The Man Who Would Be Strong

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is wandering off, weak and alone.

Before our recent election,
our government had negotiated
with trading partners around the Pacific Ocean
to trading terms that did not abandon
the area to Chinese advantage.
Of course it was not something perfect.
Trade agreements have trade-offs.

Donald Trump said to forget it:
The Trans Pacific Partnership died.

Once upon the carnage after World War II,
Europeans and the US forged
the North Atlantic Treat Organization
to provide stability and security not only
for Western Europe but for us, too.

Donald Trump has not just questioned,
but undercut, the notion that NATO
and the Common Market is critical.
He and Vladimir Putin propose to cozy up
to each other and take care of all of that.
Leave Western Europe to Germany and France:
England can come along with us.

The Paris Climate Agreement was almost unanimously
agreed to, except for two small nations that thought
that it did not go far enough to protect the planet.
When the time came to meet again,
Donald Trump, alone, refused to sign on to the agreement.

The Man Who Would Be Strong
is standing strong, all alone,
while China is shaping global commerce,
while Putin is nibbling at Eastern European territory,
while the rest of the world agrees we have to limit emissions.
No one is following him.

It is not just sad that the US role in global affairs
is being shelved: it is disastrous for us.
Trade will be arranged, not to accommodate us,
but to work around us; to our disadvantage.
The ocean is rising, and a rising ocean
raises the water table in all seaside basements.
Hotter air, and a warmer ocean, cause the atmosphere
to do savage and unexpected things.

One of these days, I suspect
that we will hear it reported
that Donald Trump will--something like Xerxes--
be found at our borders, at the shoreline,
lashing the sea into submission.

He is strong, you know.

Comments

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

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