Trump Plunder by a Thousand Cuts

SONOITA, Arizona — This will be short; we’ve all wasted enough words on Donald Trump. But as he sulks in defeat and disgrace, awaiting a second trial for treachery far more heinous than the last, we had best take stock of an America he so badly crippled.

The pandemic will eventually subside. Shocked by a bald coup attempt that might have crowned Trump king, voters may finally unite to rid Congress and statehouses of self-serving snakes. In time, the outside world may again believe in American values.

But headlong plunder of natural resources, Native American cultures and wild splendor — heritage that belongs to future generations — has caused irreparable devastation from Florida wetlands to the northern reaches of Alaska.

The big picture is achingly clear: the plague Trump let run wild has already killed more Americans than Hitler and Hirohito did in World War II. His inaction on testing, masks and vaccinations now causes 1,000 more deaths each day than terrorists did on 9/11.

A Harvard team calculated in October that Covid-19 had stolen 2.5 million years of Americans’ lives. That has since doubled. A lucky few pile up huge profits while the rest suffer. Jeff Bezos earned an extra $68 billion; perhaps 50 million others go hungry.

Damage from the Trump virus is incalculably pervasive. Beyond the fatalities after he ordered a lynch mob to the U.S. Capitol, at least 38 police officers overrun by unmasked insurrectionists have tested positive for Covid-19.

Yet a thumping majority of Republicans, ignorant of facts, or simply ignorant, still rally behind him. He likely won’t run in 2024, but someone else will, on a similar oligarchic, authoritarian platform based on lies and distortions.

Congress is now shot full of faithless partisans fixated on their ambitions. A smattering of conspiracy-theorist newcomers with their own twisted realities stretch the limits of abnormal psychology.

The roots of this American Nightmare run deep. Ronald Reagan set in motion income inequality that is now a yawning abyss between rich and desperate. He dumbed down schools, quashed labor unions, cut taxes at the top and gave big business free rein.

Barack Obama restored prosperity after George W. Bush’s $6 trillion wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But factions hardened in Congress and statehouses. Mitch McConnell’s intransigence eroded an historic tradition of compromise.

And then Trump, the bad shepherd, flocked America, fleecing his sheep-like followers to within an inch of their lives. He used his one great talent — slinging bullshit — to create of base of zealots who politicians and tycoons exploited to their own advantage.

With repeated big lies, a mob-style crook with serial bankruptcies and dubious foreign loans claimed credit for his predecessors’ triumphs. His touted economic miracle doubled unemployment and left behind financial crises that recall the Great Depression.

Last year’s three-month growth spike was no more than clawing out of a hole he dug himself by ignoring the pandemic that, beyond the death toll, added losses and costs high in the trillions to the national economy.

Meantime, former lobbyists and industry insiders in the cabinet allowed big business to loot America for immediate profit as if there was no tomorrow.

Lasting damage is starkly evident in Arizona, from Sonoita, a crossroads near the now-fortified Mexican border, to sacred Indian sites and tourist meccas in copper country to the dwindling Colorado River through the Grand Canyon up north.

For much of a century, federal agencies have fought to protect waterways, forests and wilderness from big mining and petroleum companies while protecting tribal territory and national monuments. Rapacious “deregulation” reversed much of that.

Joe Biden’s executive orders seek to roll back environmental threats across America. But what is dead or dying, bulldozed or blasted, is gone forever. New last-minute permits will be hard to stop.

Arizona legislators and complacent governors have mostly sided with hard-rock miners since before 1912 statehood. They explore on public land, pay only token taxes, and an old federal law meant to develop the West exempts them from extraction royalties.

As a result, companies destroy priceless mountain majesty that returns substantial earnings from recreational use. And executives are generous with contributions to politicians who keep pesky conservationists and other opponents off their backs.

Resolution Copper and Rosemont Mine, projected multibillion-dollar foreign-owned copper mines, are now making the front pages when it may be too late. I profiled both in Harper’s two years ago.  

The piece opened with an aerial view of the old Silver Bell Mine, just northwest of Tucson, shielded behind rocky hills and barbed wire from suburban homes nearby. Now, owned by a Mexican billionaire notorious for polluting and union busting, it is no longer pickaxes and burros:

“Seen from above, it is an upside-down Machu Picchu: vast open pits terraced deep into the earth, some with bright turquoise toxic pools at the bottom. House-sized trucks haul copper ore under a ghostly dust haze to tin-sided structures for crushing. Waste rock piles high along the perimeter at a rate of 1.8 million tons a month. At 19,000 acres, the mine site is a third larger than Manhattan.”

The magazine used coated paper for Samuel James’ stunning photos: panoramas of the Morenci Mine, an eight-mile gash along the Coronado Scenic Highway, and others across the state. Sam focused mainly on San Carlos Apaches at war with Resolution Copper. But the Harper’s display caused little stir over a sideshow in Trump’s circus.

Oak Flat, as holy to San Carlos Apaches as Mount Sinai is to Christians, may be weeks away from being the private property of Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, an Anglo-Australian tandem. Trump approved the title transfer in January and shortened a final review period to 60 days.

The mine would drill down from Apache Leap, possibly collapsing its dramatic cliff face, and flooding Oak Flat, where Native Americans have settled for millennia. Huge waste heaps would mar spectacular land for miles around.

Hudbay Minerals of Canada is battling tribes and environmentalists in court to exploit Rosemont Mine in the Santa Ritas near here, a mile-wide open pit, with a looming crushed-rock mountain. It would devastate rare wetlands and an aquifer that feeds Tucson’s water supply.

Both mines would ship ore concentrate to Asia for smelting, with profits going to Australia, Britain and Canada. Executives and top managers would cycle in from abroad, with a limited local labor force to operate gigantic shovels and ore haulers.

The biggest player is Freeport-McMoRan, based in Phoenix, which owns five Arizona copper mines, including Morenci. Its stock price rose last year from $4.82 to $32.49.

State governments can oppose U.S. Forest Service and Army Corps of Engineers decisions if they threaten to pollute air, rivers or groundwater. But although Arizona voted for Biden and a second blue senator, its deeply red legislature is hostile to green.

Disputes work their way through the courts, which until Trump’s massive packing mostly kept destruction at bay. Now, despite years of testimony and damning reports by the Environment Protection Agency, new judges take a different view.

Ironically, Republican senators, John McCain and Jeff Flake, first cleared the way for Resolution Copper in a last-minute rider in an omnibus bill that Obama was forced to sign. Oak Flat had been protected since the Eisenhower administration.

Today, Arizona Republicans are hellbent on censuring McCain’s widow and drumming Flake out of the party as too liberal for their pro-plunder policies.

In Sonoita, green Border Guard trucks fill a vast parking yard, a base for the fortified barrier Trump erected at breakneck speed while the nation was focused on the pandemic. Wall construction tore up Indian burial sites and blocked wildlife migration.

To the east, developers plan a huge community that would deplete groundwater, likely drying up the San Pedro River, which attracts more than 400 of the 900 bird species in North America. Each year, they find less water in the internationally treasured wetlands habitat.

The outlook is bleak. McConnell, now minority leader, lost a fight to paralyze the Senate and retain his control. But he is still there. With so many urgent priorities, the environment and land use risk slipping behind on the Democrats’ crowded agenda.

This is a sampling; the list is long. If a president who spent his time watching TV, tweeting twaddle, golfing and nursing an insatiable ego can devastate so much of America in four years, just imagine what a competent despot could do in the White House after 2024.