A Special Note on Tariffs...
...and historical memory.
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a special note on a matter of public concern.
Things have been busy here at HQ (my home office). I’m excited to continue my Empire of Liberty reflection series and to share my thoughts after rewatching Network (1976), especially having spent two years at Media Matters immersed in cable news footage. But sometimes, the moment demands we pause, reflect, and respond. Those pieces will be released next week after I break for the weekend!
This tweet by Tom Nichols has stayed with me:
Nichols is known for his unsparing critiques of MAGA politics and the enablers who stoke it. He often frames their movement as one driven by bored citizens, people adrift in an era of unmatched national wealth who crave grievance and spectacle. On The Bulwark podcast, Nichols has pointed out the bitter irony: those who demand a twisted form of respect are rapidly losing it, dragging a global superpower into chaos through their political choices.
While I share Nichols’ frustration, I also see layers he sometimes overlooks. There’s real pain in the deindustrialized corners of this country, pain that overlaps with racial anxiety and a desperate desire to be heard. Still, Nichols’ insight holds weight, especially when countering pundits like Batya Ungar-Sargon, whose tweet above invokes a rose-tinted version of 20th-century factory life.
America, under the revanchist control of the Trump Republican machine, is embarking on a dangerous tariff regime, one that threatens the global trade system that helped fuel America’s postwar prosperity. The same MAGA voters who now rail against globalism have long enjoyed its spoils: cheap goods, seamless international travel, and the comforts of empire disguised as everyday life. We traded GE for Amazon, manufacturing for logistics and data streams. But this wasn’t just economic evolution, it was a shift in values and identity.
Yes, what happened to America’s factory towns is tragic. These were communities built more for extraction than stability. But we need clarity. The myth of a factory job as a golden ticket to the middle class is just that…a myth. These jobs, particularly before automation and labor reform, were grueling and hazardous. The real American dream wasn’t in romanticizing those jobs, it was in the hope that children wouldn’t have to take them. That’s what Nichols was getting at.
Bethlehem Steel, a former titan of American industry, ceased operations in 2003.
This is why the postwar boom brought skyrocketing college enrollment and youth-centered culture. Parents dreamed of more for their children. But when nostalgia curdles into resentment, history becomes a weapon, and politics becomes performance. Trump’s appeal is rooted in that performance: grievance dressed as governance, politics as entertainment. And while media systems helped enable that spectacle, it was voters who kept tuning in.
As false memories of Mayberry dominate our discourse, we’re losing sight of something vital. Voting out of anger or aesthetic grievance is endangering the very future generations these voters claim to protect. That’s not patriotic. That’s betrayal.
We must stop indulging in myths about a past that never existed. If we’re serious about progress, we need truth (however uncomfortable) and the courage to act on it.
That, too, is part of the American legacy. One worth remembering.
In my 1st year of College in 1970, a book had been recently published. The Greening of America, that was the era of the Love canal tragedy, the Hudson River all rivers were toxic sewers in which no fish could live. The air in LA was so thick that my sister's family moved from Pomona to Mt Airey,Md because of breathing problems.
Bill Clinton started the process of cleaning up the water and air, nothing could be done about the soil, by signing NAFTA and GATT and shipping our pollution and jobs to Mexico and Asia.
He also created the Rust Belt, which is AKA the Swing states. And once blue Ohio became Ruby Red.and set in motion the reverse migration (see Henry Louis Gates Jr's The Great Migration)
Thwarted dreams, the greening of America has produced the unforseen consequence of rule by a racist, fascist dictatorship,and eventually the reversal of all of the environmental and social gains.I take this opportunity to mention that the EPA was created under a Republican president, George W. Bush.
Tariffs will indeed result in a depression and in that vein I share
Trump wants this recession/depression, here’s why
https://www.mind-war.com/p/we-are-flight-93
It seems to me that we are currently on United States Flight 93, the terrorists have locked themselves in the cockpit, and we know they have no intention of ever landing the plane.
Today, Donald Trump took a baseball bat to the world economy before shooting America in the head by slapping a massive wall of tariffs on countries around the world with a rationale that was absolutely Kafka-esque. The markets have no idea what he’s doing or why—and uncertainty is death to investors.
Trump put a formula in his Executive Order to make things seem more scientific, or something, but it’s mathematically meaningless—two of the variables are set to result in the number 1 which is then multiplied by another number. Calling it brain-dead is too generous.
Trump slapped tariffs on uninhabited islands, and places populated exclusively by penguins, while also increasing tariffs on China to an insane 54% tax on their goods. which they will pass on to every American.
What’s important to understand is that Trump is replicating the conditions for an economic depression—on purpose. ICYMI, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act by Hoover in 1930 was an attempt to generate “more revenue” but actually turned a recession into the Great Depression. This is a feature not a bug for the Trump regime.
There are people who are trying to call this a “risk” or a “gamble,” while others are calling it a “big mistake.” It is neither. A financial meltdown is exactly the result they want and expect.
The PayPal Mafia, led by Musk, Thiel, and David Sacks—who is now White House “AI and Cryptocurrency Tsar”—have wanted to destroy the dollar and replace it with digital currency controlled by them for nearly 30 years. That’s what PayPal was originally for. Now they intend to replace the dollar with Bitcoin—no matter what the rest of us think of that idea. This isn’t a proposal, it’s sabotage, massive fraud, and the greatest heist in US history.
<knock knock>
“Hello, ma’am, I’m sorry to see your porch is engulfed in flames, would you like to buy one of my fire extinguishers?”
Grand Theft Crypto: “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve”
When I was a kid I went to New York City with my mom and there was a three card monte game going on the sidewalk so I made her stop to watch it. After a while I got the hang of it and told my mom I wanted to try it. She warned me I would never see the money again but agreed to forward me some allowance anyway, so I gave the guy $10 and he laid out the c…
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We can see what’s happening right in front of our eyes. There is no version of this story where democracy survives if we continue to sit quietly in our seats on Flight 93. The economy is just one target. If we stay on this trajectory, this regime will destroy our freedom, steal our resources, co-opt our government and end the American Experiment permanently. The relative peace since WWII will be replaced by a world torn apart by wars, oppression, and genocide.
So, as Todd Beamer said more than 23 years ago:
“Are you ready?”