“The United States now has the highest percentage of low-wage workers – that is workers who make less than two-thirds of the median wage- of any developed nation. Fully 25 percent of all American workers make no more than $17, 576 a year.” Harold Myerson The American Prospect,
We know how to counter the Trump administrations attempts to wreck the U.S. economy and our constitution from his past history. Blue states in particular have the power to keep their citizens healthy and safe. They did it in his first term, as I said in a 2017 Huffington Post article, when it was becoming obvious Trump wanted to act like an anti-democratic oligarch.
Climate change has been the target of Trump’s “drill baby drill” fossil fuel supporters since his first term, yet climate change poses the greatest danger to Americans’ health and safety, particularly to our west coast inhabitants (wildfires and floods) and east coasters (hurricanes and tornadoes), not to speak of the record low winter temperatures tormenting Midwesterners.
“The U.S. just released its latest congressionally mandated Climate Science Special Report that says 2017 wreaked the most catastrophic destruction in 90 years with an estimated $175 billion in property damage. Only the San Francisco Earthquake (1906), Chicago Fire (1871), and Great Flood (1927) caused more destruction,” I said then.
Trump’s other first term attempts at relevance included, “his fiasco of an Asian trip, where he fawned over foreign leaders who gave him massive pageants, but no trade concessions, while abandoning the Trans- Pacific Partnership.
“The remaining 11 countries, including Japan, Australia, Mexico and Malaysia, said they had revived the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal, a multilateral agreement championed under the Obama administration.
And also, “American leaders from state capitals, city halls and businesses across the country have shown up in force” in Bonn, Germany, to discuss carrying out the 2015 Paris climate agreement,” said California Governor Jerry Brown and Michael Bloomberg in today’s New York Times.”
This is when President Trump announced at the beginning of his Presidency that he was abandoning the Paris Accord in favor of supporting a return to coal and oil energy. But that wasn’t what the rest of America wanted, as some 50 percent of U.S. states and cities were represented in Bonn.
And now it is his indiscriminate use of import tariffs that threaten to wreck international trade.
President Trump’s attempts to return to the predominately white middle class of the 1950s have become irrelevant to most of the problems facing Americans and the world today. Trump is ignoring the damage revenge policies will do to the U.S. economy, and his own red state supporters by also attempting to destroy American’s social safety net, including cuts to Medicare and Medicaid that most harm red state citizens, protections against climate change, and wanting to downgrade the military alliances that have kept us safe.
Trump’s first term policies have been irrelevant in so many ways. He has done nothing for his red state supporters. As Thom Hartman highlighted in my last blog, red states continue to suffer most from:
— Spousal abuse
—
Obesity
— Smoking
— Teen pregnancy
— Sexually transmitted diseases
— Abortion
(at least before Dobbs; now it would be “forced births”)
— Bankruptcies and
poverty
— Homicide
and suicide
— Infant mortality
— Maternal mortality
— Forcible rape
— Robbery
and aggravated assault
— Dropouts from
high school
— Divorce
— Contaminated air and water
—
Opiate addiction
and deaths
— Unskilled
workers
— Parasitic infections
— Income and wealth inequality
— Covid deaths
and unvaccinated
people
— Federal subsidies
to states (“Red State Welfare”)
— People on welfare
— Child poverty
— Homelessness
— Spousal murder
— Unemployment
— Deaths from
auto accidents
— People living on disability
— Gun deaths
Climate change is a good start, since the worldwide droughts have been a major cause of the worldwide migrations escaping from poverty that have upset the existing geopolitical order.
Let’s continue to make Trump and Republicans’ actions irrelevant that are attempting to destroy our federal government by supporting cities, states and even international organizations (UN, WHO?) that pursue the policies that have kept America great and the world at peace—policies that build rather than destroy, that breed trust and community, rather than hatred and division.
This strategy doesn’t minimize the suffering Trump has already inflicted on so many Americans but could mitigate some of the cruelty to come.
Harlan Green © 2025
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
No comments:
Post a Comment