A Good Time to be in Switzerland

President Donald Trump is in Davos, Switzerland to hobnob with all the globalist elites who gather there every year, while back in the states all his nationalist and more working-class fans are fuming about his latest position on illegal immigration. This isn’t likely to last long, but it is a moment worth noting.

On Wednesday night Trump told an impromptu news conference that the “dreamers” who had been illegally brought here as children “had nothing to worry about,” as he jetted off for Switzerland on Thursday morning his staff was announcing a proposal to not only keep some 1.8 million of them here but also offer a path to citizenship, and by Thursday afternoon his usual apologists on right wing talk radio were quite literally screaming their objections. The proposal also included a demand for a $25 billion “trust fund” to to build a big, beautiful wall along the southern border, along with several far more reasonable proposals to curtail illegal immigration, but talk radio talkers and their callers were clearly unimpressed. A mere 25 billion won’t build the kind of sea-to-shining-sea 50-foot-tall and translucent and solar-power-generating wall that Trump vividly described during the campaign, and even the die-hard supporters who never took all that wall stuff literally did believe Trump’s oft-stated campaign assurances that he was going to kick out even the most unwitting and sympathetic illegal immigrants.

That $25 billion for a border if for now  too much ask of the Democrats, who even objected some of the far more reasonable border enforcement measures Trump was demanding, and the negotiations will be tricky. The Democrats are obliged by political reality to protect all those “dreamers” from deportation, and will eventually be obliged to give up something in return to the Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress and the Republican president, but they still hold a strong hand. All the opinion polls show that a vast majority of the country has no stomach for kicking law-abiding and military-serving and college-going semi-citizens out of the country they grew up in, several Republican congresspeople from the soft-hearted Chamber of Commerce wing of the party, and by now even Trump is in full retreat from his hard-hearted campaign trail talk and even talking about his love for the “dreamers.”

Some of those more reasonable border enforcement proposals Trump is proposing also poll well with a populace that is rightly alarmed by the country’s still-high levels of illegal immigration, and we expect the Democrats will eventually relent to most of them, but we doubt they’re quite dumb enough to up cough $25 billion for a border wall. Most of the non-talk-radio media are going to explain the negotiations as the cruel Republicans threatening to kick out a bunch of telegenically sympathetic “dreamers” to build some small portion of a wall that even the president’s chief of staff now admits was oversold on the campaign trail, Trump will be hard-pressed to argue that’s all “fake news,” there are a lot of soft-hearted Chamber of Commerce types of Republicans and all those congressional Republicans whose states and districts abut the southern border who also realize how silly the border wall ideal was all along, and as dumb as those Democrats undeniably are they’re not quite stupid enough to lose this fight.

Meanwhile, Trump was faring better at that fancy-schmantzy gathering of globalist elites in Switzerland. He had an awkward moment sharing a stage with British Prime Minister Theresa, gushing about all the rumors of tension in Anglo-American relations were “fake news” and insisting he and his British counterpart had a mutual admiration society, while she responded with classically British quietude and an apparent relief that Trump has backed out of a visit of her to country, but otherwise it went well. You don’t get to be a globalist elite without being shrewd enough to notice that Trump is highly susceptible to flattery, so most of his fellow hoity-toity hob-nobbers lavished it on, and Trump didn’t shove any prime ministers out of the way or otherwise embarrass himself as he’s done on past on international occasions.

The globalist elitists seem to genuinely like Trump’s tax-cutting and de-regulating agenda, as we generally do, yet they object to all that anti-free trade campaign trail talk he still claims to believe, as we more enthusiastically do, and we expect they’ll gain more concessions from Trump with their flattery than we have with our snarky criticisms. Trump has recently imposed tariffs on washing machines that have had the effect of making American-made washing machines more expensive, but he’s largely abandoned all that campaign trail talk about 45 percent tariffs on anything Chinese, and unless the talk radio-talkers get annoyed about that we’re hopeful that all of Trump’s promised trade wars can be averted.

When he gets back to states Trump will have to answer to all those talk-radio talkers and all those hard-line anti-illegal immigration and nationalist and protectionist Trump voters they speak for, though, and we’ll be interested to see where he winds up. If Trump’s not going to build that wall just to let a bunch of “dreamers” avoid the deportations he promised he’ll lose that 25 percent of the the country that comprises about 50 percent of his support, if he holds firm he’ll further annoy the other 75 percent, and on the whole we guess he’d rather be hobnobbing with all those billionaires in Switzerland.

— Bud Norman

A Swiss Miss

Military life never had much appeal for us, as we are lazy and cowardly and constitutionally disinclined to follow orders, but we’re considering volunteering our services to the Swiss.

Such a radical career change occurred to us on a slow news day when we came across a story about an Ethiopian Airlines flight that was hijacked by its co-pilot and flown to Geneva. These developments were intriguing enough, but an even more striking detail was that French and Italian fighter planes were used to escort the hijacked airliner to the ground because the incident happened after the Swiss Air Force had concluded its business day. It seems the Swiss Air Force strictly observes an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule, with an hour-and-half lunch break starting at noon, and anything that threatens Swiss national security during the off-hours is left to more martial nations such as the French and Italians.

That 8 a.m. starting time is somewhat daunting, given our very nocturnal tendencies, but a lengthy lunch break with Swiss cuisine might provide adequate compensation for the inconvenience. The Swiss Army’s famous knives always include a corkscrew, so we assume that the lunch will include a glass or two of wine, and the waitresses will presumably be blond, fair-complexioned, and pleasant-natured. War is hell, as no less an authority than General William Tecumseh Sherman once observed, but a cessation of hostilities at every lunch and dinner time and a good night’s rest following a cup of hot chocolate could make it tolerable.

The chances of avoiding anything remotely resembling war altogether are favorable for a member of the Swiss military, too, given Switzerland’s longstanding policy of strict neutrality. This distinctively Swiss tendency is much celebrated by pacifists everywhere, although we always thought that neutrality toward the Nazis and Communists and assorted other totalitarian evils that were gobbling up their neighbors was taking things a bit too far, but that’s us and we assume it’s more popular with the typical Swiss serviceman. Throw in the high wages and ample benefits that are bound to be offered by such a generous welfare state as Switzerland, and the military recruiters’ job must be easy duty. They might not be interested in out-of-shape fifty-somethings who don’t speak whatever language is spoken in Switzerland, but if they can find any use for our wine-popping skills and waggish wit we’d be tempted by the deal.

On the other hand, perhaps we should just wait for the United States military to catch up with our more progressive European examples. Another three years of radical transformation might well deliver us a unionized and nine-to-five Air Force that doesn’t dare practice weightist and ageist discrimination against out-of-shape fifty-somethings, and we’d be spared the necessity of learning whatever language it is that they speak in Switzerland.

— Bud Norman