Why?
Tired of feeling like a rabbit in the headlights of the Trumpian juggernaut?
President Trump and his government have, in the last few months, desecrated international norms developed over the last decades. For example,
- The country has aligned itself with and appeased autocratic regimes that have (also) ignored and broken international norms, including through aggression and little respect for human life
- The ‘Liberation Day’ announcement on tariffs capsizes the WTO and efforts to treat developing countries in a fairer way, and may trigger a global recession
- WHO has been vilified and has lost, along with many other multilateral organizations, significant funding
- USAID has been eviscerated, with 60 years of programming “put through the woodchipper” with tens (if not indirectly hundreds) of thousands of losses of jobs in the non-profit sector
- Sensitive information, pertinent to US and global security, is not safe and treated irresponsibly and without accountability by the most senior officials in the country, as demonstrated by the Signal/Yemen debacle.
Only a minority of observers think these are positive: compare the 3% of scientists who don’t believe in climate change. The policies and actions are brutal and cruel. They will deepen inequalities, reverse progress, and foment unrest and conflicts. ‘America first’ means ‘America alone’ and many question the wisdom of the benefits for the US population as a whole.
We respect that the US electorate chose this leadership – although it is not clear, given the country appears to be heading towards electoral autocracy, how easy choice will be in the future. The country is becoming becoming more and more isolated. The bad days of the 1930s echo more and more.
With much love for our US friends, their intellectual and literary legacy stands out - including It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, and Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Beyond these, whether religiously inclined or not, the Sermon on the Mount, delivered by a humble preacher about 2,000 years ago, and close to where there is a promising Big Real Estate Site in the Middle East, predates the American Myth. Click here for the quick summary.
We live in a complex global society more intertwined than ever before. Our voices and actions carry weight. While governments diplomatize, we as individuals collectively have power through our economic and political choices and can express these non-violently and directly. We can send a clear message, through our own transactions, to transaction-loving Trump and co. What is happening is far from ‘business as usual’ and terrifying. Remembering Burke, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good people do nothing.
