Drowning in trump's Bluster

Today wasn't even much of a surprise. OF COURSE trump would do this:

Donald Trump has confirmed that he will withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, in effect ensuring the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases will quit the international effort to address dangerous global warming.

The US will remove itself from the deal, joining Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries not party to the Paris agreement. There will be no penalty for leaving, with the Paris deal based upon the premise of voluntary emissions reductions by participating countries...

“We will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair,” Trump said. “If we can, that’s great. If we can’t, that’s fine.”

Would it help to note that nearly EVERY OTHER NATION - including oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and RUSSIA (!) - are staying with the Paris Climate Accords?

Would it help to note that every one of trump's excuses to take the United States out of those Accords are verifiable lies?

trump, meanwhile, seems to think he can "re-negotiate" his own climate deals with individual nations, convinced "he" can get deals that would be "fair"... which by his measurements means "deals in which I steal a shitload of other people's money."

As always, he's creating problems by making everything about him.

You see, here's the little secret that most of the Beltway Media won't talk about. The real reason trump is exiting the climate change accords. It's not over facts, it's not even over standard Republican ideology of opposing everything Democrats support.

trump is exiting the Paris Climate Accords out of personal spite.

To Krugman over at the New York Times, he's thinking of this in terms of Republican animosity towards Obama - who did agree to the Paris Accords - as the simplest explanation:

Pay any attention to modern right-wing discourse — including op-ed articles by top Trump officials — and you find deep hostility to any notion that some problems require collective action beyond shooting people and blowing things up.

Beyond this, much of today’s right seems driven above all by animus toward liberals rather than specific issues. If liberals are for it, they’re against it. If liberals hate it, it’s good. Add to this the anti-intellectualism of the G.O.P. base, for whom scientific consensus on an issue is a minus, not a plus, with extra bonus points for undermining anything associated with President Barack Obama.

And if all this sounds too petty and vindictive to be the basis for momentous policy decisions, consider the character of the man in the White House. Need I say more?

But for trump to do this now, so quickly after his disastrous trip abroad, tells me that he's doing this because his tiny little fee-fees got hurt and he's swinging back at Europe in the worst way possible.

See, trump went overseas on his first big trip as President Loser of the Popular Vote, and with all the crazy things he did and the crazier things he said and the insulting crap he attempted to pull off, trump came back in a foul mood knowing full well he'd been made a laughingstock.

Listen to trump's speech. He kept obsessing over being treated fairly, and commented "We don't want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore, and they won't be."

Who's "we," kemosabe?

The world leaders, the other countries, they were laughing at YOU.

And they still are laughing at you: Because like the wounded eight-year-old bully you are, you came back out onto the playground with mud on your face still threatening to beat up the entire school that showed you that mudpit in the first place.

The rest of the world is going to go on with their climate accord deals because 1) they are driven by the empirical evidence that climate change is a real threat, 2) they are able to make money off of switching to carbon-neutral or eco-friendly energy platforms, 3) they aren't idiots.

Meanwhile, the United States is going to drown in the ocean that is trump's Ignorance.

This move hurts US more than it hurts the world. Look at what's happening. Look at the alienation trump is causing with his destructive travel bans. Look at the way trump caused discord over his failure to recognize Article 5 of the NATO treaty. Look at how trump treated allies that have stood with the United States for decades to create a period of remarkable global stability (granted, this covers most of Western civilization, there remains a lot of bad stuff on the fringes).

Forget the Wall trump keeps threatening to put up on the Mexican border. trump has pretty much built a wall of Isolationism around the United States and has brought an end to the era of the United States as a global power. Nobody in their right mind can claim the President is the Leader of the Free World anymore. trump is only leading himself.

He's giving Putin (who wants the United States to fall as a global power) everything he wants to weaken Western Europe. He's giving China (who can now lead on green energy issues) everything they want to become the biggest Superpower on the planet.

This is what you voted for, 62 million Americans: an easily bruised ego-driven monster cutting off our own collective nose to spite the rest of the world.

Damn you.