An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes. Sun Tzu
Yesterday, Trump unilaterally enacted a list of draconian tariffs that effectively declared economic war on the rest of the world. He set America up as the angry and isolated enemy of just about everybody.
Trump’s tariffs circle the globe. He even imposed tariffs on islands off Antarctica that are uninhabited.
I don’t know what the penguins on those islands did.
Maybe they refused to “donate” a million dollars to Trump’s “inauguration fund,” or wouldn’t sign a pledge giving him hundreds of millions in “donations” to avoid being attacked by executive orders.
Maybe the penguins thought those things looked too much like bribes, or extortion, or paying “protection money” to the mafia and just wouldn’t do it. I don’t know how penguins think, and I don’t know what the penguins did to Trump. I just know they’ve been hit with high tariffs as punishment for it, whatever it was.
In all these tariffs, including the penguin tariffs, there are two countries Trump missed. He did not impose any tariffs at all on … get ready for this now … Russia and North Korea. Of all the countries in all the world that Trump claims are abusing America and need to be punished, he somehow overlooked his buddies Putin and Kim Jong-un.
That fact may get lost in the carnage that we are in for if he lets these tariffs stand. These tariffs amount to the largest tax increase loaded onto America’s working people in history.
Trump called his announcement of the tariffs “Liberation Day.” Did he mean that he was liberating the American people from prosperity?
These tariffs are a declaration of economic war on all the rest of the world, including the allies who have stood shoulder to shoulder with us through everything since World War II. These alliances, the most important of which is NATO, have kept us from a cataclysmic world war for over 80 years. Now, this crazy old man is tearing them apart.
He’s sucking up to Russia who wants to destroy us, and attacking the people who have stood with us through thick and thin.
At the same time, he and his minions are destroying our government. They are dismantling the institutions that make things run, keep us safe and protect us from diseases. Not only does this wholesale firing of the staff of entire agencies cripple us, it vastly increases the possibility of an economic downfall that could be, as talking heads were speculating this morning, “something worse” than a recession.
One thing I do know. We almost went in financially in 2008 due to the mismanagement of another Republican president. There was a period of time that went on for months when all the governments of the free world were working in tandem to stop it, and it looked like they might not get it done. People have forgotten just how close we came to something that would have made the Great Depression look like a walk in the park.
The only thing that saved us was the fact that all the governments in the free world worked together. Does anybody seriously think that those same governments would trust Trump enough to sit down and work with him today?
Nobody trusts Trump except hard core MAGA, and they’ve got to lie to themselves and deny reality all day long to maintain that trust.
We the People are the only ones who can stop this. We can stop it. But we’ve got to wake up and get serious to do it.
Note: In addition to Russia and North Korea, Trump also exempted Cuba and Belarus from his tariffs. That actually strengthens the argument that he is in Putin’s pocket.
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