In the early 1950s, when many of us had yet to buy our first television set, Truth or Consequences was a popular TV game show, one of many quickly thrown together to fill the sudden gaping time demands of this new technology.
On Truth or Consequences, contestants were required to answer a trivia question, and, if they got it wrong, had to perform a silly, embarrassing stunt as a consequence. It was all pretty harmless.
Seventy years later, we can see that neither the embrace of Truth, not the recognition of Consequences seems to have taken hold in the White House. And it is anything but harmless.
As a child, I learned, usually by trial and error, that actions can lead to consequences, either for myself, or for others. Try a daredevil stunt on your bike and you might end up in the dirt. Light a match and you might get burned, or cause others to get hurt. This is a standard part of development, one of those lessons critical to leaving childhood and entering the more responsible phases of life. Not everyone, however, seems to make it through this stage and moves to the next level of maturity.
This is the only explanation I can invent to make sense of the behavior of the current President. Is is possible that he is, after all these decades, still in the learning phase?
Or is it more likely that he has simply decided to ignore the adverse consequences of his actions on others. Admittedly, these negative consequences put the lie to his great claims of wealth, growth, economic nirvana, and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
Perhaps he is simply incapable of thinking forward, of considering consequences before he acts, like a never-burnt toddler, striking a match and watching it burn, with no prior experience of fire. He seems blithely uncaring as he gleefully sets his minions free to slash and burn their way through every important protection provided by the agencies of the federal government, or to set fire to every historic bridge that has connected America to its allies, or to strike a match to the Constitution, itself, and watch its pages curl and blacken. Is he truly able to grasp the likely outcomes?
I’m beginning to think the answer may be no. Perhaps he has been protected from negative outcomes throughout his privileged and unpunished life, and lacks the intellect or cognitive ability to grasp probable outcomes. We’ve seen it in the wholesale imposition of tariffs without consideration of the effects on American businesses and American consumers. We’ve seen diminutions of the personnel of valuable protection agencies, like the FAA, with an ever burgeoning number of plane crashes in just two months of his term and more reported every day. It is the same with personnel purges in every federal agency. Though the actions are his, we are forced to shoulder the consequences, while he repeats his mantras of great wealth and success for the country with blank and uncomprehending stares when questioned by the press on consequences.
Only when he is cornered and forced to consider the destructive outcomes surrounding his every misstep does he pull back a bit. Never, however, does he demonstrate that he has learned anything about consequences. Only the growing outrage of ever-larger numbers of Americans turning on him and his lickspittles has any chance of teaching him that you can light a match, but you’d better be prepared to get burned. Let us all join in continuing to teach him that lesson.
Crypto-whaaa?
Okay, friends, we’ve all been asking each other: Do you understand crypto-currency?
Some have become even more curious in recent days with the co-occurrence of two not-on-the-front-page events.
(1) On March 7, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (yes, that’s in the USA) affirmed that a number of different cryptocurrency activities are now considered permissible for use in the federal banking system. National banks and federal savings associations are allowed to keep crypto-assets in their custody, and to participate in node verification networks, without demonstrating that they have separate, adequate controls in place. The Acting Comptroller of the Currency, Rodney E. Hood, indicated that he believed these financial institutions would use the same management controls in place for their traditional holdings. Which, of course, were not designed to control and manage imaginary, virtual “currency”.
(2) At the same time, the president announced the creation of a strategic cryptocurrency reserve fund, to include currently held Bitcoin assets. Bitcoin was the original cryptocurrency, though there are now thousands of different brands, and the US has 17 billion dollars in Bitcoin in its reserves, seized in criminal or civil forfeiture of assets or assessed as penalties. Theoretically, these assets are “held” in the same way in which petroleum and gold (things you can see and touch) are stockpiled.
But what is this crypto-asset, really, you ask? Well, you may not gain a great deal of insight out of the following, but here goes: The money is virtual. It does not exist in the physical world. Rather, it arises through a collaborating host of computers, each of which (referred to as a “node”) keeps an independent copy of a public ledger of transactions, with no central oversight, and direct, person-to-person transfers. Each copy of a ledger is called a blockchain.
As a life-long science fiction reader, I had already come across the concept of developing a kind of universal money, not controlled or exclusively managed by nations, banks or financial institutions. The current version was invented in 2009 by a pseudonymous developer named Satoshi Nakamoto, to accomplish just such decentralization.
And Bitcoin was born.
The integrity and accuracy of crypto-asset ownership and transfer is theoretically protected by a requirement of consensus between and among these various nodes about the content of the blockchain. To verify the accuracy and validity of ownership of the units of crypto, the system engages in a process called “mining”, which uses specially built computers and constantly invites others to develop ever more encrypted verification methods. The mining process is designed to prevent double-spending of assets, and to prevent the eradication of valid transactions. In addition, those developing new and safer ways to protect these ledgers are rewarded with new amounts of cryptocurrency. That’s why it’s called “mining”.
The security of these systems, however, is, as Mark Twain said on hearing reports of his own death, “greatly exaggerated”. Just last month, according to economist Paul Krugman on his Substack publication, hackers looted $1.5 billion worth of Ethereum coins from Bybit, which is based in Dubai. South Korea is credited with the caper and it is believed the stolen coins have already been turned into Bitcoin and then into actual money. The President of Argentina introduced his own sort of crypto, the $Libra. The price of $Libra soared at first on speculation, but, when small players moved in to make a fortune, the price collapsed and the little investors were left with worthless bits of code.
Similarly, the purely invented $Trump coins pulled in millions of dollars from MAGA fans, according to Krugman and others, and then quickly lost over 80% of their value. Krugman adds that, unlike oil and gold, this “stockpile” in the US coffers amounts to nothing but a “hackable string of ones and zeros”.
The use of the crypto systems boils down to only two kinds of value: either pure speculation or exchanging value for criminal activity.
In addition, the environmental impact of the use of so much energy is enormous—more than the yearly energy consumption of Finland. In addition, the computer hardware has a short lifespan, so there is also an incredible increase in electronic waste, comparable each year to the electronic waste of the Netherlands. This is why I had to laugh to hear Elon refer to Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. Who would know better?
Perhaps he should look a little closer to home. In the last few days, he has been pushing a bill called, modestly, the GENIUS Act, which the Republicans are trying to rush through. It would allow users to trade crypto on Musk’s X Money platform. Perhaps I should suggest legislation to make Monopoly money virtually real. Then I could prepare a GENIUS Get Out of Jail Free card and dangle it in front of the unelected president. And then make sure he never gets it.
Sheila
