New Orleans The standard line for dealing with a bully is a weird psychodrama where we assume they are really insecure cowards and our course of action is to stand up to them and slap back. With or without empirical evidence, that’s the advice we have often taken to heart personally and advised our children, as they were growing up. If that’s such common-sense wisdom, why is it that so many in the United States and around the world are cowering in dealing with Trump II and the United States. We have quickly gone from being America, the Beautiful, to America, the Bully-ful!
There’s no cure for crazy, but we need a scorecard to keep up with Trump these days. He says he wants to take back the Panama Canal, but is that true or does he really just want a free ride through the waterway for US naval ships? He says he wants to buy Greenland, but does he really just want access to resources and staging grounds? He wants to take over Gaza and evict all of the Palestinians from their homeland, which is outrageous and impossible, but he repeats it endlessly. He talks about making Canada the 51st state, but all of us know he and the conservatives don’t want that more reasonable and humanitarian country to have a votes in our elections that are more liberal and moderate? One Canadian friend sent me an email today saying she was “waiting for the invasion.” It was hard to answer questions about his antics in his first term, now it’s just impossible to explain, and can’t help but be embarrassing.
Trump likes high-low bargaining, as we call in union contract negotiations. He somehow believes that the more outrageous his demands, the more likely he will win something in these improbable confrontations. Worse, to some degree it’s working. Mexico moves 10,000 troops to the border to hang out and pretend that has something to do with migration. Canada only is responsible for 1% of the fentanyl that comes into the US, but now pretends it is all over that situation to avoid tariffs. He picks a fight with South Africa claiming the authors of apartheid are now being discriminated against, because they are white. The playbook from other countries is to treat him like a child with flattery, promises, and gifts. Small countries try to stay undercover, so they won’t be noticed, even as they are damaged by his threats and withdrawal of aid and support.
None of that fits the usual strategy of dealing with a bully. The bigger boys, like the European Union claims it has a secret plan. China is responding with tariffs as well. Trump just warns America that prices will be higher, and that we will feel the pain in the economy. How is that good politics or governance? You got me.
His billionaire buddies line up for tax cuts that will pad their pocketbooks even more, while hurting the poor and increasing inequity. Corporate America by and large is just bending with the wind and taking a knee. Congress in the main seems to be going along to get along.
The resistance strategy de jour is to go to court. Remember, this is the same judicial system that is now scrapping the bottom of the barrel in polls about its level of public approval. This is the same judicial system that ends on the docket of the most partisan and conservative Supreme Court in our lifetimes. Even if we win some, which likely just means holding the line against something worse, we’re also guaranteed to lose some as well.
It’s hard not to conclude that all of us here and abroad are eventually going to have to stop coddling Trump and crouching in fear of the bullies, and fight back directly rather than hoping lawyers will save us.