"I want you to know, this is my view. I want tariffs. And I want someone to bring me some tariffs. … I know there are some globalists in the room right now. And they don't want them, John, they don't want the tariffs. But I'm telling you, I want tariffs." — President Donald Trump, speaking to his new chief of staff at an Oval Office meeting about trade and taxes on imports, as reported by Jonathan Swan of Axios.
The most charitable view of this is that Trump or his allies are leaking it as a bluff, to strengthen their hand in trade negotiations with Mexico and China. In this view, the president doesn't really intend to saddle American consumers or businesses with taxes on imported goods.
In 1955, popular talk show host Steve Allen wrote a chilling short story. Set in the faraway future of the late 1970s, the story begins in New York City's Yankee Stadium, where some 70,000 spectators munch on hot dogs and down cold beers as they eagerly await the afternoon's main event.
But this is no World Series game for which the crowds have assembled. In Allen's dystopian future, they are there to join in a "public hating." Drawing on the depths of their collective hatred, the mob directs such powerful mass hostility and rage at a political prisoner that the unlucky victim actually suffers physical pain, writhing and convulsing to the point of death.
