the factors which led to economic globalism as it now exists.

A Thinking Cap for Resisters

In the wake of Donald Trump's ill-gotten capture of the Presidency, it has been mildly interesting to see mainstream television entertainers pleading with Americans to give Donald a chance.  I guess it's only fitting that among his flying monkeys should be people who make a living by acting silly or by pretending to be what they are not.  The Donald fits right in with them, as the former star of a cheesy "reality" TV series.  Those who study dysfunctional family dynamics will also recognize the parallels between the people begging us to give the Donald a chance and those members of dysfunctional families who cover and make excuses for those members of their own families who are the actual cause of family dysfunction. 

The problem is that ever since it was announced that the Donald "won" the Electoral College (with only 25 percent of all people in America of voting age supporting him!), he has had chance after chance to show that he is capable of sane, moral, just and fair leadership.  And every day he has failed the test in one way or another.  Asking the majority of people of voting age in this country to give him a chance sounds a bit like a violent and/or substance-abusing husband asking his wife to give him another chance even when there is no evidence that the husband has begun to do the hard work of repentance.  Those of us who are being asked to "give him a chance" are therefore being asked to ignore the lessons of pattern recognition, to ignore the data points supplied by the trajectory of Donald's life from way back in the day up to the present, to expect that a man who has enthusiastically pursued a course of selfishness and petty evil and has shown no sign of changing his course will suddenly be a different person tomorrow.

Those of us who have to live in this country under a Trump presidency would do well to avoid having any hopeful illusions about him.  I think it would be reasonable to assume that the Donald will try to do just about everything he threatened to do during his campaign.  (The leaders of some of the countries which the Donald threatened during his campaign are assuming that very thing, and have begun to issue warnings that if the new administration revokes certain treaties and agreements, or re-imposes certain sanctions, there will be consequences.)  I think it is also reasonable to assume that many of the more objectionable types who have latched onto Trump and to whom he pandered during his campaign are an accurate reflection of his character.  This means that a large number of us will be targeted for suffering, repression, denial of equal protection, false imprisonment, economic discrimination and threat of physical violence by these types.

Therefore, it will be necessary for us to resist.  Resistance, moreover, is not optional.  If we don't resist, we will suffer for sure.  If we do resist, we may still suffer - but we might also win.

Moreover, the resistance must be nonviolent.  There are ethical and moral reasons for this, especially for those of us who are Christians.  (No, this is not the time for so-called "Christian patriots" to bust out their hardware and their ammo.  If you're in that crowd, grab a clue from Luke 3:14.  By the way, the translation I quoted renders this verse exactly as it is written in the Greek, so don't try to weasel out of it.)

But there are also very pragmatic reasons why the resistance must be entirely nonviolent.  A number of those reasons have been captured in the work of Maria J. Stephan of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and by and Erica Chenoweth of Wesleyan University.  In a 2008 paper titled, "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict," Chenoweth and Stephan examined a large number of nonviolent resistance efforts which took place over the last hundred years or so, and discovered the shocking fact that nonviolent resistance movements had a success rate of over 50 percent.  Violent resistance movements, on the other hand, had a success rate of only 26 percent.  In addition, societies which experienced successful nonviolent resistance tended to be much more stable and peaceful afterward than those societies which experienced violent revolution or civil war.  Chenoweth and Stephan have expanded their findings and published them in a book, and there are other researchers who have confirmed their findings as well.

The goal of nonviolent resistance is not necessarily to persuade an oppressive, powerful and violent opponent to "listen to its better angels."  After all, it may not have any "better angels!"  Rather, the goal is to deprive the opponent of its ability to continue its oppression by removing the sources of power of that oppression.

As for the strategy and tactics of nonviolent resistance, there are a number of sources.  (See this and this, for instance.)  One source I have been enjoying over the last few days is How Nonviolent Struggle Works, by Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institution.  How Nonviolent Struggle Works is a short, easy-to-read condensation of a much longer book by Mr. Sharp, who has written several lengthy books on the subject.  If you see yourself as a resister in these days, and you're wondering what to do, Mr. Sharp's short book would be a good place to start.

Bem Vindo, Brasil

This post will be short.  I am a bit stressed right now, having a computer programming assignment and a couple of reports I have to finish for school.  I am a lousy programmer.

But I recently checked my blog, and found that I had gotten a lot of traffic from Brazil.  To those of my readers who live there, I extend a hearty welcome.  Your country seems to be going through interesting times just now.  I know that Brazil, in collaboration with other countries, has been seeking to move away from the use of the American dollar in international trade.  (See this also.)  And I know that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is under intense political attack just now.  A coincidence?  (Hardly, I think.)  I wonder who is funding and orchestrating the attacks.  I also think that it would be premature to write Ms. Rousseff off as a casualty.

The nasty thing about an empire trying to overthrow foreign governments in order to protect its hegemony is that every time the empire tries such tricks, the foreign governments learn lessons from the experience, which they apply in defending themselves from being eaten by the empire.  Learning and applying those lessons to future overthrow attempts makes it harder for the empire to prevail in future attempts.  It's like going into the ring against a bully who knows only a few tricks and who repeats them over and over.  If the bully targets you, and if you have learned lessons from studying his past fights, you can befuddle him by thinking outside his box.  (One application of lessons learned is that American NGO's - including religious and missionary organizations - are being kicked out of an increasing number of countries.)

So stand strong, Brazil!  Don't let the United States eat you for lunch.  One thing the U.S. cannot do this time around is foment a "democratic resistance" in Brazil in an attempt to legitimize a government that is the thuggish tool of rich people, as they tried to do in Syria and the Ukraine.  Most Brazilians simply won't tolerate that sort of thing.