Lex Anteinternet: Trump gives US ranchers the shaft.

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or les...: January 1, 2026. China is imposing a 55% tariff on some (it appears quite a bit of) beef from Brazil, Australia and  the United States. In C...

I'm cross posting this due to Trump's giving ranchers, one are of agriculture where agrarians are hanging on, the shaft.

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 1. The reap what you sow edition.

January 1, 2026.

China is imposing a 55% tariff on some (it appears quite a bit of) beef from Brazil, Australia and  the United States.

In Casper, Vintage Wine and Spirits and Wyoming Rib and Chop are closed as of this morning.

Donald Trump vetoed a water project in Colorado which was passed unanimously by Congress, and which is in a district that is represented by MAGA Lauren Boebert and which voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump mostly, it appears, as an act of revenge on Colorado.

The costs of at least 350 drugs in the U.S. are expected to rise in 2026.

Also, according to Trump Golf Tracker, Donald Trump has golfed 79 days out of 347 days since returning to office (22.8% of the presidency), at a taxpayer cost of  $110,600,000.

The price of oil today is generally $57.41/bbl, below US profitability.  Wyoming oil is generally at $57.84/bbl.

Coal rose to $107.50 /T on December 31, 2025, up 0.80% from the previous day. Over the past month, coal has fallen 0.78%, and is down 13.72% compared to the same time last year.

January 6, 2026

Venezuela takeover has Wyoming oil industry bracing for market changes: Though Wyoming politicos regard Trump's actions as necessary, oil executives do not anticipate immediate windfall.

There's no part of this that will be a positive for the U.S. economy, or Wyoming's.  There's been too much oil on the market now for years, which has made Wyoming's petroleum economy unstable.  More oil will simply make it worse, much worse.   Sinking a bunch of infrastructure into a foreign country will make it worse.

For Wyoming, Is Venezuelan Oil The New Argentinian Beef?

This will be an economic problem, if not a disaster.

And here's another GOP bit of great economic news:

Wyoming spent $2.4M on hunger relief during shutdown emergency: Food insecurity is soaring in the state due to inflation and other factors, food relief experts say.

January 6, 2026

Venezuela and Greenland.

There's a lot of weird war related news circulating today.

Trump claims that the government of Venezuela is going to, well, here:

The U.S. doesn't need millions of gallons of oil to be sold to the US, and further the means by which Trump claims this will happen, he'll control the sales, is legally dubious.

Frankly, I don't believe that this will occur.  Much of what Trump has been saying about Venezuela is a lie and I suspect this is too.

If it isn't a lie, Wyomingites are going to get another dope slap from the demented fool they voted for.  It'll take the price of oil in the state for years.  It's at $46.37, below profitability, right now.

Of course, the goal would be to depress the price of oil, which consumers in most locations want depressed, even though we ought to be weaning ourselves off of oil.  But closer to home, this is another example of why Wyomingites are absolute idiots to vote for the GOP.

The Nobel Peace Prize winning Venezuelan woman who probably ought to be running the country is headed home.  Hopefully she takes over the government, although there's every sign that the Venezuelan socialist party will continue to do so and not much will really change.

Trump, who is demented, is now threatening Greenland.

If we lived in a sane time they'd be taking him out of the Oval Office in a straight jacket, but the Republican Party is now largely bat shit crazy so there's a real chance we'll do this, even while, for the first time, some Republican leaders are dismissing it.

Trump needs to be removed via the 25th Amendment, and like yesterday.

January 8, 2026

Oh we clearly need to add Venezuelan oil to this scenario.

January 9, 2026

Allowing power usage on this scale is simply insane.

Huge Cheyenne Data Center Grows To 2.7 Gigawatts — Nearly Triple State Power Use

January 10, 2026

$350 Million Transmission Project Links Wyoming, South Dakota Power Grids

Broncos Playoff Mania Drives Tickets To More Than $17,000

January 13, 2026

One year in, Trump's economy is a mess

He may have won on a promise to fix everything, but he's only made it worse.

January 19, 2026

Дональд Трамп — агент России, will be imposing tariffs on NATO members over his avarice for Greenland.

Дональд Трамп — агент России.

January 20, 2026

The stock market is collapsing and Treasury bonds are being sold off by the Danish retirement system due to the instability of the American budget.

If this becomes a general trend over the next thirty days the U.S. will go into a recession and the Dollar will cease to be the global reserve currency. 

All this sparked by the demented avarice of the dimwit in the Oval Office.

January 21, 2026

Trump added $2.25 trillion to the national debt in his first year back in (illegitimate) charge.

Laramie County approves construction of what could become the largest data center in US - WyoFile: Project Jade could eventually use the same amount of electricity as produced by 10 nuclear power plants.

January 26, 2026

Natrona County gas prices soar as Iran tensions, sanctions rock oil markets

January 27, 2026

Posted under fair use exception, there's no other good way to illustrate the dollar tanking like this.

Yeah, Trump sure is making us great again.

February 7, 2026

Trump screws American agriculture:

By the President of the United States of America

A Proclamation

1.  Cattle ranchers have played an integral role in United States history, helping to forge an American identity and an American diet with beef as a key staple food.  Today, beef remains vital in the American diet, evidenced by the fact that the United States is the largest consumer of beef by volume, followed closely by China and Brazil.  And the United States ranks second in per capita beef consumption globally.

2.  But in 2022, the United States faced a widespread and severe drought, affecting beef-producing States, such as Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Kansas.  Texas and Kansas, for example, continue to face persistent drought conditions.  The effects of drought are particularly pronounced for livestock producers as many of their operations rely on precipitation to grow forage crops to feed their herds. 

3.  In addition to droughts, wildfires have affected the grasslands of the western United States, including America’s cattle-producing States.  Apart from the direct threat of burns and burn-associated deaths to cattle, cattle ranchers have had to adapt to indirect effects of wildfires, including changes in grazing patterns, loss of feed supplies, and suboptimal animal health for those cattle surviving the wildfires.

4.  Given the demand for beef, certain United States cattle farmers and ranchers supplement their herds, specifically their feedlot stocks, with cattle (calves) imported from Mexican ranchers.  But following new detections of the New World screwworm in Mexico in May 2025, the Department of Agriculture Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service, in conjunction with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), restricted the importation of live animal commodities from or transiting through Mexico, further limiting domestic feedlot stock supplies.

5.  These factors have combined to result in the United States cattle herd contracting to record lows.  As of July 2025, the United States cattle inventory totaled 94.2 million head, including 28.7 million beef cows.  This is one percent lower than the United States cattle inventory surveyed in July 2023, continuing the downward trend of cattle inventory in the United States.

6.  The abovementioned factors have also cumulatively resulted in higher beef prices for United States consumers, including for ground beef.  Since January 2021, ground beef prices have continued to rise, reaching an average of $6.69 per pound in December 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the highest since the Department of Labor started tracking beef prices in the 1980s.

7.  Despite the increased prices and the availability of more affordable protein alternatives, United States consumers’ demand for beef remains strong.  The United States imported a record high amount of beef in 2024, reaching 4.64 billion pounds, a more than 24 percent increase in beef imports since 2023.  Among the beef products the United States imports are lean trimmings, which are blended with fattier domestic trimmings to produce ground beef products, such as hamburgers.

8.  The Secretary of Agriculture has monitored the domestic supply of beef products subject to a tariff-rate quota (TRQ), including lean beef trimmings falling under Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) statistical reporting numbers 0201.30.5085 and 0202.30.5085, and noted the domestic supply of such products and substitutable products combined with the estimated imports of such products under the United States beef import TRQ.  The Secretary of Agriculture also advised on related domestic demand and pricing.

9.  As President of the United States, I have a responsibility to ensure that hard-working Americans can afford to feed themselves and their families.  After considering the information provided to me by the Secretary of Agriculture, among other relevant information, I am taking action to temporarily increase the quantity of in-quota imports of lean beef trimmings under the United States beef TRQ to increase the supply of ground beef for United States consumers.

10.  Section 404 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) (Public Law 103-465, 108 Stat. 4809, 4959-61 (19 U.S.C. 3601)) authorizes the President, in certain circumstances, to modify TRQs on certain agricultural products.  In particular, section 404(b) of the URAA (19 U.S.C. 3601(b)) provides that where imports of an agricultural product are subject to a TRQ, and where the President determines and proclaims that the supply of the same or directly competitive or substitutable agricultural product will be inadequate, because of a natural disaster, disease, or major national market disruption, to meet domestic demand at reasonable prices, the President may temporarily increase the quantity of imports of the agricultural product that is subject to the in-quota rate of duty established under the TRQ.  And section 404(d)(3) of the URAA (19 U.S.C. 3601(d)(3)) provides that the President may allocate the in-quota quantity of a TRQ for any agricultural product among supplying countries or customs areas and may modify any allocation as determined appropriate by the President.

11.  After considering the information provided to me by the Secretary of Agriculture, among other relevant information, I find that imports of lean beef trimmings into the United States are currently subject to the United States TRQ for beef and determine that the supply of lean beef trimmings or directly competitive or substitutable agricultural products will be inadequate to meet domestic demand at reasonable prices because of a natural disaster and major national market disruption.  Accordingly, I determine that it is necessary and appropriate to temporarily increase the quantity of imports of lean beef trimmings subject to the in-quota rate of duty established under the beef TRQ.  In addition, I determine that it is appropriate to allocate all of the increased in-quota quantity of beef, as established by this proclamation, to Argentina.

12.  Section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended (19 U.S.C. 2483), authorizes the President to embody in the HTSUS the substance of statutes affecting import treatment, and actions thereunder, including the removal, modification, continuance, or imposition of any rate of duty or other import restriction.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 404 of the URAA, section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended, and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, do hereby proclaim as follows:

(1)  For calendar year 2026, the aggregate in-quota quantity for certain products described in Additional U.S. Note 3 of Chapter 2 of the HTSUS will be increased by 80,000 metric tons (mt).  

(2)  The additional 80,000 mt described in clause (1) of this proclamation will apply only to lean beef trimmings classifiable under HTSUS statistical reporting numbers 0201.30.5085 and 0202.30.5085. 

(3)  The additional 80,000 mt described in clauses (1) and (2) of this proclamation will be administered on a first-come, first-served basis in four quarterly tranches.  The first tranche of 20,000 mt will open on February 13, 2026, and close on March 31, 2026.  The second tranche of 20,000 mt will open on April 1, 2026, and close on June 30, 2026.  The third tranche of 20,000 mt will open on July 1, 2026, and close on September 30, 2026.  The fourth tranche of 20,000 mt will open on October 1, 2026, and close on December 31, 2026.

(4)  The additional 80,000 mt described in clauses (1) and (2) of this proclamation is allocated in its entirety to Argentina.

(5)(a)  To establish the TRQ amendments described in this proclamation, the HTSUS is modified as set forth in the Annex to this proclamation.

(b)  The United States Trade Representative (Trade Representative), in consultation with CBP, shall determine whether any additional modifications to the HTSUS are necessary to effectuate this proclamation and shall make such modifications to the HTSUS through notice in the Federal Register, including any technical correction to the Annex to this proclamation.

(6)  The Secretary of Agriculture shall continue to monitor the domestic supply of lean beef trimmings, as the Secretary considers appropriate, and shall advise me on the domestic supply of lean beef trimmings or directly competitive or substitutable products, combined with the estimated imports of such products under the TRQ as adjusted by this proclamation, and how such availability relates to domestic demand at reasonable prices.  The Secretary of Agriculture, in consultation with the Trade Representative, shall inform me of any circumstances that, in the Secretary’s opinion, might indicate the need for further action and shall recommend to me any additional action I should take, if necessary.

(7)  Each executive department and agency (agency) is authorized to and shall take all appropriate measures within its authority to implement this proclamation.  The head of each agency may, consistent with applicable law, including section 301 of title 3, United States Code, redelegate any of these functions within their respective agency.

(8)  Any provision of previous proclamations and Executive Orders that is inconsistent with the actions taken in this proclamation is superseded to the extent of such inconsistency.  If any provision of this proclamation or the application of any provision to any individual or circumstance is held to be invalid, the remainder of this proclamation and the application of its provisions to any other individuals or circumstances shall not be affected.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this

sixth day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fiftieth.

                               DONALD J. TRUMP

Well that not only hurts Wyoming, it directly hurts me.

Well this will be fun at the next gathering "are you surprised that Trump. . . "

And something to remember:

Tom Lubnau: This Session, A Failed Budget Shuts Wyoming Down

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 13. Disassociation.

Labels: 119th Congress, 2020s, 2025, Chuck Gray, Coal, Economics, Government, Health Care, Petroleum, Populism, Republican Party, Taxes, Unions, Wyoming, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

First set of Labels: 2020s, 2026, Agriculture, Australia, Brazil, China, Donald Trump, Food, restaurants and bars, Taxes, The Second Trump Administration, United States, Wyoming, Wyoming (Casper)

Labels: 2020s, 2026, Agriculture, Argentina, Cattle, Donald Trump, Greenland, Petroleum, Stock Market, The Second Trump Administration, War, Wyoming, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Lex Anteinternet: Manifest Destiny and the Second Trump Administrati...

Lex Anteinternet: Manifest Destiny and the Second Trump Administrati...: Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, dramatizing Manifest Destiny.   Over the weekend, the real imperialist thinking behind Trump...

Manifest Destiny and the Second Trump Administration. What's going on with Greenland.

Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way, dramatizing Manifest Destiny.

 

Over the weekend, the real imperialist thinking behind Trump's avarice for Greenland was revealed, and not by Trump, but by Ted Cruz.

Look, the whole history of America has been a history of acquiring new lands and new territories, whether you go back to Thomas Jefferson making the Louisiana purchase — about half of the United States of America today — or you go back to America purchasing Alaska from Russia. You want to talk about — at the time they called it ‘Seward’s Folly’ — It turned out to, to be an extraordinarily consequential purchase, Greenland has massive rare earth minerals and critical minerals. There are enormous economic benefits to America, but like Alaska, it is located on the Arctic which is a major theater for major military conflict with either Russia or China,

In short, it's a naked imperial land grab whose intellectual justification dates back to the 19th Century.  The age of alliances and of the United States representing hope and freedom is over. The age of grabbing lands to exploit because we can is back. 

It's deeply immoral, but Donald Trump is a profoundly immoral man.

He probably also didn't come u pwith this idea, but it was a natural for him.  He's not smart enough, or learned enough, to know of manifest destiny.

We've never covered the concept of Manifest Destiny here before, although we've covered some of the latter stages of the exercise of it.  We probably should have, as we've mentioned the Indian Wars fairly frequently, which are tied to it.  Having said all of that, it's worth nothing that there was never a time at which the concept had anywhere near universal American approval, and it was often hotly contested.

Manifest Destiny had its origins to some degree in the earliest history of the Republic, but less than is sometimes imagined.  The term itself was coined in 1845 in an editorial by later Confederate propagandist John L. O'Sullivan, although an earlier editorial by the adventersome Jane Cazneau entitled Annexation is credited by some with being the first work backing it.  That advocated for the annexation of Cuba and was penned about the same time.   O'Sullivan had used the term "divine destiny" as early as 1839.  O'Sullivan entered the scene advocating for the annexation of Texas, and then in an editorial about the Oregon Boundary Dispute wrote:

And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.

The entire concept is patently absurd, but it had a strong pull on people as an excuse for aggressive expanding.  God, the concept holds, made the United States unique and it the country was charged with a divine mission that included expanding its territorial control.  It had opposition right from the beginning.  None other than U.S. Grant stated:

I was bitterly opposed to the measure [to annex Texas], and to this day regard the war [with Mexico] which resulted as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory... The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times.

An obvious problem with the concept is that once the United States reached the Pacific, the expansion should have been over.  It was used to justify everything about the worst of American expansionism up until that point.  Thomas Jefferson had seen the acquisition of Louisiana as a 1,000 year long preservation of agrarianism, but everything the country could do to exploit the West and its resources started nearly immediately.  The expansion not only left room for yeoman farmers to expand into, the country forces the native inhabitants into reservations and began destructive extraction of minerals nearly immediately.  The mixed legacy of expansion can be seen in contemporary illustrations, such as the often seen painting Manifest Destiny, showing a barely clad angelic woman pointing the way west, while in the shadows a Native American family (with fully topless Indian women) look back as they're pushed off the land.  Wyoming's state seal has a cowboy and a miner.  Colorado's features mountains and a the phrase, Nil sine Numine, Nothing without Providence.

By the time the Frontier closed in 1890, the entire concept was really losing its appeal.  The Battle of Wounded Knee that same year raised questions about the morality of Western Expansion in a new bloody way, although the questions has always been there.  A sort of national angst set in with nowhere to expand to.  That soon found the concepts old backers urging war with Spain.

Supposedly the Spanish American War was over Cuban freedoms and dissatisfaction over Spain's reaction to the explosion on the USS Maine.  In reality, McKinley was forced into it, or at least ended up going along, as it looked like the US could grab Cuba and add it as a new territory.  Opposition in Congress, however, . . . which affords us a roadmap now, statutorily kept that from happening.

What was wholly unanticipated, however, is that the US would brilliantly deploy its Navy to position it to take the Philippines.

Painting depicting Dewey in the Battle of Manilla Bay. Why, exactly, did we want the Philippines anyway?

Congress hadn't precluded the US from adding the Philippines, or Gaum, as U.S. territories.  The Philippines had a long running independence movement and a well educated class that thought of the American arrival as guaranteeing their immediate independence, which they were quickly disabused of.  The U.S. ended up fighting to keep the Philippines as a colony, although the war was deeply unpopular and lead to Theodore Roosevelt simply declaring that the US had won it, when in fact it had not. Some part of the Philippines contested for independence all the way into December 1941, when they then took up the cause against Japan.  Indeed, some other elements of the movement to gain independence, which by that time had been promised by the U.S., welcomed the Japanese as liberators and collaborated with them, something that was not held against them by the Philippine people later.

Up until the end of the 19th Century the US had been hostile to Great Britain for historical reasons.  The UK, however, immediately saw what was occuring, and was in its high colonial phase.  The reality of what the US was doing was portrayed in Kipling's poem, The White Man's Burden.

Most Americans had a strong distaste for colonialism, and had it before the Spanish American War.  The population bought off on the concept that we need to "Remember the Maine", but that didn't mean owning Cuba.  The war did bring the US into the Caribbean like never before, and for four decades the US fought an endless series of Banana Wars, often to secure the interests of American business, that has made us hated in Central America to this day.

The US intervention in Venezuela was a page right out of that book.  The US intervened in a foreign nation that really isn't a problem country for us, and now the Administration is busy trying to figure out how to profit from its oil.

Greenland is the same sort of thing.

The justification routeinly features the same sort of rationalization that was used to shove Native Americans off their land.  They'd be "better off" with the kind entrepreneurial American hand guiding them, and they would "get rich" with their country more efficiently exploited, never mind if they didn't' want to get rich and they didn't want to exploit their land.  In Greenland's case, it's now bitterly clear that part of real estate developer Donald Trump's desire to steal the country is so that rich American enterprises can exploit its mineral wealth.

What if they don't want it exploited?

That though never enters the minds of a certain branch of American capitalism.  Maybe most people don't want endless economic exploitation.  Maybe we don't want to mine everything.  Maybe we don't want endless business growth.

By World War One the US had moved very much away from colonialism.  The country started a series of "good neighbor" policies with countries to our south.  At the end of the Great War we favored self determination for nations.  World War Two's results emphasized this even more, with the US now favoring collective security against nations that were fundamentally opposed to democracy.

Trump has thrown that all in the trash.

People, myself included, have been struggling to figure out what on Earth Trump is thinking, and if he's being paid to destroy the US position in the world.  Nobody really knows, but all this does point back to the lunacy of National Conservatism, which looks back on a world that never was.  National Conservative thinkers see the US in much the same way the members of the New Apostolic Reformation do, and both forces are at work here.  National Conservatives want the US to crawl into the Western Hemisphere, making it solidly Christian, and shut the door behind us. They figure Europe will do the same, if its not too late, in their view, with many looking at authoritarian regimes like those of Orbán and Putin as Eastern European models.  Putin, they imagine, will advance Orthodoxy, although there's no reason to believe that his alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church is anything other than convenience.  Orbán is supposed to do the same with old world values in Hungary and Eastern Europe.  Immigrants to Europe and foreign influences are to be exterminated and tossed out.

That's what's going on in the minds of the National Conservatives, and that's partially what's going on with Greenland.

At this point, I frankly feel that its nearly inevitable that the US is in fact going to invade Greenland.  Europe can't really stop us from doing it, although it'll result in bloodshed.   It'll destroy the post war order completely. The Trump Administration will set about trying to exploit the minerals of Greenland immediately.

But that won't be the end of the story.  It's taken this along, amazingly, for people to get a concept of how horrible Donald Trump and his backers really are, but it's finally occuring.  Americans don't want to invade Greenland. They didn't want to invade the Philippines.  If, and I feel its a when, we do this, it'll be followed by several realities.

The first will be that exploiting a nation takes time, and those backing this move do not have it.  The House will flip in November, even though Trump will in fact take a run at suspending the election.  The Senate might flip in November as well, although that's doubtful, but Senate Republicans, their own careers on the line, will begin to back away from Trump.  In 2028 a disgusted populace will elect Democrats into office.

The US will leave Greenland, and in a big hurry.  It'll be independent.  The Trump legacy will be the pile of shit it deserves to be.  The US will begin the process of rebuilding itself, but as a much, much, weaker country than before.  That will be Trump's legacy.

May God grant that I'm wrong on all of this, and that somebody intervenes to stop this insanity before it's too late.

This again.  It never occurs to many that the mines and cities aren't really everyone's dream.  It particularly doesn't occur to a rich real estate developer who isn't smart and whose values are shallow.

Lex Anteinternet: Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat: An open call to Greenlanders, and musings.

Lex Anteinternet: Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat: An open call to Greenl...:   An interesting blog entry by a native Montanan. Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat An open call to Greenlanders I note this in part because she...

Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat: An open call to Greenlanders, and musings.

 

An interesting blog entry by a native Montanan.

Voices of Kalaallit Nunaat

An open call to Greenlanders

I note this in part because she's a nature writer, and native Montanas are close to nature, like native Wyomingites.

Indeed, I've tended to find since Donald Trump reared his New York overfunded balding head that real Trump backers in my home state either lack education, or tend to be imports.  I know part of that is a really harsh judgement, but I don't find too many natives, in any demographic, who are fire breathing Trumpites who are exceptions to this rule.  There are, I'd note, educated Trumpites here, for sure, but they tend to be imports.  

I think people know what the unrestrained wealth and exploitation mean to Wyoming, and that helps explain it.  Wyomingites are, if they are real Wyomingites, conservative/libertarians but not populists really.  

Imports who move here, however, including some who claim to be us, or want to be us, often are Southern Populists at heart.  Indeed, a couple of years ago I was out in the sticks and saw a giant Stars and Bars flying above somebody's camp tent, something that, when I was young, would stood a good chance of having been ripped down by any native passing by.  

I've written a lot about how we got here.  The question now, is how we get out. We'll be getting out, one way or another.  The question is, however, whether a rational conservatism can emerge that's free of the horrific elements that Trump has interjected into what's passing for conservatism now, or whether it will pass the way the way that French conservatism did after Vichy.  I think, frankly, the latter is more likely.

If conservatism can survive Trump, which frankly I very much doubt, when it reemerges it's going to have to rebuild a lot nationally and internationally that Trump and his minions have utterly destroyed.  More likely, however, what will emerge after this era is a renewed liberalism countered only by a somewhat middle of the road liberalism.  Again, France provides the model.  After the Second World War the French Third Republic was dominated by the hard left, including a very powerful communist party, countered only really by a centrist to liberal centrist Catholic party.  The French right died. 

I suspect that's the country's political future, in a way.  Starting in 2026 the Democrats will regain the House and, if Trump is still in power, provide a block to an outraged and increasingly insane Trump.  By 2028, the Senate is likely to go Democratic too, assuming it doesn't in 2026.  The White House will have a legitimate President following the 2029 election who will almost certainly be a Democrat.

That President, whether he's Republican or Democrat, and who won't be J. D. Vance or Marco Rubio, is going to have a big task in front of him.  Part of that will be to repair the international damage done by Trump. 

Not all of it will be capable of being repaired.  A western world that had depended upon the U.S. to be the world leader of Western ideals will never, and I mean never, trust the U.S. again.

But the U.S. will also be much diminished in the Western Hemisphere, in spite of what Trump, Vance, and Rubio think.  In South American a new block will emerge, likely with former major rivals Argentina and Chile as the leadership, but with Brazil, a massive country in extent and population, more significant than the U.S.  Canada will be regarded as a serious, educated, intelligent nation by the Europeans.  The U.S. will still have weight in the world, but in the way that France or the United Kingdom do now, save for Asia where the U.S. will still be a major presence.  We will have been forced to look to the Pacific, as so many in the past have urged us to do in the past, by Trump and the Republican party soiling our relationships with our intellectual home.  

Basically, we will have been the kid that left home, got into drugs, and embarrassed everyone. We'll be the Hunter Biden of Western nations.

Domestically, we're going to have a lot of repairs to do.  A new President will quietly accept much of what Trump has done in immigration.  The damage done to trade economics will likely have repaired by them, the tariffs having by then settled into an economic background as part of a new system which will not generate all that much in income but which countries are by then used to.  Businesses won't come back to the U.S. due to them, and the Rust Belt dreamers will have gone on to despair.  The Agricultural sector will be barely reviving, I'd guess, from a Trump induced economic collapse by that time.

The U.S. will return to environmental and conservation sanity and begin to try to make up lost ground and lost damage, in part because its role in the world will have been so decreased that it will have no choice.  Fools who insisted that we had to grab Venezuelan oil as China was going to will wake up and find that China will, by 2028, be using largely electric, not gasoline, vehicles. Europe won't be far behind, and a U.S. auto industry that will wish to sell will have advanced in this direction, with U.S. consumers, less enamored with a 19th Century economy than Donald Trump, will have as well.

If Trump's "Travis, you're a year too late" petrol pipe dreams will have achieved little, and they will, perhaps a revival of nuclear power might actually make a difference.  Like many of Trump's policies, or those who used Trump to gain position, that policy on the margin of his larger policies, would be beneficial.  The pipedreams about coal and oil, however, will go nowhere and already are going nowhere.  Indeed, Wyoming's coal fortunes, so desperately pinned on Trump, are going nowhere at all, and the price of oil in the state is down in the disastrous levels.

In larger things, people sometimes ponder the existential "problem of evil", that being why does God allow bad things to occur.  A common answer is that God does not allow it unless a greater good can come out of it.  While I don't want to go so far as to claim to detect a Devine hand at work here, I wonder if a bit if we're going to see something like that occur.

The country that comes out of Trump Drunk in 2028 with a bad hangover is going to be a much lesser nation.  Maybe that's a good thing, particularly of Europe, where we derived our culture from, revives to claim a larger place.  We'll need to get used to being told what we will do, and like a bratty teenager, which we've proven ourselves to be, we'll have to get used to that.  Our Evangelical Puritanism which most Americans assume is Christianity will have taken a sharp hit.  Our botching foreign wars will end as nobody will really trust us much as a solo actor.  Nations that need alliances, and many do, will look to us only in concert with others, which will make them safer. Taiwan and South Korea will look to Japan, and perhaps to Australia. Europe will look to ourselves.  Nobody will care one wit about us, and we'll have to look, pleadingly, to everyone else.  Our environmental destructivism will start to come to an end.  Our cultural imperialism will come to an end, as nobody will admire a country that could produce such vile characters as Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, or Jeffrey Epstein.  Our absolute lust for the wealthy, that came in with Ronald Reagan, who looks less and less like a hero, will come to an end as well as we have to face a Republican ramped up budget crisis the only way we can, taxes, and taxes on the wealthy.

Not all of Trump's legacy, including the tiny positive portions of it, or the negative massive aspects of it, will go away.  Trump has destroyed the post World War Two United States.  But the country itself will survive, and rebuild, and probably be better than it was before.  

Perhaps the U.S. can get back to being the U.S.

Oh, and Greenland will be independent. Americans won't really be welcomed there.  The U.S. military won't be there.

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 1. The reap what you sow edition.

Lex Anteinternet: Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or les...: January 1, 2026. China is imposing a 55% tariff on some (it appears quite a bit of) beef from Brazil, Australia and  the United States. In C...

Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 1. The reap what you sow edition.

January 1, 2026.

China is imposing a 55% tariff on some (it appears quite a bit of) beef from Brazil, Australia and  the United States.

In Casper, Vintage Wine and Spirits and Wyoming Rib and Chop are closed as of this morning.

Donald Trump vetoed a water project in Colorado which was passed unanimously by Congress, and which is in a district that is represented by MAGA Lauren Boebert and which voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump mostly, it appears, as an act of revenge on Colorado.

The costs of at least 350 drugs in the U.S. are expected to rise in 2026.

Last edition:

Subsidiarity Economics 2025. The Times more or less locally, Part 13. Disassociation.

Labels: 119th Congress, 2020s, 2025, Chuck Gray, Coal, Economics, Government, Health Care, Petroleum, Populism, Republican Party, Taxes, Unions, Wyoming, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The brave men and women of the USCG are pleased to be able to buy Trump wine and cider tax free.”

Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The...: 

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The brave men and women of the USCG are pleased to be able to buy Trump wine and cider tax free.”

Announcement confirming that Trump wine and cider is now stocked at Coast Guard BX's.

Sigh.

Interestingly, just yesterday I heard a Catholic Answers interview of Dr. Andrew Willard Jones on his book The Church Against the State.  The interview had a fascinating discussion on sovereignty and subsidiarity, and included a discussion on systems of organizing society, including oligarchy.

Oligarchy is now where we are at.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 107th Edition. Tacky Crap, Delusion, and the Sgt. Schultz defense.

Labels: 2025 Election Post Mortem, 2025 White House Vandalization, Donald Trump, Mike Johnson, The Madness of King Donald, The Second Trump Administration, The Sgt. Schultz Defense, White House, Zeitgeist

Lex Anteinternet: An East Wing Post Mortem.

Lex Anteinternet: An East Wing Post Mortem.:   Comparative air photos posted by CBS News. Put up under commentary and fair use exception. I've never seen the East Wing of the White ...

An East Wing Post Mortem.

 

Comparative air photos posted by CBS News. Put up under commentary and fair use exception.

I've never seen the East Wing of the White House, and of course, now, I never will.  I have very little, as in no, interest in touring Washington D.C. and  have even less interest than that now that the illegitimate Trump gang of insurrectionist is occupying the nation's capital.  

This has been a very revealing series of events however, and we can take some things away from it.

The first thing we have learned is how utterly desperate Donald Trump is to amount to something.  He started too late in life and his character is too fixed in order to achieve that, absent late in life inspiration of an existential type which would require him to make a profound change in his behavior.  Born into wealth and a playboy by character, he's desperately trying to buy and build himself into seriousness and relevance.  In the back of his mind, or frankly maybe in the forefront, he knows that he's a fart in a windstorm.  After he's out of office, and no amount of far right fantasizing is going to keep him there, his successor, right or left, will begin the process of trying to repair the damage Trump has done.  If its a right wing leader, like wannabe NatCon J. D. Vance, it'll be National Conservative far right, but less insane than Trump.  It probably won't be Vance however, but somebody from the political center, particularly if the Democrats get their act together and dump their own wackadoodle far left, which there are signs they will, or from the actual libertarian populist right.

My prediction, early though it is, is that the next President will be Tammy Duckworth, maybe on a Duckworth Klobuchar ticket.  I can see, however, Thomas Massie and Rand Paul taking a run at Vance's dreams and keeping them from happening.

Vance would keep the Trump monument to himself up and pretend to like it, as he only is where he is now due to Trump, but as soon as somebody who wasn't a Trump sycophant is in the Oval Office, it's coming down.  That will be symbolic of the entire Trump legacy, destruction that will ultimately come down, and have to be rebuilt.

Trump want to see himself as a great man, a sort of Napoleon being crowned, but knows that he's more like Napoleon on Elba.  He's not going to get there.  He's really extremely pathetic.

Also sad is the degree to which it has been demonstrated that a life of extreme wealth is corrosive.  Trump's entire life of largess already showed this, but he really does believe that the White House needs a huge overblown rushed ballroom as he's seen those of failed monarchies in Europe.  The republics, or in one case dictatorship, that inherited that stuff still uses it as it's a human instinct not to rip things down.  That's why the Brandenburg Gate, which should have been blown to rubble in 1945, is still standing.  Yes, it's a monument to German militarism, but it's big and already there so we keep it around.  That's the reason the Eiffel Tower is there, even though its a giant ugly radio tower, or why the "egg beater" thing in Casper Wyoming is still there.  We just can't bring ourselves to rip things down, no matter hideos they are, or how symbolically problematic.

The egg beater in Casper Wyoming.  It's ugly.

This will come down.

It'll come down in part as it just won't work with an 18th Century large house built on a budget.  It wasn't constructed to be a palace, but just a big house.

Which brings me to my next point.

Perhaps the West Wing, after actually going through the proper process, ought to be taken out as well.

No attachments to the structure are really consistent with its original concept.  It isn't supposed to have a lot of offices and the entire concept of the First Lady needing room for anything is absurd.  The First Lady is simply the President's wife, or Trump's case in regard to the monarchical role to which he aspires, the current concubine, or in the American Civil Religion context, his current wife. 

Maybe it ought to be just scaled back to its original footprint.

Some would object that that would mean that it wouldn't have enough room for its purpose Well, No. 10 Downing Street has less room than the White House.  And if more space is really needed, they can find it somewhere else in Washington D.C.  Nixon actually did that with the nearby Eisenhower Building.

The White House in 1846, when it was first photographed.

Restoring the White House back to scale would also be symbolic.  The entire office of the Presidency needs to be restored to scale.  Right now, Trump is in fact ruling as a dictator, with the complicitly of the Dixiecrat Party that has taken over the GOP.  That needs to end, and end to an enormous degree.

The drift towards an imperial presidency started with Theodore Roosevelt, who is a person I admire, but whom I admire more than I once did.  TR, like Trump, tended to act unilaterally, the difference being that Roosevelt was a profoundly intelligent and moral man, where as the opposite is true of Trump.  The East Wing started off in his administration as the fairly modest East Terrace, which looked nice and wasn't an overblown Sun King structure like the proposed ballroom will be, but it nonetheless got the modification trend rolling.

It would be TR's cousin Franklin that really got the modern Presidency established, however, and that due to the emergency of the Great Depression and World War Two.  Franklin Roosevelt did not rule as a dictator, although people liked to accuse him of that at the time.  Ironically, a President that the Republicans hate to this very day is the one, in some ways, that Trump has tried to emulate, even to the extent of wishing for a third term, which he cannot legally occupy.  Franklin, of course, redid the East Wing, which was done in part due to the bomb shelter that was constructed underneath  it.

The West Wing also dates back to TR's time in the White House with the construction of what was supposed to be a temporary structure.  That structure was expanded in 1909 and ultimately came to be the White House office space.  I don't doubt that they need office space, but as noted, maybe it can just be somewhere else.

And in fact, for the most part, it should be.

Taft family milk cow Pauline Wayne, one of two milk cows the Tafts kept and allowed to freely roam the White House grounds. What is now known as the Eisenhower building is in the background.  This is as things should be.