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Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Life of Chuck' Review
[The plot of The Life of Chuck will be discussed below; read on at your own risk.] THE LIFE OF CHUCK IS SIMULTANEOUSLY EFFECTIVE—it jerks those tears—and almost terrifyingly ineffective, a movie that feints at a sort of transcendent human depth but has a nullity at its center that undercuts the entire premise upon closer examination. To understand why, you'll need to know the broad strokes of the plot, including the first act twist; I think everything discussed here will be painfully obvious to any viewer about ten minutes into the movie, but still, caveat emptor. We open on 'Act Three: Thanks, Chuck,' witnesses to a world on the precipice of collapse. Marty Anderson's (Chiwetel Ejiofor) America is much like ours, if ours had everything go wrong at once. California has collapsed into the ocean; wildfires rage through the Midwest; the rest of the world is starving; and, worst of all, as the film begins the internet has collapsed. The one constant? Advertisements—on billboards, radio stations, and network-TV test patterns—thanking Chuck Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) for '39 great years.' Retirement ads? At a time like this? Why, he looks like he's 39 himself, not a 39-year veteran of the bank—or maybe accountancy or life insurance firm; no one actually seems to know the guy—where he works. Why are these ads everywhere? And is that a tear in his eye? Hm, something feels strange about this. It's almost as if, yes, obviously, Chuck is dying, and this is all in his mind. Indeed, he dies, and we travel backwards through time from there: The second act focuses on a near-miraculous day in the life of Chuck, in which he, a distraught passerby, and a drumming busker engage in a crowd-pleasing dancing exhibition; the first on his childhood with his doting grandparents in their darling Victorian home, one with a terrifying mystery in the attic cupola. Keep up with all our coverage of politics and pop culture—join Bulwark+ today: As I said, The Life of Chuck is effective in that it acknowledges early death is intrinsically unfair, and writer-director Mike Flanagan, adapting a Stephen King short story, understands how to milk this for all its worth. We see Chuck full of life, dancing up a storm on a random street corner, the audience cheering along. It's a great set piece: well-staged, perfectly edited. I'm a sucker for a good drum solo, and while I'm not one for dancing, I still appreciate seeing rhythm on the screen. We also see Chuck near death, his child and his wife weeping over him, damning the unfairness of it all. We see Chuck as a child, full of hope for the future. We know how that turns out. Mistiness, achieved. However, rather than serving as a 'life-affirming masterpiece,' as the advertising for The Life of Chuck has promised, the whole charade feels weirdly empty, bereft of greater meaning. And that's because the universe that Chuck has created in his mind—the one where we meet Marty and his ex-wife, who reconcile at their end—has no resonance through the rest of the film, no real connection to his life or what he accomplished or who he loved. A hippy-dippy teacher in Chuck's elementary school informs him that Walt Whitman's 'I am large, I contain multitudes' refers not to the inherent contradictions of life—the different roles we play, the hypocrisies we reconcile internally—but to an actual universe created by the randomly firing neurons in our brain, an entire cosmos of imagined existences that blink out of existence when we breathe our last. The invocation of Whitman—and, later, Carl Sagan's famous cosmic calendar, the one that informs us all of human existence takes place a few ticks before midnight in a universe condensed to a year—suggests an effort to create a sort of secular cosmology, a sense of a universe greater than the self. But the effect is precisely the opposite. It'd be one thing if Chuck's life of the mind represented important moments and people in his actual life, if we learned that the characters we were following were key figures in Chuck's own world, if we discovered that he helped them find something deeper, something more meaningful, if he saved their lives or redirected the stream of their existence. But we . . . don't. They're just kind of random, stray thoughts. A couple of teachers, a funeral director, a little girl he saw skating on a promenade one time. And when he dies, they disappear into nothingness. This simply does not work as a metaphor for a life well lived or a person who matters to the community; it is fundamentally solipsistic, an expression of a nearly unimaginable form of self-centeredness, almost a hope that the world ends when we die, that people cannot go on without us. So yes, The Life of Chuck works, kinda, if what we mean by 'work' is 'it'll make you tear up.' But it's a work of nearly distressing emptiness. Zip this into a friend's inbox or zap it on to social media: Share
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Does Trump Want to Be the President Who Lost Ukraine?
DONALD TRUMP HATES NOTHING more than a 'loser.' To him, losing is shameful and the worst insult he can imagine. But he could end up being tagged as a loser for the way he has abandoned more than three decades of U.S. support for Ukraine's sovereignty. He is walking away from a tougher European sanctions package that he essentially encouraged, and is now telling Russia and Ukraine they need to work it out themselves. As he well knows, Russia doesn't want a ceasefire or to compromise any of its ill-gotten gains. Almost as shameful, eighty senators are co-sponsoring a strong, veto-proof bill introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham to impose secondary sanctions on entities that enable Russia's flagrant violations of international law in Ukraine. But Graham's bill isn't moving. It's reasonable to believe it's being held in reserve to provide political cover, which allows senators to say they are tough on Russia and supportive of Ukraine while avoiding any pressure on the president. Hypocrisy, sadly, remains a cornerstone of Senate business. For more than three decades, through administrations of both parties, the United States has affirmed Ukraine's sovereignty. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum, signed by President Clinton along with the United Kingdom and Russia, committed the United States to uphold Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for its surrender of nuclear weapons. Now President Trump is apparently growing frustrated with the war in Ukraine and considering washing America's hands of it altogether. When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, many observers warned that the chaotic exit damaged America's credibility and weakened its global standing. That moment is now etched into President Biden's legacy. If President Trump were to withdraw U.S. support from Ukraine too abruptly, he could face a similar judgment. Would he lose Taiwan next? Get the best coverage of politics and policy available anywhere. Become a Bulwark+ member. Some argue that stepping back is a way to avoid escalation, and that Trump is actually protecting Europe and the West. But we have heard this before. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned from meeting Hitler in Munich declaring 'peace for our time.' That short-term concession did not prevent war. It only delayed it. President Zelensky warned against repeating that history in his 2022 remarks at the Munich Security Conference. He urged the West not to appease aggression. That warning now seems more urgent than ever. A recalibration of America's role in the war is possible, and even reasonable. Ukraine is far more resilient than it was in 2022, with a stronger domestic arms industry and deeper ties to Europe. But a precipitous American exit—especially one that halts intelligence cooperation or the flow of critical weapons—would affirm for Putin that time is on his side. It could fracture Ukraine's battlefield cohesion, strain European supply chains, and open the door to renewed Russian advances both in Ukraine and elsewhere. Despite Putin's overtures to Trump, Russia's objectives remain unchanged. Moscow continues to occupy Ukrainian territory, target civilian infrastructure, and destabilize the broader European security order. Just as it did in Crimea in 2014, the Kremlin seeks to redraw borders through force. Others, including Beijing, are watching to see whether they succeed. Putin has also made clear that his ambitions extend beyond Ukraine, including a rollback of NATO's presence in Eastern Europe. A failed Ukrainian defense could encourage him to test NATO's Article 5 commitments, especially in the Baltic states. Preventing that scenario now, through sustained support for Ukraine, is far less costly than confronting it later with American troops on the ground. As someone who recently discovered Ukrainian roots in my own family, I feel a deeper connection to the courage of Ukraine's people. Their strength lies not only in their weapons, but in their will. They have not asked the United States to fight for them—only to stand with them. They have borne immense casualties, held the line for Europe, and proven their resolve beyond doubt. President Trump often speaks the language of power. Lasting power is measured not in threats or slogans, but in the consistency of our commitments and the clarity of our values. Standing with European allies who have shown a willingness to engage with his administration and who still believe in American leadership is not weakness, it is the foundation of deterrence. Showing leadership and resolve now is the surest way to avoid being remembered as a loser. Share
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Coldest Cold Warrior
The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski,America's Great Power Prophetby Edward LuceAvid Reader, 560 pp., $29 LAST WEEK, EDWARD LUCE JOINED ME on Shield of the Republic, the podcast I cohost with Eliot Cohen, to discuss his compulsively readable biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor and longtime scholar of the Soviet Union and its relations with its East European satellites during the Cold War. Although there have been a handful of other books on Brzezinski's intellectual evolution and aspects of his public life, this is the first biography based on access to his personal papers (including his private diary) that brings together his public and private life in one volume. As we discussed on the podcast, it's a puzzle that there have been so many biographies of Brzezinski's predecessor as national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, but so few of Brzezinski. There are probably several explanations for this. Kissinger served eight years in office, including more than two years during which he was concurrently secretary of state in the Nixon-Ford administrations. By contrast, Carter's policy failures ended up limiting him to one term and casting a loser's pall on his administration's reputation. The two men's personalities may have also had something to do with it. Kissinger was more accessible, with a finely honed self-deprecating sense of humor, and he assiduously wooed the press. Brzezinski was witty, but more pointed and razor-sharp. His wit was largely aimed at others, and he could be extremely prickly with members of the fourth estate. One anecdote Luce recounts—thoroughly footnoted—illustrates how quick Brzezinski could be to inconvenience or annoy others if he perceived a rationale to doing so: At 3:00 a.m. on March 5, 1953, Merle Fainsod, Harvard University's leading Sovietologist, awoke irritably to a telephone call from his twenty-four-year-old research assistant. The excited Zbigniew Brzezinski was calling to let him know that the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, had died. Fainsod said that Stalin would 'be just as dead in the morning' and hung up. The dictator passed away later that day. Brzezinski justified his intrusion by saying that the professor would want to be prepared for journalists to ring him at dawn for comments on Stalin's death. Brzezinski's rude awakening offers an inimitable glimpse of how his mind worked: since Fainsod's sleep would in any case be interrupted, Brzezinski would save him the trouble by getting in first. Besides, what Cold War scholar would not want to know as soon as possible about the demise of one of history's greatest monsters? Keep up with all our coverage of politics, policy, books, culture, and ideas—join Bulwark+ today: After leaving government service in 1977, Kissinger continued to seek high office and courted senior officials in successive administrations, both Democratic and Republican. Brzezinski was more focused on public debate on national security policy, and his intellectual style, which consisted largely of bludgeoning his opponents in debate, won him more enemies than friends. As Luce recounts, for Brzezinski 'the visceral and the intellectual . . . were never far apart.' While Kissinger was supremely gifted in dealing out flattery, Zbig treated fools (and some who were not so foolish) with disdain. Both men, émigrés from war-torn Europe who never lost their foreign accents, were fired by relentless ambition for power and prodigious skill in networking, including scoring patronage by the Rockefeller family (Nelson in Kissinger's case and David in Brzezinski's). As a result, perhaps improbably, they both ended up operating at the highest levels of government. Since both received their graduate educations at Harvard (and Kissinger his undergraduate degree as well) and taught there in the 1950s, it was probably inevitable that myths would grow up about their rivalry. Kissinger received tenure and Brzezinski didn't, and therein, so the story goes, lay the seeds of lifelong jealousy and competition. Luce provides a valuable corrective to this tall tale. Although it is true that Brzezinski was initially denied tenure at Harvard, Kissinger actually supported him for the professorship, and Brzezinski subsequently turned down no fewer than three opportunities to return to Harvard. The two men remained in friendly contact (more or less) for the rest of their lives, and as Luce recounts, there is real pathos in Kissinger's heartfelt condolence message to Brzezinski's family when the slightly younger Brzezinski predeceased him in 2017. That said, their 'friendship' retained more than small traces of rivalry as both sought to influence national security policy, one for mostly Republican presidents and the other for Democrats (although, as hard it is to imagine in these highly polarized times, both managed to provide advice across party lines during their long post-government careers). Kissinger's years as national security advisor were marked by high drama, including the opening to China, major arms control agreements reached (SALT I and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty), vivid summits in Beijing and Moscow, and the tumultuous negotiations and tragic exit from the Vietnam war that Nixon and Kissinger inherited from their predecessors. Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Vietnam peace talks, although the catastrophic collapse of South Vietnam in the aftermath of U.S. withdrawal cast a shadow on that achievement. The Carter years were a bit more prosaic. The administration completed the establishment of formal relations with the People's Republic of China begun by Nixon and Kissinger, and the Camp David accords (for which Carter deserves enormous credit—although the catalyst for Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's trip to Jerusalem was Carter's and Brzezinski's wrongheaded determination to bring the USSR back into the Middle East by convening a multilateral peace conference in Geneva). The positive achievements, however, were obscured by the larger failures. The last year of Carter's term, especially, was an almost Dickensian study in contrasts in which Brzezinski played a large part. Most people overlooked the investment in technologies like stealth and precision targeting that started a revolution in warfare (largely because they were secret). Much more visible were the breakdown of arms control negotiations in response to Soviet adventurism in the Third World culminating in the invasion of Afghanistan, as well as the collapse of the Shah's regime in Iran and the subsequent hostage crisis. Share FOR ALL THAT, HOWEVER, I suspect that readers of Luce's biography will come away thinking that Brzezinski was, perhaps, a more consequential figure in the history of American national security that the admittedly more seductive personage of Kissinger. For one thing, he was more prescient, in big ways and small. Luce recounts: In the midst of [the 1976 Entebbe hostage crisis], Brzezinski was invited to dinner at the home of Shimon Peres, Israel's defense minister. Peres kept having to leave the room to take calls. Somewhat flippantly, Brzezinski quipped to Peres that Israeli commandoes should storm the airport and free the hostages. Peres gave Brzezinski an enigmatic stare and went silent. The following day it became obvious why he had kept his counsel: Israeli forces raided the airport in one of the most daring rescue operations in modern history. On many of the big questions, as well, Brzezinski saw things more clearly, or at least more creatively, than Kissinger. Kissinger accepted that the Cold War was a long twilight struggle and that, in a world of nuclear parity with the USSR and limited support in Congress for spending on national defense, it was his job to manage American decline (as he allegedly said to Adm. Elmo Zumwalt). Brzezinski, on the other hand, was more upbeat about American prospects, more fixated on Soviet weaknesses, particularly nationalism in Eastern Europe and the nationalities problem in the USSR. The comprehensive net assessment of U.S. and Soviet strengths and weaknesses that Brzezinski (working closely with Samuel Huntington and Andrew Marshall) conducted at the outset of Carter's term found that only in the area of military power, particularly the nuclear balance, did the Soviet Union outstrip the United States. The policy shifts that Brzezinski helped initiate—the MX missile, the dual-track decision in NATO (modernizing America's arsenal of theater nuclear weapons in Europe while also negotiating more arms control agreements), counterforce nuclear targeting, emphasis on improvements in command and control of nuclear weapons and continuity of government, covert action to undermine the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and Poland, increases in the topline spending on defense in the last two years of Carter's administration, and the inclusion of strategic defense in assessments of the nuclear balance—set the stage for the Reagan Revolution that was to come as the result of the 1980 election and, in no small measure, contributed to the overall collapse of Soviet power in 1991. Join now BRZEZINSKI'S JUDGMENT, HOWEVER, was far from flawless. Luce largely acquits Brzezinski of the charge of antisemitism that dogged him throughout the last forty years of his career, and recounts the fascinating relationship that Brzezinski enjoyed with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin: Although Begin was Israel's most hawkish leader, he and Brzezinski hit it off. Indeed, their shared hawkishness may even have helped. . . . There was something about Begin's inveterate nationalism that struck a romantic chord in Brzezinski. That both men had been born in Poland—although raised in very different milieus—helped. They could switch easily from English to Polish. Their shared compendious knowledge of the Polish Home Army's wartime resistance and the Warsaw Uprising gave them plenty to talk about. Begin had been imprisoned for part of the war by Stalin's NKVD, which meant that they also shared an allergy to communism. Their discussion ranged to Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the Jewish Polish father of revisionist Zionism, who had been Begin's mentor. Brzezinski's assessments of Middle East events (about which he knew far less than Europe or even Asia, where he had spent considerable time) were sometimes catastrophically off. The most prominent examples were Iran during the crisis over the future of the Shah's regime and, at various points, Israel. Perhaps Brzezinski's his greatest lapse, and one which rekindled charges of antisemitism, was his endorsement of The Israel Lobby, the scurrilous book by Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer on the supposedly determinative role of shadowy, unpatriotic, scheming forces in setting U.S. Middle East policy. Share The Bulwark LUCE'S VALUABLE VOLUME will have to serve as just a foundational effort to give Zbig his due. Although it is grounded in Brzezinski's personal papers, it only scratches the surface of the broader array of primary sources (both published and unpublished) that have become available in the last few years—not to mention a growing secondary literature on many of the topics that Luce covers in this book. The official Defense Department history of Harold Brown's tenure as Secretary of Defense and the rich documentation in the State Department's series Foreign Relations of the United States as well as the declassified documents available at the National Security Archive could all have been used to great advantage in fleshing out some of the details in episodes that Luce covers. Recent important secondary accounts of the Iran crises like Ray Takeyh's The Last Shah and Mark Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah would have enriched his account of that climactic experience of the Carter presidency. Finally, a cursory citation of William Inboden's Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink would have prevented an ill-advised overreliance on sketchy sources arguing that Reagan and his campaign minions were responsible for colluding with Iran to hold the hostages until after the election of 1980. Although Brzezinski became more pessimistic about the United States and its prospects, particularly in his last few years, close study of his broader optimism about America and his indefatigable pursuit of American advantage in strategic competition with the USSR as his life's work will yield valuable lessons for today's even more complicated era of great power competition. Send this review on to a friend who cares about foreign policy or who lived through the Carter administration: Share
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What If Trump Ditches the Tariffs Too Quickly?
I'M WORRIED ABOUT TARIFFS. Not in the way you may assume. I'm not worried that tariffs will crash the global economy and lead to massive, avoidable suffering. Well, okay, I am, but I'm even more worried that Trump will be talked out of them. He has already backtracked faster than a hiker who spies a rattlesnake. Trump spent the first weeks of his second term spitting out tariff rates in a twitchy staccato. On February 1, he announced 25 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada (along with a 10 percent tax on goods from China) supposedly due to fentanyl trafficking and illegal border crossings, and then reversed himself. On February 3, he decided upon a 30-day pause on the Canada and Mexico tariffs (which in any case violated the USMCA, the trade agreement with those countries that Trump negotiated in his first term). He next rumbled about taxing the European Union. On February 10, he announced 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, and on February 14 he announced unspecified tariffs on foreign cars. Two weeks later, noting that drugs were 'still pouring into our country,' Trump said the tariffs on Mexico and Canada were back on again and would proceed as scheduled on March 4. And they did. But on March 5, Trump said the tariffs on foreign cars would be paused for thirty days. Got that? Neither did world markets, which featured people exchanging incredulous, haunted looks and pounding the refresh keys on their computers. One day after affirming that the tariffs on our neighbors and most important trading partners would go forward, Trump announced that the Canada and Mexico tariffs were suspended. His decision, he said, had 'nothing to do with the market' (financial markets were sliding). Perhaps the fentanyl smuggling magically ceased? The news has never been harder to follow. Make sense of it with us by becoming a Bulwark+ member and getting access to members-only newsletters, podcasts, and live events. Join today! This on-again/off-again havoc continued for several more weeks (a 200 percent tariff on champagne and wine from the EU, 25 percent tax on cars and parts, a tariff on movies, carveouts for various electronics, copper, lumber, etc.) culminating in 'Liberation Day' on April 2, when Trump announced a national emergency to justify a suite of tariffs that seemed to have been designed by an illiterate on acid. (Yes, the ones that tariffed exports from islands whose only residents are penguins.) We were all to move to battle stations because the United States had been running trade deficits with the world for . . . many decades. This, the White House declared, had 'hollowed out our manufacturing base . . . undermined critical supply chains' and done other damage to our 'competitive edge, our sovereignty . . . and our national and economic security.' Even if this interpretation of trade deficits were true (and it isn't, we have the world's strongest economy), nothing that has persisted year in and year out since 1976 can be credibly labeled an emergency justifying the invocation of extraordinary powers. After 'Liberation Day,' the world reeled. The European Union, China, and other nations announced retaliatory tariffs, and markets crashed. The words 'Smoot Hawley' were suddenly more popular than at any time since the premier of 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off.' All over the globe, panic buying, hoarding, and anxiety skyrocketed. And then came the flight of capital. It wasn't just the obliteration of $8.5 trillion in wealth between April 2 and April 8 (which must be a record for a market crash caused entirely by the whim of one man) but also, for the first time in memory, the dollar was losing its luster as the safe haven in times of upheaval. Instead of rushing to buy dollars, investors were hanging back. As former Fed Chair and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained: Normally, when times are chaotic and uncertainty is high, there's a desire to invest in safe assets, and that tends to push down U.S. Treasury yields, but U.S. Treasury yields went up. When U.S. Treasury yields go up, normally, that attracts capital inflows that would boost the dollar, but both the dollar declined and U.S. Treasury yields rose. What that suggests is that investors are beginning to shun dollar-based assets and calling into question the safety of what is the bedrock of the global financial system, namely U.S. Treasuries. The entire edifice of American strength—financial, educational, military, strategic, and moral—was trembling and starting to crack as in the first stages of a massive earthquake. For a few days, Trump dug in, lecturing the American people that their children had to live with fewer and more expensive dolls, and that this was all part of the great scheme to make us 'so rich you won't know where to spend all that money.' He claimed the tariffs were already working: 'We're making a fortune with tariffs. $2 billion a day!' It was a theme he struck repeatedly in 2024 and since. 'We're taking in so much money, you're not going to believe it,' he told Fox News. But a few days later, again, President Tariff backed down. On April 9, he suspended the 'Liberation Day' levies for 90 days—though he tacked on an additional 145 percent tariff on China as a face-saving measure. And then, on May 12, he climbed down even from those. As the Wall Street Journal put it, 'He started a trade war with Adam Smith and lost.' As matters stand at this moment (and things may have changed by the time you read this), the overall average effective tariff rate is 17.8 percent—the highest since 1934. It was 2.5 percent when Trump took office in January. That's enough to do serious harm to the average consumer. But if the current pattern holds, Trump will back down even more, all while claiming, as he backpedals, that he's 'winning' glorious 'deals.' Share HOW CAN I POSSIBLY SUGGEST that I would prefer Trump to take the ruinous path on tariffs that he first started down? Sadly, because I think economic pain for the average American is the only thing that really matters. Since taking office again, Trump has engaged in a level of naked corruption that has no peer in American history. The $400 million Qatar luxury jet is only the latest (and hardly the most lavish) gift he has accepted. He's been a cash register with the nuclear codes, accepting gifts and probably bribes via memecoins and crypto, deregulating cryptocurrencies to ease the flow, empowering Elon Musk to gain access to confidential information about his competitors, instructing the SEC to cease a fraud investigation of Trump donor Justin Sun ($75 million to Trump digital currency), ending an SEC investigation of Ripple Labs after that company donated $5 million to Trump's 'inaugural fund,' selling tours of the White House to any and all purchasers, and on and on. One could call this third world–level corruption, but frankly, it's at prices that most tin-pot dictators can only dream of. This is Putin-level corruption. Will this dent his popularity? Will it be enough to persuade a critical mass of voters that they made a mistake in 2024 that they must never repeat? I doubt it. People are jaded and inclined to believe that such corruption is universal. If the economy is humming along, will this level of thievery by the chief executive give them pause? Trump has also begun the project of dismantling our democratic system, issuing executive orders when he lacks the power to do so and failing to ask for legislation from a Congress controlled by his own party. Will that be enough to persuade voters of his dangerousness? If inflation is trending down and employment remains strong? Trump is unravelling our global alliances, siding with our enemies, threatening our neighbors, and placing idiots in charge of our military and intelligence services. He is endangering the lives of thousands of Americans by putting public health in the hands of a fanatic anti-vax kook. He is undermining the rule of law by pardoning all of the January 6th insurrectionists as well as dropping charges against useful politicians like Eric Adams. He is hinting that he might run for a third term, kidnapping immigrants off the streets and sending them to a foreign prison from which there is no escape, intimidating judges, persecuting law firms, and threatening to suspend the ancient right of habeas corpus. Will that move the needle? Trump has attacked one of the foundations of our prosperity and world leadership: scientific research and development. He is undermining the First and Fifth Amendments by deporting immigrants purely for speech the government dislikes. He has already destroyed the expectation that public life will be conducted with anything resembling adherence to facts and truth, respect for one's fellow citizens, or basic decency. But this country's voters have demonstrated that they can re-elect someone who attempted a violent coup d'état and who demanded that we 'terminate' the Constitution in order to put him back in the White House in 2022. They may express disapproval for his wild statements and lawless actions (and polling shows a dramatic decline in his approval ratings), but if the economy revs up and prices come down? What will they say then? No, sadly I believe that a durable majority of the American people will not turn their backs on MAGA unless they feel dire consequences in their daily lives. The reasons to reject Trump and Trumpism are too numerous to list but the gravamen is this: He threatens to destroy the system of checks and balances adopted two centuries ago that has proven to be the most successful form of government in history. If the American people are too ignorant or complacent or insensate to respond to the manifold depredations of this president, then economic pain may be the only way. 'Experience is the school of mankind,' said Edmund Burke, 'and they will learn at no other.' Bring on the tariffs! Share
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Donald Trump Has a Family Policy. Stop Laughing.
THE ANIMATING BELIEFS OF THIS ADMINISTRATION range from dangerously wrong to head-spinningly crazy. Tariffs are in the first tranche, along with the myth that NATO has been ripping off the United States for decades, that immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans, and that 'He who saves his Country does not violate any Law' (just to name four). The beliefs that vaccines cause autism, that fluoridated water is a public-health threat, that threatening allies and neighbors enhances national security, and that taxing foreign holders of Treasuries would be a good way to solve the (nonexistent) problem of trade deficits belong in the second tranche. The Trump administration marries insane ideas to gross, bullying tactics. But even when this administration stumbles upon an idea that is not deranged, illegal, or immoral, it has the capacity to do great harm. I'm thinking of the apparent plans to encourage marriage and motherhood. The administration is reportedly considering proposals to award mothers $5,000 'baby bonuses,' to reserve 30 percent of Fulbright scholarships to parents, to reduce the costs of IVF (not clear how), and to fund programs to educate women about ovulation cycles (I kid you not). I've been promoting marriage for decades, not as part of a religious agenda but as the result of studying the social-science literature demonstrating that marriage makes adults happier than non-marriage and that stable, two-parent homes are the best environment for raising children, building thriving neighborhoods, and reducing crime, homelessness, and substance abuse. Join the best pro-democracy community on the internet and help us grow. Become a Bulwark+ member today. The Trump administration cannot adopt this message without turning it rancid. If you hope to persuade people, you must start by showing good faith—that your intentions for them are good. This crowd has displayed open contempt for women—at least those women who vote for the other party or otherwise assert their individuality. In light of the president's apparent requirement that any nominee for a major cabinet role have at least one serious accusation of sexual misconduct, the vice president's sneers about 'childless cat ladies' seem mild. Matt Gaetz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Pete Hegseth, and Linda McMahon all trailed accusations that would have been disqualifying in any other administration. (Only Gaetz was undone.) But then, the thrice-married, adulterous president himself has been found legally liable for sexual assault in the E. Jean Carroll case, and has been accused of similar behavior half a dozen or so times by other women. What that may mean is that Trump must convince himself and others that accusations of sexual misconduct are always and everywhere 'fake news.' Also, he just doesn't give a damn. Trump has endorsed and campaigned with alleged sexual predators ranging from Roy Moore to Herschel Walker, and one of his first acts as president in the second term was to effectuate the release of Andrew and Tristan Tate from custody in Romania on rape and human trafficking charges. (So they can effectuate releases from foreign countries.) The Trump crowd's approach to fertility is not the joy of parenthood or the warmth of close families. It's more like the 'Great Replacement' theory made flesh. Give them credit for honesty, I guess. They don't really claim to be speaking up for family values. Instead, as Elon Musk admits, he wants a 'legion' of offspring 'before the apocalypse' and is creating a harem to achieve it. He is married, but also father to at least fourteen children by four different women and willing to outsource his semen upon request. 'No romance or anything,' he explained to one baby mama, 'just sperm.' It's remarkable to consider that Musk is a pinup for the GOP these days. I well remember the party of 'family values.' Musk is the most famous progenitor of illegitimacy in the world. (William J. Bennett, call your office.) THE TRUMP CROWD WORRIES about America's declining fertility rate and yet treats immigration as a mortal threat. So when they encourage childbearing, the not-so-veiled subtext is that they want not more babies but more white babies. Perhaps they will begin awarding 'Mother Heroine' honors as the Soviet Union did, or the 'Cross of Honor' with which Nazi Germany rewarded fecundity. You don't convince women in a free country to have more babies for the sake of the fatherland. If you want to encourage family formation and increase the birth rate, you can't treat women as breeder mares. It helps to model good behavior. That includes being good husbands who don't cheat on their wives, good fathers who actually live with their kids, and good parents who don't commit or condone adultery. Baby bonuses have been tried in other countries with poor results. Hungary has adopted a suite of policies to support families that are far more generous than what the Trump administration is considering, but the results have been disappointing. Singapore, South Korea, and Russia have seen similar results. Subsidies for babies don't seem to budge fertility rates much if at all. Poland's program of incentives showed some early success but more recent data found that childbearing is still trending down. There are many things governments can do to ease the burden on parents—tax credits, parental leave, and banning smartphones in schools, among other ideas—but policymakers should keep their expectations in check about the effect these initiatives will have on fertility. If they just make family life easier and better, that's a good start. But frankly, we'd all be better off if the Trump people stay far away from family policy, lest they besmirch it. Share
