After Donald Trump was elected for a second time, he began to systematically destroy the “rules-based order” that the US had painstaking constructed after World War II. It’s elements included having an independent bureaucracy and judiciary, floating the dollar as the reserve currency of the world, keeping the world’s communications networks centered here, maintaining an enormous military to be the world’s policemen, etc. Although somewhat expensive, this arrangement provided enormous benefits.
In little more than a year, these are all in tatters. The US is now the largest and most powerful corrupt mafia state in the world, run entirely at the whim of a single dictator who maintains a masked paramilitary force to terrorize cities, who arbitrarily attacks dairy farms and fishing boats, who abducts the leaders of other countries, and who unilaterally begins wars.
People argue whether he is the cause or the symptom of an electorate that is too stupid and provincial to understand what immense harm he’s doing to the standing of the country. But I would like to argue that the moment that the US actually jumped the shark and began on the path that led inevitably to this moment was when Ronald Reagan was elected.
I think this graph pretty much sums it up:
Ronald Reagan had a handful of bad ideas and pursued them vigorously. He began the process of undermining confidence in the ability of government to be a force for good. He began the Republican practice of appointing cronies to govern incompetently and cynically, so that people would see government negatively.
Critically, he presided over the decoupling of productivity gains from wages for workers. The voodoo economics of “trickle down” began under Reagan. Prior to his administration, as productivity increased, wages for workers increased commensurately. After Reagan, productivity continued to increase, but wages were flat. And basically have been flat until today. The rich got richer, but everyone else got poorer and poorer.
These two factors are what we see playing out today. People no longer believe that government or expertise are forces for good. Even though they enjoy the fruits of science, technology, and medicine, they have been impoverished economically, and they blame government.
To be fair, the Democrats have not distinguished themselves. Under Bill Clinton, the Democratic party became a kind of Republican-lite. He created the Democratic Leadership Council that began pursuing funding from the wealthiest in the country. Democrats pushed back against the worst excesses of the Republicans, seeking at least to govern competently, but remained in the pockets of the wealthy and failed to effectively advocate for working people.
I could see these things happening when Reagan was President. I kept waiting for the country to realize the enormous damage he had done. But they kept naming things after him, as if he had done anything other than preside over the destruction of the American dream. Now, finally, people seem to be realizing the enormity of the injury he inflicted on the country. But the damage is done and things are likely to get worse for a long time to come at this point.
Donald Trump has made the United States an international pariah. The rules-based order isn’t coming back. The rest of the world is never going to trust the United States again. So the country is likely to get poorer for the foreseeable future. Sorry. I mean the population of the United States. The billionaires will probably keep getting richer.
Donald Trump is the one who actually took an axe to the world order that had been so painstaking constructed to benefit us. But the seeds its destruction were sown by Ronald Reagan. And we are left to reap the bitter harvest of his cynical crop.
