America

Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote poet Robert Frost in the opening line of “Mending Walls.”

And on the American left there is something like revulsion at the idea of the “beautiful wall” President Trump intends to build along the 1,900-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico.

The opposition’s arguments are usually rooted in economics or practicality. The wall is unnecessary. It will not stop people from coming illegally. It costs too much.

The former Presidente of Mexico, Vincente Fox, has been trolling President Trump on twitter for about a year now, over that fucking wall.

Somehow Vincente thinks he has a choice when it comes to paying for the wall or not, considering the fact that billions of dollars are wired in from Mexican citizens living in America illegally on an annual basis and the fact that they enjoy a $60b surplus with us. Nevertheless, it makes for good media.

While so far Trump's trade focus was fallen mostly on Nafta countries, and to a lesser extent China, one country that is taking precautionary steps is the one which recently suffered a major loss when Trump signed an executive order to exit the TPP, effectively killing the trade deal: Japan. The TPP, which took years to negotiate among 12 countries, has often been described as being, at its core, a deal between the United States and Japan, the world's largest and third-largest economies respectively.

Submitted by Robert Parry via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

On several occasions I have asked in my columns the rhetorical question: What became of the left? Today I answer my question.