MoUs & Versailles
I’m in Chicago and the other day my 93 year old mother was in the other room watching the Trump show from Versailles. My mother now has the TV volume higher than my dad once did, that’s saying something. So, once more, despite best efforts, Trump was sticking himself in my life, something I’ve tried to avoid happening again and again for over 40 years.
Is there anything that’s laid bare the total dysfunction and corruption of the American political system than Donald Trump’s complete domination of the process for the past decade? I was in Tanzania in 2015 when Trump announced. I remember having drinks with Reggie who ran the Chadema campaign and his gleefully saying, “President Trump." I would just shake my head and reply, “It’s all set for someone outside to win, but not fucking Trump.”
Nonetheless, 11 years later, the Trump presidential show was beaming live from Versailles. At one point, Trump sort of bubbled liked Al Czervik, “Hey, it’s Versailles!” That he shares the Sun King's glitzy taste is undeniable, but it's a good bet Trump knows nothing about French history, in that, he’s a good American. Americans know no history, not just no French history. After all, from the beginning America was the future and in all sorts of ways it was, however a little understanding of history would be better for all involved. Anyway, must have been someone way down the pecking order who said, “It’s Versailles, World War I, let’s sign the Iran MoU here.”
Let’s all hope it goes better.
A century ago, John Maynard Keynes, a Brit rep at the Versailles negotiations wrote the highly critical and still essential read, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. Revealing if nothing else how far too little’s changed in the last century, Keynes starts The Consequences with,
“The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. Very few of us realize with conviction the intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organization by which Western Europe has lived for the last half century.”
A hundred years later you can say exactly the same about the "intensely unusual, unstable, complicated, unreliable, temporary nature of the economic organization,” except it’s now expanded across the globe. As far as lack of realized conviction, the most recent example, an American president purposefully closing the Strait of Hormuz. I guess not realizing oil's essential role in the corporate globalized economy.
However, something's happened, especially in the last couple weeks. Someone’s got the oil fear into the president’s head or at least what high prices and shortages mean for incumbent elected officials. He's even lifted sanctions against Iranian oil. If I remember right, the last president to lift sanctions against Iranian oil was Obama. What will Maga think? One thing for certain, the Strait's closing has already been a hard body blow to the corporate global economy.
It’s still unclear how well Israel’s gonna take America’s imposed defeat. Someone who knows a lot more about such things, Max Blumenthal has a take. Best and funniest, Max states about one of the responsible actors in this sad state of affairs that has "consistently been one of the most odious and insidious factions in American political life, they’re called the Democratic party.” I love Max.
In other energy news, Chevron to fuel massive Microsoft data center in Texas. Phew, gotta say if you told me 30 years ago this would be a headline in 2026, I’da said, “We done nothing.”
And well, we didn’t.