Anoche pudimos presenciar en Ciudad Juárez un fenómeno astronómico que se conoce como la superluna. Este fenómeno de la superluna sólo ocurre cada 15 o 20 años en promedio, pero cuando sucede se tiene la fortuna de observarla en tres diferentes ocasiones. La superluna no solo fue visible en Ciudad Juárez, fue visible también en el resto del mundo conforme fue cayendo la noche respectivamente alrededor del mundo.
Para entender por qué la superluna no es algo que ocurre todos los días, hay que tener presente que para que la superluna pueda ocurrir se tiene que llevar a cabo una combinación entre dos movimientos astronómicos diferentes que no tienen nada que ver entre sí.
El primer movimiento es, desde luego, la rotación aparente de la Luna cuando cada noche sale por el Oriente y se pone por el Occidente en el hemisferio Norte, completando un ciclo cada 24 horas alrededor de la Tierra al igual que el Sol y al igual que el resto de la bóveda celeste. Sin embargo, se trata de una ilusión, porque lo que en realidad sucede es que la Tierra gira alrededor de su propio eje de rotación completando un ciclo cada 24 horas. Es simplemente la rotación de la Tierra:
Pero además del movimiento de rotación de la Tierra, hay otro movimiento separado que es el movimiento de traslación de la Luna alrededor de la Tierra. El movimiento circular de la Luna alrededor de la Tierra, al cual nos referiremos simplemente como la órbita de la Luna, tiene una duración de un mes, y esto es lo que dá origen a la fases de la luna (luna nueva, cuarto creciente, cuarto menguante, luna llena) como podemos verlo en la siguiente ilustración:
Estrictamente hablando, el movimiento de traslación de la Luna alrededor de la Tierra no es un movimiento circular con la Tierra posicionada en el centro del círculo. Es más bien una órbita elíptica en la cual la Tierra ocupa uno de los “focos” de la elipse, de acuerdo con la primera ley de Kepler (las fórmulas que corresponden a las leyes de Kepler pueden ser obtenidas de los principios de la mecánica descubiertos por Isaac Newton, y esto es uno de los grandes principios de la física clásica hasta que dicha física fue echada por la borda bajo el esquema de la teoría de la relatividad, pero no entraré aquí en tales detalles):
En el movimiento elíptico (no circular) de la Luna alrededor de la Tierra, hay un punto en el cual la Luna se encuentra a su mayor distancia de separación de la Tierra conocido como el apogeo (del griego apo que significa “lejos” y de geo que significa “tierra”, o sea alejado de la Tierra), que vendría siendo el punto de menor luminosidad cuando la Luna es vista desde la Tierra, y hay otro punto en el cual la Luna se encuentra lo más cercana que estará a nuestro planeta conocido como el perigeo (del griego peri que significa “alrededor, cercano” y de geo que significa “tierra”, o sea cercano a la Tierra).
Para que se pueda dar una superluna, para que podamos ver la Luna lo más “grande” y luminosa posible, es necesario que la Luna se encuentre lo más cercana posible a nuestro planeta, o sea que se encuentre en su perigeo, lo cual ocurre una vez al mes, y lo cual depende por completo de la Luna. Pero esto no basta. Se requiere que la Luna se encuentre también en su fase de “luna llena”, lo cual depende por completo de la Tierra. Si la Luna no se encuentra en su perigeo, o la Tierra no se encuentra en una posición tal que corresponda la fase de luna llena, no se dará una superluna. Esta combinación de dos condiciones diferentes no es algo que se dá con frecuencia, pero cuando se dá se tiene lo que se llama una superluna. Y anoche tuvimos una superluna.
La superluna que tuvimos anoche es la más grande desde 1948. En efecto, presenciamos la Luna más grande en 70 años. Esta Luna se vió 14 por ciento más grande y 30 por ciento más brillante de lo usual. La fueron viendo en otras partes del mundo conforme fue cayendo la noche en cada país, así que todos los humanos pudimos gozar de una superluna. Y de paso hay que dar gracias a la Providencia (algo que no solemos hacer muy seguido pero que deberíamos hacer) por brindarnos este espectáculo que no tendríamos si no hubiera habido Luna.
Esta es una fotografía que nos muestra cómo se vió la superluna desde el área de Ciudad Juárez:
Otro factor que no suele ser mencionado es el requerimiento obvio de que para que la superluna pueda ser apreciada como tal es importante que la Luna no se encuentre cerca del Sol. Habrá algunos que tal vez recuerden alguna vez en sus vidas haber visto la Luna cercana al Sol durante el día, y en tales condiciones no es posible apreciar una superluna como tal aunque la Luna sea una luna llena y aunque la Luna se encuentre en su perigeo.
martes, 15 de noviembre de 2016
lunes, 14 de noviembre de 2016
Tiempo de definiciones
Antes de empezar, creo que es necesario aclarar el significado de la palabra Reichstag que aparece en el cartón de arriba elaborado por el cartonista Helguera del periódico LA JORNADA que apareció publicado el 10 de noviembre de 2016. Antes del ascenso de Adolf Hitler al poder, había una democracia en Alemania, la democracia Weimar. El incendio del edificio en donde se reunían los parlamentarios alemanes, el Reichstag, fue lo que precipitó la caída de la democracia de Weimar y posibilitó el ascenso del Nazismo al poder. Se agrega además que en las elecciones en las cuales el pueblo norteamericano le dió la presidencia norteamericana a Donald Trump también se le dió una mayoría en ambas cámaras del Congreso norteamericano, tanto la Casa de los Representantes como la Cámara de Senadores, lo cual significa que Trump va a tener en sus manos un poder absoluto como pocos presidentes en la historia de los Estados Unidos lo han tenido, va a poder pasar las leyes que quiera y hacer lo que quiera. Los norteamericanos lo han convertido, en efecto, en una versión norteamericana de un emperador romano. Lo han hecho todopoderoso en el sentido humano, como en su tiempo lo fueron los emperadores romanos Julio César, Nerón y Calígula.
En una entrada previa publicada aquí el martes 18 de julio de 2016 bajo el título Trump y su as bajo la manga, escribí cómo, contrariamente a lo que muchos creían de que el próximo presidente norteamericano sería electo por el voto directo popular, el triunfo no necesariamente se lo llevaría quien tuviera la mayor cantidad de votos sino aquél que acumulara la mayor cantidad de votos en una cosa llamada el Colegio Electoral. El 18 de noviembre, día en el cual se llevaron a cabo las elecciones, muchos en México empezaron a darse cuenta a través de la televisión que el resultado se estaba definiendo no por la cantidad de votos que fuera acumulando cada candidato sino por los estados en los que fuera ganando con los votos electorales asignados a cada estado. Y nuevamente uno de los estados cruciales fue Florida. En la elección general, Hillary llevaba una ligera ventaja en la cantidad de votos por encima de Donald Trump (a las 1:48 PM del 9 de noviembre, Hillary Clinton llevaba acumulados 59,681,098 votos, en contra de 59,480,726 de Trump), pero aún obteniendo Hillary una cantidad mayor de votos generales que Donald Trump, de cualquier modo Donald Trump habría ganado, precisamente porque se sacó su as bajo la manga., se enfocó en las últimas semanas de su campaña en aquellos estados que podían darle una mayor cantidad de votos en el Colegio Electoral. Como resultado de ello, hoy se encamina a tomar posesión de la Casa Blanca, ante la mirada de un mundo incrédulo.
No queda duda alguna sobre quiénes le ayudaron a Trump asegurar su camino hacia la Casa Blanca. Lo podemos ver en la nota aparecida el 10 de noviembre de 2016 en el periódico CRONICA bajo el encabezado La venganza del hombre blanco: “La anunciadísima ola hispana que iba a llevar a Hillary Clinton a la Casa Blanca no tuvo la suficiente fuerza. El votante negro, que se movilizó como nunca hace cuatro y ocho años para llevar a su primer representante a la Presidencia de EU, esta vez decepcionó e impidió una victoria que parecía cantada para la candidata demócrata. La venganza de las mujeres contra el candidato misógino tampoco se convirtió en una marea de votos en su contra. ¿Dónde está la clave de la victoria contra todo pronóstico de Trump? En los votantes de su raza: los blancos, y no sólo los hombres, sino también sorprendentemente las mujeres. Según The New York Times, el 58% de los hombres blancos votó a Trump, frente al 37% que hizo lo propio por Clinton. Este porcentaje se eleva a un abrumador 67% cuando se trata de hombres blancos sin estudios. La cifra es muy alta, pero era esperada. Con lo que nadie contaba es que el republicano sacase tan buen dato entre el sector de los hombres blancos con estudios: hasta un 49% se decantó por el magnate contra el 46% que votó por la ex secretaria de Estado. En cuanto a las mujeres de todas las razas, Clinton ganó con el 54% frente al 42% que obtuvo Trump. Sin embargo, las blancas tampoco le dieron la espalda a Trump. La cadena NBC señaló que entre las mujeres conservadoras el apoyo fue del 58% para Trump”.
En toda la historia previa de los Estados Unidos, ningún presidente se había expresado jamás en una forma tan despectiva de México y de los mexicanos como Donald Trump. Ni siquiera cuando la guerra con la cual Estados Unidos le robó a México más de la mitad de su territorio el presidente norteamericano de aquél entonces vilipendió e insultó a los mexicanos con tanta dureza como lo ha estado haciendo Donald Trump calificándolos de violadores, criminales y narcotraficantes. Estamos entrando en una nueva fase en las relaciones entre México y Estados Unidos extraordinariamente incierta.
En Estados Unidos, triunfó el discurso racista, el discurso de odio xenófobo del antimexicano Donald Trump, y lo logró con 59 millones de votos de aquellos que lo apoyaron incondicionalmente pese a todas las estupideces con las que Trump se dió a conocer mundialmente. Al confirmarse el triunfo de Trump, todos los grupos supremacistas blancos que detestan a los inmigrantes mexicanos -incluso aquellos inmigrantes mexicanos que inmigraron legalmente después de una larga y paciente espera de muchos años por su cita consular- estallaron de júbilo en grandes celebraciones por la victoria del candidato antimexicano. Como prueba de esta información que algunos pudieran considerar exagerada y hasta tendenciosa, se reproduce la siguiente nota aparecida a tan solo cuatro días después de haberse llevado a cabo la elección:
Ku Klux Klan convoca a desfile para festejar victoria
AFP
Sábado 12 de noviembre de 2016
La organización racista Ku Klux Klan de Carolina del Norte convocó para diciembre un desfile para celebrar la victoria del republicano Donald Trump. En su página web, los Leales Caballeros Blancos del KKK llaman a desfilar el 3 de diciembre.
“Desfile Klan por la victoria el 3 de diciembre de 2016 en Carolina del Norte”, dice la página.
“La raza de Trump unió a mi gente”, añade la convocatoria, acompañada de una ilustración de Trump en contrapicado, que le da majestuosidad, con la leyenda “presidente de Estados Unidos”.
No se proporcionan más detalles sobre la caravana y el escueto anuncio no detalla la hora ni el lugar. De acuerdo con el diario local The News & Observer, los Leales Caballeros Blancos tienen su sede en Pelham, una pequeña localidad del norte del estado, en la frontera con Virginia. En su web, los Leales Caballeros Blancos del KKK aseguran que no son un “grupo de odio”, sino que odian “algunas cosas que ciertos grupos hacen a nuestra raza y nuestra nación”.
Lo anterior ya tenía precedentes. The Crusader (El Cruzado), el periódico oficial del Ku Klux Klan, elaboró su último número con un artículo sobre el lema de campaña del magnate, Make America Great Again (“Hacer América Grande de Nuevo”), y lo que esto significa para el grupo xenófobo, mostrando abiertamente sus simpatías por la candidatura de Donald Trump a la presidencia de EEUU. Dicha publicación “The Crusader”, que se define a sí misma como “la voz política de la América blanca cristiana”, abrió ese último número con el lema de campaña de Trump ilustrado con una foto del candidato en el que ensalza, sin nombrarlas directamente, algunas de las ideas del magnate:
Reafirmando su retórica antimexicana y dejando entrever la ideología que marcará su forma de gobernar, el presidente electo Donald Trump no tardó en nombrar a Stephen K. Bannon, el presidente de Breitbart -una publicación online ultraconservadora y panfletaria- como consejero de la Casa Blanca. La cercanía de Bannon al poder y al oído de Trump es alarmante para muchos en Estados Unidos y debe empezar a serlo ya para todos los mexicanos. Es un supremacista blanco que ha sido acusado también de antisemita, y de esto no hay duda. Bannon fue acusado en 2007 por su ex mujer, Mary Louise Piccard, de violencia doméstica y antisemitismo: aparentemente, según testificó Piccard en el juicio, Bannon estaba muy preocupado por el elevado número de judíos que asistían a la misma escuela que sus hijas. “Dijo que no le gustaba la forma en la que crían a sus hijos para ser mocosos malcríados y que no quería que las niñas fuesen a la escuela con judíos”. Su publicación, Breitbart News, es el brazo mediático de un movimiento extremista conocido como Alt-Right, o derecha alternativa. El director del Centro de Monitoreo del Odio (Hate Monitor Center) de la California State University, Brian Levin le explicó a Univision Noticias en agosto que la Alt-Right es heredera del supremacismo blanco, reempaquetado y presentado con un nuevo nombre más aceptable para las nuevas generaciones que no quieren ser identificadas con el Ku Klux Klan o los neonazis. El republicano John Weaver, quien fue estratega del gobernador de Ohio John Kasich durante su campaña presidencial, escribió: “La extrema derecha fascista y racista está representada a pasos de la Oficina Oval. Sean muy vigilantes, Estados Unidos”.
Damn Mexican greasers, go back to Mexico, we don't want you here. Pinchis Mexicanos grasientos, vuelvan a México, no los queremos aquí. Finally our dream has come true, that Mexican bullshit will be no more here in America. Finalmente nuestro sueño se ha hecho realidad, esa mierda mexicana no será nunca más aquí en Norteamérica. You Mexican dogs, leave our country, or else! ¡Perros Mexicanos, salgan de nuestra patria, o ya verán como les va! America for white anglosaxons, the rest for all those genetically deficient bastards. Estados Unidos para los anglosajones, el resto para todos aquellos bastardos genéticamente defectuosos. The browning of America will now come to an end. El amorenamiento de Estados Unidos ahora sí llegará a su fin.
Se trata de los mismos norteamericanos WASP que antes de que miles de mexicanos empezaran a emigrar de México hacia los Estados Unidos creyendo que todo el país acogía y recibía con los brazos abiertos a los nuevos inmigrantes que no fueran de piel blanca, llevaba a cabo rutinariamente linchamientos de negros y quema de cruces e iglesias sobre todo en los estados sureños que nunca se resignaron a la abolición de la esclavitud ordenada por el presidente Abraham Lincoln:
A estos grupos xenófobos de supremacistas blancos llenos de odio hacia todos los negros, hacia todos los judíos, hacia todos los mexicanos y en general hacia cualquiera que no pertenezca a lo que los une como lo que ahora los ha unido el triunfo de Donald Trump, se les han estado sumando otros grupos cuya ideología y principios traídos de otra parte del mundo y de otra época se creía distante hoy se muestran jubilosos y alegres ante la victoria por la presidencia de Estados Unidos de alguien con quien creen tener mucho en común, los cuales ya ni siquiera hacen esfuerzo alguno por ocultar su rostro ante la mirada del mundo entero:
Todo lo anterior demuestra, en los hechos, que una gran parte del pueblo norteamericano (no todos, y esto hay que tenerlo presente, aunque a fin de cuentas esto no cambiará el resultado final), sobre todo en las zonas rurales en donde más votos acaparó Trump, es y siempre ha sido profundamente racista, profundamente anti-negros y anti-mexicano. A muchos mexicanos ya se nos había olvidado esto, pero debemos estarle muy agradecidos a Donald Trump por habernos dado este gran recordatorio histórico. Y muchos jóvenes mexicanos de las nuevas generaciones que no lo sabían ya lo están aprendiendo de la manera más dura posible. En el pasado, muchos mexicanos de la clase media y de la clase alta que no tenían absolutamente ninguna necesidad de emigrar a los Estados Unidos por razones económicas no lo hacían precisamente por esta cuestión. No se trata simplemente de un nacionalismo mal entendido. ¿A qué mexicano en su sano juicio le agradaría la idea de irse a vivir y llevarse consigo a su familia a un país en donde el odio contra el mexicano abunda y aunque bien ocultado en el armario por varias décadas en nombre de lo políticamente correcto por fin ha sido resucitado gracias a Donald Trump, el candidato favorito de los anglosajones y los blancos caucásicos que pedían casi a gritos un freno a la nueva invasión representada por esos asquerosos y malolientes recién llegados de piel morena, precisamente el candidato que les ha demostrado a todos dentro de Estados Unidos y a todos los demás alrededor del mundo que es posible referirse a los mexicanos de una manera soez e injuriosa y aún así convertirse en presidente de los Estados Unidos por el voto popular? Esta es la verdadera cara de Estados Unidos. Este es el verdadero rostro del imperio. En México no se discrimina a los mexicanos, mientras que la pesadilla antimexicana en tierra de Trump avanza de manera irrefrenable.
Uno de los que tendrán que definirse, y pronto, es el periodista Jorge Ramos de Univisión, el cual decidió dejar México para siempre y abrazar la ciudadanía norteamericana jurándole lealtad incondicional y absoluta a la bandera de Estados Unidos, lo cual no se lo tomó en cuenta uno de los simpatizantes del entonces candidato Donald Trump que le gritó pidiéndole que se saliera fuera de un rally de apoyo a Trump. Considerando que Trump es ahora el presidente electo de los norteamericanos, habrá que ver si Jorge Ramos quiere seguir viviendo por el resto de sus días en el país del dólar (en realidad, por eso se fué de México, por su codicia y ambición del dólar), sabiendo ya el giro que ha tomado dicho país abrazando la xenofobia antimexicana. Y en la misma situación se encuentran ahora millones de mexicanos tanto indocumentados como los que se fueron a vivir a los Estados Unidos de manera legal.
Haciendo un repaso de algunas observaciones de varios académicos y analistas, encontramos un consenso de la terrible amenaza que se está gestando para México, aunque tras su victoria y con la finalidad de disimular un poco Trump está fingiendo suavizar su retórica dura. Podemos empezar con Mireille Roccati a la cual se le conoce bien en Ciudad Juárez, la cual plasmó lo siguiente en la revista Siempre! en su trabajo “La pesadilla se hizo realidad”: “El tan esperado 8 de noviembre finalmente como tenía que ser llegó, y con él la afluencia de votantes que con sus votos propiciaron la llegada al poder de una tendencia cuasi fascista de la sociedad estadounidense que, pletórica de racismo y xenofobia, permanecía larvada en espera de condiciones para emerger, asustar, sorprender y por su tamaño espantar a los propios estamentos liberales norteamericanos y al mundo entero. Es difícil entender cómo la sociedad norteamericana, una democracia admirable en muchos sentidos, tan liberal a veces, o tan conservadora en otras, pero siempre privilegiando la libertad; acotando en su esencia el autoritarismo del poder, pudiera albergar en su seno el huevo de la serpiente de un fascismo nazi, que preconiza la supremacía blanca y encuentra en los mexicanos el sustituto de los judíos en su odio. Para quienes hemos o creemos haber superado la herencia del inconsciente colectivo del antiyanquismo, sin por ello adoptar conductas o actitudes de sumisión o subordinación y hemos tenido además la suerte de defender los legítimos intereses de México en diversos temas de la relación bilateral, y adicionalmente sentíamos que conocíamos al pueblo estadounidense; nos costaba mucho admitir la existencia de esa veta profunda tan antimexicana, tan racista, tan llena de odio. Y no es que negáramos su existencia o que no la hubiéramos percibido, solo que no la imaginábamos tan grande, tan extendida, tan a flor de piel. Por ello, la sorpresa se trasmutó en indignación y, con el resultado de la elección, angustia y desesperación. Hoy con el resultado electoral el mal ya está hecho. Ahora y aquí, lo importante es que la pesadilla es una realidad. El futuro inmediato de deportaciones, devaluaciones, crisis económica, ruptura de acuerdos comerciales y persecución criminalizada de nuestros connacionales tendrá que ser afrontada y será quizás este factor exógeno el que permita la unidad en lo esencial de todos los mexicanos”.
En su editorial “La Terca Realidad”, el analista Gerardo Galarza escribió: “Es creencia casi generalizada que el triunfo de Trump está sustentado en el racismo, el machismo, la misoginia, la intolerancia, la xenofobia y el populismo, entre otros males mayores, a los que presuntamente la humanidad entera les ha dicho muchas veces: Nunca más... sobre todo en actos conmemorativos de las derrotas humanas, luego de ver películas o leer novelas sobre las atrocidades de las que son capaces los miembros de la especie, supuestamente superior o, digamos, inteligente. Y esa creencia debe ser cierta si más de 59 millones de ciudadanos estadunidenses votaron por él (por cierto, no hay discusión alguna por el hecho de que haya obtenido menos votos populares que Hillary Clinton, porque ésas son las reglas electorales de su país y los candidatos las conocían y las aceptaron, como en elecciones presidenciales anteriores). Es decir, el problema no es sólo Trump, sino millones de sus conciudadanos que con su voto dicen que piensan como él. Donald Trump ganó las elecciones porque supo decir y prometer lo que una mayoría, o al menos la mitad de quienes asistieron a las urnas, de los ciudadanos estadunidenses, quería oír. Y ganó por sus excesos sexistas y misóginos, xenofóbicos, racistas, intolerantes, por la venganza prometida. Todos estos males encarnados en él y casi como aspiración, por diversas razones, de sus votantes: a muchos, por ejemplo, les gustaría ser millonarios y rodearse de mujeres hermosas; a muchas les gustaría ser la mujer de un millonario; otros quieren conservar su empleo o recuperarlo o, simplemente, recuperar el sentimiento de superioridad por motivos de raza, de nacionalidad o de situación socioeconómica”.
Otro conocido editorialista, Hermann Bellinghausen, no menos pesimista que los que ya he mencionado, elaboró un artículo del cual no daré mayores detalles, porque su solo título “Fascismo que viene” habla por sí solo.
Un conocido político local de Ciudad Juárez escribió esto: “En los lugares donde se presentó, Trump expresó lo que su audiencia quería escuchar, en los estados sureños tradicionalmente racistas, exacerbó su resentimiento, lanzándose y despotricando contra los migrantes mexicanos, al culparlos de las calamidades sociales y económicas que hostigan a los ciudadanos, incitando a los ultra conservadores contra nuestros paisanos, quienes junto a sus familias en México encaran un futuro poco propicio. No debemos albergar esperanzas de que se retracte de sus ominosas declaraciones, Trump fue ingenuo quizás, pero podemos tener la certeza de que el muro será su bandera, insistirá en gravar las remesas para obtener fondos y construir así su infamante muro. La vida en la frontera no será la misma, la comunidad binacional que a diario cruza la línea divisoria, enfrentará más duros procesos de revisión, los trabajadores de la maquiladora estarán bajo el amago de perder sus empleos o pauperizar sus salarios”.
Por su parte, en un editorial suyo titulado “Indiferencia”, Sergio Sarmiento dijo: “Trump aprovechó los prejuicios de los trabajadores blancos sin estudios universitarios de esta región que piensan que los culpables de sus problemas son los inmigrantes mexicanos y el libre comercio. El rechazo al extraño, al extranjero, ha sido habitual entre los seres humanos desde tiempos prehistóricos. Siempre es fácil creer que los responsables de cualquier mal son los extranjeros, tanto los que se mudan al vecindario como los que producen bienes que compiten con los míos. Por eso triunfó el Brexit en el Reino Unido, por eso los partidos xenófobos han tenido tanto éxito en Europa. El triunfo de Trump es una victoria más del viejo tribalismo”.
En su famosa columna De Política y Cosas Peores, el politólogo y humorista Catón -del cual he ido coleccionando algunos de sus chistes que me he tomado la libertad de estar reproduciendo en esta bitácora- dijo: “Me acerco ya a los 80 años. A esa edad puede uno darse el lujo de tener ocurrencias que a algunos les parecerán de loco y a otros de hombre sabio. Por ejemplo, juré que si Trump era elegido presidente no volvería yo a pisar territorio norteamericano, por la forma grosera en que ofendió a los mexicanos y por sus amenazas contra México. Cumpliré mi promesa ahora que la ominosa pesadilla se ha vuelto realidad. Digo adiós a los sencillos goces que me hacían ir “al otro lado”: mi jubilosa adquisición de libros en Barnes & Noble; mi compra de chácharas en el Dollar Tree; mi búsqueda de lindas antiguallas en el mercadito de los domingos en Port Isabel; mis desayunos en familia en Wendy's; mis solitarios paseos de madrugada por la playa de la Isla del Padre. La verdad -se los digo aquí en confianza-, no extrañaré demasiado esos placeres. En vez de Barnes & Noble tengo aquí a Gandhi y a mis queridas librerías de viejo. En lugar del Dollar Tree poseo la riqueza infinita de nuestros mercados de artesanías. Para suplir a la pulga de Port Isabel están las pequeñas tiendas de antigüedades a las que de vez en cuando voy. Sabrosos son los hot cakes del Wendy's, pero más ricos aún son los tacos de Los Pioneros en mi ciudad, Saltillo, o el menudo del entrañable Café Viena, o los chilaquiles del Güero de La Herradura. Tan bellas como los paseos por la playa en la Isla son mis caminatas por los pinares del Potrero de Ábrego. Así las cosas no resentiré mucho eso de no volver a cruzar ya nunca la frontera para ir al país vecino. ¿Les parece que exagero? A lo mejor. No tomaré a mal que me tilden de loco: en mi vida he hecho muchas cosas cuerdas de las cuales ahora me arrepiento, y he cometido locuras colosales que hoy me enorgullecen. No creo que por mi ausencia se colapsará la economía norteamericana. Lo que debe preocupar son los efectos que esta elección provocará en el mundo, y concretamente en México. Me azora, eso sí, ver que millones de norteamericanos piensan como Trump y son como él: comparten su pedestre nacionalismo, su xenofobia, su misoginia, su racismo, su falta de compasión humana. ¿Así actúan los ciudadanos de una nación que se supone está fincada en los ideales del bien, de la verdad, de la justicia? ¿Qué fue de conceptos fundamentales como los de cooperación internacional, respeto a las minorías, reconocimiento de la dignidad de la mujer, libertad de creencias, y otros del mismo valor? ¿Cómo es posible que ese individuo tan ignorante, tan inepto, de tan pobre calidad humana haya sido elegido para ocupar el puesto político de mayor importancia en el planeta? Con esta elección, que no dudo en calificar de trágica, la historia de los Estados Unidos retrocede un siglo. Ese país mostró muchas veces ser el mejor del mundo. Quienes votaron por Trump lo hacen ver ahora como el peor”.
La promesa mencionada arriba hecha por Catón en caso de un triunfo de Donald Trump ya había sido mencionada con anterioridad al final de la entrada en esta bitácora titulada ¿Llegó la hora de salirse de USA? que publiqué el 24 de junio de 2016, y fiel a su palabra Catón ha refrendado que cumplirá con su promesa, al igual que se anticipa que Donald Trump cumpla con todas las suyas, al pie de la letra, cueste lo que cueste, para darle credibilidad a su slogan Make America Great Again. De eso se trata todo, ¿o no?
Ante la posibilidad creciente de que Donald Trump triunfara -cosa que muchos creían imposible en julio de 2016- ya había propuesto yo en esta bitácora en la entrada titulada ¿Llegó la hora de salirse de USA? mencionada arriba una alternativa posible en caso de que una mayoría del pueblo norteamericano conformado en una importante proporción por racistas tan xenófobos y viperinos como Donald Trump lo eligieran como el líder máximo de la Unión Americana, y esa propuesta era abandonar por voluntad propia a Estados Unidos. Es posible que algunos de los lectores de esta bitácora hayan estado pensando en mi consejo de aquél entonces, por el hecho de que la página Web del Ministerio de Inmigración de Canadá se colapsó una vez que se hizo patente la amplia ventaja electoral de la que gozaba el candidato Republicano a la Presidencia de Estados Unidos sobre la candidata Hillary Clinton. La pestaña de “inmigrar” de la página web del Ministerio de Ciudadanía e Inmigración de Canadá registró un “error interno” durante la noche electoral estadounidense, en la que todos los resultados provisionales dan como virtual ganador de las elecciones a Trump. Durante la campaña electoral, personas que actualmente viven en los Estados Unidos habían reflejado en las redes sociales la posibilidad de cruzar la frontera de su país hacia el norte. Además, las búsquedas de cómo mudarse a Canadá también aumentaron desde que Trump salió elegido como candidato del Partido Republicano. Y algunos en Canadá, como la provincia de Nueva Escocia, aprovecharon el interés de los estadounidenses para ofrecerse como refugio para aquellos que quisieran escapar de una posible presidencia de Trump. En los medios sociales, la caída de la web del Ministerio de Inmigración canadiense ha sido interpretada como consecuencia del gran número de personas residentes en los Estados Unidos que está considerando mudarse a Canadá ante la victoria de Trump. Podría terminar siendo algo así como la emigración que empezó a tener lugar en Alemania cuando Adolf Hitler llegó al poder en 1933, se salieron los que pudieron y casi un siglo después quedó confirmado que ellos fueron los primeros que se salvaron; fueron los que se quedaron aquellos a los cuales en su gran mayoría se los cargó el carajo. Esta es la imagen de la página Web del Ministerio de Inmigración de Canadá cuando quedó colapsada:
Al día siguiente de la elección, el historiador Enrique Krauze comentó en el noticiero matutino Al Despertar con Carlos Loret de Mola que el triunfo de Donald Trump es como un terremoto para México, y a México le espera una guerra no militar en varios frentes, advirtió el intelectual mexicano Enrique Krauze al comentar la victoria de Donald Trump en las elecciones presidenciales de Estados Unidos. Krauze dijo que México sufrirá “un grave terremoto” y afrontará en los próximos años una guerra comercial, económica, migratoria, legal, diplomática y en otros frentes, refiriendo que ya las secuelas se sienten con el desplome del peso mexicano, y augurando que las manufacturas y la economía nacional estarán en el colimador de las batallas que se anuncian.
Está por verse, desde luego la construcción del muro Trump, el mismo muro que tras su visita a México el hoy presidente electo de los Estados Unidos anunció y repitió hasta el cansancio en muchísimas ocasiones como una de sus promesas más solemnes que su construcción será pagada hasta el último centavo por los mexicanos, por esos cerdos mexicanos, por esos perros latinos a los cuales hay que mantener fuera de la sacrosanta Unión Americana para así conservar la pureza de la raza blanca. Será pagado con sudor y lágrimas de esos miserables mexicanos, y de ser necesario, con sangre. Para ello Donald Trump, como comandante en jefe del Ejército norteamericano, cuenta con el aparato militar más poderoso de la historia, y ha dejado en claro que no vacilará en utilizarlo en contra de quienes llama los “enemigos de Estados Unidos” que le están robando empleos a los norteamericanos.
Ante el triunfo de Donald Trump, todos los mexicanos que jamás nos hemos desarraigado de México ni le hemos jurado lealtad a la bandera norteamericana ni hemos ido al otro lado del mundo a pelearle sus guerras al gobierno norteamericano, debemos formular seriamente una pregunta crucial y crítica a los otros mexicanos que con el espejismo del dólar se han ido a vivir a un país en donde los anglosajones y los blancos caucásicos, además de demostrarles a los latinos que el poder del voto latino no es tan poderoso como ilusamente creían, les han demostrado finalmente a esos mexicanos que viven en los Estados Unidos cuánto los detestan al escoger en voto democrático precisamente al candidato que ha prometido construír un gigantesco muro para mantener a “esos asquerosos mexicanos” fuera de territorio norteamericano. La pregunta es: ¿realmente quieren seguir viviendo en un país en el que sus hijos son aborrecidos y detestados por los anglosajones, en el que sus esposas también son detestadas por los anglosajones, y en donde a aquellos en calidad de indocumentados se les va a deportar al cumplirse la promesa que Trump les hizo a quienes votaron por él?
No debemos olvidar que Trump debe su triunfo en parte al apoyo que recibió de parte del Consejo Nacional de la Patrulla Fronteriza que representa a 17 mil agentes, la cual anunció el 30 de marzo de este 2016 su apoyo a la candidatura de Donald Trump. La gran mayoría de ellos estarán felices por el hecho de que, respaldados por el propio presidente de Estados Unidos, estarán en plena libertad de incurrir en todo tipo de abusos a los derechos humanos no sólo de los mexicanos indocumentados que capturan sino incluso hasta los que residen en dicho país legalmente, emulando el ejemplo de los policías que han hecho de la matanza de negros casi un deporte nacional que se puede practicar con plena impunidad (no hay un solo policía que haya sido enviado a prisión por haber matado a algún negro que no estaba cometiendo delito alguno).
No solo podemos anticipar una época sumamente dura todos los mexicanos que seguimos viviendo en México y a los cuales nunca nos ha agradado la idea o la posibilidad de irnos a vivir a un país tan racista como Estados Unidos, cuna de grupos supremacistas blancos de odio como el Ku Klux Klan que todavía siguen vivos y operando, más aún hoy que tienen a alguien en la presidencia que simpatiza con ellos. También se viene una época sumamente dura para todos los mexicanos que viven en los Estados Unidos y por los cuales México como país no puede hacer absolutamente nada excepto acogerlos de vuelta en caso de que quieran regresar. La mano dura empezará a caer sobre los millones de indocumentados -no todos los cuales son mexicanos- a los cuales Trump ya dijo que deportará (si es que puede, eso está por verse) en un lapso de dos años. No le importa desbaratar familias, no hizo ni siquiera mención a una consideración de ese tipo en ninguno de sus discursos de campaña. Lo prometió y tiene todas las intenciones de hacerlo, eso es lo importante. Hará todo lo que esté a su alcance para que esos puercos indeseables queden fuera de Estados Unidos, y que sus empleos y trabajos puedan ser ocupados por norteamericanos de la clase trabajadora para los cuales ahora sí habrá muchos empleos gracias a las cacerías que los agentes migratorios ya se están preparando para llevar a cabo en todo el territorio norteamericano empezando por los campos agrícolas hasta los lugares urbanos en donde se concentran mexicanos que trabajan en la industria de la construcción y en las proveedurías de servicios, todo ello aplaudido por los anglosajones y blancos caucásicos que ya echaban de menos la quema de cruces. Todo lo que necesitaban era una persona afín a la ideología de ellos sentada en el escritorio de la Oficina Oval de la Casa Blanca, y ya la tienen.
El Congreso federal en México les concedió desde hace varios años la ciudadanía mexicana a a los mexicanos que se desarraigaron de México y terminaron jurándole lealtad eterna a la bandera norteamericana adoptando la ciudadanía norteamericana aunque no tenían ninguna necesidad económica apremiante que los obligara a hacer tal cosa, entre los cuales podemos mencionar al periodista y conductor de Univisión Jorge Ramos Ávalos, a Los Tigres del Norte, a Thalía, a Kate del Castillo y Paulina Rubio. Se trata de mexicanos que, si en un momento dado por órdenes del presidente Trump, son reclutados dentro del ejército norteamericano en una conscripción obligatoria, deben estar dispuestos (¡y muchos de ellos sí lo están!) a invadir a México en nombre del gobierno norteamericano, a bombardear ciudades mexicanas y rociar de balas y químicos venenosos el suelo mexicano, si el presidente Trump así se los ordena, demostrandole con ello su lealtad y su amor a la bandera norteamericana, no a la bandera mexicana. En caso de llegar la cosa a estos extremos, todos estos falsos mexicanos se encontrarán desde luego con verdaderos mexicanos en México que nunca se han desarraigado y que están dispuestos a defender a México en contra de invasores como éstos que solo son mexicanos de nombre por razones de pura conveniencia, se encontrarán con verdaderos mexicanos dispuestos a morir peleando en defensa de México, y estos últimos son los verdaderos mexicanos, no los falsos mexicanos que dicen serlo pero no lo son. ¿Qué piensa hacer el Congreso federal de México con ellos? ¿Se les va a seguir dando una doble nacionalidad que no merecen?
Hubo mexicanos en Estados Unidos que votaron por Donald Trump pese a que el gobierno de México les concedió la ciudadanía mexicana bajo el esquema de la doble nacionalidad sin pedirles absolutamente nada a cambio para otorgarles tal derecho. ¿Realmente alguien en México se puede tragar la píldora de que estos pseudo-mexicanos que votaron por el anti-mexicano Donald Trump realmente puedan seguirse considerando como mexicanos?
Ha llegado el tiempo de las definiciones.
Lo menos que puede hacer el Congreso de la Unión en México, si realmente representa al pueblo de México como dice hacerlo, si los diputados y senadores del Congreso realmente están dispuestos a ver primero por los mexicanos que votaron por ellos antes que ver por los intereses de desarraigados extranjeros, lo menos que pueden hacer es quitarle la ciudadanía mexicana y con ello la doble nacionalidad a todos aquellos pseudo-mexicanos que haya pasado a formar parte o que pasen a formar parte de las fuerzas armadas norteamericanas, porque se trata de estadounidenses que deben estar prestos a matar mexicanos que viven y trabajan en México si así se los ordena el presidente Donald Trump. Si quieren quedarse en Estados Unidos sirviendo a un gobierno basado en la política y retórica antimexicana, allá ellos. Es su decisión y están libres de hacerlo. Pero no hay por qué seguirlos premiando en México con una doble ciudadanía que no merecen.
Estar con México, o estar contra México. No se puede comulgar con ambas cosas a la vez, no sin rebajarse a la altura de un payaso como el que ha decidido elegir y poner en la Casa Blanca la mayoría blanca supremacista de Estados Unidos, esa mayoría que ha dejado de ser la mayoría silenciosa para dejar aflorar su xenofobia y su odio racial.
miércoles, 9 de noviembre de 2016
Things to come
The American people have spoken loudly in the presidential elections that took place yesterday, and the entire world is listening.
Not only did the American electorate chose Donald Trump as the next president of the USA, he was also given full control of both houses of Congress, both the House of Representatives and the US Senate, with a Republican majority in both houses. This in turn means that he will be able to get approved in Congress whatever he wants turned into law. It also means that the Judiciary will come under his control, since after the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia the Supreme Court was left equally divided between a liberal wing and a conservative wing, and this split balance of power inside the US Supreme Court can be easily upset either way by putting in the bench a Justice who will be either a well known liberal or a well known conservative. And we already know the kind of Justice the 45th president of the USA wants to put in the bench. As a matter of fact, considering the ages of the all the Justices now serving in the Supreme Court, it is highly likely that Trump may end up replacing several of them, packing the Court with not just a moderately liberal group of conservatives but perhaps even a group of Justices leaning towards the far right.
In essence, the separation of powers under the US Constitution so carefully forged by the founding fathers has been wiped out. Make no mistake, we are witnessing a major historical shift in the US government, and the repercussions will be felt wide and deep for many generations to come. The system of checks and balances was erased the past November 8th, and it is not a just a brief historical fluke as many would like to believe.
Some far reaching repercussions can be expected almost immediately after Donald Trump takes office. Here is just a few of them:
Just the crazy ramblings of a Mexican blogger, you might say? Please remember that Donald Trump is about to become an almost absolute ruler, with no checks and balances to set limits on him. He is on the verge of receiving absolute power, and Lord Acton warned us about the terrible consequences of power in the hands and on the brain of any man, especially a man about to become an American Caesar poised to receive and exercise absolute power. Furthermore, historian George Santayana warned previous generations of Americans and the entire world about the risks and dangers of forgetting hard won lessons from the past (he wrote in The Life of Reason, 1905, his famous phrase: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”), hard won lessons that were overlooked and forgotten in an election where the American electorate decided to hand over absolute power to a man as unpredictable as Donald Trump, putting in his hands the nuclear codes. Let us hope that the American people, just as the German people nowadays, do not see the day when they may regret handing over such a vast amount of power to someone as unpredictable as Donald Trump. However, and unfortunately, many analysts and editorialists are already stating the the Trump presidency is a tragedy in the making, or better said, a US social tragedy in the making. The drama is about to play out, and it could end up as bad or even worse than the drama that played out in Germany when the Nazis seized power, considering that the Nazis were not able to develop in time a nuclear bomb.
There is always the possibility that Trump may recant on some of his clearly laid out promises, but it is very likely that if he does so he will be held accountable by his tens of thousands of followers who used to go to his rallies, and would almost certainly be punished by them in the next Congressional elections where he could start losing control of one House of Congress and thereafter the remaining one, leaving him in a no better position than the position president Obama found himself when he was unable to get anything done by a Republican controlled Congress.
The above is just for starters. The Trump wall conceived to put a great divide separating forever the USA and Mexico and the Trump threat that Mexico will pay entirely for the building of that wall by resorting to any means the Commander in Chief of the US Army will have at his disposal has not even been mentioned here. There are other consequences of Trump taking over the presidency of the USA. The reader might already foresee some of them.
Not only did the American electorate chose Donald Trump as the next president of the USA, he was also given full control of both houses of Congress, both the House of Representatives and the US Senate, with a Republican majority in both houses. This in turn means that he will be able to get approved in Congress whatever he wants turned into law. It also means that the Judiciary will come under his control, since after the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia the Supreme Court was left equally divided between a liberal wing and a conservative wing, and this split balance of power inside the US Supreme Court can be easily upset either way by putting in the bench a Justice who will be either a well known liberal or a well known conservative. And we already know the kind of Justice the 45th president of the USA wants to put in the bench. As a matter of fact, considering the ages of the all the Justices now serving in the Supreme Court, it is highly likely that Trump may end up replacing several of them, packing the Court with not just a moderately liberal group of conservatives but perhaps even a group of Justices leaning towards the far right.
In essence, the separation of powers under the US Constitution so carefully forged by the founding fathers has been wiped out. Make no mistake, we are witnessing a major historical shift in the US government, and the repercussions will be felt wide and deep for many generations to come. The system of checks and balances was erased the past November 8th, and it is not a just a brief historical fluke as many would like to believe.
Some far reaching repercussions can be expected almost immediately after Donald Trump takes office. Here is just a few of them:
- Rowe vs. Wade will be overturned. Abortion will be outlawed inside the USA and things will be reverted back to the way they were before 1973 after the landmark decision of Rowe versus Wade. This will outlaw almost any kind of abortion except perhaps in the cases of rape or incest, and will affect profoundly the personal lives of every woman currently living in the USA, including those white college educated women who voted for Donald Trump. His points of view on this issue are well known and have been clearly stated. President Trump will not even need to intervene directly on this issue; all he will have to do is fill the Supreme Court vacancy by nominating some judge who can be sympathetic to the idea of overturning Rowe vs. Wade. Once this is done, the impact will most likely be felt not just by the current generations by the next generations, considering how difficult it is to overturn a Supreme Court decision.
- Obamacare will be scraped. Trump as candidate vowed to do so, and he will have in Congress all the votes he needs to accomplish this. The immediate impact will be felt by the less privileged economic classes, especially those in the working class minorities such as the Afroamericans who stayed home instead of going out to vote in the recent presidential election as they were asked to do by president Obama himself. It will also be felt by many of the blacks who actually voted for Donald Trump. Let us recall that the basic idea behind Obamacare was to provide health insurance protection for all, i.e. every man, woman and child now living in the USA. And if Obamacare is wiped out by a presidential decree backed by a servile Republican Congress, what will replace it? Go figure. The most likely scenario is that things will revert to the way they were before Obamacare was set in motion.
- The “dream” of the dreamers is gone for good. It Trump keeps his word on deporting every undocumented immigrant now on American soil, it is very likely that those undocumented college educated immigrants who were benefited by the Obama executive order known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (better known as DACA) will be kicked out of the USA for good, no exceptions. This was, after all, one of the most solid promises made by Donald Trump when he was a candidate, and will be greatly facilitated by the fact that the personal files and data of all those undocumented immigrants who voluntarily registered to obtain such benefit is now in the hands of the US federal government, the US immigration agents already know where to look for them and find them. If Trump is a man of his word, he will do just as he promised to in his rallies with all those who voted for him. Those “dreamers” who believed the Dream ACT could one day become a reality would be wise to have their luggage ready in case US immigration agents come looking for them.
- Tens of thousands of families in the USA can expect to be broken up for good and forever. This is inevitable, if Donald Trump does good on his promise to punish those who broke the US immigration laws. In his 10-point immigration plan, Trump promised to “immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties” which targets for immediate rollbacks not only the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) mentioned above but also the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). The latter, DAPA, would have deferred deportation for as many as five million undocumented immigrants, and it would have allowed them to work the U.S. DAPA was immediately challenged by the attorneys general of 26 states, and a Texas court placed a nationwide injunction on the program while the legal challenge proceeded through the courts. The Supreme Court, by deadlocking in a 4-4 tie in the legal challenge on DAPA, effectively upheld the lower court’s decision, which was merely a nationwide injunction putting the program on hold while the legal challenge against DAPA. The final intent is a massive deportation of all undocumented parents of many US legal residents and many US citizens.
- The US will pull out of most free trade agreements with the rest of the world. First in line will be the North American Free Trade Agreement otherwise known as NAFTA, and the views of Trump regarding NAFTA are well known. However, it is unlikely that there will be a newer version of any kind of free trade agreement, especially with Mexico, since the absolute rule the Mexican president once had over the Mexican Congress in what used to be a single party system is now defunct (the party of Enrique Peña Nieto, the PRI, has just scuttled his legislative proposal for the legalization of same sex marriages), and there is even a widespread opposition in Mexico against NAFTA (made well known to the rest of the world with the Zapatista rebellion), an opposition that is shared by many important Mexican entrepreneurs and tycoons, which translates into an impossibility of forging any kind of new free trade deal with Mexico. Make no mistake about it, once NAFTA is gone, it will be gone for good. The only possible replacement of a scraped NAFTA could be through the Trans Pacific Partnership initiative (otherwise known as TPP) now in its final stages. But Trump has already stated his personal views on TPP. As president, Trump can pull the USA out of NAFTA for good and forever without even requiring the approval of Congress. Indeed, Article 2205 of the NAFTA trade agreement makes it clear that the president of the USA can pull out the country off NAFTA unilateraly by only giving an advance written statement confirming the pullout to Mexico and Canada six months ahead of time. Besides pulling the USA out of NAFTA, Trump can start imposing heavy tariffs upon products manufactured by US companies that have relocated to Mexico, tariffs so huge that there will be no economic incentive for them to remain in Mexico or to leave the USA and go to Mexico. In theory this would help bring back many US companies and would help save jobs in the USA, helping American workers at manufacturing facilities such as Carrier, where the workers there are fully expecting Donald Trump to make good on the promise he made to them. If he does not keep the promise he made to them, it is most certain that they will end up being very very sad with a lot of tears in their eyes and with their hearts broken. There is just one catch in the issue of imposing stiff tariffs to just one country. Mexico can resort to the World Trade Organization (WTO), of which the USA is a member nation. Under the WTO rules, the USA cannot simply impose tariffs individually upon any nation it so chooses. It has to do it on an equal basis to all other nations. To resolve these issues, the WTO has a Dispute Settlement Body entrusted with making decisions on trade disputes between countries, and it even has an Appellate Body. Further complicating things for Mister Trump is the fact that one of the WTO judges is a Mexican by the name of Ricardo Ramírez Hernández. If Trump does not wish to abide by the rulings of the WTO, he can decide to pull the USA entirely out of the WTO, sending a message to the rest of the world that the USA does not need the rest of the world at all. But in such an event, it can be anticipated that there would be an equivalent reply, with the rest of the world deciding it does not need the USA either, thus putting millions of US export depending jobs at stake. This sort of thing has taken place several times in the past elsewhere, it is the kind of thing that has given rise to what are known as trade wars. If that happens, it could end up raising inside the USA the phantasm of a new economic slump just as the country was beginning to come out of the Great Recession. But Donald Trump is convinced that he knows what he is doing, better than anybody else, so in the end he will be the one who will make the decisions and thus carry a great social economic experiment taking the entire USA for a ride just as President Reagan did with Reaganomics. Bottom line: if Trump is true to his word and keeps all his promises, there will be no free trade deals with the rest of the world. The official posture of the US government could end up being that the USA does not need the rest of the world to grow and prosper, a point of view that could find a stern reply from a plethora of nations arriving at the same conclusion, that the rest of the world does not need the USA to grow and prosper either. In essence, it could all end up being a return to the isolationism school of thought that has shaped US foreign policies since its birth.
- Stiff tariffs will be imposed on countries such as China now flooding the USA with cheap goods. This is another thing Trump has promised to do as president, and many of his supporters, especially those living in the Rust Belt, will follow very closely since it is the sole reason many of them voted for him. He has talked about imposing a 45 percent tariff on Chinese exports to the United States. With a Republican Congress in which the Democrats have no voice on this issue, this can be done a few days after Trump becomes president. There is just one slight inconvenience he did not mention to his followers. Almost immediately after such a stiff tariff is applied against Chinese imports, there will be an almost immediate and sharp jump on the prices of many goods now sold inside the USA. Anybody who finds this hard to believe should take a close look at the labels of many manufactured goods now sold in places like BestBuy and Walmart, where he/she will find “Made in China” on the label. Just add 45 per cent to the cost of any Chinese manufactured item now sold in the USA retail stores, and it will be easy to figure out what the cost will end up being. The US consumer, and especially all those who voted for Trump (there will be no exceptions here!) will have to pay for this. And what about buying similar goods made in the USA? Well, all those US goods, considering the wages that will have to be paid to unionized workers, may end up costing the same or perhaps even more than the Chinese goods smacked with the 45 per cent Trump tariff. We are talking here about a decrease in the US standard of living likely to be felt almost immediately once this Trump promise becomes a reality.
- America must brace itself for a de-industrialization process. Trump promised to create many jobs inside the USA. But there is a hard fact that has already been pointed out in this blog. A lot of the jobs lost by the average blue collar worker in the USA have not been lost due to those jobs being exported to places like China and Mexico, but rather to the growing use of automation and robotics, something that was stated here in a previous entry. The only way to revert this trend is to actually ban or impede the use of automation and robotics in US manufacturing plants. But this is precisely the kind of thing that allowed America to remain competitive! Never mind. It can still be done, forcing US companies to turn their backs on their use of technology, thus making America lose its technological leadership in the process and pricing its products out of the world market. This would really be something to see and witness.
- Things may be about to become much harder for America in the Middle East. Just when ISIS is in retreat in Iraq with the strategic city of Mosul about to be retaken by the Iraqui troops, the American people have elected a president with an anti-Muslim rhetoric who has promised to bomb almost everything in Iraq and Syria and even take away their oil in the region. This is precisely the kind of US government threat that ISIS was begging for and will love to use in its propaganda, and even if ISIS is crushed it may be anticipated that there will be new waves of crazed Muslim kamikazes poised to fight against what Muslims in the region call the Great Satan. As bad as things are right now in the Middle East, they could become far worse when Trump takes over the Oval Office and just by doing so he unifies all the Muslim countries in the Middle East (including long time standing US allies such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar) in a common cause against America. In order to meet the challenge, and no longer with any allies in the area except Israel, the deployment of US ground troops on Middle Eastern soil seems unavoidable, and it could require reinstating the draft in order to fight Trump's wars on the other side of the world, with body bags returning to the US just as they did during the Vietnam era.
- Ukraine to be left defenseless in the name of improved USA-Russia diplomatic relations. Donald Trump has made no secret of his great admiration for Russian president Vladimir Putin whom he has called a presidential role model, with whom he expects to establish a great friendship, and this admiration and gesture of a great future friendship is equally corresponded, and in fact it began even before the November 8th presidential election took place, so much so that the Russian government was repeatedly accused of meddling in US internal political affairs with the leaks of thousands of private emails thought to be damaging against presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a slew of emails supposedly procured by Russian hackers working for the Russian government, an important factor that may have been decisive in a close election, something for which no doubt Donald Trump will forever be extremely grateful to president Vladimir Putin, all of which foreshadows a great future alliance and friendship between the USA and Russia. But this mellowing of diplomatic tensions between both countries will have to come at a price. Indeed, right now in Ukraine there are a lot of worried faces of people who can only see ahead a scenario of gloom and doom, people who are convinced that they have been stabbed in the back and betrayed by the American voters, especially those voters from the rural areas. It is imperative at this point to recall how the current USA-Russia diplomatic tensions came about. It all started when the former pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted on 22 February 2014 (less than three years ago) by the Ukrainian parliament that voted to remove him from his post. After his ousting, talks began in the Ukrainian parliament about joining the European Union and even joining NATO, thus bringing one of the most important remnants of the Cold War straight at the strategic border between Ukraine and Russia. In response, Putin ordered an all-out military invasion of Crimea, and backed up with elite Russian troops and sophisticated Russian weaponry (such as the missiles that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17) an internal uprise in Ukraine that is still going on, spearheaded by Ukrainian pro-Russian separatists. Many analysts firmly believe that Russia did not carry out a full scale invasion of Ukraine because of very stern warnings given by president Obama. But with president Obama gone, and with Donald Trump ushering a new era of friendship and cooperation with Russia, the main door is being left open for that Russian invasion of Ukraine to be carried out. In essence, Ukraine and the Ukrainians have been left hanging in the balance by the American voters. But even more important, much more important, the future of NATO itself is in jeopardy as soon as the US presidency falls into the hands of a man who has already expressed sharp critics against the NATO alliance. The future of a military alliance as vast and complex and NATO seems gloomy at best when its most important member will be a nation headed by a pro-Russian and unpredictable man such as Donald Trump. There is a saying which goes like this: “You can't have your cake and eat it too” (in this case, Vladimir Putin is the cake). President Trump simply and plainly cannot expect to have a great friendship with the Russian president whom he admires, without being willing and ready to sacrifice Ukraine completely, to the full extent of the word, if need be. Indeed, the abandonment of Ukraine has already started. It started 8th November 2016. Ukrainians are right now in disbelief, and most of them expect the worse yet to come, recalling from the history books the Munich Agreement with which the Prime Minister of England, Neville Chamberlain agreed to the handing over to Nazi Germany of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation “Sudetenland” was coined, all in the name of avoiding a new world war, which ended up taking place anyway.
- Opening up of diplomatic relations between the USA and Cuba comes to a screeching halt, with the clock being set back to a time when Cuba was considered to be a full blown out enemy of the USA. The historical thawing of diplomatic relations between the USA and Cuba that was begun in December 2014, ending a 54-year stretch of hostility between both nations, and was formalized in March 2016 when president Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Cuba, is now finished. Kaput! This thawing of relations started entirely under the initiative of president Obama with the intervening help of the Vatican as a mediator, and became a recognition that the previous policies of isolating Cuba had not accomplished anything except making the lives of the Cuban people miserable. Cuban-Americans whose vote as Hispanics in Florida was crucial to give Trump the victory he needed there enabling him to carry the electoral votes of Florida and thus assuring him the presidency were swayed and convinced by his message and now fully expect him to keep his word in case he wants their vote again in 2020 to get re-elected. They fully expect from him at the very least the closing of the US Embassy in Cuba that was reopened under orders from president Obama over a year ago, and most certainly expect a full enforcement of the commercial embargo against Cuba as dictated by the Helms-Burton Act whose main intention was to force the Cuban economy into bankruptcy and force the Cubans to rebel against their own government overthrowing the communist regime set up more than half a century ago by Fidel Castro. Add to this the demands of the many in the Cuban-American community in Miami of making tourist travel to Cuba extremely hard to make and scuttling the plans of American companies such as Visa and Mastercard to start operations in Cuba which otherwise would be making it easier to travel to Cuba and invest in Cuba. But it is a fact that the policies of economic blockade have failed. as both the Cuban government and the Cuban people learned to endure the hardships that came along with this US-imposed economic blockade. With the opening up of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the USA, it was becoming increasingly harder for the Cuban government to put the blame on the USA for all the woes of Cuba, which is precisely one of the things that president Obama was trying to achieve. The forced isolation of Cuba scheme had failed for half a century in trying to force the Cuban government to abandon completely its Marxist-inspired ideology and dogmas, and oddly enough after president Obama took the bold decision to switch gears, a change in attitude actually began to take place at the top of the Cuban government akin to the abandonment of radical Marxist ideology after president Nixon also took the bold decision to open up relations with the Chinese who now have a free market economy under the rule of an almost symbolic communist government. But this will almost certainly not happen in Cuba if Trump follows up on his promise to the Cuban-Americans of reverting the opening up that was carried out under Barack Obama. If so, not only will the Cuban government be able to blame again the USA for all its woes, but it may very well garner the support of many Cubans who will end up viewing America once again as their enemy. There remains the possibility of a full scale American military invasion of Cuba under orders given by president Donald Trump, the commander in chief of the US Army, with every intention of overthrowing the Cuban regime and replacing it with a new one, avoiding the Bay of Pigs fiasco when president Kennedy failed to deliver on his promise to give backup aerial support to the invasion of Cuba. The new invasion of Cuba would not merely be a repeat of the past failed CIA attempts, it would be a major military invasion ordered by president Trump, with the full backup and support of the Cuban-American community mainly in Miami, in little Havana. The only catch is that, if this is carried out into full fruition, the American people may end up paying a high price for the invasion, both in the number of casualties and in the economic cost of carrying out such an attack. It is no wonder that president Bill Clinton did not even consider any kind of military retaliation after the 1996 shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue aircraft (they were on their way from the USA to Cuba to drop propaganda leaflets in Havana when the Cuban airplanes shot them down), and the only kind of retaliation taken was the signing of the Helms-Burton Act. Likewise, the Commander-in-Chief hero of the Gulf War, president George H. W. Bush, who also ordered the US invasion of Panama, refrained himself from ordering a US invasion of Cuba to overthrow the Cuban regime by military means. Even president Reagan himself, who had the popularity to order a full scale US military invasion of Cuba as he did in Grenada, refrained himself from ordering an invasion of Cuba, heeding the advice of his cabinet in the sense that Cuba was not Grenada, and if such a thing was done in the case of Cuba the USA would end up paying a very high price, and thus president Reagan ended up confining himself to simply ordering a tightening of the US embargo of Cuba. But Donald Trump has always done as he pleases without considering the possible consequences, this is precisely one of the things that got him the presidency. And furthermore, he is unpredictable, so this is an event that could take place. It might be added that, if under the direct orders of president Donald Trump there is a US-military invasion of Cuba with orders to overthrow the current Cuban regime at all cost, those Cuban Americans who now serve in the US military will not waver for a single moment at the idea of killing Cubans, which in turn means that the hybrid known as Cuban-American in reality does not exist. In a military showdown, someone can be a Cuban or an American, but he cannot be both. There is no such thing as a Cuban American, there is no such thing as a person with a dual nationality, a fiction that many American citizens of Cuban descent still believe. It usually takes a war to define loyalties, and an invasion of Cuba ordered by president Trump may be all that is required for Cuban Americans to strip themselves of the hyphen and start calling themselves for good what they really are, American citizens, hispanics who by the way supported Donald Trump in his quest of the US presidency. In the meantime, Cubans now living in Cuba are deeply worried showing faces of despair, for in the end, any hardening of USA against Cuba at the behest or president Trump will end up being paid by the Cuban people themselves, something that will not produce many sympathizers of Donald Trump in Cuba in case he decides to act one way or another against the Cuban government and even decides to put troops on the ground in Cuba. And what about Radio Martí? That's a good question. And what about Guantanamo bay? That's another good question harboring some bizarre ideas. With someone as unpredictable as Donald Trump, go figure.
Just the crazy ramblings of a Mexican blogger, you might say? Please remember that Donald Trump is about to become an almost absolute ruler, with no checks and balances to set limits on him. He is on the verge of receiving absolute power, and Lord Acton warned us about the terrible consequences of power in the hands and on the brain of any man, especially a man about to become an American Caesar poised to receive and exercise absolute power. Furthermore, historian George Santayana warned previous generations of Americans and the entire world about the risks and dangers of forgetting hard won lessons from the past (he wrote in The Life of Reason, 1905, his famous phrase: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”), hard won lessons that were overlooked and forgotten in an election where the American electorate decided to hand over absolute power to a man as unpredictable as Donald Trump, putting in his hands the nuclear codes. Let us hope that the American people, just as the German people nowadays, do not see the day when they may regret handing over such a vast amount of power to someone as unpredictable as Donald Trump. However, and unfortunately, many analysts and editorialists are already stating the the Trump presidency is a tragedy in the making, or better said, a US social tragedy in the making. The drama is about to play out, and it could end up as bad or even worse than the drama that played out in Germany when the Nazis seized power, considering that the Nazis were not able to develop in time a nuclear bomb.
There is always the possibility that Trump may recant on some of his clearly laid out promises, but it is very likely that if he does so he will be held accountable by his tens of thousands of followers who used to go to his rallies, and would almost certainly be punished by them in the next Congressional elections where he could start losing control of one House of Congress and thereafter the remaining one, leaving him in a no better position than the position president Obama found himself when he was unable to get anything done by a Republican controlled Congress.
The above is just for starters. The Trump wall conceived to put a great divide separating forever the USA and Mexico and the Trump threat that Mexico will pay entirely for the building of that wall by resorting to any means the Commander in Chief of the US Army will have at his disposal has not even been mentioned here. There are other consequences of Trump taking over the presidency of the USA. The reader might already foresee some of them.
martes, 8 de noviembre de 2016
Even if Trump loses
Today is the great day, the historical day in which America chooses between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The wait will be over after the sun has set, when every American will know who will be the person in the White House. Although in most polls Hillary has the lead over Trump, the winner will not be decided by the popular vote, but will be chosen by an anachronic Electoral College where, once more, Florida will play an important role. It must be reminded that today, just as in 2000, the man who won by a majority of the popular vote, Al Gore, was not the one who became president, precisely because of the undemocratic Electoral College that still gives an enormous and even unfair advantage to just a few states over all others, a chink in the armor of a republic that has long claimed to be a democratic example for the rest of the world.
A famous motto during the times of Nazi Germany, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” (“Germany, Germany above all else”), is essentially the same thing as Donald Trump’s motto "Make America Great Again". It should be clarified that the German phrase is actually the first stanza of a song, a song which as a matter of fact became the national anthem of Germany since 1922 and thus predated the rise of National Socialism to power.
It is commonly believed by many in America that Adolf Hitler, the well known German dictator, seized power without popular support and ruled Germany without popular support, against the will of many Germans who could not oppose his iron fist. This would put the blame solely on one man for all the atrocities such as the Holocaust that were carried out under his rule, with most of the Germans of that era remaining innocent and blameless for the actions of a single man. However, it is an historical fact that Hitler could not have gotten to where he got without the support of many, and we are not talking merely the support of his closest collaborators such as Goebbels and Himmler. He had ample popular support. Nowadays it defies the most basic common sense and logic how a man who had clearly laid out his views and plan of action in his manifesto Mein Kampf was not be taken seriously at his word by the Germans who adored him. Donald Trump’s incendiary, racist, scapegoating rhetoric is frighteningly reminiscent of the hate-filled rantings of Adolph Hitler. Both men should never have had a chance, not even remote, of becoming the rulers of their countries. But with the support of many Germans, Hitler was able to accomplish his main goal, and Trump is getting closer and closer to realizing his own goal.
Just like Hitler, Trump has the ability to convince people, especially unemployed and underemployed Americans, that he can bring them out of their misery. The USA is barely coming out of the Great Recession, a prolonged period which by the way was brought about not by a Democratic president but by a Republican president, an economic slump surpassing another economic recession in the 1980s brought about by yet another Republican president which is only topped by the Great Depression (yes, a Republican was in the White House when the US economy crashed), but Trump has been able to convince many that he and he alone can turn the USA into an Utopian paradise. Back in the 1920s, we find that it was a period of extreme economic hardship for Germany, and just like many Americans today they could believe anyone who could be very convincing. The German people were disoriented by the World War I as they could never imagine Germany losing. They badly sought answers for the defeat and one young lad convinced them that he had all the answers. Just like Trump has done today.
Leaders don’t get selected for the diplomas and work experiences during the tough times. It is actually a disadvantage to have high pedigree and conventional backgrounds in those periods. In tough times, people go for unconventional leaders as they believe that the conventional leaders failed to deliver. Thus, his lack of degrees and strong professional career is not an impediment. And one thing that has characterized the Trump appeal is his anti establishment stance. It is a proper time to recall that, at the end of Vietnam war, oil crisis, Watergate and Iran refugee crisis in 1970s, US elected two unconventional leaders, Carter and Reagan, outsiders who were thought of as an antidote to the prevailing rot in politics. Here Hitler had a very precise advantage. He was an outsider, not part of the establishment, and he was mesmerizing. People wanted to believe what he said was right. Although he was an Austrian, he was always impressed of Germany, fought for Germany and many Germans didn’t realize he was an Austrian.
With his xenophobic rhetoric and his racist remarks, starting off with the Mexicans against whom he has promised to build a separating wall, Trump has shown to every American what he is made of. His negative traits that recall similarities with some questionable figures from the past should have kept him at the very bottom of the Republican candidates who aspired to become the next president in 2017. And his similarities to Hitler himself are well known to many. Yet he trumped them all, with the support of his tens of thousands of supporters, hijacking the Republican party for himself with the help of his many supporters and managing to become elected in the primaries as the Republican candidate for the presidency.
The squashing of the Republican party by a demagogue who has resorted to many lies in such important issues as unemployment, who has made a commitment of tearing up trade agreements that may become impossible to bring back one destroyed, and whose backers who nowadays have jobs may end up in the unemployment lines, all these things have been considered by the so called pundits as things that should have kept the Trump phenomenon as something limited to the entrails of the Republican party, something that would fizzle once the actual presidential race got started. But yet again, Trump defied has defied all the odds, and in the eve of the presidential election there are some who actually give him a possibility of having a shot at taking over the White House.
By tomorrow, Donald Trump could very well be president elect of the USA. The surprising results of the Brexit vote in England where all the forecasts predicted a rejection of Brexit, and the surprising defeat of the Colombian peace deal painfully hammered out between a Nobel prize winner and the FARC guerrillas that proved the expectations of most all analysts wrong, are sore reminders that people do not necessarily and overwhelmingly vote for the most logical choice. But what if he loses? Could that be the end of one of the most remarkable flukes in the political history of the US?
Not by a long shot.
Trump’s claims that the election is rigged and his refusal to accept defeat in case he loses are already setting a fire that may not be quelled in case Trump is defeated. There are experts who believe that his accusations alone could inflict long-standing damage on the US political system itself by eroding trust in the probity of the electoral process, eroding the credo of American democracy that has rested on the cherished principle that the transfer of power from an outgoing president to a successor was widely seen as legitimate and the possibility of fraud was not even mentioned. Electoral fraud used to be something that took place in third world countries, but not in the USA.
Trump has awakened a monster, the monster that in the past used to hide behind the flag of the Confederacy and the cross burning rallies of the KKK. He has shown all his followers that it is alright to be a racist, it is alright to be a woman hater, it is alright to be a liar, it is alright to be demagogue, it is alright to be a xenophobe, for all these traits are no longer an obstacle to anyone who aspires to become president. As a matter of fact, as Trump himself has shown by his example, an individual who has all these traits in his persona may actually end up gathering hundreds of thousands of followers as extremist and as blind as he is. And these Trump followers, with their base instincts awakened and human rationality thrown overboard, are not likely to go home and give up on the crazy dream Trump has given them. The very least that can be expected is a fractured society.
A man such as Trump was not supposed to get this far. He was once considered as the most unlikely candidate to seize the nomination of the Republican party for the presidency. Nearly one century ago, neither was Hitler. They were considered as small insignificant threats, nothing to worry about, and yet history is proving that in politics anything can happen, anything.
So, even if Trump loses, a horrible genie may have been let loose out of the bottle, a genie that even Trump himself may be unable to control, much less put it back inside the bottle.
But what if he ends up winning?
Well, for starters, if Trump ends up winning, those Germans descending from the generation that hailed Hitler in his rallies and backed him up in his seizure of absolute power and who have been bedeviled ever since by the entire world with the perpetual reminder and reprimand “Shame on you”, could very well end up looking back to America saying to Americans exactly the same thing: “Shame on you”.
And then what?
That’s where more history books remain to be written. We will soon find out.
A famous motto during the times of Nazi Germany, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” (“Germany, Germany above all else”), is essentially the same thing as Donald Trump’s motto "Make America Great Again". It should be clarified that the German phrase is actually the first stanza of a song, a song which as a matter of fact became the national anthem of Germany since 1922 and thus predated the rise of National Socialism to power.
It is commonly believed by many in America that Adolf Hitler, the well known German dictator, seized power without popular support and ruled Germany without popular support, against the will of many Germans who could not oppose his iron fist. This would put the blame solely on one man for all the atrocities such as the Holocaust that were carried out under his rule, with most of the Germans of that era remaining innocent and blameless for the actions of a single man. However, it is an historical fact that Hitler could not have gotten to where he got without the support of many, and we are not talking merely the support of his closest collaborators such as Goebbels and Himmler. He had ample popular support. Nowadays it defies the most basic common sense and logic how a man who had clearly laid out his views and plan of action in his manifesto Mein Kampf was not be taken seriously at his word by the Germans who adored him. Donald Trump’s incendiary, racist, scapegoating rhetoric is frighteningly reminiscent of the hate-filled rantings of Adolph Hitler. Both men should never have had a chance, not even remote, of becoming the rulers of their countries. But with the support of many Germans, Hitler was able to accomplish his main goal, and Trump is getting closer and closer to realizing his own goal.
Just like Hitler, Trump has the ability to convince people, especially unemployed and underemployed Americans, that he can bring them out of their misery. The USA is barely coming out of the Great Recession, a prolonged period which by the way was brought about not by a Democratic president but by a Republican president, an economic slump surpassing another economic recession in the 1980s brought about by yet another Republican president which is only topped by the Great Depression (yes, a Republican was in the White House when the US economy crashed), but Trump has been able to convince many that he and he alone can turn the USA into an Utopian paradise. Back in the 1920s, we find that it was a period of extreme economic hardship for Germany, and just like many Americans today they could believe anyone who could be very convincing. The German people were disoriented by the World War I as they could never imagine Germany losing. They badly sought answers for the defeat and one young lad convinced them that he had all the answers. Just like Trump has done today.
Leaders don’t get selected for the diplomas and work experiences during the tough times. It is actually a disadvantage to have high pedigree and conventional backgrounds in those periods. In tough times, people go for unconventional leaders as they believe that the conventional leaders failed to deliver. Thus, his lack of degrees and strong professional career is not an impediment. And one thing that has characterized the Trump appeal is his anti establishment stance. It is a proper time to recall that, at the end of Vietnam war, oil crisis, Watergate and Iran refugee crisis in 1970s, US elected two unconventional leaders, Carter and Reagan, outsiders who were thought of as an antidote to the prevailing rot in politics. Here Hitler had a very precise advantage. He was an outsider, not part of the establishment, and he was mesmerizing. People wanted to believe what he said was right. Although he was an Austrian, he was always impressed of Germany, fought for Germany and many Germans didn’t realize he was an Austrian.
With his xenophobic rhetoric and his racist remarks, starting off with the Mexicans against whom he has promised to build a separating wall, Trump has shown to every American what he is made of. His negative traits that recall similarities with some questionable figures from the past should have kept him at the very bottom of the Republican candidates who aspired to become the next president in 2017. And his similarities to Hitler himself are well known to many. Yet he trumped them all, with the support of his tens of thousands of supporters, hijacking the Republican party for himself with the help of his many supporters and managing to become elected in the primaries as the Republican candidate for the presidency.
The squashing of the Republican party by a demagogue who has resorted to many lies in such important issues as unemployment, who has made a commitment of tearing up trade agreements that may become impossible to bring back one destroyed, and whose backers who nowadays have jobs may end up in the unemployment lines, all these things have been considered by the so called pundits as things that should have kept the Trump phenomenon as something limited to the entrails of the Republican party, something that would fizzle once the actual presidential race got started. But yet again, Trump defied has defied all the odds, and in the eve of the presidential election there are some who actually give him a possibility of having a shot at taking over the White House.
By tomorrow, Donald Trump could very well be president elect of the USA. The surprising results of the Brexit vote in England where all the forecasts predicted a rejection of Brexit, and the surprising defeat of the Colombian peace deal painfully hammered out between a Nobel prize winner and the FARC guerrillas that proved the expectations of most all analysts wrong, are sore reminders that people do not necessarily and overwhelmingly vote for the most logical choice. But what if he loses? Could that be the end of one of the most remarkable flukes in the political history of the US?
Not by a long shot.
Trump’s claims that the election is rigged and his refusal to accept defeat in case he loses are already setting a fire that may not be quelled in case Trump is defeated. There are experts who believe that his accusations alone could inflict long-standing damage on the US political system itself by eroding trust in the probity of the electoral process, eroding the credo of American democracy that has rested on the cherished principle that the transfer of power from an outgoing president to a successor was widely seen as legitimate and the possibility of fraud was not even mentioned. Electoral fraud used to be something that took place in third world countries, but not in the USA.
Trump has awakened a monster, the monster that in the past used to hide behind the flag of the Confederacy and the cross burning rallies of the KKK. He has shown all his followers that it is alright to be a racist, it is alright to be a woman hater, it is alright to be a liar, it is alright to be demagogue, it is alright to be a xenophobe, for all these traits are no longer an obstacle to anyone who aspires to become president. As a matter of fact, as Trump himself has shown by his example, an individual who has all these traits in his persona may actually end up gathering hundreds of thousands of followers as extremist and as blind as he is. And these Trump followers, with their base instincts awakened and human rationality thrown overboard, are not likely to go home and give up on the crazy dream Trump has given them. The very least that can be expected is a fractured society.
A man such as Trump was not supposed to get this far. He was once considered as the most unlikely candidate to seize the nomination of the Republican party for the presidency. Nearly one century ago, neither was Hitler. They were considered as small insignificant threats, nothing to worry about, and yet history is proving that in politics anything can happen, anything.
So, even if Trump loses, a horrible genie may have been let loose out of the bottle, a genie that even Trump himself may be unable to control, much less put it back inside the bottle.
But what if he ends up winning?
Well, for starters, if Trump ends up winning, those Germans descending from the generation that hailed Hitler in his rallies and backed him up in his seizure of absolute power and who have been bedeviled ever since by the entire world with the perpetual reminder and reprimand “Shame on you”, could very well end up looking back to America saying to Americans exactly the same thing: “Shame on you”.
And then what?
That’s where more history books remain to be written. We will soon find out.
sábado, 5 de noviembre de 2016
US workers supporting Trump may end up unemployed
Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim has pointed out that, in the long run, putting Trump in the White House will end up causing more harm than good to the USA itself than to Latin America.
Donald Trump is entirely blind to the fact that, if the USA scraps NAFTA altogether, there will be no turning back, conditions are such in 2016 that it will be nigh on to impossible to forge a new free trade agreement deal as it was done back in 1993 when president Carlos Salinas de Gortari ruled Mexico with an iron fist. Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto does not have the autocratic powers his predecesors once had, and the Mexican Congress will be in no mood to ratifiy anything new president Trump may come up to replace NAFTA.
A recent study made known September 16th and published by The Wall Street Journal has concluded that Trump trade plan could push the USA into a recession, and imposing tariffs on Mexico and China could cost 5 million jobs in America according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
There is a growing consensus that NAFTA may have actually saved many autoworkers’ jobs, yet many blue collar workers who support Donald Trump have blinded themselves completely to this revelation. Furthermore, for a candidate who argues that free trade has led to the hollowing-out of U.S. manufacturing, the most ironic cut may be that car companies are building in Mexico rather than the United States, largely because it has freer trade than the United States does with the rest of the world. Critics of the North American Free Trade Agreement, who are placing all the blame on it, are denying the reality of global auto manufacturing. “That's what gets lost in the narrative”, said Bernard Swiecki, director of the automotive communities partnership at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "Free trade agreements are driving BMW and Audi, but they're not free trade agreements with us. Blame NAFTA all you want — it wasn't the trade agreement that made that happen”. Why are so many non-U.S. automakers choosing Mexico? It's not just low wages, though Mexican auto workers make about 18 percent of what U.S. counterparts do, saving $600 on assembling a midsize Ford Fusion, according to the CAR. The real key is having free trade deals with more of the rest of the world than the United States, Swiecki said. On a Fusion sent to Europe, just the tariff difference from producing in Mexico saves Ford $2,500, while on a more expensive BMW or Audi, the difference is even more. And labor cost savings don't rise much as the cars get more expensive, but the potential gains from avoided export taxes do, he said.
In the rust belt, especially in Pennsylvania that was once a world class center for steel mills and the textile industry, Trump has promised the voters stricter immigration laws and the sealing of the borders, but in the last few years thousands of US jobs were actually saved or generated thanks to an investment that came from the least likely source: Mexico, according to a news report made by Robbie Whelan and published Friday November 4th by The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ has pointed out that Hazleton has turned into a case of the contradictions of globalization in an election in which Trump as well as Hillary Clinton (the latter following the lead of Trump in this issue) have questioned the benefits of free trade.
This is the news story as delivered by journalist Robbie Whelan:
Mexican Investment Flows Into Region Where Trump Resonates
Robbie Whelan
The Wall Street Journal
Friday 4 November 2016
Here in this former center of steelmaking and textiles, Donald Trump's campaign promises of stricter immigration laws and tighter borders resonate with voters.
But over the past few years, hundreds of jobs in Hazleton and the surrounding region of northeastern Pennsylvania have been preserved or expanded due to investment from an unlikely source: Mexico.
The result is that Hazleton has become a showcase of the contradictions of globalization in an election where both Mr. Trump and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton have questioned the benefits of free trade.
Mr. Trump had an 11% lead in Luzerne County, which includes Hazleton, in a late-October poll conducted for Axiom Strategies, a firm that has done work for Republican candidates.
In early 2009, Mexican baking conglomerate Grupo Bimbo SAB bought Weston Foods Inc., a U.S. unit of George Weston Ltd. of Canada , for $2.38 billion. With it came two Weston plants in Hazleton and a stable of American brands, including Arnold's bread, Boboli pizza crust and Thomas' English Muffins.
Despite buying Weston at the height of the financial crisis, Bimbo has reduced head count only slightly and built new plants in the region. Bimbo says that since 2012 it has invested $1 billion in the U.S.
Weston had about 2,500 workers in Pennsylvania, while today, Bimbo employs roughly 2,300, including those at its U.S. headquarters in Horsham and workers at nine industrial-scale bakeries.
In a region that lost thousands of factory jobs over the past few decades, the deep-pocketed new owners were welcomed. “Bimbo could have taken the company and moved it out of the area, but we're very fortunate that they decided to keep them here,” said Kevin O'Donnell, president of CAN DO Inc., Hazleton's nonprofit economic development group.
Other Mexico-based food manufacturers have invested in the area as well. In 2005, Mission Foods, a tortilla maker and U.S. arm of Mexico's Gruma SA, opened a plant in nearby Mountain Top that employs roughly 400 people.
And in 2012, Arca Continental SAB acquired Wise Foods Inc., a century-old, family-owned maker of Cheez Doodles and other snack foods based in Berwick, a small town across the Susquehanna River from Hazleton.
The Hazleton area isn't alone in seeing Mexican investment. Annual direct Mexican investment in the U.S. more than tripled from 2006 to 2015, from $5.3 billion to $16.6 billion, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data analyzed by the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. The Mexican government estimates that 123,000 U.S. jobs are supported by Mexican investment.
“There's been this shift from Mexicans coming across the border looking for jobs, to having this huge boom in capital coming across the border and creating jobs in the U.S.,” said Andrew Selee, the Wilson Center's executive vice president and senior adviser to its Mexico Institute. “The infusion of Mexican capital has saved some classic American brands and preserved the jobs that go with them.”
Another big Mexican investor north of the border is Mexichem SAB, a global petrochemical giant with $5.7 billion in annual sales that has invested more than $2 billion in the last five years in 13 U.S. states.
Mexichem exports fluorspar and other raw materials from Mexico to its U.S. plant in Louisiana, which produces products such as refrigerants used by the car industry. The company, in turn, ships ethylene gas from the U.S. to feed its Mexico plants.
Mexichem's chairman, Juan Pablo del Valle, has been one of the few major Mexican businessmen to publicly criticize Mr. Trump's protectionist and anti-immigration plans and his speech against Mexicans and other groups.
At a recent rally in Florida, Mr. Trump referred to "rural towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and all across our country," saying that establishment politicians had "stripped away these towns bare" and sent jobs and factories to Mexico, China and other countries.
His message is popular in Hazleton, reflecting uncertainty about the economy but also tensions over illegal immigration.
In April, 77% of voters in Luzerne County's Republican primary voted for Mr. Trump, who won six times as many votes as his nearest competitor, Sen. Ted Cruz.
Until World War II, Hazleton had thousands of anthracite coal miners, but the industry declined as cleaner, more efficient fuels gained popularity. Some workers migrated to jobs related to the steel industry, which had a center in the nearby Bethlehem Steel works, while others worked in textiles.
But all three industries largely left the area by the end of the 20th century. As of September, the metro area that includes Hazleton, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre had an unemployment rate of 5.9%, 1.1 points higher than the U.S. average.
At the same time, Hazleton, a city of about 25,000 people, saw a large influx of Hispanic immigrants, drawn by the relatively inexpensive cost of living and ample jobs in the distribution and food industries.
In 2006, in response to a rising crime rate that some politicians attributed to undocumented immigrant drug dealers, Hazleton's then-mayor, Lou Barletta, enacted harsh ordinances targeting landlords who housed illegal immigrants and employers who hired them. The policies were later ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge.
Mr. Barletta, now a Republican congressman seeking his fourth term representing the Hazleton area, said people here see Mr. Trump as a candidate who understands the region's economic struggles. “Free trade with open borders is a direct assault on towns like Hazleton,” Mr. Barletta said.
Mike Schlossberg, a Democratic state representative from the nearby Lehigh Valley, said Trump's message is resonating in Hazleton because of the “monstrous tensions" surrounding immigration there. “There's an incredible irony because immigrants create tremendous opportunity, because they create far, far more jobs than they take away,” he said.
Jolie Weber, chief executive of Wise Foods Inc., said Arca's purchase of the company helped it avert stagnation.
“If Arca had not bought Wise, Wise would have fallen into another private-equity firm's hands and that would have jeopardized the brand and the company's manufacturing facilities,” Ms. Weber said. “There certainly was a risk that those jobs over time would not be replaced.”
Over the last year, Arca has built a new wing on the Berwick factory to help handle logistics and bought two new 600-gallon boilers to expand its production of kettle-fried potato chips. Head count at the factory has remained steady at about 600 workers.
Two years ago, in Breinigsville, Pa., about 45 miles southeast of Hazleton, Grupo Bimbo opened what company officials describe as its most technologically-advanced plant in the country, a 230,000-square-foot bakery that flies the flags of the state of Pennsylvania, the U.S. and Mexico.
Inside, 275 workers -- new hires as well as employees from other Bimbo plants -- bake 2.8 million hot dog buns, loaves of bread and buns used for Burger King chicken sandwiches every week.
The average starting salary at the Breinigsville plant is $42,000 a year, said Jonathan Berger, a vice president at Bimbo Bakeries U.S.A. Inc.
“I don't think it's exactly the steelworkers of yesterday who are working in this plant,” he said. “But the next generation of workers who want to be involved in manufacturing, they have a place here, in a good work environment that has great technology in it.”
It is extremely ironic that, if Trump gets elected to the US presidency with the help of the citizens of Hazleton who right now suppot him and favor him over Hillary Clinton, and implements his anti free trade agreement policies starting with the killing of NAFTA, those who will be hit the hardest are the blue collars workers of America beginning with those who have been helped by the investments carried out by Mexican entrepreneurs inside the USA.
It stand to reason that if the US economy sinks into a black hole after the USA goes into full isolation mode under Donald Trump, with European and Asian investors carefully watching the manner in which the USA has treated one of its biggest trading partners, they will also be more than reluctant to make any investments inside an unreliable USA, they will not be in a mood to consider the USA as a trading partner. In brief, they will be scared of making any long term investment inside the USA. This in turn means that the hit may eventually end up taking hundreds of thousands of American jobs (if not millions) down the drain, for without any new investments there will be no new jobs.
Donald Trump, as owner of casinos and entrepreneur in the gambling business, is used to the business of gambling. But this time he is poised to make the biggest gamble of them all. He is getting ready to gamble American jobs, precisely the jobs of those blue collar workers to whom he has promised paradise and utopia. In case of an economic collapse many economists are now predicting if Trump wins, Trump himself will not be hit, that is precisely his game, that is the kind of deal he is offering. He would keep on receiving his presidential paycheck for four long years even if the US economy spins into a black hole and millions of Americans end up receiving their pink slips, and this perhaps would be the greatest spit in the face made to all American blue collar workers, especially those who live in places like Hazleton.
The bottom line is this: USA stands to loose more than Mexico with Trump in power implementing his political ideology, and the ones who will be hit the hardest are precisely the hundreds of thousands of American blue collar workers that Trump has rallied around him, most of them without a college degree that would have allowed them to read between the lines. But in the end, perhaps all this will not matter, for with an unpredictable irresponsible buffoon in the US presidency with the entire nuclear arsenal of the USA at his fingertips, in one of his classical fits of mistemper he may very well resort to putting the blame on others (besides Mexico) for the collapse of the US economy, trying to create a major distraction with some spectacular action such as launching ICMBs against North Korea; and from that point on it could be downhill not just for the USA but for the entire world, taking with him even the Russian President Vladimir Putin who fully supports him (Stalin made exactly the same mistake with Hitler). Indeed, if Trump wins, we may very well be approaching the end of times as predicted in the Holy Scriptures, precisely a few years after the third milleniium begun, which would be most fitting including to people such as those who live in the state of Pennsylvania.
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