CapitalistImperialistPig

S OMETHING  there is that doesn't love a wall,   That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,   And spills the upper boulders in the sun;   And makes gaps even two can pass abreast............................Robert Frost, Mending Wall   For the scientifically inclined, that something is entropy. But walls are everywhere the signature of life, so there are also things that do love walls. Cell walls, skins, snail shells, termite mounds, farmers fences and the Great Wall of China are all fashioned to keep order inside and disorder out. An Anthropology professor once told me that every culture draws a wall around itself. Culture walls are fashioned not from stone or chitin, but from elements of culture: language, religion, endogamy rules, shared myths and prejudices, taboos, tattoos, and tribal insignia. Did I mention that this post is about Donald Trump? I think the heart of his appeal is the culture war currently underway in the US and elsewhere. The...

Casinos, by their nature, are institutions dedicated to fleecing the suckers, so I suppose that there is a certain ironic justice in the fact that Trump's casinos, the source of much of his wealth, made Trump richer by fleecing the people he talked into investing in them. Russ Buettner and Charles V. Bagli, writing in today's New York Times, tell the story. An excerpt: But even as his companies did poorly, Mr. Trump did well. He put up little of his own money, shifted personal debts to the casinos and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. The burden of his failures fell on investors and others who had bet on his business acumen. In three interviews with The Times since late April, Mr. Trump acknowledged in general terms that high debt and lagging revenues had plagued his casinos. He did not recall details about some issues, but did not question The Times’s findings. He repeatedly emphasized that what really mattered about his time in Atlantic...