“The Defence Department has made a commitment to invest $9 to $12 billion over the next decade to military space programs. With whom do we partner? Why, the good old USA,” writes columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.
Americans are acting out the truth or otherwise of the notion that a frog in water coming slowly to the boil will remain submerged till it dies.
It was first expressed by a German writer, the eponymous Dr EW Scripture in 1897. In America’s case, the frog is democracy, and its death signals the arrival of autocracy, or perhaps theocracy.
Indeed, last week the New York Times gave an extraordinary 76-minute positive discussion between two scripture lovers, their Catholic evangelical columnist Ross Douthat and a leading theocrat, Pastor Doug Wilson, on the details of a theocratic America.
It followed the country’s Justice Department charging New York’s Attorney-General Letitia James, and James Comey, the former FBI director whose “crimes” were a mistake on a personal home loan document and “lying” to the Senate respectively. In each case, the department had previously found there were no cases to answer.
The NYT board then engaged Kate Andrias, law professor at Columbia University, to trace Trump’s corruption of the legal system.
“In case after case over the past eight months, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court have acquiesced to President Trump’s lawless and authoritarian actions, often without offering any explanation,” she wrote.
“Mr Trump’s authoritarian moves and the Supreme Court’s authorisation of them has produced, for many, a deepening despair. But here is the essential fact: The Constitution’s meaning is not the Supreme Court’s alone to define. It belongs to ‘we the people’. When enough people have organised around a constitutional vision, they have managed to prevail even against a hostile Supreme Court.”
But here’s the other essential fact. “The people” are exactly like the frog in Mr Scripture’s simile. They don’t seem to realise that they’re in a pot that will surely boil and kill their democracy. No marches, no mass protests.
It gets worse… much worse. The rest of the world might well be looking aghast at what Trump is doing at home, without realising what it means for them.
Climate Change is just the start. His “Dig, baby, dig” cry to the fossil fuel industry is an invitation to hell on earth. If America lets loose on CO2, methane and the other elements heating our atmosphere, it doesn’t matter much what the rest of the world does. America, Russia and the big oil exporters of the Middle East will pile more fuel under the pot.
The water will quickly reach boiling point, but not before there’s a global explosion of migrants from the countries most affected to the rest. Their governments – including Australia – know perfectly well that in the ensuing chaos the collateral death toll will make the 20th century wars seem like a picnic, albeit of the butchers’ variety. Yet they say nothing that might in any way displease the White House Narcissus.
And last week I learned of Australia’s latest response to Trump, following its $800 million “down payment” on the AUKUS submarines. This one is so bizarre that it’s been kept off the Department of Defence website. Brig-Gen Christopher Gardiner, space and cyber attaché at the Australian embassy in Washington, spilled the beans. The answer is “Space”.
The Defence Department has made a commitment to invest $9 to $12 billion over the next decade to military space programs, he noted.
“We need to partner, and we need to co-operate to generate the resiliency effect,” Gardiner said. With whom do we partner? Why, the good old USA, Mr President.
Incidentally, since 1897 science has shown Dr Scripture wrong. The frog jumps out in time. Will we?
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