Tag: cowardice
The Cowardice Of Conservative And Business Elites Led Straight To This Disaster

The Cowardice Of Conservative And Business Elites Led Straight To This Disaster

A Wall Street Journal editorial described President Donald Trump's tariffs as the "dumbest trade war in history." It's important not to overrate intelligence, even in leaders. Judgment and maturity may be more crucial. But Trump is no ordinary dunce. He displays a stubborn stupidity that threatens to plunge the world into chaos and potentially into depression.

It should go without saying that our constitutional system was never meant to be so vulnerable to the whims and fantasies of one man. Nothing as critical as the entire world trading system or the maintenance of the NATO alliance should be decided by which side of the bed the emperor woke up on today, but due to the cowardice and cupidity of the GOP and others, we've gradually lost our antibodies to strongman rule and find ourselves bowing before a power-drunk man/child.

His peculiar blind spots and obsessions now threaten everyone. All of those supposedly worldly-wise Wall Street types who either supported or did not oppose Trump's return to power deserve some of the blame today. One thinks of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who has a long history opposing tariffs but was becalmed to the point where he told a Davos audience in January that tariffs are a good "economic weapon" and that critics should "get over it."

This kind of insouciance in the face of a severe economic threat is breathtaking. Even if Wall Street executives and others who chose to believe that Trump was preferable to Kamala Harris were indifferent to the civil liberties implications of a Trump second term and uninterested in public health and the administration of justice, you'd think they'd be interested in their own bottom lines. You would think they might have noticed that one of Trump's only long-term convictions was that America had been victimized by world trade and that tariffs would solve all of our problems.

Trump has an obsession with trade. He always has, and his views are wrong historically, economically and even morally. At his Rose Garden declaration of "Liberation Day" he repeated his oft-stated view that the U.S. has been "looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far" for 50 years and more. Long-term trade deficits, he declared, are a "national emergency" that "threaten our way of life."

In vain did a procession of first-term advisers attempt to disabuse Trump of his absurd views about trade. They patiently explained that it is Americans, not foreigners, who pay tariffs. He was deaf to this. They noted that trade deficits are not a measure of wealth, far less who is "winning" or "losing." If we buy coffee from Costa Rica and they buy nothing from us (which isn't true, but just as an illustration), in no sense has Costa Rica taken advantage of, far less "raped," America. We gave them dollars and they gave us coffee in return.

That is called commerce, and nearly every exchange between a willing buyer and willing seller yields two winners, not one. Besides, as those first-term Trump advisers also tried to convey, those Costa Rican businessmen then take those dollars and buy American assets.

The global trading system the United States shepherded into existence in the post-World War II era has been a boon to people around the globe, and no one has benefitted more than the people of the United States. We've run trade deficits with many nations for many reasons. Sometimes that's a reflection of savings versus investment rates in other countries (think Germany). Sometimes it's a reflection of relative wealth (Vietnamese consumers can't afford to purchase as many American products as Americans can afford to purchase of Vietnamese products).

But in any case, it doesn't really matter because countries that run big trade deficits can be super wealthy. The United States has run trade deficits since the late 1970s and has also been the richest nation on the globe during those years. In fact, even during Trump's first term, which he has widely proclaimed to have been the greatest economy in the history of the universe, we ran consistent trade deficits. In fact, the trade deficit increased during the first Trump administration from $481 billion in 2016 to $679 billion in 2020.

In a saner world, Trump's delusions would not guide U.S. policy. They'd be checked by his own advisers, the Congress and the public. But here we are.

This is not the first time in history that a leader's misconceptions have been implemented on a broad scale, but you have to reach into the history of dictatorial regimes to find parallels. In the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the ideas of agronomist Trofim Lysenko gained acceptance not because they were true but because Stalin wanted them to be true. Lysenko promised a new golden age with dramatically improved crop yields that would transform even Siberia into a paradise of orchards and gardens. This was touted by Stalin as the "new biology" and ruthlessly enforced. Naysayers were arrested and executed. The result was repeated famines in the USSR and in China, where Mao also embraced the fallacy. Millions of men, women and children starved to death because a leader was able to impose his fantasies on a whole society.

Global trade is an engine of prosperity, and one man's stupidity now threatens billions.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Chris Sununu

'Portrait In Cowardice': Chris Sununu Bends The Knee To 'Crazy Loser' Trump

Even though he was an early backer of former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, New Hampshire Republican Governor Chris Sununu has now officially endorsed former President Donald Trump.

Sununu's endorsement — first reported by the Boston Globe — comes despite his constant criticisms of the ex-president, once calling him "f---ing crazy" in 2022 and an "a-----e" just last month. The Granite State governor was also a frequent target of the former president on his Truth Social, who called Sununu a "RINO [Republican In Name Only]" who was "polling at zero," and even suggested that his constituents "no longer like or respect him."

The four-term New Hampshire governor was seen as one of the leading anti-Trump Republican figures among the GOP until his endorsement announcement on Friday. After his 180 on the ex-president he once derided as a "loser" who "doesn't galvanize the party or the country together," numerous journalists and commentators took to social media to lambast Sununu.

CNN reporter Edward Isaac-Dovere tweeted the chronological progression of Sununu's attitude toward Trump. He noted that in April of 2022 he called the 45th president of the United States "f---ing crazy" in April 2022 He also noted that Sununu said in January 2024: "If you go with the Trump path, obviously, it just gets — it's like throwing gasoline on a firework. It's just going to get so much worse. And in February he expressed optimism about the GOP after Trump, saying "a-----es come and go." He then concluded with a line that read, "Today: Endorses Trump."

Vanity Fair special correspondent Molly Jong-Fast opined that Sununu's about-face on Trump was "so embarrassing." Huffpost journalist S.V. Dáte tweeted that Trump "is an adjudicated rapist who attempted a violent coup to remain in power despite having lost his reelection" in response to Sununu's endorsement. Progressive army veteran and podcast host Fred Wellman wasn't surprised, tweeting, "Hahahahahaha. We knew it."

"What a f----ing coward. These people are all so pathetic. Go beg for forgiveness now @ChrisSununu you loser," Wellman wrote, tagging Sununu's official account.

Former Republican congressman Joe Walsh lambasted the New Hampshire governor in three words: "Portrait in cowardice."

Democrats also piled on the GOP governor. The official X/Twitter account for the Democratic Governors' Association tweeted a meme of a clown putting on makeup, mocking him for his abrupt reversal by noting he went from calling Trump "crazy" and a "coward" and a "future four-time loser" to endorsing him. Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison likened the endorsement to Sununu "bending the knee" to the former president. And former Congressman Mondaire Jones (D-NY) said of the Republican Party, "it's a cult."

Despite the mockery, Sununu is simply doing what he always said he would do. After Nikki Haley dropped out following a disappointing Super Tuesday performance, Trump became the de facto Republican nominee. And in January, Sununu reiterated that as a Republican, he would ultimately cast his ballot for whomever the Republican candidate would be, regardless of whether it was Haley or Trump. He added that he would still vote for Trump even if the former president was convicted of a felony in any of his four upcoming criminal trials.

"I think most of us are all going to support the Republican nominee – there’s no question," Sununu told CNN's Kaitlan Collins. "I am going to support the Republican nominee, absolutely."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

‘We’re Americans. We Don’t Walk Around Terrified.’ — Wrong!

Now, let’s mark the anniversary of something that happened AFTER 9/11.

On 9/12, as a shaken nation reeled, an old soldier gave a pep talk. Do not let this change you, warned Secretary of State Colin Powell. Do not cower or walk around terrified. “We’re Americans,” he said. “We don’t walk around terrified.”

It was bracing medicine, designed to stiffen watery spines and lift downcast eyes. In that, it was like Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 first inaugural address to a nation mired in economic ruin. “Let me assert my firm belief,” he said, “that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror…”

Nine years later, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt gave in to a nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror of some of his own citizens and authorized the internment of Japanese-Americans whose only crime was being Japanese-American. It is a blot on our national honor that neatly sums up the contradictions in what he said 78 years ago and Powell echoed a decade back.

Yes, the physical bravery of Americans is incontestable, as proven on battlefields from Concord, Mass., to Peleliu Island in the South Pacific to the Meuse-Argonne region of France to Paktya Province in Afghanistan.

Similarly, Americans have always found courage to conquer the trials of national life, from Dust Bowl privation to presidential assassination to the bombing of children in church to the explosion of a spaceship arcing toward heaven.

But when it comes to finding courage to simply be Americans, to venerate the values upon which we were founded, the things we say we believe, we have too often been conspicuous by our cowardice, our spineless eagerness to throw sacred principle aside as a sop to expedience and fear. Or, as Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy said days before Roosevelt issued his order, “If it is a question of the safety of the country (and) the Constitution … why the Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me.”

In times of danger or fear, we seem to feel it OK to curtail the freedoms — of religion, association, speech — codified in that “scrap of paper.” We never seem to get that it is precisely in such times that those freedoms are most important and most in need of defense.

So everything that has happened since Powell spoke — the curtailment of civil liberties, the domestic surveillance, the demonizing of all things Muslim — is troubling, but predictable to any student of American history.

In his new book, “Manufacturing Hysteria,” author Jay Feldman traces the depressing line from a German-American being lynched during the First World War to the murders of Arabs after 9/11.

Along the way, union leaders, alleged communists, Mexicans, gays, peace activists and African-Americans all take their turns in the barrel, all get brutalized, detained, fired, illegally searched or killed outright because they, we are told, are the people we should fear. As a nation, we seem to need that, seem to need a people to fear. But fear interdicts intelligence.

It is almost impossible to reason and fear at the same time.

We ought to know this. Our history should have taught us. But we are, it seems, resistant to learning. And 10 years after 9/11 one thing now seems obvious.

Colin Powell was wrong.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

Shop our Store

Headlines

Editor's Blog

Corona Virus

Trending

World