Posse Incitatus

The Grand Strategy of Donald J. Trump

Long-time readers know that I was always skeptical of The Donald.  Unlike a lot of conservatives, I wasn't hostile to him, but I reserved judgement. 

That being said, the more I saw of him, the more I enjoyed his performance.  He made politics fun.  I didn't have much in the way of expectations for his presidency and - like many - I've been very pleasantly surprised with both his policies and his governance.  I can only imagine how much better he would have done without half of the federal government bureaucracy being in open (and illicit) rebellion.

One of his most striking successes has been in the realm of grand strategy.  His international diplomacy excites massive amounts of unhinged criticism from Conservatism, Inc. and the usual progressive suspects, but this is largely because those people are stupid and jealous of his competence.

When the same dolts who masterminded defeat in Iraq, stalemate in Afghanistan, chaos and national humiliation in Libya, disaster in Egypt, etc. lecture us on Trump's shortcomings, you know you're dealing with weapons-grade envy.

It's instructive to take a look at what Trump is doing and why it's working.

The first thing to understand about Trump's foreign policy is that it is unabashedly about strengthening American interests.  Allies are nice, but the US will not unilaterally weaken itself just to curry favor.  There needs to be something gained in return.

This is demonstrated in his behavior towards NATO and particularly Germany.  NATO is supposed to be a mutual defense pact, not an open-ended American guarantee.  Trump's criticisms are nothing new.  What is new is his willingness to act on them.

While the Obama administration talked about "whole of government" operations and solutions, they never went beyond limp-wristed diplomatic gestures and half-hearted military movements.  Trump does the opposite.

His dealings with China are a wonder to behold.

Trump understands that the status quo in trade could not be maintained.  He also knows that China will try to retaliate.  His solution is to outfox the Chinese by anticipating their moves and leveraging his strategic advantage.

This is exactly what we are seeing.  His tariffs on Chinese goods are biting deep into their export trade.  China's retaliation on our agricultural sector is already failing because without our production, China cannot feed itself. 

What is more, China is desperately thirsty for oil.  We are now a leading producer of it.  As part of its retaliation, China has tried to shift from our oil that that of Saudi Arabia.

Strangely, Saudi Arabia is having a minor dispute with China about prices right now.  I'm sure the establishment economists are writing this up as a mere trifle, a coincidence - but the result is that China is now forced to swallow its pride and buy American crude.

Oh, did anyone notice how the US is pointedly not using its formidable leverage against the Saudis in their dispute with Canada? 

Hmmm.  Saudi Arabia is pissed at Canada.  Canada calls on the US for help.   They US declines Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia gets grumpy with China, forcing the Chicoms to go back to buying US oil.

Yeah, nothing to see there.

The Trump administration is using all levers in concert to achieve its desired effects.  The ongoing negotiations with Mexico illustrate this as well.  Both sides have something to gain.  While NAFTA's negative effects on the US have gotten most of the attention, Mexico has also been harmed.  Its upper classes got rich but the agrarian lower classes have been reduced to serfdom.  The cartels are flourishing because American agri-business destroyed small farmers and left them destitute.

The US wants a strong, stable Mexico.  We also want to see Mexican wages rise so that there is less incentive for companies to relocate.  Mexicans themselves will benefit from better wages.  This doesn't benefit the global elites, and that's the point.

The term for this approach is realism - putting national interest first and favoring friendly nations who work with us over those that don't.

In recent years, the term has been twisted out of all recognition, but Donald Trump is the first true American practitioner in decades.

Trump's tariff calculus 2: Canadian boogaloo

As the lifelong resident of a state bordering Canada, I have a little more knowledge of the Great White North than perhaps most of my fellow Americans.  Growing up in metro Detroit, I could watch the CBC station out of Windsor and one of my earliest memories is watching Space:1999 on that channel.  I also know all about "Hockey Night in Canada."

More to the point, since the national days of Canada and the United States are so close together (July 1 and July 4), it was long the custom to have a joint fireworks display on the Detroit River - the Freedom Festival.

All of which is to say I bear no animus at all to our cousins up north.  It is merely their misfortune to have elected a clueless dolt to the premiership, and a further misfortune that their trade minister doesn't understand basic economics.

The truth of the matter is that Canada has no cards to play in this trade dispute, and even their daft leadership is starting to realize it.  The latest round of retaliatory tariffs will do nothing to dent the surging US economy, but the inevitable counterstrike from the Trump administration will dump Canada into an even deeper recession.

The remedies proposed to help Canadian workers look like they were copied verbatim from the failed Recovery Act of 2009:  extended unemployment benefits, job retraining, government-sponsor investment banks and - of course - subsidies.

None of this will work.  You don't revive and industry by paying its employees not to work.  Furthermore, the skills set of steel workers doesn't easily translate into coding or medical technology.  People aren't simply widgets that can be reconfigured to do whatever their corporatist masters desire, yet the globalist keep pretending that 40-year-old assembly line workers can seamlessly shift into software design in a matter of months.

The real world doesn't work that way.

The awful truth is that NAFTA has been a lie for a long time.  Canada (and Mexico) import cheap Chinese raw materials and basic parts and then assemble them for importation to the US, pretending all the while that they came from within the NAFTA zone.  This undercuts American industries, which are strangely locked out of a number of Canadian markets.

It's funny to watch the Canadians huff about how their attempted destruction of our steel and aluminum industries isn't a "strategic threat," and yet they levy massive tariffs on American dairy products.  What's wrong, Canada, afraid of a "cheese gap?"

Steel and aluminum are of course strategic industries.  Without them no military equipment can be manufactured.  A nation entirely depended on imported metals isn't a great power at all, merely a paper tiger hoping that a strong gust of wind doesn't blow it away.

This was all part of China's long game.  Erode American industry and then, in the event of a showdown, pull the rug out.

Trump's people have seen this coming and have decided to stop it cold.  China is now caught in an awkward place.  They need the US as an export market to keep their economy moving and they cannot survive without importing vast amounts of cheap food.

Facing direct American tariffs, Canada provided an alternative route into American markets - and now that gap is being sealed.

Canada is not without alternatives, but these would require good-faith negotiations and a decision to transform their country to one of real production rather than a trade conduit and unwitting dupe for Chinese (and French) trade negotiations.

Since one can't easily fix stupid, odds are that Canada will continue to languish until the next national elections.  Little Justin is now madly waving the Maple Leaf and hoping to retain office on a surge of nationalism and anti-American sentiment, gut given how amorphous "da Canadian values" are these days, I'm skeptical that gambit will work.

Trump demonstrates how superior strategy beats improvised tactics

Another day sees yet more winning for Team Trump as well as the country as a whole.  There is a tendency to oversell political developments, but the opportunity to appoint as second Supreme Court justice and thereby harden the court's Constitutionalist majority is no minor event.

Similarly, the court's decision that compulsory union fees of any sort for government employees is unconstitutional strikes at the very heart of the Democrat money machine.

These are long-term shifts in the country's political balance of power and they could only come about through long-term planning.  It provides a sharp contrast with the impulsive movements and foggy thinking of the preceding administration.

The Obama administration never thought beyond the next news cycle.  Their goal was to win each one, figuring that if they strung enough of them together, strategic victory would be theirs.

In a sense this was correct if one defines "strategic victory" purely as "Obama himself gets re-elected while his party is virtually wiped out," because that's what happened.

Obama won the new cycle because their allies in the press dragged them through it every single day.  When an embarrassing story broke, they covered it up.  If fake news was needed to change the subject, they were happy to oblige.

Obama's personal success made it look as the nation was moving sharply to the left, but in fact a backlash was brewing.  This was because Obama's policies did nothing to help the lower or middle classes.  Internationally, the US was subjected to unprecedented humiliation by foreign adversaries who were happy to take advantage of our leader's ineptitude. 

A signature example of this was Obama's visit to China where he was forced to debark from the rear ramp - denying him the classic red carpet descent and tarmac greeting.  The Chi-coms did it because they knew they could get away with it.

This also explained a great deal of Vladimir Putin's adventurism as well as Iran's theater-wide offensive.  Both regimes correctly ascertained that a president who was more worried about covering up his ambassador's death (in Libya) than avenging it wouldn't offer much resistance to sustained aggression.

Donald Trump is completely different.  He values long-term, tangible victories over ephemeral spin cycles.  To be sure, he absolutely understands the value of persuasion, but he sees it as a means to an end rather than and end in and of itself.

This is why Obama's legacy is so easy to undo.  The Obama administration was capable of creating a news cycle that would regard the Iran agreement as a fait accompli, but he couldn't manage the hard work of negotiating a treaty the Senate would ratify.  That made it ridiculously easy for Trump to repudiate it with a stroke of the pen.

The same was true of the Paris Climate Accord, which is already a dead letter.  Obamacare was already collapsing from its own weight before the GOP finished it off. 

And now Trump's judiciary is slowly, methodically demolishing the New Deal/Great Society ediface the Dems have spent decades putting into place.  His diplomacy is transforming the international scene, forcing our adversaries to curb their provocations and encouraging our allies.

His economic policies have unleashed a powerful surge of economic growth that shows no signs of slowing down.

This is not just a run of luck.  These were carefully planned and skillfully exploited.  The Democrats have no one like him.  All of their leading candidates rely on massive media support and identity politics for their strength - and both factors seem to be fading fast.

For most of my adult life the ratchet has moved steadily to the left, despite the claims that the singing eunuchs of Conservatism, Inc. were putting up the good fight.

It is telling that the man they hated above all others is now finally forcing the left to retreat.  Far from being a "witless ape," he's demonstrated a shrewdness far beyond their limited intellect to comprehend.

And no, I'm not tired of winning.

Another week of yuuge winning

More than a year into his presidency, the battle rhythm of the The Donald is starting to emerge.  Knowing that the Democrat-owned press is irredeemably hostile, he arranges events in a series of convergences, resulting in bursts of good news that simply overwhelm the press filters.

It's hard to believe, but in this single span of seven days:

1. Trump dominated the G-7 talks, easily brushing aside efforts to form a united front against him.
2. He humiliated Justin from Canada, giving the pretty-boy ruler the back of his hand as he proceeded to more important matters.
3. The Singapore Summit went off without a hitch, providing a solid opening for future talks on finally resolving the Korean War. 
4. The IG report - which he obviously saw in advance - perfectly buttressed his long-standing claims about a Deep State.  The fact that the executive summary was a whitewash contradicted by the details within only adds to the sense that the FBI is a deeply compromised institution.
5. The economy continues to soar, despite all the talk of trade war.  Current growth forecasts are in the mid-four percent range - far above anything Obama achieved.

It is possible for the press to ignore one or two of these items, but they cannot look past them all.  It is almost the mirror image of Obama's "stray voltage" strategy of starting a pointless partisan pie fight to distract from more serious and unfavorable news.

In Trump's execution, the stray voltage is all good.  Tired of seeing Trump shaking hands and looking like a world leader at the G7?  Well now you can see him negotiating a peace settlement with North Korea - you remember, the thing he was going to turn into World War III.   The pathetic bitching of the press and their Never Trumper Quisling allies that Trump isn't being bellicose enough was a sight to see.

Tired of that?  Oh well, I guess you'll just have to sort through all the job offers that are piling up on your desk thanks to the booming economy.

Oh, but the trade war!  Right, and who doesn't enjoy Democrats trying to take control of Congress openly rooting for foreign boycotts of American goods?  Say, if we slap tariffs on RUSSIA, will they finally decide Putin's on the side of the angels after all?

I know I rip on the Never Trump Traitors, but this week pretty much crushed them.  Only the most insane are still howling that Shrillery would have been a better president.  Even the singing eunuchs at National Review are starting to lose heart.  The truth is that outside Twitter and a few Beltway circle-jerks, these people have no following and no influence.  They are included on cable shows merely as comic relief and deserve less attention than the Preparation H commercials that bracket their segment.  (This is because Preparation H is actually useful.)

Jonah Goldberg's new book has been panned by right and left alike, and I'm not surprised.  It's the height of delusion for a guy whose entire career was built on telling Simpsons jokes to believe he's now a deep thinker.

Or, to put it another way:  what kind of idiot would buy into the policy prescriptions of a guy who has been unrelentingly wrong for most of the last decade?  He's gone from being NR's enfant terrible to just plain terrible.

All this is a lot to absorb, but thanks to months of careful diet and training, I can handle more winning.

The nightmare of Trump's success with North Korea

Obviously the memo has gone out:  the left and the Quisling Never Trumpers (but I repeat myself) agree that the Singapore Summit was a non-event bordering on failure.

Of course the same people were howling that Trump was about to start World War III only a few months ago, so I give them credit for being completely wrong on a consistent basis.

In fact, I would say the summit was wildly successful.  Kim Jong Un's written commitment to de-nuclearize the Korean peninsula is not something he can easily walk away from.   This is because he's put a lot of his own prestige as an infallible ruler on the line.  For him to back out damages that prestige, perhaps fatally.

Trump's plan for solving the Korean riddle is therefore well-launched and while there are certain to be sticking points, prospects for lasting peace seem bright.

So why are so many people miserable? 

Can it be that they are jealous that a man who they denounced as a clueless buffoon has just shown them up to be over-credentialed incompetents?

I know the Never Trump crowd always gets a hard-on when thinking about some new war to start (Lindsay Graham actually started drafting a war declaration, the perv), but seriously, isn't a peaceful solution better?

The great fear of Democrat and Fredocon alike is of course that Trump pulls the thing off, cementing his reputation as a statesman and destroying their dreams of ousting him.   If Trump has seen as an irreplaceable negotiator, impeachment falls by the wayside and a million progressive hearts will break.

And how about Dennis Rodman and his MAGA hat?  Is this a trend or what?  Dem strategists have to be panicking over Trump's potential inroads into the black vote.

The upshot is that we aren't even at midweek and the winning has been - in a word - yuuge.

Still not tired of it.

Trump's trade onslaught

While Official Washington waits for the DOG IG report, the Trump administration is moving to aggressively transform our trade relationships.

The decision to levy tariffs on Canada, Mexico and the EU will be painted by the Chamber of Commerce types as a "trade war" and a disaster for American diplomacy and the economy.

In fact, it is the opposite.

The Trump administration is proving that it means what it says.  This is crucial to understanding why this is happening, and why it is happening now - conveniently before the North Korean summit.

The Chinese are also affected by this, and a key part of Trump's Asian strategy is to enlist Chinese help in forcing Kim to give up his nuclear program.  Hitherto, this has been a fool's errand because the US was unwilling to use an integrated strategy of both economic and military power.

Those days are over.  Trump's willingness to use military force in Syria and now economic force against nominal allies demonstrates that he will harbor no qualms about using either against declared adversaries.  It's a riff on the old Chinese proverb to kill the chicken while the monkey is watching.

North Korea - and China - are now seeing that this White House isn't going to draw red lines and walk away from them.  If so much as a toe crosses, it will be shot off.

It has been decades since a president with this understanding of strategic leverage has sat in the White House.  China and the EU had better pay close attention.

What a week of winning!

I find myself in an unprecedented place:  There has been so much winning this week that I am having difficulty to recall all of it.  Where to begin?

I suppose a good place to start is Korea.  The president is currently playing the Chinese-NORK axis like a concert grand - teasing out grace notes and thundering grand arpeggios while his adversaries stutter and fumble for words.

His letter terminating the June 12 talks could serve as a master-class in framing.  The way he brought up how North Korea sought the talks in the first place but then dismissed it as irrelevant is vintage Trump.  So too the gratuitous mention of American military might coupled with the hope that it will never be used.

The brain-dead chattering classes had a field day - or tried to.  In fact, they didn't even get a full day before Kim came back with his tail between his legs asking to restart the talks. 

This episode outlines the fundamental challenge facing the Dems and their Quisling Never Trump allies: in order to oppose Trump they have to objectively take the side of a nation that threatens the United State with nuclear attack.

All Americans should hope that the talks succeed.  A disarmed North Korea and peaceful resolution to the Korean War is a win for our country and the world.  Constantly picking on the president and openly gloating when he suffers a setback is arguably the dumbest thing these people can do.  I say arugably, because they're doing so many dumb things, determining the grand champion is pretty tough.

Going from the serious to the trivial, the NFL has finally caved on the National Anthem issue.   Ace of Spades had a wonderful riff on this and how the Quisling Never Trumpers are now so far off the reservation that celebrating what they used to call "our civic religion" is some form of leftism.

Odd, I remember the old days when National Review felt that there should be values and norms that society informally enforced as part of its culture.  Things like respecting the flag, standing for National Anthem.  We didn't need this codified into law, social pressure would suffice.

Of course, when social pressure ran against their conservative beliefs, they merely shook their heads sadly and retreated because they always wanted to die on some other hill rather than the one they were on.  Now that Trump is leading the culture war and actually conducting an active defense, they're horrified.

Is anyone surprised to learn that these traitorous clowns are now drawing checks from liberal democrats?

Keep that in mind the next time David French or Max Boot puffs up about eternal "conservative principles."  I count learning this truth as another big win.  Actual conservatism can't hope to succeed so long as these gutless money-grubbing turncoats are shooting us in the back.

Speaking of Conservatism, Inc., does anyone remember how our fearless, brave and noble Speaker did an utter face-plant last year on defunding Planned Parenthood?  Despite having a clear majority in the House, somehow a bill that would merely stop paying an organization that makes money killing infants and selling off their parts couldn't get an affirmative vote.

As anyone with a brain pointed out at the time, attempts to lay this failure on Trump was nothing more than the usual Failure Theater mixed with blame-shifting.  Conservatism Inc. has been playing the Right to Life movement for years, knowing that they don't actually have to follow through on their promises because the alternative is an open market in baby parts and overt infanticide.

I'm old enough to remember how Trump was stridently denounced by these "principled conservatives" as a pro-choicer and his pro-life stance was a lie.

And yet it is Trump who this week promulgated regulations stricter than anything seen since the days of Ronald Reagan.  The next time some holier-than-thou Weekly Standard puke takes a dump on evangelical voters for supporting The Donald, remind them that Trump has done more for the pro-life movement in one week than their posing pukes did in twenty years. 

Dubya was supposed to a true-believing evangelical Christian but he governed like Bill Clinton's third and fourth terms.

Meanwhile, back at the SpyGate scandal, we had even more good news this week.  Now that irrefutable proof has emerged that yes, the FBI, CIA and everyone else was spying on the Trump campaign, Lyin' Jim Clapper decided to take to the talk shows to clear his name.

This guy is a total idiot whose stupidity is only exceeded by the moron who thought sending him out in person to tell transparent lies was a good idea.  This guy has all the charm of a dead snake and the string of lies he has to crank out has only destroyed what shred of credibility he had left.

His newest salvo of boomeranging torpedoes is yes!  The election was totally hacked!

If that's true, what does that say about the people in charge of the government when it happened?

This moron has just given the Trump administration grounds to form a commission of inquiry to investigate James Clapper's personal failure to stop this from happening.  What a total idiot.

This is the core problem with all these Democrat lies - even they can't keep them straight.  Was there spying?  Who authorized it?  If it was justified, surely someone will be happy to take the credit for it, right?  Is that person you, James Clapper?  I'm sure Jeff Sessions' stealth prosecutor has some questions for you since the buck now appears to stop at your desk.

And oh, by the way, did President Obama authorize this? 

To coin a phrase, what did the president know and when did he know it?

Jumping back to foreign news, there are some other items that the mainstream press totally ignored.  Italy has now formed an anti-EU government after protracted negotiations.  Part of their platform is massive deportations of migrants and an assertion of traditional culture.  Seems like Trump is picking up another ally and the EU is deeply worried.

The globalists are also quite fearful of Trump's bare-knuckled brawl with the Chi-Coms regarding trade.  In fact, there's a lot going on regarding trade, with NAFTA on life support.

Strangely, US wages are rising at the fastest rate in almost twenty years.  Coincidence?

The Trump administration has reversed eight years of American irresolution and retreat.  The missile strike on Syria didn't happen in a vacuum - it was another object lesson for both Iran and North Korea. 

This week's decision to kick China out of the RIMPAC exercise is a similar rebuke.  By the way, this decision was announced on the same day as the pullout from the North Korea summit.

The strategic coordination here is no accident but rather a carefully calculated maneuver to bring maximum pressure to bear.  So too is Trump's decision to study 25% tariffs on imported automobiles.  For China that would be a complete disaster.

Remember, China needs us far more than we need them.  China is completely dependent on its trade surplus and export market.  The US may suffer some market disruption, but that will be quickly offset by on-shoring those parts suppliers.  We have tremendous residual manufacturing strength, which Trump knows full well.

The same is also true with agricultural exports.  China's threat to lay duties on American soybeans and other commodity crops is the hollowest threat imaginable.  In the first place, commodities are, uh, commodities.  If China stops buying our soybeans, it has to buy someone else's, like maybe Brazil's.  Brazil's customers will then need soybeans from somewhere else, so they'll buy them from us.

To be sure, the markets will see a ripple as supply chains shift, but the biggest impact will be this:  Chinese peasants will see their food grow more expensive.

That's not a good thing in a dictatorship.  Food riots can quickly lead to revolution.  The Chinese leadership knows this, and the only reason they are bringing it up is that these are the only cards they have.

There is even more winning, but I'm getting tired of writing about it - a great problem to have!  Still, I'm not tired of the winning, not even close.

 

Is the Korean War over?

What is one to make of events in Korea this week?  The meeting of the two leaders is without precedent in a number of ways.

First, there was the initial moment when Kim briefly brought President Moon onto North Korean soil - something that clearly shocked and amazed the observers.

The ceremony that followed was also a complete departure from everything that has happened to date.  Never before have the leaders of the two Koreas met face to face, let alone embraced.  The signed joint statement committing to peaceful unification and a nuclear-free peninsula was also a break from prior practice.

Now the Democrat-run press and the Quisling Never Trumpers are trying to downplay all of this.  "Action, not words," they say - as if their side ever managed to accomplish one-tenth of what they claimed credit for.

Was it in the distant past that Barack Obama was given a Nobel Peace Prize simply for breathing, or that his Cairo speech was hailed as heralding a new era of peace in the Middle East?

Not.

The Invade-The-World militants seem the most upset by all of this.  In a professional sense, this isn't surprising since Donald Trump has basically locked them all out of cushy government employment and if peace actually does break out, he will have accomplished in 18 months what none of them did in decades.

The funniest line I've hear is "We've seen this all before."

No, we haven't.  That's the point.  This isn't the usual shrill propaganda that emanates from Pyongyang.  This is without precedent.

Moreover, it's very hard to walk this sort of thing back.  North Korea is a police state held together by fear and the mystique of its great and powerful leaders.  The Young General (I think that's Kim's current title) can't easily take back this week's declarations and gestures.

It was possible for Stalin to make the left turn a dime in 1939, but their enforcement apparatus was far more assertive and powerful.  Kim is offering his starving people a ray of light.  His conscript soldiers will at last go home and find meaningful and prosperous work. 

The threat of constant war has galvanized and united the Hermit Kingdom since 1953.  It has been invoked to justify incredible sacrifice and privation.  If Kim is unable to deliver what he has declared to be tantalizingly close, how will he keep his regime intact?

I can see mass desertions and a total breakdown of authority - just the type of disorder that overthrew the Ceausescu regime in 1989. 

There is a common misconception that revolutions happen when things become intolerable.  It isn't true.  What causes revolutions is when things aren't improving fast enough, when people become impatient for change they sense is just around the corner.

This is perhaps why Kim is moving with such speed.  He has only a narrow window to avert political collapse and personal destruction.  To this end, he needs South Korean - and American - help to hold things together.

The prestige of meeting with the American president is therefore essential to enhance his prestige and convince his people that he is the indispensable element in ending their pain.  Only he can make this happen and so he must be obeyed.

The bloviating Never Trump uber-hawks have completely missed this angle.  As usual, they have no idea what will happen once the shooting stops. 

Notice how they insist that whatever happens, US troops must remain in Korea.   They are immovable on this condition, but no one ever asks them:  Why?

Must every American troop deployment remain permanent?  Can we never bring the boys home?

How remarkable would it be for the Veterans Day parade - the one people are mocking Trump for holding by claiming it's the hallmark of a North Korean dictator - consisted of troops actually brought home from Korea?

What if it was the long-awaited victory parade - a half-century in the making?

Maybe it won't happen, but one thing I've learned is never to bet against Donald Trump.

 

 

The Never Trumpers' freatest fear: America succeeds

I believe it was almost exactly nine years ago that Rush Limbaugh caught grief for saying that he hoped Barack Obama failed in his goals.

He was broadly denounced as anti-American by progressives (which is always funny since they despise their country most of the time), but Limbaugh was on solid ground.

Obama's stated goals would cripple the country.  His actual policies did cripple it.

A few months ago I pointed out that Obama managed to drive the economy into an eight-year recession.  The growth he claimed was paid for by doubling the national debt.  The stock market rose only because the Federal Reserve was juicing it up.

(Speaking of which, maybe those corrections were the Fed unwinding its stake?  Food for thought.)

The Quisling Never Trumpers claim to be in the same position as Limbaugh in opposing Donald Trump's policies.  They argue that their stand is a principled one, based on what's good for America.

The problem with this argument is that their own words directly contradict it.

Jen Rubin, for example, has reversed herself on every single policy she held simply to oppose Trump.  Bret Stephens has done the same.

It is one thing to rethink a long-held belief.  This often requires years of thoughtful reflection as well as considerable debate.  The Never Trump traitors haven't done that.  They simply flip-flopped as soon as Trump acted.

In the process, they have also revealed that they don't really care about America's success.  Their own emotional state and social status is what it truly important to them.

For example, they warn that raising tariffs will cause a trade war and a global recession.  This is nonsense on stilts.  "Free trade" has crippled the middle class, destroyed the working class and made us increasingly dependent on global rivals for strategic materials.

Throughout history nations have protected key industries from foreign competition without causing commercial havoc.  It was only in the last three decades that "free trade" became an article of faith for the neocons and their progressive allies.

Similarly, restricting immigration used to be a core conservative principle.  Open borders is a radical departure from American policy and without precedent in human history.  No nation, no state or realm ever threw open its doors to anyone who wanted to come in - and then blessed them with full citizenship.  It's a recipe for national suicide.

Yet now the Benedict Arnold Right loves it and denounces actual border enforcement as racist.

The theme running through all their policies is fear and hatred.  Fear of losing status and hatred of the working classes that elected a blowhard from Queens to the White House.

Yet that blowhard is more competent than any of his Ivy League predecessors.  The economy is booming with more gains on the way.  American military might is being slowly restored.  Our enemies are alarmed and our people are more optimistic than they have been in 20 years.

This gets us to the real reason why the Never Trumpers are so angry:  America might actually become stronger.

And it will have happened without them.

Consider last week's opening with North Korea.  If this pans out, it would be a game-changer, a milestone is improving global security.  The US has made a single concession: long-overdue face-to-face talks with North Korea.

In return the Norks have pledged to cease nuclear tests and missile launches and claims they will allow military exercises with South Korea to proceed without incident.

The US holds all the cards in this deal.  If the Norks violate their pledges, they lose and the US military will resume its Doomsday Countdown on Little Rocket Man.  But if they do hold true, it will be the first time they ever kept their word.  That's pretty significant.

And yet the Never Trumpers are up in arms, supposedly because (it's hard not to laugh as I type this) it's an affront to democracy for a US president to sit down with a tin-pot dictator.

Yeah, I know.  Where do they get this stuff?

The real fear, though, is that Trump might actually solve the problem, just as they fear his tariff will work and his border enforcement will work.

That is their ultimate nightmare, their greatest fear:  that Orange Julius, whom they claim is ignorant, has a ten-second attention span, a witless baboon descending an escalator, that this guy will have exposed them as clueless idiots whose policies produced nothing but disaster.

It's one thing to be proven wrong, but it's another to be proven wrong by...Donald Trump!

That is why they are screaming their damn fool heads off over everything he does.

 

A Korean breakthrough and a necessary pardon

What is interesting to me about the lastest move in the North Korean standoff is how much the US gained for so little.

North Korea gains direct bilateral talks for the first time - a matter of some importance to them.

The US (and the world) in turn gains a moratorium on launches, bomb tests and a pledge not to interfere with US/South Korean military exercises. 

More importantly, no US sanctions are being lifted.  There are no pallets of cash headed to Pyongyang.

This is a very different dynamic from past negotiations, which required "humanitarian assistance" as a price for even beginning the otherwise useless talks.

Nothing may come of the dialog, but it certainly dispels the notion that his unconventional approach to diplomacy has done more harm than good. 

Of course, on cue the Quisling Never Trumpers have been howling that merely meeting with Little Rocket Man is a disaster of the first order and a huge concession.  As usual, they're full of shit.  Logic dictates that when the same approach has been tried multiple times without failure, you change your approach.

Yet the only tactic in the Never Trumper playbook seems to be:  fail harder.

People puzzling about how generals during World War I could continue to make bloody and fruitless frontal assaults despite hideous losses need look no further than these supposed military experts and strategic thinkers who have botched every job they've been given but still claim the mantle of authority and expertise.

The Trump Whitehouse contains some deep thinkers and it is perhaps no accident that despite superficial drama among civilian advisors, the core team of retired generals remains intact.

This, by the way, may also explain the full and unconditional pardon given to former Navy Sailor Kristian Saucier for a minor breach of security protocols relating to his nuclear submarine.

Saucier's transgressions were insignificant when compared to the massive security breach cause by Hillary Clinton - a crime made even more glaring by the FBI's decision not to even conduct a damage assessment.

The message was blatantly obvious:  Laws are for the little people.

This environment is toxic to both morale and military discipline since it teaches senior commanders that the core value for advancement is butt-kissing rather than competence.  If anyone wonders how it can be that two US warships had crews incapable of conducting basic navigation, this is your answer.

Far from being erratic or ill-tempered, Donald Trump is systematically rebuilding American might.  His armed forces are becoming more advanced, better trained and morale is rapidly recovering from years of abuse at the hands of Obama appointees.  This pardon is a clear signal to the enlisted ranks:  The commander-in-chief has your back.

On the economic front, Trump has taken decisive action to protect key strategic materials and for the first time in years, labor force participation rates are increasing.  Job creation is exploding and the new fear is that the economy may be expanding too fast.  It's a wonderful problem to have.

The Korean gambit may fail, but what sets it apart from previous efforts is the explicit threat of force that has never been employed before.  Unlike previous administrations, Trump has made it clear that he will denuclearize North Korea one way or the other.  The only alternative to military action will be a nuclear arms race including Japan and South Korea, which would be a strategic disaster for North Korean's patron China.

This is perhaps why the offer has been made and why the talks may bear fruit.  China is in a position to guarantee North Korean independence.  A formal treaty ending the war coupled with a Chinese security pact would provide better security and stability than anything Pyongyang can produce on its own.

It is therefore in China's interest that North Korea make a deal.  This too is a new development.

Here's to hoping the talks bear fruit.