Tag: friendship

I did not expect my first post be a letter to the president, but this is what came out of my heart this Valentine’s Day. Children and all humans need friends — and nations do, too.

Dear President Trump,

I hope you had a happy Valentine’s Day! In Mexico, they call it El Dia del Amor y La Amistad, which means The Day of Love and Friendship.  Which is a good sentiment to perhaps allow you to pause on pronouncements and orders, as they are pushing our nation away from friendliness in ways I predict will soon haunt us.  

You might object that you don’t need friendship, that you are getting quick results!  And you have demonstrated that you can move things in your direction when you put out executive orders and threaten international leaders with tariffs.   

For example, you told Colombian President Gustavo Petro his nation would get a tariff pronto and he quieted down fast about his ideas to not accept the deportees we were sending via military planes. You threatened a 25% tariff to Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and each agreed to step up border enforcement (just for the record, they were working with us before).

You’ve also demonstrated that you and your friend, Elon Musk, can get results fast by making strong statements about U.S.A.I.D. – “a criminal organization.” Now you have made federal workers and programs around the world that helped people with life-threatening diseases disappear.  

Likewise, Musk told thousands of federal workers via email they could step down and take a vacation until September (although I’m really not sure I want my tax dollars paying for mass vacations) if they’ll just quit working for good.  

The trouble is that all these “wins” may add up soon to big losses.  Because friends get tired of being bullied fast.  World leaders have other options for trading partners — China, for example.  

On the international front: If you are known by other nations as a rich country that was helping them with diseases like malaria through U.S.A.I.D.– and then you vanish with barely a word, you are not going to be looked at as much of a friend anymore.  (In friend parlance, this is called “ghosting.”)  And it opens up the door for … you guessed it, a country like China, to be the new friend — and the new world leader.

Our greatest moments as a country – becoming independent, winning World War II, and leading the world into a stable era of decades of peace, prosperity, and freedom – have come with the help of allies.  And when we’ve helped other nations, they have remembered. One small but relevant example in recent times:  When the United States asked countries for help in fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Denmark joined us. Now, for reasons I don’t understand, you are threatening Denmark over its territory of Greenland.

Meanwhile, at home, a great strength of our democracy has been an ongoing cadre of civil servants who have worked mostly without political bias across Republican and Democratic administrations to protect Americans (military, FBI, police), give them justice (judges, prosecutors, public defenders), improve people’s health (doctors, nurses, social workers and others at places like the VA), and undertake many other tasks (such as processing social security and Medicare payments for retired people).  

These are people whom you and Musk are, to use a phrase you seem to like, treating very badly.  Out of nowhere, you gave them very little time to decide whether they needed to leave their jobs or risk losing them, as there were vague threats to them that they might not have employment later if they didn’t leave right away.

Here we run into something that goes past friendship.  The U.S. Constitution says clearly Congress has the power to fund agencies.  If you’re deciding you can de-fund them, that would represent your oath of office to support and defend the constitution.  

I’m feeling sad in the aftermath of Valentine’s Day, because in many cases, the ideas behind your actions have merit.  I doubt many people would disagree that U.S.A.I.D. and other federal programs could be improved.  It’s just that taking a sledgehammer to programs isn’t improving – it’s destroying.

And once you’ve destroyed things – friendships, alliances, programs, the Constitution – it can be a very long, hard road to get them back.