Party Like There’s No Tomorrow – There Might Not Be

 

Dubai Token2049

The May 3 Wall Street Journal describes a bacchanalian bash—unimaginably over-the-top—in “What Happened in Two Days at a Very Wild Crypto Party. Arrests from just a year ago are forgotten. Executives ride zip lines, champagne flows, and deals are struck in Dubai.”

After 100 days, Trump’s presidency is essentially a revenge tour aimed at wrecking the institutions we’ve relied on since World War II. Instead of stability, we have chaos—fueled not by coherent strategy, but by his seemingly impulsive, seat-of-the-pants decisions. It may take generations—if we have that time—to restore public and global confidence in American governance. Behind the chaos stand crafty, avaricious power-seekers, armed with the Project 2025 playbook.

They’ve ravaged the judicial and educational systems, shifted our culture from tolerance to intolerance, and turned Congress and an unqualified Cabinet into obsequious followers. Our international commitments—on trade, the environment, and the defense of democratic allies—have been gutted. We have, in many respects, become the rogue state we once vowed to oppose.

In this sense, Trump’s second presidency represents the most consequential seismic shift in American governance since FDR. But this didn’t happen to us—it happened through us. We hastened it, abetted by a performative “woke” culture that quickly gave way to a reactionary cowboy ethos, supercharged by platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and X that allow anyone to spin their own version of reality, unmoored from fact.

If that were the end of it, we might breathe easier. But the Wall Street Journal article suggests the story only deepens. Beyond the partying at “Token2049,” “the biggest names in crypto and 15,000 of their biggest fans marked a new era of freedom.” Ah yes—“let freedom ring.” But freedom for whom? This is the kind of deregulated “freedom” that enriches the few—like the Trump family—at the expense of everyone else. Quite convenient, when the foxes write the rules of the henhouse.

One marquee attraction: Eric Trump, alongside Zach Witkoff—son of Trump’s Middle East envoy—promoting their company, World Liberty, and its so-called stablecoin, “USD1,” a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency. I don’t claim to understand the technical aspects, so I turn to Wired:

The model is simple: World Liberty Financial receives US dollars in exchange for coins that customers can trade freely in the crypto market. It keeps some of those dollars in cash and cash equivalents and invests the rest in US government bonds—also called Treasuries—which yield interest. The profits of stablecoin issuers depend partly on the going interest rate—right now, short-term Treasuries yield a little over 4 percent—but otherwise scale in a linear fashion with supply. The larger the amount of a stablecoin in circulation, the heftier the underlying reserve of assets from which the issuer can generate income.

How convenient. We’re talking about U.S. government securities—the very instruments that underpin our bloated national debt. About 30% of Treasuries are held by foreign governments or by institutions. The Federal Reserve holds nearly as much. Among other roles, it buys Treasuries to help finance government operations.

And then this torpedo from the Wall Street Journal article: “To whoops and applause, [Eric] Trump said nothing would give him more joy than to see crypto help kill off the big banks that cut ties with his family.”  [emphasis mine]

There it is: the final destination on the Don Corleone Trump revenge tour. About seventy banks were involved in his near personal bankruptcy as well as the bankruptcy of six of his hotel and casino businesses in the 1990s, including Citibank and Chase. These same large banks serve as primary dealers in Treasury auctions. If crypto eclipses traditional banking, the global role of the dollar as a reserve currency is jeopardized. The financial regulatory rules for crypto are being written by those who have most to gain by their easing. 

When the banks have to crawl to Dear Leader, it’s the final nail in the coffin of what was once a flawed but functioning republic.

This article from the March 7 New York Times shows this has been developing right in front of our eyes, as have all his transgressions.  Note the symbolism of the staging:

 

 

 

Open Letter to Senator Chris Murphy

 

(Image credit: Mike Luckovich / Copyright 2025 Creators Syndicate)

As usual, political cartoons speak volumes.  Thank you, Mike Luckovich.

I meant to be at a “Hands Off” (I prefer “F**k Off”) rally today but writing might be slightly more effective than my body being there.  This letter to Senator Chris Murphy also went to my Florida representatives, with no expectations of a non-AI response.  And as Senator Murphy is not my representative, I already received an automated reply that I should direct my letter to one of my representatives, so I am in an endless loop of non-representation; it’s frustrating, infuriating, but mea culpa for moving from the northeast, too late in life now for me to reverse.

The motivation for writing to Murphy is his view that tariffs are a Trump tool to subjugate businesses, bending them to his transactional will as he has done with other institutions. 

The fact that none of the math makes sense, and seems to be concocted by a Dunning-Kruger schoolboy the night before the homework was due (after his cheerleader-worthy Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, implied they are the result of decades of careful deliberations, admonishing the press to “Trust in Trump”). 

There’s so much more to say, but for the time being here’s my letter to Senator Murphy:

 Dear Senator Murphy:  I lived in Connecticut for thirty years before retiring to Florida.  Yet I write to you as you’ve had the courage to speak out about President Trump’s true motivation regarding these senseless tariffs: they are but a tool to “gain fealty from private industry.”

He has torn apart the government to surround himself with acolytes, as well as bringing legal firms and even universities to their knees.  His power is now unchecked, by SCOTUS, and by Congress.  Thus we are well on our way to autocracy with kleptocrats in control and the Rule of Law stifled.

The markets have finally awakened to the reality of tariffs, a tax on the people, and a means of further undermining a world order which emerged after WWII.  Our adversaries’ prophecy that democracy will be destroyed from within seems to be coming true, while our traditional allies are left bewildered and have found they must fend for themselves.

We all know that these tariffs are not going to solve our deficit.  More sensible graduated income and inheritance taxes are needed, but that will not become reality with plutocrats in control of government and congress cowered by this president.

The final death knell could be selectively defaulting on debt, particularly when a large foreign debt holder such as China is due repayment of principal and interest, yet another potential “tool” like tariffs.  Instead, the present regime might offer cryptocurrency, perhaps closely tied to the Trump family’s Bitcoin mining enterprise.  This would be the ultimate undermining of the “full faith and credit” of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.  It’s not surprising that the dollar has seriously weakened with tariff announcements. 

“Only the weak will fail,” he texted in regard to the market selloff.  Senator Murphy, this nation turns our lonely eyes to you and others in Congress to put a stop to this attempted coup and desecration of the American way of life.  I’d be out protesting today if it were not for health reasons, so I have taken to the pen.

Sincerely and with thanks,

 

Cc: Representative Brian Mast

      Senator Rick Scott

      Senator Ashley Moody

 

‘Waiting for Someone to Explain It’ Now Published

Having written this blog for some dozen years, by the end of last year I felt it was time to make it less of “a job” and more focused on things I enjoy rather than those I obsess over.  That meant less political and current affairs commenting (although I’ll never say never to those subjects in the future).  The present political and economic landscape invites day to day commentary, but I’ve decided to resist it to preserve my sanity.  It is truly a case of existential dread and exhaustion.

Nonetheless, I also decided to mostly exit those subjects by making a declarative statement in the form of a book based on the extensive entries from the past.  Therefore, Waiting for Someone to Explain It; The Rise of Contempt and Decline of Sense (North Palm Beach, Lacunae Musing, 2019),348 Pages, $13.95 is now available in paperback from Amazon and their extensive distribution network. 

The irony of selecting Amazon KDP as my publishing platform hasn’t been lost on me as when I was a publisher I dealt with Amazon in its infancy and now it deals with me in my dotage. 

It is also ironic that it should be published the same week as the Mueller Report which to some extent provides some of the answers I’ve been “waiting for.”  Yet Trump is as much a symptom as a cause. The book reveals the deep roots of our cultural civil war and the intransigence of political polarization, and one person’s quest to come to terms with them. 

It argues that we’ve become inured to the outrageous and accommodative of the absurd.  It points to a deep vein of anti-intellectualism in this country, questioning the veracity of climate change, championing the “right” to open carry weapons, and leading to the worship of false idols: 24 x 7 streaming entertainment.  We’ve become a nation needing immediate gratification, no matter what the societal consequences of borrowing against the future or becoming somnambulists in front of liquid crystal display screens.

Who could have imagined the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States?  As his candidacy ramped up, so did my commentary, all encapsulated in “Waiting.”

The book documents the election of such an unsuitable candidate, who has proved to be worse than feared, a “crazy maker” a gas-lighter of reality, a believer in his own mendacity.  These issues populate the entries.  As Eric Hoffer said in his classic The True Believer (1951), “We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.”  During the period I sought out other expert journalists, psychologists, bloggers, economists, and even novelists in an attempt to understand.

The publicity release at the end of this entry explains the title and more about the rationale.  It is not simply a collection of entries from the blog.  There is a narrative tying things together and the entries themselves have been edited to minimize redundancies and present them better in print. 

As an ex-publisher it’s also been a labor of love, to write a book, even participate in its design, bringing me back to my start in publishing in 1964 as a production assistant.  So much has changed since then in the industry.  For me, the publication was as much about the journey. I think of it as an act of professional closure as well as a cry for the kind of democracy our forefathers envisioned.