Readers know that I have mixed views on President Trump. I am happy he is in office compared to the alternative and I generally think his policies are very good, with the exception of his failure to acknowledge the seriousness of our deficit and debt problem. I part company with him in regard to his boorish and unpresidential manner of addressing people. It hurts his ability to get our citizens on the same page and to accomplish his goals. There are two areas in which I strongly agree with his actions and I believe people do not understand how serious he is on these issues and how important it is for humanity that he succeeds. Trump is being given little credit for his efforts in this regard.
The first issue is ending wars and conflicts. I have written before about the phenomenal waste, throughout history, of human and physical resources by the ceaseless violent conflicts that plague us. Millions of people killed, buildings, infrastructure, natural resources destroyed. For what? We can’t find a better way to resolve conflicts? Imagine what could be done with the trillions of dollars spent every year on weapons and on repairing the damage caused by violent conflicts. Imagine how much progress would be made toward improving the life of every human with those trillions of dollars.
Trump obviously feels this in his soul. He has devoted tremendous effort to ending these conflicts everywhere around the world, not just the obvious ones in Ukraine and Gaza, but literally everywhere. He has a visceral understanding of the damage being done and what could be occurring in the place of wars and violence; that people could be building better lives. Trump and Putin are polar opposites–Trump is a builder, an improver; Putin is a despicable destroyer, a wanton barbarian, which is why peace will be impossible in Ukraine without the defeat of Putin.
The second issue is ending the plague of deaths and damaged lives from fentanyl and other drugs in the US. Literally hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying from drug overdoses every year. Millions of other lives are ruined by these drugs–children are orphaned, people become jobless, homeless, estranged from families and friends. This is another enormous waste of human potential. The costs are high–law enforcement, treatment, high health spending on multiple disease and conditions caused by the drug use, crime, effects on employers.
Most of these drugs are coming from outside the United States. People can talk about “demand reduction” all they want; it clearly hasn’t worked and there is no reason why this country should tolerate the literal poisoning of large numbers of our citizens. Taking out boats, or airplanes, ferrying drugs to the US should be only a first step. If we identify drug labs in countries like Venezuela, Columbia, even Mexico, those should be fair game as well. I don’t recall that the victims of this drug trafficking were given any due process before being killed by fentanyl or heroin. I completely fail to see why the criminals responsible for these murders deserve any better.
