Urgent Need for Better
Tactics in Standing Up to Trump
By now, you have have heard
from hundreds of federal workers asking “Why do WE have to suffer to save us
from Trump’s wall? Isn’t the cost of the shutdown more than the $5 billion for
the wall?” CNN hates Trump, but they too have been repeating these concerns,
especially important to your office.
Nancy Pelosi has good reasons
to look ahead further, and stand up to Trump. But, like Cameron after the Brexit
vote, she hasn’t been able to relax enough to look ahead more calmly and
consider more creative options.
Above all, I urge you to work
with Hoyer, and urge her to pass a bill immediately in the House which combines
two key elements: (1) yes, $5 billion for the wall; (2) specific additional
provisions which REALLY stand up to points which irritate people in the middle
of the road and which mobilize new support from the people worried about Trump’s
recent betrayal of US national security. Consider: if Trump or the Senate say
no, you will at least be able to look at your constituents and say what this
says about Trump.
(2) is very tricky. (Years
ago, I got my PhD from a guy at Harvard who was the world’s expert on nations
falling apart through internal conflict, and in 2009 worked for a year as a
Senate staffer. How to explain a complex game in less than a page? I’d love to
come in and discuss more if there is a value in that.)
What I would propose is:
(1) Include the recent proposal that all Federal
candidates and present officers MUST make their tax returns public;
(2) Guarantee support
for the Muller investigation and public release of its report;
(3) Require concretely (with enforcement mechanism) that
the Administration live up to Bolton’s recent promise not to leave Syria until
ISIS is truly defeated and the Kurds are protected from genocide.
If Trump refuses these points,
he signals that he does have a lot to hide, and that he has defected from the
effort to defend us from the Third Caliphate movement. The genocide of the
allies which have been most crucial to our struggle on the ground would be a
disaster for national security. If he agrees, you save a lot of lives. If he
doesn’t, he exposes himself as… someone a lot of his base might abandon, if you
make the point clear.
The situation with the Third
Caliphate movement is complex. I do not blame him for having made a deal, but the
KIND of deal which he and Putin have made is a disaster for the future of all
of humanity if it sticks. It is not the kind of win-win Pateto optimal deal which
some of my old teachers (Schelling and Raiffa) studied, or which the US was
founded on (Locke and Hobbes), but more like the novel 1984. PLEASE take action
on this! Win or lose, we need someone (hopefully including Pelosi) to stand up
NOW for these principles.
Sincerely,
Dr. Paul J. Werbos
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