“Circumstances beyond our control” by Joshua Golden

Collateral consequences

It is easy to understand that our individual actions have consequences. Some of these consequences can be anticipated- If you miss a few meals you can expect an eventual hunger, eat too much and the discomfort of heartburn or indigestion is likely. Potential risk is part of the calculation we make before actions are taken. Because we all want to be safe, reduction of risk and the provision for safety is considered rational, and those who neglect these are termed foolhardy. The choices we make lead to consequences that we are accountable for, but we can also be responsible for instigating unexpected consequences. Unanticipated accidents do happen, and the consequences of those unexpected actions are traceable.

On the broader scale of statehood, the governance of a nation, to maintain legitimacy, should be expected to act in ways that reduce risk and provide safety. Unfortunately reckless decisions have lead to disastrous consequences.

Isolationism 

World War I, “The Great War,”  was kindled a century ago with the assassination of a single nobleman, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife. The murders by a 19 year old radical sparked a war that spread through Europe, impacting the world far beyond the 4 years of warfare. Responsible for up to 22 million deaths and 23 million wounded. With unprecedented troop movements and malnourished refugees the war exasperated the outbreak and spread of the 1918 Flu epidemic that would kill 50 million, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in history. The war slaughter a generation, realigned international balances of power and shocked human morality and the global financial system. US neutrality meant commerce continued with both side of the war, but finally found The US declaring war in the last year of the conflict.

Following the armistice, President Warren Harding and and his VP Calvin Coolidge won the White house in 1920, focused on domestic problems in a new global political landscape. The new administration planned to empower businesses, decrease regulation and cut taxes to enable them to grow, following Harding’s campaign promise: “less government in business and more business in government.” 

Business became a symbol of American prosperity, and the 1920s saw the United States come out of a post-war recession with high economic growth. Industry flourished, technology rapidly evolved, and wealth was generated. The economic boom was facilitated by tariffs that were enacted to restrict the influx of imported goods, increasing domestic production. Harding implemented the Emergency Tariff of 1921, which imposed duties on over two dozen food imports and agricultural products.

In 1922, he signed the Fordney-McCumber Act into law, which raised tariffs by about 25% and made it easier to enact them without congressional approval. In 1930, Herbert Hoover, grand manipulator of war time food supplies, now president, signed the Smoot-Hawley Act into law, raising duties and tariffs significantly on over 20,000 foreign products.

The unanticipated outcome of American protectionism was the response of other nations, also suffering financial uncertainty. Seeking to bolster their own economies through tariffs, dumping of goods, and trade manipulation. The trade barriers ultimately impacted American producers and reduced jobs by decreasing the U.S. products in foreign markets. The promise of the American dream of prosperity had empowered wild financial speculation and an economic bubble. Margin buying, heavy debt and outright Ponzi schemes had created the illusion of impenetrable greatness, then in 1929 the U.S. economy crashed.

Depression

The collapse of the increasingly speculative stock market brought the Roaring 20’s to a grinding halt as the Great Depression spread through the economy. But the farm economy had already been in trouble.

American farmers had experienced dramatic growth during WWI, an increase in demand came with European farmers’ inability to keep up with agricultural demands. The government encouraged farmers to grow wheat on cheap land. Land, equipment and supplies were purchased on credit with the promise of a continuing bullish market. Plows “broke” millions of acres of virgin soil, removing native grasses that had evolved to hold the soil in place. As European farmers began a post war recovery, U.S. agriculture suffered from overproduction, demand plummeted, crop value tanked, and over leveraged debts went unpaid. 

Adding injury to insult, as the depression spread, there was a series of unanticipated droughts through the 1930’s. The overburdened soil, turned to dust by the farming practices adopted for maximum profit. Then whipping winds came displacing tons of topsoil across the plains in cataclysmic dust storms, reaching as far as the East Coast. The vicissitudes of weather and financial distress conspired to despoil the land and led to millions of people leaving their Farms- with over 300,000 desperate refugees migrating to California, exacerbating the agricultural recession.

The United States retreated further into its post war isolationism as financial collapse spread around the world. Japan had a desperate need for natural resources restricted by post war foreign policies. With a rapidly increasing population, government deficits funded heavy industry and the military. The rising militaristic ideology saw territorial expansion as a solution to dwindling resources, leading to invasion of northeast China in 1931. While hyper-inflation, punishing reparations, loss of territory, population, and political realignment led to regimes in Germany and Italy, whose leaders would eventually promise economic relief through national expansion. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and German expansionism led to the invasion of Poland in 1939. No one had anticipated the consequences of the preceding post-war policies would precipitate another catastrophic, and larger world war.

Denial is nothing new

I’ve briefly sketched out this century old history to illustrate the law of unintended consequences. We can’t expect to anticipate all the fallout of national aspirations, but some can easily be foretold, especially if the history of folly is critically examined. 

The incoming presidential administration has clearly described goals that will without a doubt create circumstances beyond their control. Among the dire predictions are the consequences of the “damn the torpedoes” attitude towards the ongoing climate crisis and insistence on ramping up fossil fuel exploitation.

The petroleum industry has been aware of potential human-caused global warming since at least the 1950s and hid this information from the public and regulators. Mega producer Exxon has known since the late 1970s that its products would lead to global warming with dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050. Despite the scientific conclusions on anthropomorphic global warming, 36% of Americans don’t believe humans are responsible for climate change, let alone planetary warming from greenhouse gas absorption. Not only did the president elect campaign with the recycled “Drill, baby, drill” motto, he also has stated that climate change, more accurately termed climate crisis, is a hoax. 

The Donald and his people will likely begin by getting rid of experts, regulators and other civil servants they identify as disloyal antagonists, and eliminating jobs that he simply thinks shouldn’t exist, creating government in his image. Fascists are defined less by political beliefs than by the way they do politics, by trafficking in fear and affirming supremacy. Trump spent four years stoking fear of the other, and proclaiming himself as the one true voice of the people. His past White house experience has hardened his determination to surround himself with sycophants, and the faithful have presented him with a manual for success, a comprehensive document created by his cadre of think tankers which he denied any knowledge of. 

The vast scope of Project 2025 is more a reflection of the goals of people who empower Trump, and are empowered by him than an ideological document. It’s not a plan for coherent legislative change, but a mission statement for effecting a disruption of the current form of government. Fundamental change in the way we empower government is needed, but the petty, idealogical, egotistical, intolerant, and vindictive, billionaire class are not the ones who should be tinkering with the broken system.

Trump returns to the presidency with both houses of Congress in his pocket and empowered by his Supremes finding that he holds absolute immunity to do his presidential will. We’ll be only a an emergency declaration or two away from the unimaginable. The most extreme form of the danger we face is a rapid reshaping of government that changes laws and practices in a way that assures he can’t be dislodged again, like his hero authoritarian Viktor Orbán did in Hungry following his latest ascent to Prime Minister, by creating the conditions that produce what has been termed an “autocratic breakthrough,”  a transition from the rule of law to the law of rule. The system in Hungary preserves an illusory base of legal and rational legitimacy, but the rule of law has been replaced by the primacy of political interests creating a government by decree. Hungary has developed a form of autocracy in which the governing functions as a sort of centrally directed criminal organization. Given Trump’s criminally adjacent resume, it is only reasonable to conclude that abuses of power and corrupt practices, conflict of interest, and unanticipated consequences will occur in pursuit of Making America Great Again. 

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