Welcome to a longer-than-anticipated inaugural blog post. I’ve always loved writing, especially when it comes to travel, big ideas or whatever’s bothering me at any particular point in time. I welcome comments, feedback, ideas and opinions from anyone, provided that they’re well thought-out and respectful. I think that’s the minimum that any of us deserves.
Unfortunately or fortunately, what’s disrupting to my serenity is nothing within my personal life, but instead is based on the collective experience of the current larger political situation. I believe truly that the current American president is a cancer, diligently eating away at the beauty and the magic of what America has always meant.
Weirdly, through my Gen-Z kids, I’ve learned that patriotism is a dying thing, that they don’t really have a sense of American exceptionalism in the way that I always have. Being a 70s baby, I remember the bicentennial, and I remember my mother telling me a story about a Soviet delegation to the U.S. for the Olympics or some other competition (don’t make me Google it), and the Soviets being absolutely convinced that our normal grocery stores were shams – as they couldn’t fathom a system that allowed for such an abundance. I was raised with the idea of being lucky to be an American, and particularly as a woman since the lot of women in other parts of the world isn’t so great. Even through the Carter years, and my parents LOATHED Carter, the American exceptionalism was very much intact.
I was an expat throughout my high school years, and an American Lit major through my college years, both of which gave me a sense of what it meant to be an American abroad. The best of the America that I knew is generous, educated, friendly, optimistic, curious, kind … and you see it all over the world in expat communities and the way that Americans have been received. While there are loud, nasal voices in their tacky outfits or their goddamn pajamas who can’t be bothered to learn even a word of their destination’s language, there’s still an equal or greater number of educated American travelers, and especially when you get off the beaten path (off the beaten path even within the well-beaten paths like Paris and Venice). And across the 35+ countries that I’ve visited, talking to the local people we encounter, almost unilaterally they claim to prefer American travelers to those of other countries because we’re just happier and easier in general.
I have never felt embarrassed to be an American. I have felt unsafe occasionally, when abroad and adjacent to a group of people who may be anti-American or who may target an American woman for crime. But embarrassed? No. Ashamed? Never.
Now? I find it mortifying that we throw completely unnecessary punches against our enemies and allies alike. I find it mortifying that we are represented by someone who, with his army of sycophants, is unkind, unfriendly, menacing, and wholly uncurious, who also manages to be loud, abrasive and tacky. The crazy thing is that, even in our polarized political environment, nobody disputes any of the adjectives I’ve just used – but some people actually applaud this “directness” for reasons I cannot begin to understand. The only thing I can’t say is that he’s uneducated. Which brings me to a thing my father used to say: “Sometimes you can’t tell if you’re being lied to or stupided on, but the effect is the same.” This brings me to the core of my quandary.
If you look beneath the surface of things, there are a couple things that are universally true. They just are. I run a trade deficit with H-E-B, our local grocery store. I buy lots of stuff from them, and they buy zero stuff from me. Is that unfair? Am I being ripped off? So picking a country that sells us coffee, or mangos, or bananas … is that unfair to the U.S.? If it’s a developing nation that can’t afford to buy much from us, but which sells us goods … is that unfair to the U.S.? Are we really being ripped off? There is still an exchange taking place, in that the American economy provided money, and the foreign country provided goods. Do people understand that the trade deficit calculations are entirely based on tangible goods? In this dystopian trade war world we now find ourselves in, American services don’t count toward calculating those deficits. Finance, banking, entertainment, telecom, computing, consulting, construction, etc. – all of which the U.S. exports throughout the world and which now comprises the majority of our economy – it all counts as nothing. Why?
Given that these things are true, I come back to the question: are these people stupid, or are they lying to us? Charitably, I’d have to say they’re just stupid. Maybe not the low-IQ or undereducated kind of stupid, but they’re ideologues and they’re just incredibly sloppy. Concluding that they’re stupid is more charitable than assuming it’s an actual conspiracy to tank us. If you believe that one-size-fits-all and that tariff and non-tariff barriers to American competitiveness in Japan is equivalent to the fact that we import coffee from Colombia and/or that some “shithole country” can’t afford to buy very much from us … umm, that’s pretty stupid, and especially when you fail to consider exported American services at all. But that’s what just happened.
Is there some merit to the idea that trade should be fairer where there are actual abuses? Of course. Does it make sense to reshore some manufacturing, and especially of critical items? Of course. Again, people across the political spectrum would agree to that. But what has Liberation Day actually cost us, even already when we’re at the tip of the iceberg? What’s the cost per job that will allegedly be created by these tariffs? Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to just invest the fucking money to begin with via subsidies or incentives, without creating international rifts, domestic chaos, and total uncertainty across the globe?
Could any benefit of these trade negotiations not have been achieved by just picking up the phone and calling a country? Like “Yo, Korea. This is unfair, dammit, and unless you come to the table and renegotiate with us in good faith by such-and-such a date, we’re going to impose punishing tariffs.” See? You could even talk tough in that phone call if you want. Do we not think that this phone call would yield an actual negotiation? You could start with the bigger offenders and work your way down to Lesotho and Madagascar, or maybe even decide that these make no sense to address at all. You could even remove the polar bears and penguins from your list, if you handled it with any clarity, focus, or methodological attention to detail.
For people who actually read, there’s a story about the Trump 1.0 tariffs that resulted in Samsung’s investment in a plant in Newberry, SC to make washers and dryers. That’s great, right? Trump 1.0 imposed tariffs, Samsung invested in U.S. manufacturing, and this quaint Southern town was revitalized, adding manufacturing jobs. This is the purported goal, the holy grail, and it worked! But at what cost to us, the public? From a Wall Street Journal article:
The tariffs may have led to an additional 1,800 washing machine jobs created by Samsung and other firms. But price increases caused by the tariffs cost U.S. consumers about $1.5 billion annually, according to a study in the American Economic Review, or more than $800,000 per job created.
WHAT??? We, the American consumer, subsidize this. Not through government-issued subsidies but through our post-tax earnings, just like an additional tax. We collectively pay $800,000 per job created PER YEAR via a nearly $100 increase in prices of washers and dryers (so ~$200 for the set), when the actual person getting paid is making $35,000/year on average.
The shocking thing is that this is one industry, one set of tariffs, one company, one sector. Think about the cost per job per year to us, yes us, the American taxpayer … when you’re doing all the tariffs, all at once?
But wait, it gets better. What if you behave in such a pervasive, disruptive, unpredictable, unstable manner in applying these tariffs on Liberation Day that the stock market tanks, the bonds markets start convulsing, and uncertainty permeates the U.S. and world economies? And better yet: it’s all done by executive order, meaning that it can all be undone by executive order when this man changes his mind tomorrow or next week or next month, or when he’s replaced in less than 4 years by someone else? How does a business owner like Samsung decide that the U.S. market is where you want to bet the farm, especially when it takes 4-5 years to build a factory? I mean, shit, that’s a foreign company. How does an American company decide to invest here, under these conditions?
Details, details.
Are they just stupid? Or are we being lied to? I still really prefer to think they’re just stupid, blinded by their ideology, willfully resistant to the applicable set of realities, nostalgic, and, hey, if it doesn’t work, the rest of us get to shoulder the consequences anyway. They can just go cry into their millions or billions, as they’re insulated from the cost of goods in the way that most people are not.
But being lied to, that brings me to the myriad of character issues that now affect us on the world stage. We get lied to all the time, and somehow that’s become normalized and not even worthy of comment. But it matters, right? It should. He tells us it’s all coming up aces, when it’s clearly not. Grocery prices are down, when they’re not. That Ukraine started a war, when they did not. But he lies, and then he lies, and then he lies again. It’s not even subtle and, again, the entire political spectrum clearly sees this and accepts it. The MAGA justification appears to be, “well, he doesn’t really mean everything he says” or “everyone else lies too” or “you have no idea what he’s up against” or something?
To the lying, we add the boastfulness, the crassness, the insults, the lack of empathy, the threats, the selfishness, the infidelities, the victimhood, plus his amazing good looks … and we have the entire charming package. If you saw any of these traits in your 8-year-old, you’d correct it. But our grown-ass man of a president? We accept it. Some people go to great lengths to justify it, even.
Our president sits atop the mountain of privilege into which he was born and hurls out abuse in various forms, and then calls himself a victim. So it’s no big surprise that he now sits on top of America (ewww, gross visual) which is itself a mountain of privilege relative to most of the world, and hurls out abuse while claiming we’re the victim. The unfortunate truth is that by doing so, he’s making us an actual victim.
Another inconvenient truth is that people generally don’t love you very much when you treat them unfairly and badly. Short term, it might get you a concession, but ultimately anyone who can WILL walk away from you to the degree possible. We know this. It’s common sense. So let’s focus on how this piss poor execution of the fundamentally stupid tariff policies have slapped allies in the face and now negatively affect their economies and their people. Like Canada. Their new prime minister just won based on being anti-American, based on accepting a new world order that doesn’t rely on us. Canadian tourism to the United States is down significantly, and American wine and liquor have been taken off their shelves. Canada will take its money elsewhere in every manner possible, including sourcing products from countries that are not the United States, and getting their beach time in places like Mexico or Portugal rather than Florida. Did you know that McDonalds’ global sales have taken a shit? Do we not think that has something to do with people not liking America very much right now? This behavior costs our companies and entire industries – which will cost jobs, and will ultimately cost all of us. And then extend these effects globally, because we just sucker-punched everyone, and we’re run by an abusive, charmless ogre. It’s a big problem. Not for him. For us.
Nobody really gives much of a shit about the plight of Ivy League college students, and especially not when they’re some sort of Middle Easterners. But do we care about free speech? Do we care about education, especially higher education where the U.S. still leads the world? (MAGA folks probably tune out at this point, but I’ll forge ahead anyway – if you’ve read this far, stick with me, even if you’re MAGA!)
True story: like Trump, I was born onto a mountain of privilege, just a much smaller mountain … more like a rolling hill or a gently sloped driveway. By that I mean we had plenty, but I have repeatedly been inside grocery stores, my cook and driver were both my mother, and our limo was a gigantic wood-paneled station wagon. I digress. Anyhow, in my high school expat years, I went to a really nice boarding school outside of London, where 50% of the student body was American and 50% from someplace else, all aiming for university in the U.S. During this time, I was invited by a friend to visit their family home in Saudi Arabia. Even at the age of 15 or 16, I appreciated the invitation and was pretty confident that I would come back in one piece. But I decided not to go because I was not comfortable, as a woman, with the idea that I would essentially check my rights at the door and trust that all the men in the equation would act in my interest when I, myself, would be powerless to act in my own interest. I thought it would be fine, but I was not willing to take the risk that it wouldn’t be.
Now our president is having foreign students arrested in our prominent universities for no offense other than speech. Like me thinking of Saudi way back when, will the best and the brightest globally want to come to the U.S., when they essentially check their rights at the door? It’s not only the right to free speech, but the right to due process. These are students with a contrary opinion who are voluntarily and legally here, in pursuit of an education, who now languish in a Louisiana prison. If I’m a genius who happens to be German, or Turkish, or Jordanian, or Filipino, or Spanish, or any other nationality, I’m rethinking the U.S. Because this time it’s speech about the Palestinians, but next time? Do I really want to risk that something I say while in the U.S. could land me in some hot, squalid prison?
I know America is not perfect, and that it never has been, and that it never will be. But we are, as my mother used to say, the only country founded on a set of ideals and those ideals are the things that have bonded us. The ideals, even our imperfect adherence to them, are what have made us great. And we are so far from those ideals, that I really don’t know where we go from here.
Isn’t this executive overreach the “big government” that we’re supposed to be afraid of? This unilateral decision-making is not representative government, nor does it reflect the co-equal branches. Our Congress is so cowed by the executive that it’s not doing its job at all. The courts, at least, are stepping up. And we, the People, are screaming via polls and to our own audiences, some on the streets, and hopefully we eventually get to a ballot box before it’s fucked beyond all recognition.
All I know is that, if something doesn’t change, we’re already moving from the Shining City on the Hill to … a heaping pile of shit under a bridge? I’m reaching for an analogy. But nowhere good, and nowhere that represents what it means to be an American.
Wherever and however you can, understand and reinforce that principle matters: representative government with constitutionally protected rights to everyone in our land. If that were in place, these tariff decisions would have to be voted on, not imposed by one man on the entire world. Our founders did it this way so that we’re not subject to the whims of one man who may be wrong – either deliberately or just plain stupid. Whether you happen to agree with one decision or another is ENTIRELY BESIDE THE POINT. You either believe in our system of government or you don’t. You don’t get to just declare everything an emergency to bypass all checks and balances. What’s happening now is not American. It’s not who we are.
Wherever and however you can, understand and reinforce that character counts. Think of how you raise your children, wherever you are on the political spectrum. Would you be proud of a boastful, arrogant, dishonest kid, who takes credit for what’s not his, and who shifts blame for his actions to someone else? Would you want your kid to be unkind, selfish, unfair and disrespectful, who cries that the other kid was cheating whenever he loses a game? Every single person I’ve spoken to, even the most fervent MAGA people, agree that the president is an asshole. There’s no justification for his character. I think there’s just this idea that somehow it doesn’t really matter.
Well, as he governs us into this mess, we see the arrogance in thinking he knows better than everyone else including virtually all economists and business leaders, the dishonesty about how it’s unfolding, the boasting about a good stock market in January and shifting blame to Biden for the bad market in April that his own policies created … all while being unkind, disrespectful, and screaming that the world is cheating. It’s 100% true to character.
I really hope and pray for the return of American exceptionalism. But this is not the way. I won’t even say that I hope I’m wrong because, if it turns out that I am and that we actually “win” by hijacking our system of government and creating turmoil by bullying everyone else, we will have lost what being American has always meant in the process.
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5/1/2025 (Mayday, Mayday)
On the bright side ... 