Introduction
Welcome to The Cameron Journal Newsletter! This week, it’s all about Trump Tariffs and the reverberations around the world from what can only be described as an economic reset.
The World is Hard, This is Not
Each week I send out the latest headlines, the latest videos from The Cameron Journal and commentary about the week’s events. If you’re new here, my name is Cameron Lee Cowan M.A. MFA, and I’m the Creative Director here at The Cameron Journal. You can learn more about me on the About page. I do research and commentary on politics, culture, and the world around us. Remember, The World is Hard, This is Not.
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Updates
Happy Saturday everyone! I took a little road trip this week to take care of some business and so I had some time in the car to just vibe and I think it was just the reset that my brain needed. I am feeling a bit better about things and for once can write this without feeling exhausted! As someone who runs a business and also takes private clients, it can be easy to get scattered. I am reminded that no matter how important the work might be or how much of it there is, it is vital to take time to yourself to reset, review, and recuperate from everything. When you’re working for yourself (as I have done these many years) it can be easy for things to blend together. Work happens at all times and calls can come in at any moment. I didn’t really unplug this week but I did get a bit of a break and that was pleasant.
If you noticed the Latin in the title of the newsletter this week and wondered what the hell that means, it means “We have (a) Pope.” As you might have heard, the Catholic Church elected the first American Pope who will reign as Leo XIV. He is a cardinal from Chicago and while he is introducing deep-dish pizza to Italy, it looks like he will be keeping up the progressive and “bridge-building” view of the world of his predecessor Francis II.
Let’s get into the headlines!
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The Latest
More Than Cheap Goods
Mike Pence was making the rounds this week and interviewing with several people. In one interview on CNN, he remarked that cheap goods were part of the American Dream. This statement sparked some discourse on Twitter. This tweet really stood out to me.
“My American dream is a billion bison, a working canal system, great sheep farms & fruit orchards, the tendrils of cross-country trail networks spiraling into every neighborhood so kids can race bikes beside the trolleys that circle the Romanesque Churches in the evening light.”
My reaction was pretty simple. “Ok, so you want France but with Bison in a scene that could go on a Thomas Kinkade plate.”
I can tell you one thing people won’t like about France with bison is the tax structure that makes that possible. But I am also taken aback by the implications of the scene in this tweet. They want an ecology that supports a massive wild land (RIP cattle ranches and oil fields) and they want the church to be the center of American life in a way that it has never been but also with mass transportation. I swear, these people would love Belgrade.
In any case, as President Trump engages in high-level trade talks in Switzerland with China and announces a new trade with the UK (more market access, lower tariffs, and more) how we think about the American dream is changing. The age of globalization, at least as we know it is coming to an end. In the past decades, we had moved most of the capital and labor-intensive industry elsewhere and focused on higher-margin services, research, and development. However, that led to a lot of downsides for the average person who could not find a decent job despite the cheap goods. Alan Greenspan’s great compromise has ended and now we are entering a new global economy. How many jobs will return and how successful this reset will be remains to be seen.
Conservatives More Empathetic Than Liberals?
So much for the “bleeding heart liberal” in this new study, they tracked conservatives and liberals on empathy and found that liberals were less empathetic to conservatives due to moral judgments toward out-groups. Liberals also saw conservatives as more dangerous than Conservatives saw liberals.
This study certainly reinforces the notion that conservatives are far more willing to work with and live with liberals than the other way around. I am reminded of a book I reviewed (and whose author I had on the show) back in 2015. The book was called, “The Big Sort” and at the time, it was theorized that American polarization was here to stay and that was because we were physically moving away from each other. He found that when you look at party registration and other data, Americans were physically moving away from areas that did not align with them politically. This narrative has been lost to time but this study reminded me of it again.
I’ve definitely faced the moral “circular firing squad” from my fellow liberals for the work I do in talking with conservatives and opening narratives and dialogue. Just today, I jumped into a conversation with David Beckemeyer again on a Substack live (with no hair and makeup no less) to talk about how to bridge divides. One of the issues is that Liberals do not accept the GOP framing of issues and certainly do not agree on the problems in society. Also, as I’ve written before, I find that the attitude toward humor and how we think about society are quite different. As I concluded in that newsletter, “Liberals need to learn how to laugh more and conservatives need to learn to take things more seriously.” Our current political dynamic reinforces the thesis of the story. Liberals are just trying to survive 4 (or more) years of Trump and conservatives are happily rolling along with it, even when they don’t agree with it. Liberals are cowering in the corner waiting for the worst while conservatives are reserving judgment. I am also reminded of something I’ve heard time and again that liberals are “close-minded” and “won’t listen.”
Food for thought as we move forward into an uncertain future.
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