Brooks: Make America Great Again, meet ‘beggar thy neighbor’

Don’t be stupid, said President Donald Trump, as Americans here and across the country rose in massive protests over the weekend against the chaos he’d unleashed. Don’t be weak.

His skittish advisers assured Americans that the pain they’re experiencing, as the economy is thrown into chaos and our national image is thrown in the woodchipper, is simply an “adjustment.” Much as your morning commute might be adjusted if the bus driver yanked the wheel for no reason and rammed full-speed into a wall.

“The United States has a chance to do something that should have been done DECADES AGO,” the president posted in caps-locked glee on his personal social media platform. “Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid! Don’t be a PANICAN (A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!). Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be the result!”

The main result of the president tanking the economy for no particular reason played out in St. Paul and countless other American cities on Saturday. A massive wave of humanity descended on the Minnesota Capitol: retirees, young parents, teachers, scientists. Thousands of people, possibly tens of thousands, filling the grounds around the Minnesota Legislature. A massive “I’m With Stupid” signal, pointing straight back at the White House.

Hands off science, the protest signs read. Hands off our Medicaid. Hands off education. Hands off veterans. Hands off our civil rights. Hands off everything, basically, that Elon Musk and his imaginary government agency have had a hand in these past few months.

Most Americans, it seems, would like to pay less for groceries, not more. We liked watching our retirement savings increase, not crater. We liked helping other nations through natural disasters and feeding starving babies on the other side of the planet because it was the decent thing to do. We liked it when Canada was elbows down, not up.

So far, we PANICANS have watched the richest man on the planet throw our neighbors out of work, hollow out our government, defund cancer research and dismantle safeguards that kept water drinkable, air breathable and food edible.

We’ve watched the names and faces of our heroes vanish from government websites, libraries and museum exhibits. Harriet Tubman. Medgar Evers. Casualties in the war on diversity, history, civil rights and truth.

Our retirement savings have dwindled along with our hopes that we’ll ever be able to collect the Social Security and Medicare we’ve paid into all our lives. We’ve watched our closest allies issue warnings against travel to America, because there’s a non-zero chance any one of us could get shipped off to some nightmarish Salvadoran supermax without due process.

Now a nation that was absolutely furious about the price of eggs is facing tariff-driven price hikes on ... almost everything we love, basically. Coffee. Clothing. Shoes. Both chocolate and vanilla.

Tariffs as crippling as they are baffling. It’s like someone only read the first half of the paragraph about the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in high school history and just thought tariffs sounded cool. They skipped the part about how punitive tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression and sparked a cycle of retaliatory tariffs.

The late Sen. Paul Wellstone had a motto: “We all do better when we all do better.” This is the opposite of that. “Beggar thy neighbor,” economists call it. You only win if everyone else loses. Including your own citizens, apparently.

The bodies of four American service members who died during a training exercise in Lithuania returned home last week. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda and thousands of mourners lined the roads in Vilnius.

The president of the United States was not there to witness the dignified transfer when the flight landed at Dover Air Force Base. Instead, Trump headed to Florida for the Saudi-backed LIV golf tournament.

The only surprising thing about the massive protests that swept the country over the weekend is that they didn’t happen sooner.