whatimnothearing.com

Anyone outside the US would think that Trump is in serious trouble. His promise to reduce the price of eggs on day one has backfired, and even his most hard-headed cultists are beginning to see that the tariffs are raising prices, not lowering them. His promise to end the Ukraine war within 48 hours has also backfired, as he is now saying he’s going to ‘give Ukraine a pass’. Signalgate has mushroomed into such a scandal that it is almost universally held that Hegseth & Co.  have probably made hundreds of hackable calls and divulged volumes of top secret information to Russia and China.

And yet, Trump’s overall approval rating remains constant around 50%. (even though on certain issues it has tanked.) The majority of Americans are pretty much OK with all these scandals. How can this be? How could anyone tolerate such awful behavior?  I watched an interesting discussion on CNN’s ‘Smerconish’. He pointed out that Trump has masterfully diverted public attention away from the disasters mentioned above to the areas where he is strongest. To wit:

1. Immigration/racism.  The deportations to El Salvador have focused the news cycle on the deportation of many innocent men to that concentration-camp gulag . All non-Aryan, of course. ICE kidnaps a Hispanic with tattoos, declares without evidence that he is a terrorist/gang member, and ships him off to the Gulag forever. This action should be beyond the pale for any democracy-loving American, but it isn’t. These non-Aryans are all horrible people — ‘rapists and murderers’, ‘dog and cat eaters’, ‘poisoning our blood’, ‘worse than animals’. Hooray for Trump! Ridding us of these non-white vermin. How dare those ‘woke’ courts try to protect these awful people?

Proud American patriot

Here’s a thought:  suppose ICE randomly rounded up 1000 non-Aryans, declared them terrorists, and ‘disappeared’ them to the gulag. Suppose that only 2 of the 1000 were later found to be criminals, while the lives of the other innocent 998 and their families were forever ruined. Would Trump & Co. still boast, “We got rid of 2 dangerous criminals. Americans’ lives are safer now. You should thank us.” ?

2. Eastern private universities.  Hotbeds of ‘woke-ism, these institutions have DEI practices that accept and hire blacks and women and foreigners. Americans hate these liberal, elite seats of woke indoctrination. Hooray for Trump! Attacking these effete libtards and expelling or deporting those snowflakes who disagree with good ol’ Aryan American policies. Of course, he would never attack any of those red-state, jock schools like Alabama or Ohio State. In fact, I was hoping that when Trump invited the OSU football team to the White House, the mostly Afro-American OSU team (How DEI can you get?) would refuse in order to call out Trump’s blatant racism.

3.  The IRS.  Everyone hates the IRS. The more Trump cuts back or eliminates the IRS, the more we can cheat on our taxes without being audited. Hooray for Trump! Allowing us to underpay our taxes and cause the US public debt to skyrocket.

Trump has managed to focus the news cycle on these three issues in order to mask his gross failures. He hates the same groups of people his followers hate. This emotionality allows them to support illegal and unconstitutional acts simply out of blind hatred. Anything Trump does to persecute these hated groups is fair game. Courts, the Congress, laws, and the Constitution must not get in the way of these noble actions. Call Trump a dictator if you will, and point to his moral failings, but he is ridding America of this scum, because the courts, etc. are not doing their job.

To these supporters, Trump is coming out smelling like a rose.

The media continue to focus on trivial questions such as “What is the definition of ‘classified’?” The Trump administration, with media complicity, has done a masterful job of steering discussion away from the central issue — that of posting sensitive information over unsecured platforms. I have yet to hear anyone ask either of the following questions:

1. Who authorized the illegal use of Signal for sensitive conversations? That person has broken laws and should be in jail.
2. Who illegally set the default of Signal to destroy the messages after a certain time? That person has broken laws and should be in jail.

A third and much more important question is the extent of other Signal communications. The media are reluctant to ask this of government officials, and the one or two attempts at it (e.g. Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs) are met with stonewalling and embarrassed dodging. That suggests that the practice is much more widespread than they are making out.  In addition, the 18 players in the Signalgate leak were quite complacent and at ease with the method, as though they had used it many times, and no one raised any questions about its legality or danger.

I think it’s fair to conclude that hundreds, if not thousands of messages have been, and continue to be posted over unsecured and hackable platforms.  This raises a couple of important questions or speculations.

1. If the White House has been using hackable platforms, the Russians and Chinese certainly know this. If so, they have said to themselves, “Hey, we can hack that.” and they certainly have tried and succeeded. Even if they haven’t managed to hack the encryption of the Signal messages, those messages are downloaded and de-crypted into dozens of private phones, where they are fair game for hackers. (Remember the outrage at Hillary’s private server?) Consider that if even one of those 18 private phones (e.g. the guy who was in Moscow at the time) had been compromised, the entire conversation would be known to the Russians. Even Goldberg’s phone might have been tapped.

I suspect that the Russians did indeed hack that Signal chat, but they decided not to act on it, because any action would reveal how far they had penetrated the communications system.

2. If hundreds, even thousands, of sensitive conversations have been sent via Signal and intercepted by the Russians, what other top secret information do they have? They possibly know everything that has happened within the White House ambit.

Are Congressional Republicans also in on the scheme? I suspect so. They are going to extremes to stonewall questions about investigations, not just to placate King Trump, but because they themselves are guilty of crimes and of knowingly leaking sensitive information.

The media are complicit in this cover-up. I’m sure that many more brilliant and analytical minds than mine have at least entertained thoughts similar to mine. But the media are avoiding those questions like the plague. They appear to be bending the knee (just as the Washington Post, CBS, and NBC have already done) to Trump, almost as if he let it be known that they’d ‘better not go there’.

I’m not normally a conspiracy theory advocate, but this one seems to have legs. Someone – probably Trump himself — has intentionally broken laws to authorize a hackable system that has almost certainly enabled the Russians (and Chinese and others) to intercept hundreds of top secret messages. The more Trump & Co. Make absurd statements to hide this issue, the more I believe they have something really big to hide.

Finally, this clear cover-up of crimes, with its obvious lies and distractions, is damaging to my feeling about all the other events in Washington. It lends credence to my fear that many other issues — Covid origins, vaccine effectiveness, etc. — have been tainted by the government. It makes me less willing to believe anything that comes out of Washington, or from the media, who are in the thrall of Trump.

Now a strange thing has just happened. I was surprised to receive an unsolicited message that AI has added two paragraphs to the above. I will include them here, but you should realize that they are AI work and not mine.

It raises a troubling question about the integrity of our institutions and the information they provide. When trust erodes, concerned citizens like myself find it increasingly difficult to navigate the complexities of governmental narratives. It feels as though we are being gaslit, led to believe that our doubts are unfounded when, in fact, the patterns of misinformation suggest otherwise. This skepticism extends beyond just the current administration; it permeates my views on broader political discourse, complicating my ability to engage with policies that affect my daily life.

As I scrutinize everything from economic reports to health guidelines, I can’t help but wonder how much of it is influenced by political agendas rather than genuine public interest. The implications of this distrust are significant, breeding apathy and division among citizens. If we are to find a way forward, a robust dialogue that embraces accountability and transparency is essential to restore a sense of faith in our governance and the media.

I’m quite amused to watch the Trump team squirm to lie, downplay, cast blame, etc., to get off the hook for the egregious leak of secret information. The media are going berserk painting the administration as a bunch of incompetent bumblers.

However, the Trump team is craftier than that. They have managed to focus the inquiry on two questions:

1. How did Goldberg’s name get added to that list?, and
2. Was the leaked information classified?

The media have taken the bait, and they devote their whole time to those questions. Trump may be successful in framing the issue as one of incompetence. They are relatively safe in assuming that no one will find out how Goldberg’s name was added. As for classification, no one formally ‘classified’ the data. Even in the case of including the name of a secret CIA operative, no one actually declared this information as ‘classified’. So the media go round and round seeking answers to the two questions, without ever getting a satisfying answer.

I suspect that the end result will be the firing of Waltz. That will dismiss the whole incident as an innocent case of inadvertent neglect, and the whole story will disappear from the news cycle.

No, all this is a distraction from the real issue, which I am not hearing: what were all these top-ranked people doing discussing sensitive information over an unsecured line, on their private phones, that could be hacked? All these people were well aware that using an unsecured line is illegal. It is doubly illegal when they willfully alter Signal’s default of preserving messages, to delete the messages, as law requires that messages be retained.  This is not incompetence; it is a planned effort to break the law and go around the ultra-secure government system.

No one in that room questioned the use of an unsecured line. Indeed, they were complacent and comfortable using it, as though they were quite used to the method. This suggests that many other chats and messages are sent through unsecured means. In fact, maybe ALL White House communication is done through unsecured means. This needs to be investigated, but I think I know what the answer will be.

If all or most of the White House messages are unsecured, then Trump must be aware of the fact, and in fact he must use those unsecured lines himself, which means that he must have approved of the method, and probably ordered that Signal be used.

Now why would Trump approve or even order the White House staff to use (illegally) lines that are hackable on private phones, as opposed to the secure government procedure? The prima facie answer is that Trump wants someone to hack the messages. And who might that ‘someone’ be? Well, Putin is the first name that comes to mind.

I’m suggesting that it is at least possible that Trump ordered White House staff to use an illegal system that Putin could hack into, giving Putin access to all secret conversations at the White House. How about members of Congress? Or the Pentagon? Do they all use Signal, as ordered by Trump? Is it possible that Putin knows all our military secrets? The loyal cronies, all of whom are aware of what is going on and how illegal is, won’t dare blow the whistle. Indeed, they are safe because they were ordered by the President to break the law, and the President cannot be prosecuted. (Reminds me a bit of Nazi prison guards.)

All this speculation is outrageously monstrous, but I feel that the rabbit hole is pointing in that direction. That is why the Trump team is going to such lengths to focus on the questions of Goldberg and classification, in order to avoid some really serious and intentional breaking of the law. If my suggestions are even 1/10^th true, then Hillary’s emails, the Mar-a-Lago documents, and the addition of Goldberg to the list, pale into insignificance.

One final question: if it is shown that Trump is indeed enabling Putin to access all our secret data, will his MAGA cultist cronies still support this criminal behavior? All indications are that they will allow this to continue.

There has been a hue and cry from economists that consumers will pay for Trump’s tariffs in the form of higher prices. China does not pay the tariff on Chinese products.

Parenthetically, I note that since the introduction of tariffs on China, the Chinese stock market has been going up, while Wall Street has been going down.

When it comes to small countries, however, the US is waging economic warfare against adversaries who don’t have the power to fight back economically. For example, Trump wanted to fly migrants in US military aircraft into Columbia, and when Columbia refused, Trump slapped a 25% tariff on them. The Columbian president immediately backed down.

So in this case, you can say that Columbia paid for the tariff. This is happening around the world. People tend to think of tariffs on China and big countries, but those threatened tariffs against smaller, more defenseless countries, are economic warfare that results in those countries’ paying (although not monetarily) for the tariffs.

The threat of tariffs in order to secure U.S. military landing rights in Columbia is especially worrying, because it translates an economic threat into a military solution. Suppose, for example, that Trump wanted to build a naval base on a small Caribbean island that sells its bananas to the US. He could say, “If you don’t let us build the naval base, we will not buy your bananas.” Of course the base will be built.

The past decade has seen a deterioration in the world security, where it used to be a rather unwritten law that a big country would not just invade or take over a small country. Probably the Pax Americana had a lot to do with this. But now, Russia dares to try to take over Ukraine. We have Rwandan forces trying to take over parts of the Congo. And, of course, we have Trump threatening to take over Panama or Greenland or even Canada, and he doesn’t rule out a military takeover. Latest is an American takeover of Gaza, in which the Gazans are expelled so that Trump & Co. Can build a ‘Riviera’, complete with a Trump Tower and Trump family-owned resorts. (How about a pork-rib barbecue?)

What can smaller countries do to prevent economic bullying by bigger countries? The only solution I see is in cooperation among small countries. All the banana producers would have to join forces and vow that an economic tariff or boycott of one country would result in tariffs or boycotts against the US from all those countries. It’s hard to see this happening: if the US slaps a tariff on bananas from one small island, the next island might say, “Goodie! Now WE can sell MORE bananas to the US.”

But really now, Trump’s “America First” means “America against the rest of the world.” No cooperation with the UN, the WHO, or with any international agencies. No win-win negotiations. Trump is not just isolating America; he is actually antagonizing the rest of the world, who will before long gang up against Trump. Africa, South America, Asia will side with China in a grand alliance against the US, which will have lost all its allies.

Foreign aid has always had its detractors. Many people feel either, “Why should we be giving aid to those ungrateful shithole countries?”, or else, “USAID is such a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy, it’s just another big, wasteful black hole for tax dollars.”

Well, I want to share my experience working for USAID some years ago in both Haiti and Cambodia, as well as working closely alongside USAID in Côte d’Ivoire. I do not come down fully either pro or con. There is one truth, not always fully realized, that must be pointed out: USAID is an arm of US foreign policy, and its number one goal is to advance American interests. Of course, helping flood victims or building hospitals is a means to that end, but we shouldn’t forget the real end objective, since sometimes helping countries and extending American influence can work at cross purposes.

I worked for USAID in Cambodia to set up what is now the National University of Management. USAID wanted the NUM to be an American-run, American dominated institution, while the Cambodians said, “Wait a minute; NUM is a Cambodian institution.” This led to bitter fighting between the Americans and the Cambodians. The leaders were interested in playing power politics, and many were self-serving, ambitious bureaucrats with little interest in helping Cambodians. It was mostly a game of stroking egos.

On the other hand, the lowly grunts hired to train teachers, set up curriculum, and develop the staff, were dedicated professionals, aiming at establishing a credible university in the midst of the political chaos going on in Cambodia immediately following the fall of the Khmer Rouge and the UNTAC elections. I get a real sense of pride when I see the NUM today – 30 years later – as the premier business university in the country. I feel that our team achieved this despite the political machinations of the big bosses.

I saw the same pattern in Haiti. USAID was intent on currying favor with Haitian officials, and often overlooked corruption and incompetence by those officials. At the same time, I worked with a team of Haitians to develop educational materials in Haitian creole, and they were real professionals who knew what they were doing, and who were dedicated to that goal.

So the pattern is always the same: political egos fighting for power at the top, with dedicated professionals trying to do good. I saw this again in Côte d’Ivoire, working alongside some truly amazing people (and I single out Steve Grant of USAID), who were adroit enough to straddle the sometimes conflicting agendas of power-hungry bureaucrats and local Africans with needs. The key was to adopt a win-win attitude, in which American influence and local development went hand-in-hand.
 

It appears to me that Trump’s dislike of USAID stems from his dislike of win-win solutions. For him, everything is a power play with a winner (himself, he hopes), and a loser (who ends up bending the knee but hating the US). In the tension between doing good and making America a winner, Trump thinks that USAID is doing too much good and not forcing America’s will upon developing countries. He calls USAID officials “radical maniacs”, by which he means “woke people who want to help others.”

In my experience with these two sometimes conflicting objectives, I feel that on balance, USAID has done a lot of good, not only for the developing countries, but also for America’s image as a partner in development. It is this image that Trump wants to destroy; he feels that America must dictate to other countries how to act and bully them into submission. That is what Trump means by ‘respect’, and ‘America first’.

Aristotle: you don’t hear much about him these days, mostly because most of his writings are taken as just plain obvious. You can yell at me for trying to reduce Aristotle’s entire opus to one short parable being bandied about the internet these days: it’s the one about two men in a room arguing about whether it’s raining outside. Aristotle says, “Why don’t you just go to the window and look?”

But what happens when the two Greeks go to the window, and one says, “See? It’s raining,” and the other says, “See? It’s not raining”?

If this disagreement over what the two men see is repeated over time, they will no longer go to the window to look, but will revert to their argument in the closed room.

Versions of this scenario have been occurring regularly for years. “See? Elon Musk was giving a Nazi salute.” “See? Elon Musk was just raising his hand.” “Let’s go back to our closed media to discuss whether Musk is a Nazi or not.”

 Musk: Nazi salute or not?

After January 6, 2020, many people saw the videos of what looked — clearly, to my eyes — like thugs beating up policemen, breaking windows in the Capitol, and smearing feces on the Capitol walls. But no, others saw peaceful tourists, or maybe some FBI provocateurs or Antifa (You don’t hear that word much these days. Did Antifa disappear?)  Trump said there was ‘love in the air’. After four years of seeing that video, the US has retreated into its closed media standoff about whether the Jan. 6 events even happened at all. We know that the evidence wins no arguments.

Across the board, every piece of evidence is denied as either politically biased or AI generated. No one even thinks about looking at evidence anymore. Aristotle has been thrown out the window.

What is replacing Aristotle? I’d say it’s blind adherence to the Great Leader. If Trump says it’s so, then it’s so. The American economy, by all measured accounts, has been the most powerful in the world, with job growth, GDP growth, and even bringing down the Covid-induced inflation. However, Trump told the American electorate that the economy sucked, prices were rising, and that they were miserable. His pronouncements were believed far more widely than the government statistics.

All economic predictions point to higher inflation under Trump’s tariffs, deportation of the labor force, tax cuts for the rich, etc. But when prices go up, Trump will brag about how he has lowered prices, and he will be believed. No one will actually go check whether the price of eggs has gone up or down. After all, a price check would be evidence — not to be taken seriously.