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GELFAND’S WORLD - It’s taken the other countries in the world nine years, but they are starting to get it. They’ve learned to just say No to Donald Trump. They now know that it works.
Greenland? No.
Venezuela? No.
Tariffs? We’ll match you.
Canada? You’ve got to be kidding.
Ruinous tariffs on China? They’ll buy their soy beans from somebody else.
Notice that neither side has devolved into submarine warfare or land invasions. Instead, there have been Trump’s yammer-yammer vs. the more disciplined responses from Europe and Canada. This has been particularly true in their replies to the Greenland threats. One by one, NATO countries have been visiting Greenland, opening new consulates there, and basically showing that they stand for Greenland’s right to make its own destiny.
It began when Trump started to talk (once again) about making Greenland a US possession, and then added Canada to the proposed bag of loot. When reporters played into the threats by asking whether Trump was ruling out military action, the president gave ambivalent responses which is to say, he did not say “We are not contemplating the use of the military” like any normal leader would. Any statesman would know how to deflect such questions, but Trump has used his replies to fan the flames.
To say that this back-and-forth was damaging to the western alliance – not to mention civilization as a whole – is the understatement of the decade. But the Europeans and China have led the way, at least recently, by adopting that old Nancy Reagan line, “Just Say No.” Admittedly, Nancy was talking about recreational use of marijuana rather than military posturing, but it turns out that the approach works well for the latter, if not perhaps so well for the former.
It’s true that when this stuff came up a year ago, the Canadians and Europeans were trying to mollify Trump, treating his demands as opening gambits in some sort of negotiation. They soon enough figured out that there isn’t much point in trying to negotiate with Trump for one simple reasson:
Trump’s word is no good.
He changes his mind without warning. What’s worse is that he violates agreements and promises made by previous presidents, particularly with regard to climate change. Still, the world’s other leaders have at least figured out that they can deal with Trump’s direct aggression. They have been a little slow in learning their lesson, but now they Just Say No.
It took a while for the American investor class, but they figured out that when Trump was confronted with a show of strength, he would back down. Hence the expression TACO for Trump always chickens out. I’ve been a little skeptical that this describes what is going on in Trump’s head, but there is a good bit of truth to its descriptive and predictive power: Stand up to him and he figures out that he at least has to pull back on the throttle.
So chalk one up for the more civilized governments in this world.
So now the big question. Have the American people learned the same lesson? Equally important, have our elected leaders learned it too? I think that there is some accumulating evidence that this is beginning to happen.
Let’s clarify the question. I think that most rational people are beginning to understand that Donald Trump is losing it mentally. Pundits and mental health professionals talk about some sort of dementia which adds to his already obvious narcissistic personality disorder. Even Republicans in congress have to understand what it going on, even as most of them pretend that Trump is the Leader we have all been waiting for.
But just a few days ago, 6 House Republicans joined with Democrats in voting to oppose the Trump tariffs. Is this the small crack in the dam that signifies that the deluge is soon to come? Admittedly there is a less dramatic interpretation, one in which these congressmen are opportunistically defending their own hides in a moment of decreasing popularity for Trump. But that – extended by a few more Republicans – is exactly what the Democrats would like to see happen. The moment does not require a mass rethinking by hordes of ultra-conservatives, it just requires a modest change in voting pattern, one in which Republicans in the House and Senate start to understand that political survival demands changed behavior.
There is one more clue that something big is upon us. Notice that Grand Juries have just said No to the Department of Justice a couple of times recently, the most dramatic being the refusal to bring charges against 6 Democratic members of congress, the ones who advised American troops to obey the law by refusing to follow illegal orders. The president went totally nuts, and the Secretary of Defense wanted to court-martial Senator Kelly, while the DOJ tried to bring charges, but the Grand Jury refused.
There is one more item which has been remarked upon by scholars such as Tim Snyder: The lower federal courts have a great responsibility to uphold Constitutional values, even as the Supreme Court pushes the envelope in the direction of Trump’s authoritarianism. The results have been mixed, but so far, lots of federal judges at the circuit and appellate level have held the line. This has been particularly evident in rulings from the bench about the behavior of ICE.
I’d like to add one more item to this list, not because it is something new, but because it speaks so well to the current crisis. Congressman Jason Crow is one of the six members of congress who spoke out about the necessity for service members to obey the law. For this, the president called on Crow and his colleagues to be hanged for sedition and treason. (This by itself suggests an increasing level of dementia, don’t you think?) Then, the Grand Jury refused to follow up on the DOJ’s attempt to charge the six, and Crow replied:
“I just found out that Donald Trump's DOJ tried and failed to indict me before a grand jury. They were trying to send a message that if you oppose them, if you step out of line, that they will crush their political enemies. But they failed and they will always fail. I went to war three times to this country as a paratrooper and an army ranger. I will never back down for my duty.
“But this isn't about me because they were trying to send a larger message that if Americans get out of line, if they dare oppose them, if they dare speak up and exercise their constitutional rights, that they will be crushed. But they're wrong. They think that fear is contagious. But here's the bigger lesson. Courage is also contagious. The American people are stepping up. They are rising up. They are organizing and mobilizing against this rising tyranny. We will continue to push back. The tide is turning and accountability is coming.”
Will it be a blue tide that washes over the American political system in the next 10 months and then for the following 24 months? I imagine that a lot depends on how the economy functions. But the first element in any such tide is for enough people to stand up and demand liberty while they simultaneously demand respect for the law.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
