I think that Donald Trump is a dolt and a buffoon and I wish he were not president. But he is president and I’m trying to move past that. There are some who just can’t find it in themselves to do that and the editors of the Washington Post are among them. From their editorial on the Trump’s speech:

Yet elements of his address left doubt as to whether Mr. Trump views such values as truly universal. “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,” he said. If by “the West” he means anyone embracing the values of human rights, freedom and the dignity of every individual, he may be right. But those are hardly the property of the United States and Europe. They are treasured by the ailing Liu Xiaobo in China, by bloggers fighting for freedom in Uganda and by legislators fighting off the Maduro regime’s thugs in Venezuela. They belong to people of all colors, all sexual orientations and all — or no — religion. When Mr. Trump urges “us all to fight like the Poles, for family, for freedom, for country and for God,” does “all” truly mean “all”?

Have they lost their minds? The governments of China, Venezuela, and Uganda and, in fact, most of the governments in the world emphatically do not believe in what the editors deem “universal values”. Those values are far from universal. Liu Xiaobo has been imprisoned by the Chinese authorities for having Western values. Consider this quote from Mr. Liu:

Modernization means whole-sale westernization, choosing a human life is choosing Western way of life. Difference between Western and Chinese governing system is humane vs in-humane, there’s no middle ground… Westernization is not a choice of a nation, but a choice for the human race.

or, in other words, Mr. Liu agrees with Trump and not with the editors of the Washington Post.

It is a grave error to believe that the whole world longs for freedom of speech, of religion, of the press and for liberal values in general. They don’t. That was Bush’s mistake in thinking that when we invaded Iraq the people there would rejoice. Some—the most Westernized—did. The rest have been fighting us ever since.

I don’t believe that we should impose our values on anyone else. I believe that the people in China or North Korea or Iran are entitled to wallow in their own misery without our interference. I do not long to “go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”. We have plenty of them here. But I don’t think we should pretend that China’s or North Korea’s or Venezuela’s monsters do not exist.

I have no way of establishing whether Fareed Zakaria’s characterization of the prevailing Washington wisdom with respect to Kim Jong Un and his North Korean regime is fair or unfair, right or wrong. From his Washington Post column:

In Washington, there is a conventional wisdom on North Korea that spans both parties and much of elite opinion. It goes roughly like this: North Korea is the world’s most bizarre country, run by a crackpot dictator with a strange haircut. He is unpredictable and irrational and cannot be negotiated with. Eventually this weird and cruel regime will collapse. Meanwhile, the only solution is more and more pressure. But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong?

The North Korean regime has survived for almost seven decades, preserving not just its basic form of government but also its family dynasty, father to son to grandson. It has persisted through the fall of the Soviet Union and its communist satellites, the Orange Revolution, the Arab Spring and the demise of other Asian dictatorships, from South Korea to Taiwan to Indonesia.

I don’t think he’s crazy. I think he’s all too rational and predictable and that in fact is the problem I have with the regime.

I don’t believe that Kim is content to be left alone. I think he will use the technology he’s developing to extort materiel from us and/or the Chinese. I think he is highly likely to sell that technology to anyone with cash. That’s the problem and that’s the difference between the Kim regime and other awful, tyrannical regimes. He’s a threat to us. Those other regimes are only threats to their own people.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

I honestly don’t know what to think about Donald Trump’s speech in Warsaw the other day. I’m being bombarded with drastically contrasting remarks about it. It was awful. It was great. It was a denial of everything we believe in. It was an affirmation of everything we believe in.

I’ve read it and found it unremarkable, pretty benign, and in the tradition of other speeches by American presidents abroad. I didn’t find it either impressive or horrifying. Rhetorically, I thought it was halting consistent with Trump’s rhetorical style.

Obviously, Eugene Robinson doesn’t feel that way as expressed in his recent Washington Post column:

The speech Trump delivered Thursday in Warsaw’s Krasinski Square might have been appropriate when Britannia ruled the waves and Europe’s great powers held dominion over “lesser” peoples around the globe. It had nothing useful to say about today’s interconnected world in which goods, people and ideas have contempt for borders.

“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,” the president said. “Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

Trump added what he probably thought of as a Churchillian flourish: “I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive. And our civilization will triumph.”

Triumph over whom? Trump mentioned “radical Islamic terrorism” as one of the enemies posing “dire threats to our security and to our way of life,” but he didn’t stop there. He went on to add Russia and — weirdly — “the steady creep of government bureaucracy” to the list. It is appalling that the president would describe patriotic public servants as a kind of fifth column that “drains the vitality and wealth of the people,” and I guess some precious bodily fluids as well.

But what does Trump mean when he speaks of “the West” and its civilization? “Americans, Poles and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty,” he said. “We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are. . . . We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs, and always seek to explore and discover brand-new frontiers.”

That’s what I mean about a little learning. If the president read a few history books, he’d know that for most of the past 2,000 years, China and India were the world’s leading economic powers and Europe was a relatively primitive backwater. He’d know that Europe rose to dominance not by erecting walls but by opening itself to the rest of the world — its resources, products and people.

Here are some links to Trump’s speech and for context I’ve included President Kennedy’s speech in West Berlin in 1963 and President Reagan’s speech in West Berlin in 1987.

Trump’s speech
Kennedy’s speech in 1963
Reagan’s speech in 1987

What should I think about it?

Update

By way of contrast here’s what the editors of the Wall Street Journal have to say about the speech:

This is the speech Mr. Trump should have given to introduce himself to the world at his Inauguration. In place of that speech’s resentments, his Warsaw talk offered a better form of nationalism. It is a nationalism rooted in values and beliefs—the rule of law, freedom of expression, religious faith and freedom from oppressive government—that let Europe and then America rise to prominence. This, Mr. Trump is saying, is worth whatever it takes to preserve and protect.

It was an important and, we hope, a defining speech—for the Trump Presidency and for Donald Trump himself.

Do you see what I mean? That’s why I don’t know what to think.

Lest anyone think there is nothing good to say about Illinois, at least the state can serve as an object lesson. The San Diego Union warns:

So is California on track to eventually reach Illinois’ status? Officials in Sacramento aren’t nearly as fiscally suicidal as those in Springfield. As hard as it may be to believe, the budget the Illinois lawmakers seem ready to pass Thursday doesn’t include any pension reforms of note. But the changes that California has made in acknowledgment of shaky pension finances — most notably the 2012 pension reform measure Brown shepherded to passage — have achieved so little that in retrospect its primary purpose seems to have been to blunt the prospects of more sweeping reforms, such as those touted by former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed.

Meanwhile, California never even comes close to asking the fundamental question: In an era in which government pay is higher than in the private sector — even for jobs which only require high school graduation-level skills — how is it remotely fair that in the private sector, the most someone retiring at age 66 can get from Social Security is about $32,000 a year, while the average pension for a state worker with a 30-year career is more than double that amount — $68,000?

Isn’t this where the starting point for addressing extreme pension costs should be? In a rational world, of course. But not now in Illinois, and not now in California — and maybe never. Because when the people making pension decisions are the very government employees who stand to benefit from generous pensions, the rational thing to do is to take as much as you can.

So we’ve got that going for us anyway.

At Bloomberg View Tim Duy is concerned that the Fed is losing track of its so-called “dual mandates”—inflation and employment:

When central bankers lose focus on their primary mandates — inflation and unemployment — the odds of a policy mistake rise sharply. Remember that the most likely cause of a sustained drop in asset prices will be a recession and the associated fall in profits. That means that if central bankers wait until asset prices roll over before they stop tightening, they have almost certainly waited too long. I don’t think the Fed is in imminent danger of making such a mistake, but I can see the genesis of such a mistake if the bank turns rate decisions too much toward financial stability concerns.

The Fed also has the responsibility of regulating banks. Where did that one get lost?

The Fed has been distracted from its most important mandates for well over a decade and that was one of the many causes behind the financial crisis of 2007. As well as I can tell, if you didn’t know that the Fed had actual mandates written into its empowering legislation, you’d think its main purpose was to ensure that the stock market went up.

Have you heard about the volcanic eruption of October 10th, 1465? Me, neither. At BBC they tell its story and the most amazing part of all—nobody knows where the volcano was:

It was 10 October 1465 – the day of the hotly anticipated wedding of King Alfonso II of Naples. He was set to marry the sophisticated Ippolita Maria Sforza, a noblewoman from Milan, in a lavish ceremony. As she entered the city, the crowds gasped. Before them was a sight so strange and beautiful, it was like nothing they had ever seen before.

Alas, they weren’t staring at the bride to be – they were looking up at the sky. Though it was the middle of the day, the Sun had turned a deep azure, plunging the city into eerie darkness. Rumours began to spread – was it a solar eclipse? As the early dusk lingered on, others suggested it could be a consequence of the weather. After all, they’d had a particularly wet autumn and some claimed they had seen a thick, humid fog rise up into the sky.
This was just the beginning. In the months that followed, European weather went haywire. In Germany, it rained so heavily that corpses surfaced in cemeteries. In the town of Thorn, Poland, the inhabitants took to travelling the streets by boat. In the unrelenting rain, the castle cellars of Teutonic knights were flooded and whole villages were swept away.

Four years later, Europe was hit by a mini ice age. Fish froze in their ponds. Trees failed to blossom and grass didn’t grow. In Bologna, Italy, heavy snow forced locals to travel with their horses and carriages along the frozen waterways.

After reading the article I sought out some lists of large volcanic eruptions and they were amazingly spotty. None of them even mentioned this eruption (or several other 19th century eruptions of which I was aware). It’s certainly interesting. There’s always something left to learn.

I want to encourage you to read this briefing at the Foreign Policy Research Institute from Rensselaer Lee and William Severe which proposes that the Russians be encouraged to get involved in the situation with North Korea:

This briefing argues that the United States should attempt to engage Russia as a potential broker of negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Russia’s ascension to a more prominent role in North Korean affairs is long overdue, and could add some heft to the international community’s negotiating positions vis-à-vis Pyongyang.

The briefing also argues that the policy of economic sanctions on North Korea, while important in pressuring Pyongyang, has proven insufficient in coercing the country to restrain or relinquish its nuclear and missile programs. One reason for this lack of success is North Korea’s skill at evading sanctions via shell companies and Chinese intermediaries. A second reason is that not all parties to the sanctions, most notably the Chinese, have demonstrated the level of commitment required to implement an airtight sanctions regime

If there’s one thing that should be of no concern to us at all, it’s the prospect of Russia becoming too chummy with China. It is of no more concern than would a cobra getting pally with a mongoose. Russia’s involvement might change China’s calculus in determining where their interests lie. It also highlights just how counter-productive fostering a hostile relationship between Russia and the United States is.

In his article on Connecticut at Atlantic Derek Thompson lurches uncontrollably into the observations I made about Connecticut’s budget problems several days ago—its tax base is declining:

Despite being the richest state in the country, by per-capita income, Connecticut’s budget is a mess. Its pensions are woefully under-funded. Its deficit is projected to surpass $2 billion, or 12 percent of its total annual tax revenue. Hartford is approaching bankruptcy. Conservatives look at Connecticut and see a liberal dystopia, where high taxes have ruined the economy. Liberals, on the other hand, see a capitalist horror show, where the rich dwell in gilded mansions, ensconced in sylvan culs-de-sac, while nearby towns face rising poverty and bankruptcy. Why is America’s richest state floundering?

The first answer is: Corporations are leaving. Aetna, the insurance giant, is leaving Hartford, where it was founded 150 years ago. In early 2016, General Electric announced that it would move its global headquarters from Fairfield, Connecticut, to Boston.*

The second answer is: People are leaving. It’s rare for any state to actually shrink, but Connecticut’s population has been falling for three straight years. Meanwhile, only Michigan, Ohio, and Mississippi had slower job growth than Connecticut did over the last two decades, according to Jed Kolko, the chief economist at Indeed, a job site.

What I think goes unappreciated in these commentaries about Connecticut is that state’s split personality. Southwestern Connecticut is a sort of bedroom community for wealthy New Yorkers. The rest of the state (especially when you discount New Haven) is very different indeed and it’s that part of the state that is suffering.

The wealthy are much more mobile than the poor and do, indeed, respond to incentives. If you tell them you don’t want them, by raising their taxes for example, they’re polite enough to leave.

And one of the big implications of really great income inequality is that a very few very rich people leaving can make a huge difference in a state’s revenues. It’s like what happens to a company town when the company leaves.

Whatever you think of Bill O’Reilly, he’s a smart guy and he’s been around the block a couple of times. Consider these observations of his at The Hill:

There are two levels to the hate-Trump media movement. First, the national press corps largely believes he is not qualified to run the country and his flamboyant personal style offends the media elite who consider him to be a vulgarian.

The second level is pure ideology. Under President Obama, the United States lurched left in a dramatic way. Political correctness became the order of the day, and conservative thinkers were branded racists and bigots simply for opposing liberal policies. The press encouraged that massive deception, and the demonization of selective conservative individuals became acceptable. Groups funded by people like George Soros have actually organized into propaganda hit squads using a sympathetic media to spread their vicious invective.

Here’s his advice to the president:

Tweet facts, Mr. President, not insults. Hammer your opposition with verifiable statements. Do that, and you may ultimately prevail against a press that often abuses its freedom — a media where seeking the truth is becoming obsolete.

I suspect his analysis of the media is just about right. I hold no hope that President Trump will take his advice. What I think is likely to happen is that both Trump and the media will continue what they’ve been doing. And, as in mud rasslin’ with a pig, Trump will like it and the media will get even dirtier. We will permanently assume the situation that prevails in the United Kingdom where news outlets are associated with specific political parties.