Arthur E. Sowers is a resident of Harbeson.
The British Empire started around 1500 and ended in 1997, when Hong Kong went back to China. The empire benefited only the British, nobody else. At its peak, some one-quarter of the world was under British rule. Here is how the Google artificial intelligence explained it to me: “Imperialism is an expansionist policy in which a dominant state extends its hard power (military/economic dominance) and soft power (diplomatic/cultural hegemony) to control and extract wealth from weaker territories, frequently operating as an unequal, exploitative system. Historically and academically, empires act as ‘imperialist ripoffs’ by draining resources from the periphery to enrich the imperial core.”
Consider that Donald Trump incorrectly claimed that all our trading partners were “ripping us off.” In reality, however, it was Trump’s tariffs that were adding fees to imports — and ripping off not only our trading partners but us U.S. buyers who had to ultimately pay the extra fee. Economists flunked Trump’s understanding of tariffs. And the Supreme Court said what Trump did was illegal, too.
Trump has recently been saying he is now “more powerful” than anybody in history. And he has also been saying there are “no limits” to his power. (Notice that he just made at least three mistakes in that second claim. Limit No. 1 to his power is his age; limit No. 2 is how long his competence will last; and limit No. 3 is he cannot know or predict all unknown factors.) My comeback would be to please read this famous exact quote from history: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.” That quote came from the Lord Acton Quote Archive.
While you are thinking about who the Trumpish Empire will help, and who it will hurt, please remember the story of how 1930s Germany got an absolute dictator and tried to form the Third Reich. The story is available in a free PDF download of William Allen’s famous book. But Germany’s dictator led to a bad ending for everybody. And, in the end, that dictator shot himself.
Recently, the Daily State News published an Opinion by Frank Daniels with this title: “Is democracy dying as we mark 250 years?” He repeats his same message over and over: One hundred percent of all our problems are caused by Democrats, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, socialists, etc., but without explanation. I don’t recall him explaining much about his idea of democracy, either. Maybe Daniels is thinking that, if we could blow away all the Democrats, socialists, etc., then maybe he would be happy having a “democracy,” where only Republicans vote. But Trump could just write an executive order creating a new office called the Office of President of Planet Earth, appointing himself as POPE (no pun intended) and defining the U.S. Constitution as subject to his “manual override.” He could write another executive order saying only he could decide whether an election was rigged or clean and then adjust the outcome at his whim, even if the election didn’t take place.
The title of Daniels’ more recent Opinion asks: “What is a Democrat socialist?” About a minute after reading his letter, I typed Daniels’ full title into the Google AI, and here is what I got back: “A democratic socialist is a left-wing political advocate who believes that both the economy and society should be run democratically to meet human needs, rather than making profits for a wealthy owning class. They aim to achieve this through democratic political processes, moving away from capitalism and authoritarian models.” In my opinion, the AI gave a fair answer.
Daniels’ letters also give a continuously chaotic demonization of socialism and an unexplained bragging about capitalism. Folks, capitalism began thousands of years ago as an economic mechanism to make a few people (landowners) very rich by exploiting the many unwary and powerless underlings (the commoners, peasants, serfs and debt peons who had to give a part of their crops as rent to the landlords). The Google AI gave this three sentence summary for ancient Greek times:
“In 594 BCE, Solon reformed Athens’ economy by banning debt-slavery and canceling existing debts. He stopped short of redistributing aristocratic estates, instead allowing poor tenant farmers to keep their land. Later, in 546 BCE, the tyrant Peisistratus finished this job by confiscating and redistributing rich nobles’ lands to the poor.”
You could maybe say that Peisistratus was a proto-communist, but really, the subject is “land reform” and was always about the people, not the rich (and not the government, either), as deserving to own the land.
You can do an internet search or do an AI query on this sentence: “What did ancient kings do for the poor” and prove that some kings did help the poor long ago. This is way before the word “socialism” came into existence. For example, debt cancellation, welfare, grain doles, subsidies and economic rights did sometimes exist 2,000-3,000 years ago. Here is a quote: “The Code of Hammurabi (circa 1750 BCE) included provisions to protect widows, orphans, and the poor from exploitation and debt slavery.” I quote from the prologue of King Hammurabi’s Code. He stated that his purpose as king was “to destroy the wicked and evil, that the strong might not oppress the weak.”
Here is another quote: “Emperor Ashoka’s edicts (268-232 BCE) specified the distribution of alms and the establishment of medical facilities and rest houses for travelers and the poor.” (In the end, after his wars, Ashoka vowed nonviolence and became a Buddhist.)
In this country, the ultrarich get tax breaks, beneficial loopholes in laws and tons of subsidies. This is “socialism for the rich.” I quote the following from a simple internet search: “Donald Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 out of the 18 years between 2000 and 2017, and again in 2020, primarily by utilizing substantial business losses to offset his income.” You can speculate or do an internet search about how this might work for other ultrarich people. However, we do have a mindset in the U.S. that is now pushing to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as add $350 billion-plus to the next defense budget. And did you hear about this, found in MilitaryTimes: “Automatic registration for US military draft-eligible men to begin in December”? Who might Trump be thinking about using strength and forcefulness to “take over”? Canada? Greenland? Venezuela? Cuba?
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
