A correspondent recently wrote an essay asking several questions, ” … Okay, I am going to educate. It’s not a position. Its just facts. China has been crushing entire industries in the US through unfair trade practices. Every single time they do this entire work forces are put on the street. This has been going on for a very long time. What do you propose to change this behavior? Why was it not a shame when the Chinese put out of business the entire solar panel production industry in the US by paying Chinese companies money so they could sell the panels at a steep discount and loss, bankrupting the entire rest of the worlds industry? Why did you not call our past President an a-hole every time China reversed engineered a patented technology and flooded the market with the knockoffs? Why are you not concerned about the large scale poisoning of our medicinal remedies due to counterfeit pills? Again, I will ask you…what should Trump do in order to force China to abide by the international laws they agreed to?….”

Perhaps in a sarcastic mood, I first wrote, “Does Dropping dead count ?” I know that that reply was a cheap shot, that I should erase, but trying to discuss issues rationally with most die hard trump supporters has turned out to be a waste of time.

Donald trump was known to people living in New York to be a pompous ass long before he got the grandiose idea that he could be anyone’s president. Yes, I was born there a year or so earlier and only about ten miles away from his birthplace. I knew that he had a solid reputation for mendacity, serial adultery, general incompetence in his business dealings and the conscience of a dog in heat. Not only did he run valid businesses into the ground (think casinos) but created and looted several bogus enterprises that he started and usually bore his name.

What surprises me is that good solid people from the mid-west, people usually suspicious of Eastern “city slickers” selling snake oil, when most must have known in their heart of hearts that he was at best a TV character in a somewhat successful TV series accepted his perfidy as a breath of fresh air, but they did and some still do stand in line for another taste of the poison kool-aide.

I keep hoping that enough voters will have realized how badly they have been hoodwinked to stay home next November either from personal shame or to choose a different candidate to vote for. There is hope as I see so many erstwhile solid Republicans deciding to not run for re-election in 2020.

Now as for the allegation that the Obama administration did nothing to counter the reasonably valid list of abusive behaviors that China’s social mores accepts as normal, perhaps you might consider the Asia-Pacific Trade agreement that the Obama people had been working on for quite some time. Ignoring trumps bluster and deceit for a moment, that agreement was designed to isolate China from the rest of the Far Eastern trading nations. If it had finally been consummated it would have brought pressure on China to amend its ways, without destroying our national industries quietly and without excessive bombast, which has only succeeded in now making China dig in its heels and create local laws that have successfully had a deleterious effect on the very businesses Obama’s merry men (and women) sought to protect.

It seems that the only reason that trump withdrew from the negotiations was his irritation to have been proved demonstrably wrong about Obama’s birthplace. Perhaps there was, and still is, some residual anger at being compared unfavorably to a well-educated, compassionate Afro-American. Spiteful petty revenge at having been proved totally wrong in public is no way to run a railroad, or a federal government. It will take the next president years of hard work and a healthy dollop of the wisdom of Solomon to repair the international harm that trump and his toadies have accomplished, that is, provided that we do hold honest elections and actually do have a lawful president.

Try to consider the attempts to abandon NATO and SEATO, NAFTA and the absolutely necessary Climate Accords, betray allies and even worse, sharing a bed with dictators, will have on future international relations. What sane foreign leader will agree easily to send his or her nations youth to fight and possibly as an ally of the USA again.

What nation’s agricultural or industrial minister will join us in another attempt to build a peaceful trade wall around China or any other violator of international trade or patent norms. “Can’t trust those Americans, they might just find another trump to insert a knife in our backs,” will cross the mind of every minister of any country that entertains siding with the USA in war or peace, in trade or any complex negotiations. And that ignores the work of restructuring our laws to protect human rights, establish justice for both the rich as well as the often abused poor, undo the effects of global climate change, as well as try to secure the blessings of equality, liberty and perhaps fraternity on ourselves and our posterity.

Charlie Jensen

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