Mexico, results

I was shown a Spanish language cartoon that I cannot find now. Wish I had bookmarked it. I looked through thousands of comments and hundreds of Spanish cartoons to no avail.

The cartoon depicted a large size Trump holding a dog's leash with Obrador on the end as a dog, holding another leash to a smaller dog labeled "chairos."

"Chairo" is Mexican pejorative slang for "liberals." The term is especially applied to followers of Obrador meaning the person is radical leftist or fixed political belief to the extent of being irrational.

See, they don't teach you these things in books.

Why would British cartoonist depict Trump holding England on a leash? Why would Mexican cartoonist depict Trump holding Obrador on a leash? Canadian cartoonists holding Trudeau on a leash. Trump holding South Korea on a leash? Netanyahu holding Trump on a leash. Putin holding Trump on a leash. John Bolton on a leash but with nobody holding it. [cartoon trump leash]

Know what? All you cartoonist suck. You're not the least bit imaginative. And Trump as a child, or a dog or a pet, and you just flat don't know what you are talking about.

When you observe what the man does dispassionately, all of it, including humorous silly things, then you're struck by genius so far outside the box that it isn't even funny. He runs circles around his detractors and they're too thick to know they've been spun. He uses everything available to their maximum effect to accord to his larger picture so that even his supporters misjudge his moves. I see this every single day. At least dozens of times each day. And the people who presumptuously assert themselves smarter than Trump, all of them, are shown to be parochial in comparison.

I've read endless criticism of Trump putting tariffs on Mexico from every angle imaginable. And each criticism does make sense with its little child's protractor and lines drawn to the edge of the paper. But Trump's angle is larger, it covers the whole nation, Trump's angle crosses borders, crosses political systems, and turns everything that national leaders think is their power into shit. They enter negotiations with all of their power, the power they know so well, and by just a few deft moves they're left standing there holding their bucket of shit.

That is what happened to Obrador.

How smugly Obrador enters negotiations with Trump with his speeches of South American migration behind him, knowing he has Trump over a barrel. All of international industries locating in Mexico with American market their target are Obrador's tools, his weapons.  What a huge load of assets Obrador has to work with against Trump. But he doesn't know how to use them appropriately. Obrador actually thought that he could continuously vex America and handicap Trump by facilitating overwhelming waves of illegal immigrants while negotiating with Trump.

Face it. No matter how clever Obrador actually is, in his Mexican political system and to whatever extent his power takes him, he's not nearly so clever as Trump. I can't even explain it because I'm insufficiently smart myself, but I do see that Trump penetrates the minds of world leaders and their systems. So he can bend Obrador to his will and bend Trudeau to his will and bend Merkel to his will and bend South Korea to his will, and win the affection of England's queen and Japan's emperor, and bend the entire dynamic of North Korea and its relationship to China to his will, and actually bend China to his will.

I've read literally hundreds of comments from Trump supporters who believe Mexico will fail. The history shows this quite clearly. They insist Trump made an error by backing away from the tariffs so soon. These supporters also know the history of Mexico's infidelity to agreements, of showing faint interest and then failing. They're positive that will happen again.

But they are not seeing the whole picture. They don't have the vision that Trump has. They don't have the business experience that makes Trump so ace at both politics and business. Trump is the force of nature and they are storm chasers fancying themselves experts at all that Trump does.

Just stand back and behold in awestruck wonder.

Just shut up and watch.

Trump lifted the tariffs before his opposition could organize against him to force him to abandon the tariffs.

He flashed his laser pen scribble on the wall and they all ran to it and bashed their heads together on the wall as the red light scribble disappears.

Financial investment pours along channels of calculated expectation, probability and risk. If you think Mexico will fail then you also think the tariffs will be imposed in ninety days.

Trump has pre-positioned the risk calculations by his suspended tariffs on China. After tremendous effort at reaching agreement, China backed away from their deal. Trump immediately imposed his tariffs, a move he was perfectly ready to do, no thought required, to Trump this was not a surprise, rather, the next logical step in his larger picture. The tariffs were always the goal. They are required in Trump's vision of forcing China to behave fairly, and not to behave as communists do. Trump knew all along that China will have to be forced. We're in the phase now where China must learn the hard way what Trump always knew.

Always knew. Trump understood all of this twenty years ago. And he actually talked about it. There are old interviews of Trump all over the place discussing this very thing twenty years ago. Viewers had no idea what Trump was banging on about. His vision had already crystalized. He was discussing his vision and none of us understood it.

We didn't understand what all that meant in terms of getting down to the brass tacks of challenging nations individually each with their unique political cultures to shape up in terms of fairness in business practices with the United States. Each nation was accustomed to being coddled in specific ways.

And with Mexico the United States has this extra layer of bullshit of Mexico allowing itself to be conduit of massive illegal immigration with the effect of overwhelming our system. Literally swamping our culture, destroying our civilization. And claiming there is nothing they can do about it, that they too are overwhelmed. The people want to come to the United States. Our problem. Not Mexico's.

How brilliantly Trump puts an end to that to the tremendous dismay of Democrat party and Republican coconspirators and Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street multinationals, Koch Brothers, Business Roundtable. Who are they going to pressure to protect their investments? Trump or Obrador?

All the responsibility for success is put on Obrador. Everyone with financial interest must pressure Obrador or else suffer Trump's scheduled tariffs. This is Trump apex predator having all other concerns applying pressure on Obrador who must be successful or else the entire economy of his nation collapses. And should it collapse this way, it will never recover. Trump just got everyone else to do his bidding for him. All the pressure is off Trump and on Obrador. The threat is existential for Mexico. The multinational interests will do Trump's work for him.

That is the observed brilliance of Trump.

I could never imagine any such thing on my own. I need Trump to show how this is done. And Trump does this over and over, nation by nation, through the resources given him, all constitutional, all legal, and with tremendous overwhelming opposition from all sides including his own supporters who cannot see what he is doing and imagine themselves better at Trump's own impossibly imaginative statecraft.

Given Mexico's dismal history to the contrary, this time Obrador will not fail. The multinationals will not let him. Their multibillion dollar investments are at stake. Obrador's entire economy is at stake.  Everyone knows Trump means business by the way they observed Trump handling China. It is the exact same pattern with Mexico. That is what Trump did with these tariffs threatened then lifted.

For now.