Escalation
“Burn it down ’til it’s ashes and smoke.
Burn it down to the smoldering coals.
Burn it down ’til I don’t want you no more.
Baby burn it down.”
I’ve used these recent country song lyrics before, but they just fit so well. There is escalation everywhere. But that is what happens when you are trying to tear down an old non-functioning order to replace it with a new one, and the beneficiaries of the old order fight hard to keep it, because it works for them, and only them.
Back in the late 1980s, the values of everything in Japan were going crazy high. Some huge percentage of the value of all the real estate in the world was in Tokyo alone. Their stock market had reached dizzying heights. The Japanese famously bought Pebble Beach and the Rockefeller Center for previously unthinkable money. The consensus in the mainstream press at the time was that the Japanese were just smarter than the rest of us and that they looked at a 100 year investment horizon which was so much better than we neanderthals who only thought ahead a few years.
Then the bubble burst.
It actually didn’t burst as much as it was popped by Japanese monetary policy. After the collapse, one of Japan’s Central Bankers described why they did what they did as follows:
“Our speculative excess undermined the stability and soundness of Japanese society by weakening the ethos of labor, the notion of working by the sweat of your brow. It hastened a decline in morals and fostered inequalities in the distribution of wealth. Rising asset prices divided society into two camps - the haves and the have nots."
Sound familiar?
The situation in the U.S. today is not nearly as extreme as it was in Japan in 1988. But, it’s getting there.
Donald Trump knows that he won because of support from the “have nots.” The working class. The “sweat of their brow” people. He is making very dramatic moves to reshape society to lift those people up and restore the value of work. There has been much written about how generation Y believes they will never get ahead or be able to buy a house. So, don’t bother working. Just gamble on Game Stop or Fart Coin or sports betting and see if you can get a 500% return in a couple of weeks because that’s the only way to get ahead. Trump knows that long term this is not healthy.
Many in the press are criticizing his emphasis on tariffs and his on-again, off-again pronouncements on the subject. This uncertainty adds stress to markets without question. But, almost every tariff that Trump has imposed has caused the other party to give him what he wants either completely or partially. Trump is like a great knuckleball pitcher. For those of you who never followed Phil Niekro or others like him in baseball, the knuckleball pitch is unpredictable. Even the pitcher is not sure where it will go. The batter, therefore, is totally confused and has a very hard time hitting it. It is hard to throw a good knuckleball that doesn’t run into the dirt or to the sky too much. But a good knuckleballer is almost unhittable.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page has been particularly negative on Trump with two or three attack editorials a day on his trade policies. You may think the WSJ editorial page is conservative and it is. But it is traditional NeoCon conservative. Trump is a new form of populist conservative. And they don’t like that.
I have experience with the Journal’s editorial page. While I was in Congress, I was leading an effort to reform the Export/Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank), a government enterprise intended to aid American companies in exporting their products overseas. Obama was president then so I had a number of Democrats on board to support my efforts to reduce the cost of this bank and focus its efforts more on small exporters rather than just Boeing. The WSJ editorial page ripped me by name twice! They hated what I was doing. They wanted the bank eliminated. I went to New York and met with an editorial board member who was a 20-something recent graduate from some Ivy League school. I explained how Obama will never sign an elimination and small exporters can be helped by this bank if it is done right. She was unmoved. That was when they criticized me a second time.
My point with all of this is that people on all sides can have vested interests in a status quo or in their ideological sacred cows. Making big change is very hard. And it is disruptive. But if it works, the sun can be very bright on the other side.
Biden left the country with high inequality, unsustainable debt and an economy running on the hallucinogenic drug of fiscal and monetary stimulus and high asset prices, rather than real growth. It seems that Mr. Trump wants to reverse all of this. That may cause a recession, Frankly, it probably needs to cause a recession or at least a slowing of growth. When the Feds borrow money to give a USAID or Department of Education grant to some Leftist non-profit, the people in the non-profit have a lot of money to spend and invest. And since they don’t work very hard, they have time to do it. Cut the money off, and they have to sell the boat.
One thing is clear, this president will not be deterred by NBC “news” or the WSJ editorial page or anyone else. “Damn the torpedos. Full speed ahead” to quote Admiral David Farragut as he stood on the deck of his flagship the Hartford during the Civil War Battle of Mobile Bay. The waters will be rough. The enemies will throw everything at you. But victory can be achieved.
Note that the Democrats are still wandering aimlessly with no ideas expressed at all on how to fix the ills in society. Being against everything Trump is their only positioning at them moment. If Trump fails, that may work in 2026. If he succeeds, it will not.
Before I close today, I would be remiss if I did not mention all the violence being directed by leftists at Tesla and Tesla vehicles. The propaganda media is completely ignoring this of course. They are all for it. When I use the song “Burn it Down,” I of course mean that metaphorically. The left means it literally.
I have never been a fan of Tesla vehicles. It’s not that I am anti-EV. I own two of them (Ford Mustang Mach E and a new VW Bus, neither built in the US) . I just don’t like Tesla stying and the fact that there are no hard buttons at all to do anything in the car. But they have the highest American content of any vehicles out there. And Tesla invented the practical electric car. All the other manufacturers have copied them in one way or another. Only one Democrat I can find (Ro Khanna of California) has condemned the violence against Tesla. The fact that one of the Tesla plants is right on the edge of his district and many of his constituents work there might have something to do with it.
Unlike Mr. Trump and Mr. Hannity, I’m not ready to buy a Tesla. But, this violence on the left with the tacit support of elected Democrats and the propaganda media makes me think about it and cheer for the company.
I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free
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