Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where ignorant armies clash by night

I was going to write something much harsher than this; but then I chanced upon “ignorant armies” and hence was reminded of Dover Beach and it was so gloriously beautiful again that I can’t bring myself to be unkind, at least for a while.  So instead I’ll just quietly point out that the vast slew of Trump stories are counter-productive. The one that triggered my… I’m being nice, aren’t I? OK, my disapproval, was Trump has violated his oath to the Constitution. But it is just an example; there are many many others. The bit they are worrying about is “emolument”; and they’re worried, for example, that The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC), which is controlled by the Chinese state, is currently paying rent for tenancy in the Manhattan Trump Tower (according to mortgage documents filed in 2012, it is the Tower’s largest office resident). TP says The emoluments clause prohibits any person holding a federal office (such as, for example, the presidency) from accepting “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.” Notice anything missing? If you’re not familiar with the constitution, or had cause to look at it recently, you won’t realise: the full clause is No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. You can also read the Economist’s take. So, the holes in this are near endless. The clause itself is designed to prevent gifts / bribes; it isn’t clear at all it is designed to prevent business transactions9. If it is so designed, since it applies to all office holders, not just the high up, it must (if you interpret emoluments to include commonplace commercial transactions) inevitably have been violated by large numbers of people.

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air! Only, from the long line of spray Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land, Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand, Begin, and cease, and then again begin, With tremulous cadence slow, and bring The eternal note of sadness in. Sophocles long ago Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we Find also in the sound a thought, Hearing it by this distant northern sea. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

And lastly, Trump’s conflicts were known before Congress ratified the results of the election, which probably amounts to “Consent”.

I’m probably getting carried away over-analysing this one example⁵. The point, in case I’ve obscured it, that all these stories are starting to amount to just so much noise. All the nice left wing people go tut tut and have their anti-Trump opinions confirmed. All the nasty right wing people go suck it up liberals and have their pro-Trump opinions confirmed. And no-one learns anything and nothing is changed, except dialogue becomes that bit harder.

You’re wondering – I know you are – why I bothered write this when it will obviously be ignored. And I have an answer. It’s going to be a great answer… people tell me my answers are great. It is this: many people – for example the Economist – are wondering “What is Donald Trump likely to achieve in power?” They note that one may be tempted to conclude that it is simply too soon to tell. But there is enough information—from the campaign, the months since his victory and his life as a property developer and entertainer—to take a view of what kind of person Mr Trump is and how he means to fill the office first occupied by George Washington. There is also evidence from the team he has picked. However, their “predictions” are rather vague. They note potential upsides to business from corporate tax cuts and deregulation, and downsides to diplomacy (NATO, EU, China) and to trade (protectionism). If they have a conclusion, it is presidents can do a modest amount of good. Sadly, they can also do immense harm. Which (I’m getting there, be patient) chimes with something I recently read via Paul:

Again and again, people imagine that, if their local pocket of order isn’t working how they want, then they should smash it to pieces, since while admittedly that might make things even worse, there’s also at least 50/50 odds that they’ll magically improve. In reasoning thus, people fail to appreciate just how exponentially more numerous are the paths downhill, into barbarism and chaos, than are the few paths further up. So thrashing about randomly, with no knowledge or understanding, is statistically certain to make things worse: on this point thermodynamics, common sense, and human history are all in total agreement. The implications of these musings for the present would be left as exercises for the reader.

However that, whilst wise, wasn’t my point. My point was to make some predictions, ta-da! Not because I have any great faith in them coming true, but because if I don’t, I’ll never be able to look back and see how I thought now. Let’s start with…

Global warming

All the stories about Trump deleting data will turn out to be nonsense⁶. All the people squirrelling data away will look stupid, and will do their best to quietly forget they ever did it or suggested it, or pretend it never happened. The US climate change programs will not be gutted (in the sense of… of, what’s gutting? I don’t know, let’s say 50% cuts or more¹). There will probably be some modest funding cuts, some people will lose their jobs, but the overall momentum of the US (let alone the world) research will be essentially unaffected.

The US will not introduce a carbon tax, or cap-n-trade. It might pull out of the Paris accord, but whether it does or not the affects on the path of its emissions will be minor. Coal consumption will continue to decrease and coal firms will continue to look sickly on the stock exchanges.

Some regulations will be repealed. They won’t be terribly important ones².

Civil liberties

People will whinge a lot but civil liberties in the US will be essentially unaffected.

Trade

Any protectionism, if it occurs, will be minor⁷. NAFTA will not be ripped up⁸.

Diplomacy

Much harder to predict³. Since I’m deliberately going out on a limb, I predict: Trump will do some dumb / risky / unpredictable things, but will get away with them.

Business

I shall be optimistic, and guess that: Trump has stuffed his cabinet with enough business folk that he’ll manage to do some sensible things⁴: reduce regulations, reduce corporation tax, perhaps even a tax-holiday for all the mountains that US companies have stashed overseas. Done right, there might be enough money flooding in to manage a mini-boom and make himself look good.

Opposition

Ha. I am, as you know, no student of USAnian politics. But I guess that his opponents (Dems, liberal media, whatevs) will continue to fail to learn. They will remain so outraged by every little thing – which all the nice people they go to dinner parties with will agree are terrible – that they’ll lack any useful metric to notice anything truely worth opposing. And so they will fail. And even if they could get over that, whilst they disagree with Trump they don’t have any good ideas to oppose him with.

Blow-up

There has to be a chance that Trump simply blows up: he says or does something too embarrassingly stupid or outrageous to be covered up, or some of his prior activities turn out to be too bad to be ignored, or he gets impeached. FWIW, I think that’s unlikely. Do you disagree with me? Excellent! We have the basis for a bet. See just below.

Overall

As you can see, my overall prediction is “minor”. Since I’ve mentioned betting, above, I’m wondering if I could interest anyone on a sweepstake on just when at least one of the “predictions” above turns out to be obviously embarrassingly wrong. As judged by me, though you can propose an impartial arbitrator if you like. I have £1,000 sitting around not doing very much. Anyone interested? You can bid (serious offers only, no time wasters) in the comments for a (first day of) month and year. Lowest (i.e., closest to now) bid wins. If my “predictions” turn out to be still plausible on that date, I win. Otherwise you do.

Notes

1. That’s in total. Any one programme may get nuked.

2. As measured by impact on total GHG emissions.

3. I’m told it’s looking good so far.

4. Cancelling the FHA Insurance Rate Cut is minor but sensible. It’s also hard to see as anything that Trump cares about, so is presumably something his people wanted.

5. Another is all the fuss over Trump-at-war-with-the-CIA. Now peace has broken out: Graun: Donald Trump seeks to quell feud with CIA: ‘I’m with you a thousand percent’. Short war, few killed.

6. Although it was shitty of him to delete Obama’s “farewell” speech from https://www.whitehouse.gov/farewell (archive of dead state). The Internet archive has a copy (archive of that).

See-also The Scramble to Protect Climate Data Under Trump.

7. As Timmy, and doubtless many others, have pointed out, Trump doesn’t appear to understand trade. That’s bad, but it is what he does that matters; I’m hoping he will be restrained by those around him. OTOH, if he actually does some of the mad things he has said it would be very bad.

8. TTP will be, which is probably regrettable, but it counts as minor because it was probably dead anyway: see Timmy for example.

9. The Senate interprets “emoluments” as “gifts”.

Refs

* Donald Trump protests: Washington leads global rallies; Washington DC police refuse to give an official count for how many people turned up today. So we’re unlikely to know exactly how many people turned out in the nation’s capital. But it’s clear there were more people on the streets of DC today than when Trump was sworn in as president yesterday. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, also staged protests against Trump in more than 600 cities and towns around the world
* The rise of the Herbal Tea Party– Lexington / the Economist.
* Fascism and the Current National Emergency– Peter Woit
* [2019/08] The Worst – CIP gives the palm to Bush not Trump
* Two Poems by David R. Henderson

* An Interesting Little Political Observation by Timmy, 2022

Other people’s predictions

* Why Trump’s Inauguration is Not the Beginning of an Era — but the End – Peter Leyden: I think Trump ultimately is going to do America and the world a service by becoming the vehicle that will finally take down right-wing conservative politics for a generation or two. Nah.