It’s been a few months since my last Two Cents Worth ramble.
I thought it best to hold my fire until
I saw what Trump and Company would actually do on tariffs and how far DOGE would
go in cutting government waste. I knew the
deportation of undocumented immigrants would be more difficult than it should be
and lawfare was not dead yet by a long shot. Now properly locked and loaded, let’s do this.
_The adults left Washington a long time ago and the downward
spiral seems to be accelerating. Both parties are to blame. In the vacuum of leadership, we have government by the worst of us for the rest of us.
One incompetent group replaces another; each with a few good ideas and a lot of bad ones. A small step forward, two giant leaps backward. Rinse and repeat.
_I had always considered the talk of another American
Civil War to be total click-bait nonsense. It’s still mostly click-bait, but it’s no
longer total nonsense. If there is another
Civil War, it will be driven by weaponized ideas, misinformation and technology. Americans will become increasingly tribal. There will likely be an increase in targeted as
well as random acts of violence and destruction of property. We will become further separated geographically,
economically and spiritually. We are becoming the Dis-United States of America.
_”Give us a protective tariff and we will have the
greatest nation on earth.” Who said it? And
don’t cheat googling the answer. Hint:
Trump may have said it in so many words, but he was not the first. Abraham Lincoln is actually the one who said it. The
truth is our founding fathers really liked the idea of tariffs and up until the
1930’s we had significant tariffs in place.
But there is a good reason why we became advocates of free trade.
Overall, free trade is in our best interest. Perhaps not for specific industries.
But when things can be made as well or better at lower costs in other places,
that’s fine as long as a nation doesn’t sacrifice its strategic production
capacity. Yes, we allowed free trade to
go too far and to our detriment in certain industries. But Trump and Company are over-reaching and
over-correcting when it comes to tariffs. This will go down in history as one
of the most wrong things that was ever done for the most right reasons.
_Musk and DOGE may also go on the list of wrong things
done for the right reasons. It’s not
nearly as bad as the tariff fiasco. However,
the unintended consequences and collateral damage of their sledgehammer,
lightening strike approach is going to backfire when the next regime, most
likely a Democrat regime, returns to power.
_The good news is that it’s not all doom and gloom. We have some very bright, hard-working young people in this country. There is
some evidence many of them are leaning back toward more traditional values of faith, family, education
and hard work. It’s not
too late to save what’s been lost and rebuild, God willing.
_Lastly, one of my biggest regrets in life is that I did not
copywrite and register “Click Bait”.
