The Rod

 As I opened my retirement account this afternoon and saw that once again whole percentage points of value had been erased from the stock market today, I winced. It hurt, as it always does. But at the same time, I accepted it. It seemed a measure of justice. We had it coming. 

The United States cannot threaten all of its allies and betray its friends and lord it over others with impunity forever. Eventually, the piper collects his due. As I saw the stock values once again in the red for the day, therefore, Rossetti's line came back to me: "the rod/ Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world."

We were due for some chastisement, in other words. Pride goeth before a fall. But let us not draw too narrow a conclusion from it. Yes, today's decline was due to Trump's specific tariff threats. Yes, it was because consumer confidence is weakening and inflation remains elevated. 

But more broadly, people are losing faith in the future because the United States is squandering all of its relationships with friends around the world that have helped to make us strong. It's because no one can trust our word after we have sold out Ukraine and threatened to annex Canada and attack Denmark. 

It's because, at the very apogee of our power as a nation—when our prosperity was greatest—we are undermining all the sources of strength that have made that position possible. We are slashing the foreign aid that has made countries like us and want to work with us around the world. 

It is truly, then—as Rossetti wrote in the poem—the "refusal of aid between nations" that is causing our downfall. It is our dismantling of U.S.-funded hospitals at the Thai-Burma border; it is our slashing of life-saving AIDs treatments in Africa; it is our rank betrayal of Ukraine as it fights for its life.  

It is, in short, the whole repulsively short-sighted and sociopathic doctrine of "America First" that—perversely—is actually causing our global demotion to the position of America Last. It is "because," as Rossetti wrote: 

"Man is parceled out in men/ To-day: because, for any wrongful blow,/ No man not stricken asks, 'I would be told/ Why thou dost thus;' but his heart whispers then,/'He is he, I am I.' 

That is why "we know," Rossetti concluded, "That the earth falls asunder, being old."