American carnage

The first national voice we heard that warned us against the rise of the 'New World Order' was during the 1992 presidential campaign, when H. Ross Perot correctly predicted that upon the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), we all would hear this 'giant sucking sound' of American jobs screaming across the border to Mexico.

Despite the little guy being a complete nut job, he was certainly right about that.  American corporations took full advantage of this immediate access to dirt cheap labor, and closed American factories hand over fist in their clamor to ship these American manufacturing jobs to the sweat shops and chain gang production crews in Mexico and later China.  

Donald Trump correctly points out this "American carnage," and what that giant sucking sound created in his inaugural address, "We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.  One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.  The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world."

President Trump referred to the rusted shells of vacant factories scattered across the American landscape like tombstones.  Many fear that this president will create a trade war that will damage this economy.  

This economy has been damaged almost beyond repair already by unfair trade practices.  We ship our goods overseas and they are met on the receiving shores with a 10% tariff, only they call it something else.  We buy goods from overseas, and charge them nothing, for the most part.  What kind of crap is this?  Donald Trump vows to end this kind of garbage.  If you want to call this a trade war, so be it.  Fair trade is one thing, giving away the store is another.

Donald Trump received a B.A. in Economics from the Wharton School of Business, and the basic tenets of economics are supply and demand, Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' and theories of trade that involve a principle called 'comparative advantage.'

I also studied economics, albeit at a commie pinko liberal leftist public school in Oregon (U. of Oregon).  I was subjected to the same business concepts that The Donald studied at Wharton.  What I never understood was my professor's insistence that 'comparative advantage' was a good thing: if production occurs in an underdeveloped country of a product that was invented and produced initially in the U.S., it would leave us more productive folk in the U.S. free to do what we are better positioned to do: stand in the unemployment line.  That's not exactly their texts, but that's what it has resulted in over the long run these last 25 years.

In other words, these learned men of letters were telling me that 2+2=5.  I regurgitated this nonsense back to the professors on the tests, got B's in the stuff but was never a true believer.  It never made sense to me then, and it still doesn't make sense to me now.

And it doesn't make sense to Donald J. Trump, either.  Finally, a guy who gets it.  Nuts to this 'New World Order' bullshit. When we stop shipping our jobs overseas, without consideration for what happens to the Americans whose jobs were pulled out from under them, things will turn around.  

We need to think of Americans and their benefit first.  And unlike George Will, who thinks The Donald's speech was the worst speech ever given in the history of mankind, I think that this mindset will go far in making America great again.

Take that to the bank, George.  And may God Bless our new President, Donald J. Trump.