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My state of the union

My Fellow Americans,

It has been a year since an unqualified braggart and blowhard bully was elected without a numerical majority to the presidency of the United States. His lies and offensive remarks about women, Mexican Americans, Africans, and Haitians have brought the nation to a new low. American prestige and influence are declining everywhere but Russia and Israel, a massive tax cut is enriching the already rich and has boosted the already high stock market, and the risks of war with Russia and China are increasing. With Trump as their prime mover, racism and anti-immigrant fever have surged worldwide.

American institutions are struggling to contain and neutralize the worst of these enervating impacts. The media are facing unprecedented attacks on their freedom and objectivity. The courts are being packed with unqualified bag carriers while the President makes prejudiced remarks about sitting judges. The Congress is sharply split and unable to conduct a bipartisan investigation of well-documented Russian interference in the American electoral process. Special Counsel Mueller and the FBI are under daily attack by both the Administration and the Congressional majority. Nothing has been done to counter Russian interference in this year’s Congressional poll.

Political tensions are generating social turmoil. Undocumented immigrants and those with temporary protected status are facing forced repatriation, including people who have never lived as adults in the countries from which they immigrated. Poor people risk being deprived of health insurance, food stamps, and other social safety net mainstays. People who live in coastal areas face disaster from global warming and newly allowed offshore drilling for oil and gas. Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, and Muslims are suffering heightened prejudice and discrimination. Gun violence is increasing, especially at schools, even as crime rates decline. The proportion of national wealth accumulating to the very wealthy is increasing, while the middle and working class get less.

What should be done? The Trump Administration is proposing to build a wall along the Mexican border. This will do nothing to help anyone but the contractors who win the bid. The flow of Mexicans out of the US has for years exceeded the net flow of Mexicans into the country. The promise that Mexico will pay for the wall was audacious foolery. So too was the pledge to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It isn’t going to happen, because too many US producers benefit from it.

The Administration’s incoherence reaches epic dimensions in foreign policy. It has declared Israel good and Palestinians bad, thus ending any hope for a US role in bringing about a peace settlement. It has extended the US presence in Syria, only to find US-allied Kurds at war with NATO ally Turkey. A one-off cruise missile attack has done nothing to prevent President Assad from continuing to use chemical weapons. The Administration has failed in its intention to block Iranian development of ballistic missiles and North Korean development of both missiles and nuclear weapons. The ruling figures of Venezuela, the Philippines, and Burma have thumbed their noses at Washington, which has failed to respond effectively. Withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership and the Paris Climate Change agreements has vitiated years of successful US diplomacy and enabled China and others to step into the breach.

Russia and China are exploiting American incompetence to extend their influence in the Middle East, Africa, Europe (both the Balkans and Ukraine), and the Pacific. War with other great powers, unthinkable since 1989, has become more likely due ineffective American diplomacy. The State Department is degenerating, the intelligence community is demoralized, and the military is overstretched to the point of breaking. The National Security Council is struggling to provide a minimum of coherence while the President gleefully upsets the apple cart with ill-considered tweets alternately complimenting and criticizing foreign leaders, with the notable exception of Vladimir Putin. Russian financing for Trump real estate projects guarantees him special treatment, including the Administration’s decision yesterday not to impose new sanctions Congress authorized.

Declining American influence after World War II, as other countries recovered, was inevitable. The main job of American diplomacy was to slow the process during the Cold War and help the country outlast the Soviet Union. The unipolar moment that followed was only a temporary respite from relative decline, which started again with the mistake of invading Iraq. Now the decline has become precipitous. American incoherence, as colleague Mike Haltzel notes, is becoming dangerous: Trump defends national sovereignty over universal norms for the US, but not for our enemies like North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela. The post-World War II international order is under attack, not by America’s enemies by America’s own president.

President Trump is putting the US into a tailspin. Recovery is unlikely. We are going down at a faster pace than ever before. Brace for the crash.