The year of lost opportunities

There’s Neil Gorsuch. Thank Senator McConnell for that.

The war against the Islamic State has been going well. But that, like the globalist-friendly corporate-tax reform, is a victory that represents a departure from Trumpism rather than a fulfillment of it. Trump has long been mired in an even shallower version of Ron Paul’s foreign-policy philosophy, holding that American commitments around the world are too burdensome and too expensive, sucking up precious resources that we could be using to patch up potholes in Poughkeepsie. Those who decry the open-ended American commitment to participating in every skirmish from Syria to Congo (one winces at the prospect of the clumsy-mouthed Donald Trump giving an underrehearsed speech on Niger) have a point, and the failure of George W. Bush’s democracy project points to the need for a deep and broad rethinking of American military strategy and procedures. Donald Trump is not the man to do that, and so those among his supporters who denounce “globalist neocons,” especially the Jewish ones, and their alleged commitment to endless war for profit and glory will for now have to satisfy themselves with their . . . tax cuts for globalist multinationals and the globalist plutocrats who hold interests in them. Funny kind of populism. Funny kind of nationalism.

At least we’ll have plenty of ethanol.