Commentary: If the room is dark, it’s time to turn on the lights

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Beverly Monahan’s Commentary (DSN 9/28) was well written but had this low-quality message: impeachment of Trump will destroy Democrats. My prediction? I am not making any bets but I will explain how Monahan’s piece is just an attempt to change the subject to let’s talk about “Trump-good” and lets not talk about “Trump-bad.” Sorry, that is cheating.

The most recent bad — impeachable — moves by Trump have come out now and I will collectively put them under the term Ukrainegate. Monahan — and other Trump supporters — underestimate how bad this is. A signed public statement by over 300 former national security officials from both political parties — stating that Trump’s actions are “serious enough to merit impeachment proceedings.” — has just come out and can be downloaded from the internet (the link is at: nationalsecurityaction.org, or search on “statement from national security professionals”).

Reports indicate that many Republicans in the Senate are also now privately and publicly bothered by Trump’s latest actions on Ukraine-gate. This is just the latest addition to Trump’s long list of questionable policies and actions but a full discussion is beyond the scope of this piece.

Monahan, however, tries to defend Trump by presenting a cherry-picked bullet list of 10 accomplishments. A more honest evaluation of Trump’s accomplishments can be found at nonpartisan PolitiFact (www.politifact.com) which has a “Trump-O-Meter” showing that only 20% of “promises” were “kept” up to now (they listed the promises). The Trump Tracker (trumptracker.github.io) lists 174 promises and only 21 “achieved.” On top of all of this are the opinion polls on Trump. They have been at a stable 40-42% approval and 52-54% disapproval for about a year or more. So, in the big reality picture, Trump is really coming up pretty low on good and pretty high on bad.

Next, Monahan complained that these 10 “…positive conclusive efforts have never been been mentioned by … Democratic hopefuls.” Come on now, let’s be honest. In the real history of constant and continuous dirty politics on both sides, does either party give recognition to anything good from the opposition? Monahan certainly did not acknowledge any of Trump’s defects, shortcomings, failures or insensitive personality characteristics. No, you have to keep track of them yourself, and according to your own biases. Many of the fact-checkers are pretty good: they pick on both parties about equally.

Monahan did not mention the next biggest thing coming up: the next worldwide recession. Problems from Brexit, the growing Japan-South Korea conflict, Trump’s many trade war projects (actually more besides with China), Trump’s bullying-insults-threats negotiating techniques, and the upheavals in Hong Kong are having significant effects on expectations discussed in the business media channels.

These discussions say that the next recession will start in 2020 and will destabilize the world economy and cause more and more investment plans to be put on hold. Trump is really going to make the recession worse and start sooner. Trump’s “America First” policy and “MAGA” motto are already pushing some Asian countries to do less business with the USA and more business with each other.

An alternate payment system has been developed to legally escape sanctions by the USA (internet search on “instex” for more information). If China, India, Southeast Asia, Russia develop an economic and trade block with each other, then the USA is going to lose its hegemony and there will be more poverty and homelessness here in the future and we will be up against a population 10 times larger than our own. After the next recession, my bet will be that the recovery here will be weaker and take longer.

Monahan is in a dark room. I think turning on the lights would help.

Arthur E. Sowers is a resident of Harbeson.

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