Ep. 153: Trump's second coming: the dog it was that died

The AI-generated podcast from NotebookLM by Google:

Whether or not you like US President-elect Trump is not the issue: the fact is that things are going to be rather different. I had an argument with an old friend from San Diego about his merits and demerits: she focused on the fact that he was ethically questionable, with his acknowledged ill-treatment of women among other things.

On the other hand, I pointed out that many POTUSes did dubious things: eg. Clinton with Monica Lewinsky; JFK with his wild parties, and so on; and that what mattered was policies. I pointed to the fact that Trump had one great virtue: he did not go to war, unlike most other recent POTUSes, especially a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

This argument is probably similar to what causes rifts between many friends; with this friend, we agreed to disagree. But that’s hardly enough for the rest of us, especially geopolitical junkies. These are going to be interesting times, starting the 20th of January. In fact we already see a number of unusual things happening.

And the Deep State is definitely rattled.

I was rather entertained by the announcement from infamous short seller Hindenburg that it was winding up shop. At the time of its withering attack on Adani, I suggested that Adani would survive, and that Hindenburg may well be a Deep State proxy, doing war by other means. It appears that the Biden State Department shutting down means its friends, or at least this one, are also gone.

I was reminded strongly of William Goldsmith’s poem, Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, with its prescient lines about a good man being bitten by a dog that went mad. Contrary to popular expectation, the man didn’t die, the dog did. I am reminded of all the left-wing pundits in India who predicted the demise of Adani. Yes, the rogues did lie.

“But soon a wonder came to light
That showed the rogues they lied,—
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died!”

The National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, made a very intriguing statement to the White House press corps on January 14th:“I hope this is my last time at this podium… the only thing that would bring me back is an unexpected event in the next few days, and as you know, which as you know, is totally possible”.

This is interesting: does he expect some major calamity to happen in the next few days before Trump is invested with the presidency? Such as some huge outbreak of war (or peace) that would necessarily bring him back into the limelight?

More darkly, is he hinting that something might happen to Trump? Well, we all know that Trump escaped assassination by a hair’s breadth just a few months ago. This is therefore a chilling statement from someone who should be careful of what he says.

On the other hand, peace is indeed breaking out in the Gaza war. It was reported that Israel and Hamas had agreed to a peace treaty and an exchange of hostages held by Hamas for those imprisoned by Israel. I suspect their minds were concentrated wonderfully by Trump’s impending arrival, as he, though a supporter of Israel, had made noises about not being so keen on Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel.

Ukraine is going to want to think of a ceasefire too. Trump isn’t going to endlessly supply it with weapons and support.

Then there was the truly intriguing Trump speculation about Panama, Canada and Greenland, which I wrote was not altogether unreasonable. There are ways in which things can work out there for the US’s benefit.

And then there were the tech bros making sudden moves in an apparent effort to curry favor with Trump. Mark Zuckerberg has made a U-turn on ‘fact-checking’ which, we all know, is a racket: there are infamous ‘fact-checkers’ in India who create the worst disinformation and cause serious problems. I believe he is now looking to curry favor with Trump, and he probably has an eye on Tiktok's customer base, assuming that app will be deprecated in the US.

Silicon Valley companies which have in general been solidly Democratic are now beginning to see the wisdom of dumping wokeness and DEI, and are moving towards the Republican party, which is probably their natural home.

If Trump, in an echo of Javier Milei’s agenda in Argentina, is able to rein in the grossly overgrown Administrative State – the agenda of the new Department of Government Efficiency – that could benefit the US taxpayer greatly by removing layers of bureaucracy.

If he is able to follow through on his promises to deport large numbers of illegal immigrants, that would also be a big plus for Americans.

If he imposes tariffs as he threatens to – and it appears he made an announcement about a new External Revenue Service to complement the income-tax authority, the Internal Revenue Service – that can have unforeseen consequences for the US economy as well as of those of its trading partners.

All in all, we are all at a point of inflection. Expect some turbulence.

850 words, 16 January 2025