On March 14, a Russian SU-27 fighter brought down a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea. The exact details of where and how remain a mystery even after the release of drone video showing what appears to be a dump of jet fuel onto the drone, but those details don’t matter much. The incident mainly serves as an excuse for more ratcheting up of US-Russian tensions around the war in Ukraine.

When I think of drones, I’m more likely to think of music — yes, music — than of unmanned military aircraft. And thinking about the drone effect in music provides a useful analogy to US foreign policy.

Simply put, the function of a drone in music is to play a single underlying note or chord continuously throughout a song, while layering melodies/harmonies above it. Those melodies/harmonies are specific variations; the drone note is the theme.

The US foreign policy drone note since at least as far back as World War 2, and certainly since the fall of the Soviet Union has been “global hegemony.” That is, the US not just as world cop, but world judge, world jury, and world executioner.

The martial melody the US regime plays over that drone note is full-spectrum dominance, which the US Department of Defense defines as “[t]he cumulative effect of dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment, which includes cyberspace, that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference.”

But if the world is a big band, nowhere near all of its 195 regimes agree to accept the US as its leader,  play in the same key,  or keep the same beat.

If you’ve ever played in a band (other than maybe an experimental jazz combo), you know what happens when each member plays or sings in different keys, at different tempos, and in different time signatures.

You don’t get a song.

You get an ugly mess.

If you’re smart (and maybe after a brawl or three), you eventually figure out that this band isn’t ever going to get on the same sheet of music and decide to break up.

Much of the world has no interest in playing with the US band. They prefer to form their own combos, or to pursue solo careers.

The US should give up its ugly drone and melody/harmony scheme and play a different tune: “Give Peace a Chance.”

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

US president Joe Biden “stresses that Silicon Valley Bank is not getting a bailout,” The Hill reported on March 13.

“[N]o losses will be borne by the taxpayers,” he said of the federal government’s decision to cover depositor losses in excess of  $250,000.  “Instead, the money will come from the fees that banks pay into the Deposit Insurance Fund.”

But Biden’s explanation doesn’t support Biden’s claim. The bank’s customers — and, by extension, the bank itself — are definitely getting a bailout. Here’s why:

The FDIC is, as its name implies, an insurance proposition. The premiums banks pay are based on the amounts they have in deposits, and an FDIC opinion of how risky the bank’s practices are.

Let us now turn our attention to a great film about the LAST big US financial collapse, The Big Short. By way of explaining his pitch for betting that collapse was coming, Jared Vennett (a fictional character based on a real person) tells some investors, “I’m standing in front of a burning house and I’m offering you fire insurance on it.”

In the case of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and likely other banks to follow, the FDIC is standing in front of burning multi-million dollar houses insured for $250,000 and offering to pay the full value of the houses instead of the amount insured.

Who’s covering the difference?

For the moment, all the banks which haven’t collapsed yet.

Which means: The CUSTOMERS of all the banks which haven’t collapsed yet. It’s those customers who actually pay those FDIC premiums. Banks don’t turn profits by eating their costs of doing business. Depositors earn a little less interest or pay slightly higher fees, or the bank charges borrowers higher interest and fees.

Those customers are, presumably, taxpayers.

Which means that yes, taxpayers are indirectly bearing the costs of the bailout.

And if — no, let’s be honest, WHEN — more banks start going under because they put money into investments that tanked their liquidity (that is, their ability to cover potential surges in depositor withdrawals), and the FDIC runs out of money to cover this new “any amount instead of just what was actually insured” policy, the taxpayer funding will go from indirect to direct.

To add insult to injury, the depositors getting bailed out could have avoided the whole situation by spreading their deposits across different banks, with no more than $250,000 at each bank.

Why should their bad judgment, and their bankers’ bad judgment, be expensed to you?

It shouldn’t. But as we saw with the 2007-2008 collapse, American finance is a house of cards because it can be.  “Privatize the profits, socialize the losses” government policy ensures that the costs of poor decision-making aren’t borne by the poor decision-makers.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson tells USA Today that former president Donald Trump should abandon his 2024 campaign to re-take the White House if he’s indicted: “It doesn’t mean that he’s guilty of it or he should be charged, but it’s just such a distraction that would be unnecessary for somebody who’s seeking the highest office in the land.”

Is Hutchinson right? Maybe. Does Hutchinson — who’s been talked up for years as a possible presidential candidate — have ambitions that Trump’s departure from the field would serve, or is he just doing the “elder statesman” thing out of concern for his party’s prospects? Either could be true.

My view:

If there’s probable cause to believe Trump committed crimes, he should be charged and prosecuted. Prosecutors in New York and Georgia may make their moves soon, and special counsel Jack Smith could conceivably recommend charges relating to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

But, buyers beware: That’s exactly what Trump wants.

After a presidency full of outcomes ranging from mediocre (for example, tax policy, desultory stabs at deregulation, mostly unfulfilled lunges toward a less interventionist foreign policy) to disastrous (his trade wars and border wall schemes come to mind), and with an unprecedented two impeachments under his belt, Trump has only one trump card left in his hand to keep his considerable base energized and mobilized.

That trump card is the victim card. The martyr card. The “stolen election” card. The “witch hunt” card.

He’s played that card to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in fundraising and cataclysmic effects on the Republican Party’s fortunes, nearly single-handedly turning  a 2022 “red wave” into a “red trickle.”

If he continues to play at all, his only available strategy is to keep  waving that card around and asking his supporters to double down with their bets on it.

Will that strategy work?

If past trends indicate future performance, probably not. He barely beat an exceedingly weak opponent in 2016, lost in 2020, and cost his party dearly in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, playing that card every time as his vaunted supporter rally turnout shrank from stadium overflows to a half-filled room at CPAC in early March.

But he’s been under-estimated before, and actual criminal indictments will likely affect that trump card the way gasoline affects a bonfire. Even if he can’t win the presidency, he can turn 2024 into a circus the likes of which we’ve never really seen.

Personally, I find that kind of appealing.

Yes, he’s a crook.

So were his predecessors.

So is his successor.

Having it out with Trump may not bring our rotten, corrupt political class crashing down, but exposing him exposes them, too. And it’s better to get such things out in the open.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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