Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Is It Genesis or the Apocalypse?

The Trump administration is barely ten days old and already America seems to have lost the faculty of Reason. Emotion is running wild. Charges and countercharges are flying through the airwaves. Protesters are out en masse. News media are saturated with public drama. You would think that the end is nigh, that the apocalypse is just around the corner.

Famed economic historian Niall Ferguson is trying to direct some light into the darkness. Admittedly, it is a tall order, but someone had to do it. By his reading, the Trump administration is enacting the Book of Genesis while Trump’s opponents are trapped in the Book of Revelation. 

Or else, as I myself have presciently opined, the politically correct see Donald Trump as the Antichrist. They believe that if they can destroy him we will see the Second Coming of Jesus and the Heavenly City will descend upon the earth, bring liberty and justice to all.

There, that explains it all. Competing narratives. Since neither corresponds to the facts and since neither is fact-driven, they will never find common ground. It would be helpful, Ferguson opines, if people started thinking rationally, even suspending disbelief until we now the outcomes of the Trump policies.

Apocalyptic thinkers are up in arms about Trump’s executive orders. Yet, when Barack Obama was ruling by executive orders they did not see an imminent autocracy. They saw a perfectly clear-headed thinker. When Obama banned some immigration from seven countries, his supporters thought it was a great idea. Chuck Schumer praised it. When Trump banned some immigration from the same seven countries, his detractors took to the streets and the airports to protest the end of America as they knew it.

Trump is running what looks like a reality show. He seems happy to provoke his enemies. Rope-a-dope, anyone?

His detractors are looking completely unhinged. How many times can you call someone Hitler? Eventually, they will run out of insults. Not because they do not feel very deeply, but because deep feelings are seriously overrated and because they are rhetorically challenged.

Ferguson describes the activities:

Each day brings news of fresh executive orders, interviews, tweets. Each day the media shoot back at Trump. To read some of the press coverage of Trump’s first week, you would think the Apocalypse was imminent. Indeed, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last week moved its famous Dooomsday Clock forward to two and a half minutes to midnight. Yet in issuing executive orders, Trump is merely following the precedent set by the previous occupant of the White House. The hysterical over-reaction of the media is fresh proof that Trump is a self-publicist of prodigious instinctive talent.

What’s a rational thinker to do? Perhaps, Ferguson says, one can start by ignoring what Trump says and watching what he does. The important point is what the executive orders produce. We should judge policy by its outcomes, not by the hue and cry in the media.

In Ferguson’s words:

I have to confess I enjoy the entertainment for no other reason than that it drives the most tedious people in America to distraction. But the real point is not what Trump says. It is what his administration does.

On that score, no one really knows what the flurry of executive orders, designed primarily to de-Obamify the government, will produce.

Ferguson lists the orders and explains that each may produce one or another outcome:

It may be that the net result of the Republican corporate tax reform will be economically disruptive, increasing the deficit and inflation. On the other hand, it may be that the repatriation of corporate capital will generate more revenue than anyone expects.

And also:

It may be that all the regulations introduced since the 1980s are all that stands between us and environmental and financial disaster. On the other hand, it may be that most of this regulation was merely a bureaucratic scam and a leaden weight on small and medium-sized businesses.

And also:

It may be that a trade war will break out between the United States and China, one that will hurt us almost as much as them. On the other hand, it may be that the Chinese will end up rolling over in the face of Trump’s aggressive negotiating tactics because their economic and political position is much weaker than most people appreciate.

He continues:

And it may be that challenging the globalized economic order is a fool’s errand that will end up hurting everybody, including ordinary Americans, by raising consumer prices. On the other hand, it may be that globalization had overshot, and it was high time we dialed back the volume of migration, off-shoring of jobs and cross-border investment.

The short conclusion is that we do not yet know what all of these executive actions will produce. For that we will need to show some patience and wait.

Ferguson is saying that the administration is neither Genesis nor Revelation. True enough, an inexperienced executive has been making serious mistakes, especially with his roll out of  some executive orders.

But it is also true that we should do better than to make our political life into public drama. Especially when that drama accomplishes little more than allowing the protesters to let off steam.

In Ferguson’s words:

The real question is: Can his administration — using the usual cumbersome channels — enact and implement reforms that will fundamentally improve the lives of ordinary Americans?

The answer to that question will not be found in Trump’s Book of Genesis. But I doubt very much it is in the liberals’ Book of Revelation either.

7 comments:

  1. Ferguson: "I have to confess I enjoy the entertainment for no other reason than that it drives the most tedious people in America to distraction."

    Ahhh. A kindred soul.

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  2. Yes, the left is going nuts.

    " It may be that all the regulations introduced since the 1980s are all that stands between us and environmental and financial disaster. On the other hand, it may be that most of this regulation was merely a bureaucratic scam and a leaden weight on small and medium-sized businesses." Didn't help when the EPA contractor spilled those millions of gallons of polluted water.

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  3. For there to be genesis, there must first be destruction.

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  4. http://100percentfedup.com/gruesome-video-muslim-mob-tears-27-year-old-woman-apart-killing-false-accusation-burning-quran/

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  5. "They believe that if they can destroy him we will see the Second Coming of Jesus and the Heavenly City will descend upon the earth, bring liberty and justice to all"

    No, no, no... not Jesus. Obama... The One. Second coming and all. The Heavenly City is Obama's Washington, D.C., valiantly embodied in his acolyte Sally Yates.

    I await Ares' "facts," and the compelling exegesis only he can offer on these two sacred Bible bookends, just the kind of wisdom as he is providing in his Bible study.

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  6. Starhawk says: "We join together to earth the power of the season and to slip between the worlds, the voices saying to every one of us, 'Wake up, you are it, you are a part of the circle of the wise.'"

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  7. The book of Genesis isn't exactly a rose garden, containing our creation myth with the garden of Eden, the tree of knowledge, and that sneaky snake who convinced Eve to eat from the tree, and she gets Adam to eat also, and they discover shame in their nakedness, and are cast out of Eden, with flaming swords blocking our going back.

    Trump does make me wonder if we've finally gone back into the womb of pre-culture and banished shame, and now emperors can walk naked, and no matter how many little children point and gawk, the King doesn't care about his nakedness. Or maybe he's proud of his naked ignorance, and needs no fact checkers from the tree of knowledge, no more forbidden fruit to open our eyes.

    Genesis also contains the murder of one brother by the other, the mythic explanation that it symbolizes the war between the agriculturalists in Cain, who has been cursed, and the pastoralist (shephards and herders) in Abel who was blessed by YHWH for the right sort of sacrifices, until jealous rage leads to murder, but God lets Cain live, and even protects his offspring from retribution. My pastor explained this is about the Agriculturalists winning over the Pastoralist, because the the larger populations of the cities and their kings can defend their land against the more sparse herders.

    Finally Cain's descendants create great cities, but fall into sin and eventually are all destroyed by the great flood, and Noah, descendant of a third son Seth is saved by the word of God to build the ark.

    So genesis would seem to be rather apocalyptic in the most extreme sense, only saved by the rainbow, a sign that God won't do that again, even if the rainbow symbol is claimed by sexual deviants.

    And just last night my pastor was also just talking about apocalypse, and that its meaning isn't just the destruction of the existing order, but its an unveiling or revealing of knowledge of the real order of things behind our facades. So perhaps that is less apocalyptic than genesis.

    So I'll hope for apocalypse I suppose over genesis, and since floods are out (except tsunamis in the pacific rim anyway), we're left between fire or ice as Robert Frost reflected upon...
    ---
    Some say the world will end in fire,
    Some say in ice.
    From what I’ve tasted of desire
    I hold with those who favor fire.
    But if it had to perish twice,
    I think I know enough of hate
    To say that for destruction ice
    Is also great
    And would suffice.
    ---

    It's hard to tell which Donald Trump would prefer. I'm calling him the President of Chaos, and that's a high energy activity, so I'd guess Fire is his preferred tool.

    And he's got the launch codes in his pocket. What's the worst that could happen?

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