Sure, let’s talk about that canal
everybody’s looking out for him
’cause they know red’s satisfies
little girls love to listen to him
sing and tell sweet lies
New Riders of the Purple Sage – Panama Red Lyrics
Hey, let’s “acquire” Greenland and invade Panama!
Donald Trump is skilled at stoking grievance and earning himself media hits. He’ll need to now that Elon Musk is stealing his spotlight. So ahead of violating his oath of office again the moment he utters it, Trump is talking smack about real estate he’d like to acquire in his second term. Trump doesn’t know much, but he knows real estate, how to distract the media (away from casting his reality-show second term), and exclusive clubs.
James Fallows thinks Panama Orange’s tiny-violin musings about Panama treating America unfairly is more make-believe from Trump:
This rhetoric comes from the same place as his claims that migrants are bringing in deadly fentanyl (they aren’t), that public schools authorize gender-change surgery (they don’t), or that regulation has crippled the US oil industry (which is producing more than ever before). It’s based on lies; it’s designed to make his followers mad; and it works.
Like Pavlov’s MAGAs, it works. The media salivates at hearing the grievance bell ring just as readily.
The chance of the US forcibly (or in other ways) “taking back” the Canal is zero. The next time you hear this idea, put it in the category of other make-believe Trump threats and promises. These range from his promise to end the warfare in Ukraine “in one day,” to his threat to slap a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada, the US’s two largest trading partners. Or even the Musk-Ramaswamy fantasy of cutting trillions in “fat” from the federal budget.
None of these claims is meant to happen, in the first day or the first year. Their purpose is to work partisans up right now.
Since the days of Rush Rooms and before OxyContin, movement conservative puppet-masters addicted generations of Republican foot soldiers to a daily endorphin hit. A hissy fit over some liberal “outrage” here, blamethrowing directed at some caste disfavored by white America there.
Fallows, however, focuses on just what a triumph of diplomacy the Jimmy Carter administration negotiated with the Panama Canal treaties of 1977-78 and the “shrewd” courage it took to ratify them. (Fallows recommends a couple accounts of the debates and contentious issues at the time.)
But Fallows also sees Trump’s grievance-based focus on the canal as a way to bring attention to the impacts of climate change:
The managers of the Canal say that what they have to sell the world is not transportation but water. Every ship that travels the 50-plus miles from ocean to ocean through the Canal requires some 50 million gallons of fresh water.
That’s how much it takes to raise a ship from sea level, in the Caribbean or the Pacific, up through multiple locks to Gatun Lake in the middle of the isthmus. The lake is 78 feet above sea level; after reaching it, from either direction, the ships then descend through locks down to sea level on the other side. Every drop of that water to fill the locks comes from rainfall in the largely forested land in the Canal’s watershed.
Savvy readers can see where this is going.
Over time, this watershed, like so many others, is becoming hotter and drier. Over time, many of these surrounding forests, where not officially protected, are being cut down, paved, and developed or turned into cattle-grazing land. Thus the Canal authorities have put themselves at the center of a struggle to protect their business interests by preserving, and even trying to expand, what is also a globally crucial reservoir of biodiversity.
Shorter Fallows: No water, no canal. So let Panama Orange fume about imaginary unfairness. Fallows sees Trump’s Panama rhetoric as a path to “global discussions of sustainability. I hope some people now thinking about Panama will reach the same conclusion.”
Bring it on.