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Where Trump Has Scorched Earth, Should We Seek Common Ground? [1]
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Date: 2025-04-10
On Wednesday, our chaos-foisting, flip-flopping, stock price whipsawing Tariff King invited governor Gretchen Whitmer to the Oval Office. She accepted. Before joining him, she reached across the aisle- into the same old, same old red woodchipper.
“I understand,” she purred, “the motivation behind the [Trump] tariffs…. People…. want a government focused on lowering the cost of living.” Never mind how tariffs on goods from China, Canada, and Mexico alone stand to boost the costs of clothing, gadgets, and cars to elevations at which most folks can barely breathe. (If at all.)
Hmm. Might Trump’s actual motive be transactional? Could it have something to do with the fact that Trump Himself stands to YUGELY benefit from the regressive, nation scourging taxation that tariffs so baldly epitomize?
Even a glance at the past speaks volumes. Like it or not, recall it or not, the Gilded Age over which he coos enriched the Robber Barons, not the rest. Accordingly, it culminated in the William McKinley (R) Tariff Act of 1890… and the Depression of 1893-1897.
No slaves to acknowledging past failure, along came still more tariff-touting Republicans. Enter the Trump presaging Smoot-Hawley GOP Tariff Act. Signed into law by Herbert “Prosperity Is Just Around The Corner” Hoover (R) in 1930, it led the ravening beast called The Great Depression to round said corner... straight toward Uncle Sam’s guts.
Now as then, GOP plutocrats’ real motives are not pro publica. Whitmer’s connotation (if not denotation) to the contrary needs to be called to account as loudly, clearly, early, and often as possible.
In recent weeks, an indie friend of mine has likened top-tier Dems to “ostriches.” Another has pegged them “wimps.” (In a realm where fortune favors the fierce, that cannot bode well.)
As if to counter them, Whitmer crows about having served as what begs to be called a prop for Trump by honking “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” At least two objections come to mind. One (as examined in depth by bestselling author Thomas Frank in 2016’s Listen, Liberal), Dems’ claims of electoral prowess and popular appeal by dint of comity and compromise (not to say spineless abnegation) have been greatly exaggerated.
Two (notwithstanding Whitmer’s pronouncement), tuskers have been dining on donkey for decades. Writing during George ‘WMD’ Bush’s second term, neuroscientist, strategist, pundit, and author Drew Westen marshaled tons of science and history while finding the Dems’ drive to evince “GOP Lite” flopping to the point of putting “The Fate Of The Nation” up for power grabs. (See The Political Brain, 2007. And, ‘needless to say,’ events of the past 10 years.)
Going forward, let’s not fail to call to account such whitewashing ooze as Whitmer’s. By 2006, Dr. Westen found Dems had become a “party of default”- rarely electable save in the face or in the wake of such misrule as Bush’s. At this writing- pretty much leaderless- if we must do some cat-herding, fine. But let no oddly Trump-hued ‘orange tabby’ (even one as otherwise accomplished as Whitmer) be trusted. Followed. Or (with the nation in thrall to some VERY bad actors who need to be called out at the top of our hopefully spine-borne lungs) heeded.
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