Ramble On: Faith, Trust, and Shared Vision (video)

Early morning thoughts on Trump tariffs, treaties, Greenland, crypto, SCOTUS, and how everything depends on collective belief in the system.

Here is today’s ramble:

And here is the edited-for-clarity transcript:

Good morning. It is Friday, April 11th. It is 3.30 AM here on the East Coast and I am up for some reason—mostly because my cat decided to sleep on my neck. Here I am a little earlier than expected. I wanted to talk this morning about faith and trust and shared vision because I think these are traits, characteristics, that are under assault by the Trump administration in a very real way.

If you look at money, right, a dollar bill, a hundred dollar bill, whatever, what is it that gives money its value? Used to be gold, but it hasn’t been for a very long time. Money is not pegged to anything. What gives money, the U S dollar, its value is faith, trust, and shared vision. We all collectively decide to believe that a hundred dollar bill is going to be worth something, specifically a hundred dollars. We trust that it will maintain the value and all of us believe it. It’s a shared vision, and it is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government, comma, the most powerful government on earth. This makes it a good investment. People like dollars. People like to buy treasury bonds. They believe in the United States. Why? Faith, trust, shared values.

That brings us to the current administration and Trump and the tariffs and all of this financial upheaval that’s now happening. There is a concerted effort to destroy the faith, the trust, and certainly the shared vision of the U.S. vis-a-vis its allies, its trading partners, and the rest of the world.

There seems to be this push to replace paper money or dollars or euros or whatever with crypto. And I don’t think that will ever happen because I don’t think enough people will believe that this blockchain weird thing that’s pegged to some Elon Musk computer is going to be worth something. It feels like a scam, and it will always feel like a scam. Unreal, not something dependable, not something that’s going to last or endure in the same way that the democracy of the United States has endured, for example.

All of this stuff is under assault by Trump and MAGA, Vance, Musk, all of these people. And I think when you look at it that way: faith, trust, shared vision, that’s what they are trying to destroy. And by they, I mean Trump and Vance, especially my God Vance, yowling around the earth, making a complete fool of himself, pissing off our allies, antagonizing our enemies. These guys are just horrible. What they’re doing is ,they’re undermining faith. They have been in charge now for, I think 70 something days, 80 days. Already the Europeans have turned on us because they know they can no longer have faith in our government. They no longer trust that we’re going to do what we say. And most importantly, we no longer have a shared vision for a democratic future, because Trump is a fascist, and Europe is not run by fascists and does not want to be.

So the Greenland thing is another example. Vance goes to Greenland, which is Denmark, an ally, a strong ally that we work closely with, has always been a good ally. Why are we there causing trouble? We’re undermining faith in the Alliance, undermining trust. And you know, the head of Space Force, the base of Space Force that exists in Greenland, which I think is where Vance went, during his ridiculous photo op, on his shakedown visit. She was let go, fired by the Trump people because she tried to assure the Danes and the rest of the world that the U.S., as long as she’s in charge there, is going to honor its commitments, and is something that we should have faith in.

That’s what she said—and they fired her. Think about what that means. It means that people can’t trust us. People don’t believe that we’re gonna do what we say. And people know that Trump and Vance and Musk and these Nazis do not have a shared vision for the future.

David Ignatius over at the Washington Post wrote an op-ed about this, about the dollar and tariffs and all that. One line, he said, this is a quote:

Here’s the bottom line: The dollar’s role as the world’s payment mechanism and reserve currency is a proxy for global confidence in America. The United States, through Republican and Democratic administrations, has protected the rule of law and international financial stability. But in his first 100 days, Trump has challenged those very principles.

So that’s what they’re doing, that’s what they are.

And it’s not just the money that depends on faith. The rule of law depends on faith, judgments by the Supreme Court and whether we choose to honor them or not ultimately rely on faith. Even the power of the president, senators, congresspeople, it all relies ultimately on faith. Faith that they were elected fairly, faith in the election system and faith in the government itself as people in authority. And this is something again that Trump and his people are undermining, undermining the faith in our system.

And the Supreme Court’s helping with this, by its crappy decisions. They made one halfway decent decision today. “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t just arbitrarily throw people in a prison in El Salvador.” Congratulations. Congratulations, Sam Alito. Wow. What progressive thing you have there.

I worry about the breakdown. I worry about what happens when the betrayals become too great, and we can’t go back. We can’t return to where we were. It takes a long time to build up trust and a very short time to lose it. And that’s what we’re seeing now.

And any breakdown domestically is terrifying too. I’m reading this book now called You Can Kill Each Other After I Leave by Patrick Strickland, who we may see later today. And it’s about Greece and the rise of the Golden Dawn, the kind of neo-Nazi party there. And it’s really terrifying to read because there was a breakdown in law enforcement there, where the cops seem to be in league with this neo-Nazi group. And when the immigrants were being beaten, you know, their homes burned, stuff stolen from them, whatever, they had no legal recourse. The cops didn’t want them to come. The cops wouldn’t listen to them.

We don’t want to be in a situation like that here, where the law enforcement becomes a joke and nobody believes in it. That’s not a prescription for a bright, sunshiny future. That’s a prescription for chaos, and ultimately for violence and for mass death. And so far, that seems to be the course that Captain Trump has set our ship of state upon. He seems hellbent on destroying the faith, the trust, and the shared vision. And it is my hope that we can remove these people from office, peaceably, and the next administration, whatever it is, can restore the faith, the trust, the shared vision, and the belief in the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

That’s my hope. Have a great weekend, everybody.

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