Sea Change

If Trump wins in 2020, our nation will have experienced a sea change ... no longer will Democrats be liberals and Republicans also be liberals. Thank Trump, we will have returned to a genuine two-party system.

Junkies

The United States has been hooked. No, I don’t mean on drugs ... but that too is a serious problem. I mean on low-priced consumer goods ... many coming from China. Companies like Walmart, Christmas Tree Shops, Five Below, etc. have been big beneficiaries of this trend ... as obviously have been our consumers.

I have often chided my wife, after a trip to one of these discount stores, that one day our house is going to explode because of all this cheap “stuff” filling all our crooks and crannies. And I’m sure that this story is being repeated all across middle-class America. Do we really need a four-story cat cubby and scratching pole?

So, the U.S. consumer needs to go on binge-buying withdrawal. And, if Trump sticks to his guns on his tariff wars, the eventual higher cost of such goods might inspire such an adjustment. ... maybe even a sea change.

These purchasing adjustments might well be painful to many American retailers, even possibly Amazon. But they would also be devastating to those foreign manufacturers which have relied on cheap labor to produce the cheap goods they export.

I am not smart enough to gauge the extent of these economic dislocations ... but they clearly could be severe ... maybe even traumatic ... somewhat like the detoxification that junkies experience in the first weeks of their rehab treatments.

Tipping Point

Was it Trumpism that caused not just conservative Americans but the average Joe and Jane here to throw open their windows and shout "Enough! I can't take it any more!"? There clearly is something happening to upset the progressive agenda in this country. Hampshire College has realized that it was a bad idea to get rid of the American flag. Colin Kaepernick looks like he has become persona non grata in San Francisco. Kellogg cereals are being boycotted because of the company's decision to stop advertising on conservative websites. Even Michael Moore seems to be straddling the political fence ... as difficult as that is for him to do. No longer does an "ist" accusation necessarily win the day. The "deplorables" have suddenly realized that, when they band together, they no longer need to be cowed by the race baiters and Soros-paid protesters.

This really feels like a sea change is happening not just in the United States ... but around the world. Obviously Brexit was symptomatic of this tsunami. Angela Merkel is booed in a German town-hall meeting and likely will lose her grip on the EU in the not too distant future. This weekend Italy may be joining Britain and the US in voting to reject globalism. The "new world order" that was destined to create an eternal [un]democratic world government and universal open boarders is fighting a rear guard action around Davos, Switzerland. Those arrogant globalists had been going balls out with their blitzkrieg progressive agenda ... unconcerned with the lives that they are leaving in their wake ... which now seems to be their undoing.

It sure looks like we are at a tipping point which will change the direction of world politics for at least a generation. Much of the justification for this globalism seems to have arisen out of the mayhem of the many wars of the last hundred years and the economic dislocation caused by the disparity between international labor costs. The latter differential is being diminished by automation and the former has been refocused into resisting the growing threat of a radical Islamic caliphate. Globalism of course is not dead but it is on life support. In the meantime I predict that nationalistic fervor will rule the day.