Some American Industries Are Doing Fine, But Tourism Isn’t One of Them

Here’s an article that begins:

The US tourism business is in trouble — and President Trump may be to blame.  America’s share of international tourism has dropped 16% in March, compared to the same month in 2016, according to Foursquare data released Wednesday. …. Meanwhile, tourism in the rest of the world has increased 6% year-over-year during the same period.

Wait a second.  President Trump may be to blame?

Please examine this list of countries: Syria, Eritrea, North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Armenia, Brazil, Poland, Hungary, Venezuela, Turkey, The Philippines, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and China—and then ask yourself how you think tourism might be coming along in those places.  Make it personal: what’s your own appetite for vacationing in places where democracy is under pressure, dissident journalists are suppressed, peaceful protesters are arrested, the country’s leader is increasingly viewed as an absolute ruler, the sick are left to suffer and die without healthcare, and the poor and desperate are treated with ever-increasingly cruelty?

I’m trying to imagine myself in, say, Saudi Arabia, staying near Bahrain, where I go for a drink.  “Uh, could I have a gin martini, up, with an olive, please?  And I’d enjoy it so much more if you could ask them to stop dismembering Washington Post reporters and flogging women drivers.”

Here are tidbits from the current report “Freedom in the World” by Freedom House, an NGO that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights:

Intensifying political polarization, declining economic mobility, the out-sized influence of special interests, and the diminished influence of fact-based reporting in favor of bellicose partisan media were all problems afflicting the health of American democracy well before 2017. Previous presidents have contributed to the pressure on our system by infringing on the rights of American citizens. Surveillance programs such as the bulk collection of communications metadata, initially undertaken by the George W. Bush administration, and the Obama administration’s overzealous crackdown on press leaks are two cases in point.

At the midpoint of his term, however, there remains little question that President Trump exerts an influence on American politics that is straining our core values and testing the stability of our constitutional system. No president in living memory has shown less respect for its tenets, norms, and principles. Trump has assailed essential institutions and traditions including the separation of powers, a free press, an independent judiciary, the impartial delivery of justice, safeguards against corruption, and most disturbingly, the legitimacy of elections. Congress, a coequal branch of government, has too frequently failed to push back against these attacks with meaningful oversight and other defenses.

We recognize the right of freely elected presidents and lawmakers to set immigration policy, adopt different levels of regulation and taxation, and pursue other legitimate aims related to national security. But they must do so according to rules designed to protect individual rights and ensure the long-term survival of the democratic system. There are no ends that justify nondemocratic means.

Americans expressed deep reservations about its performance in a national poll conducted last year by Freedom House, the George W. Bush Institute, and the Penn Biden Center. A substantial majority of respondents said it is “absolutely important” to live in a democracy, but 55 percent agreed that American democracy is weak, and 68 percent said it is getting weaker.

This is going the wrong way, but Americans are a tough bunch.  We threw out one set of would-be tyrants 243 years ago, and it’s looking a lot like we’ll soon be dispensing with another.