Let us cut
through all the name calling and character assassination after the 2016
Presidential Election. He's this and She's that. There is little value in
continuing the rhetoric and vitriol. We can even dispense with recriminations
for how and why the election turned out the way it did. Whatever comes now we must
be able to survive it.
Whatever
else Donald Trump is, he is a corporate CEO. He thinks like a corporation man
and acts accordingly. None of his supporters can or would argue against that
statement. He uses the rules which have been put in place to benefit corporate interests.
He is correct in his assertion that he was proper in writing off nearly a $1 bn
in losses which would allow him to not be liable for income taxes for nearly
two decades as the result. Not even the reason for the written off losses are
really pertinent.
The trouble
with his mentality as a CEO and President of the USA is that one cannot run a
country like it was a corporation. Here is the point. Corporations have
Internalities and Externalities. Countries of people cannot have externalities.
To a coal
mining corporation the price of mineral leases and how much labor is required
to get it out of the ground is an internal concern of the owners. What their
customers do with the coal is an externality, i.e. none of their concern. The
coal mining company doesn't care how efficiently the coal is burned, how much
ash is left over to handle or what the customer does with it. The company only
concern is to pay enough wages to get a man into the mine. Whether that pay is enough to live on is external to their operation. If the miner is injured,
it requires Federal legislation to force the company to attend to the costs. They
do not take care of disabled miners out of the goodness of their heart. Doing
so diminishes shareholder value.
Donald Trump
in and by himself is not so much a counter-productive thing, but the CEO of a
corporation sets and shapes corporate mentality and attitudes. The fiasco of
Wells Fargo Bank and the employees defrauding millions of customers with
unwanted credit accounts flows directly from the top down. Corporate leadership
created the climate where employees felt it necessary to commit financial
crimes in order to succeed in their jobs.
Mr. Trump
has led a sizable portion of this country down a road that leads to
manifestation of fear, hatreds, violence and vitriolic free speech. The gun
manufacturers had yet another banner year of sales with the prospects of
Hillary Clinton becoming President. I suggest this time sales were driven not
by the prospects of the government coming for the weapons but that they will be
needed in an imminent demographic clash. Who suggested that such a need would
come to be?
Beyond the
prospects of ultra-conservative SCOTUS appointments gutting the ACA, Roe v.
Wade, Marriage Equality and Gender Rights is the prospect that the
Trump-modified complexion of the Supreme Court will more deeply entrench
Citizens United, corporate and fetal personhood, and divest the nation of such
externalities as fair living wages, health care access, education and
environmental protections.
Beyond the Supreme
Court appointments, there are dozens of cabinet positions and agency chiefs who
will not be aligned with human being concerns such as clean water and air
(corporate externalities.) They are likely to give concessions to corporate
interests which can never be recovered. The divestiture of a National Forest to
logging and mining cannot be taken back. Once the ground water is contaminated
it will take centuries if ever for it to be clear again.
If we do not
put our financial resources into high school graduations and post-secondary
college degrees, we will not have enough doctors to serve every American. We
need nursing and other medical staff. We need to focus our efforts of training
tens of thousands of such position. Where is the Trump leadership to keep that
imminent disaster at bay? But remember, health care is a corporate externality.
One of the
several Presidential job duties is to be America's Ambassador to the world.
There are countries which already acknowledge the ineptitude of Donald Trump.
More so than what WE think of him, is what the world thinks of him and of us.
We are only 4.5% of the global population. What they think matters.
America
cannot treat human needs and the environment like they were externalities.
Doing so will increase suffering and move us closer to the metaphorical
doomsday midnight. We used to have the clock face showing 11:58 pm to show us
the world was only two minutes from nuclear disaster due to conflicts with
China and the now defunct Soviet Union. That clock needs to be rebranded as the
environment/social collapse clock.
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