Return of the Bully

bul·ly^{1 —} a person who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable.

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It’s long been obvious that the way Donald Trump plans to “make America great again” is to reject the role of a responsible leader of the international community and instead throw our considerable weight around to benefit ourselves at everyone else’s expense.

That’s what he wanted to do during his first term but he was too inexperienced in global affairs to accomplish. Now he is back and better prepared, he is starting out by bullying our closest neighbors, Mexico and Canada.

From a neighborhood perspective, the bully is back on the block.

“America First” sounds good if you are an American, just like chants of “USA” sound as if you’re simply rooting for the home team, so what’s wrong with that?

The answer is “nothing,” except that those slogans sound more like threats to everybody else on the planet. The U.S. has only 4.23 percent of the world’s population but holds an astounding 30.8 percent of the world’s wealth!

To translate those numbers into something more palpable or at least edible, if there were 100 people and 100 cookies on earth, Americans would get 7 1/2 cookies each while everyone else would only get about three-fourths of a cookie each.

No wonder we have an obesity problem while some parts of the world struggle with chronic malnutrition and even starvation.

The point is this: Trump plans to improve living standards at home by further turning the screws on everyone else in the world. There are those who believe this is the inevitable result of global capitalism, as if there is no other option for us, as the largest and strongest economy ever seen, to meet our own very real needs.

In fact, the alternative path of developing renewable energy, sustainable, seasonal;, organic agriculture, non-polluting industry, healthy diets, and a more equitable distribution of wealth domestically would obviate the need to impose tariffs on our friends and neighbors and wage global trade wars.

But to implement that solution we’d need a grownup in the White House, a person of moral character with the vision to understand the true costs of climate change, poverty, hunger, poor health and the unequal distribution of resources around the world.

Instead we’ve got a bully.

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p.s. It’s not like those 7.5 cookies make their way equally to most of us back here in the U.S. The top one percent skim a third of them straight away, so the rest of us fight over the balance. The inequality of wealth inside our country is even worse than in the rest of the world. 

HEADLINES:

• Trump Plans Tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China That Could Cripple Trade (NYT)

• Mexico president vows to retaliate with own tariffs against Trump’s tax threat (Guardian)

• Scott Bessent Sees a Coming ‘Global Economic Reordering.’ He Wants to Be Part of It. (WSJ)

• Crony Capitalism Is Coming to America (NYT)

• DOGE’ tweets illustrate an almost impossible budget-cutting agenda (WP)

• Ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah expected to halt war in Lebanon within hours (CBS)

• Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah agree to a ceasefire to end nearly 14 months of fighting (AP)

• Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers say. (Reuters)

• These batteries could harness the wind and sun to replace coal and gas (WP)

• Schiff on Smith decision to dismiss Trump cases: ‘A serious mistake’ (The Hill)

• Biden proposes weight loss drug coverage for people on Medicare and Medicaid (NBC)

• The Beginning of the End of Big Tech (Wired)

• Walmart becomes the latest - and biggest - company to roll back DEI policies (AP)

• US universities warn foreign students on Trump immigration crackdown (BBC)

• OpenAI’s Sora video generator appears to have leaked (TechCrunch)

• Apple AI Launch Faces ‘Difficult and Long Process’ in China (PYMNTS)

• An A.I. Granny Is Phone Scammers’ Worst Nightmare (NYT)

• Barron Trump Returns Home To Find Melania Converted Room To Unending Labyrinth Of Darkness (The Onion)