But this is not just your grandfather’s cyclical economic uncertainty Trump has triggered. This is the uncertainty that cuts to the bone, the uncertainty that comes from seeing a world that you knew for 80 years being unraveled by the most powerful player — who doesn’t know what he is doing and is surrounded by bobbleheads.
The world has enjoyed an extraordinary period of economic growth and absence of great-power wars since 1945. Of course, it was not perfect, and there have been many troubled years and countries that lagged. But in the broad sweep of world history, these 80 years have been remarkably peaceful and prosperous for a lot of people, in a lot of places.
And the No. 1 reason that the world was the way it was, was because America was the way it was.
That America was summed up by two lines in John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address on Jan. 20, 1961: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
And: “So, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”
Trump and his vacuous vice president, JD Vance, have completely turned Kennedy’s call on its head. The Trump-Vance version is:
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that today’s America will pay no price, bear no burden, incur no hardship, and it will abandon any friends and cuddle up to any foes in order to assure the Trump administration’s political survival — even if it means the abandonment of liberty wherever that be profitable or convenient for us.
