Category: Brian Browne

A broken hand can repair nothing

Through the quirk of uncharted fate, Trump has become the unwitting reformer of the architecture of the American political elite. His tenancy of the White House exposes fissures in the power establishment heretofore latent. That these fissures have spilled into general public opinion should not confuse us as to the true nature of the political conflict at hand and what may be at stake through it. The political battle between Democrats and Republicans, between conservatives and liberals, seen on television and read in the press is but a false shadow. The true fight is whether the power relationships within the American political elite will remain as they have been for the past thirty years or be recast by the Trump presidency.

Initially one might not care what transpires within the American elite. Should they cannibalize each other, so much the better. The sad fact is that the destruction they may bring will not be done in isolation. They will not destroy the nest they share. They will use the social space of other groups and the geographic space of other nations as their battlefields. The poor man’s fight begins and ends in his own house. The wealthy and the powerful hire the poor and the ignorant to fight in ways, in places and for reasons that remain obscured from the proletarian mind. The intramural battle within the American establishment will cause damage and casualties thousands of miles from the shores of America and among peoples who will not even realize that their demise is just the collateral spillover of a power tussle in America.

Until the time of Trump, the American political elite was a tightly knit consensus at least in public. The differences between establishment Democrats and Republicans has been more of name, of team affiliation much like two opposing sports teams playing the same game and moving toward the same goal except attired in differently-colored uniforms. Establishment Democrats and Republicans both are enamored with war and support whatever military action is taken, for whatever reason. This may be no reason at all save the impulse of the powerful to dominate his weaker. Leadership of both parties support economic policies further enriching the wealthy while mortgaging the days and lives of the economically vulnerable and broken.

The differences between the elites were over less than transcendental issues such as gun control, homosexual marriage and abortion. These issues directly influence the lives of but a fraction of the population. For these fractions, such issues may be those upon which their particular world turns. But for the majority of people, these were but ploys the establishment used to tug at their emotional strings, distracting them from questioning whether the elite consensus on a political economy based on growing inequality war and perpetual war was in the interests of the general population.

The Republican rank-and-file was taught to revere the flag, love their guns and to despise gays. The Democratic rank-and-file was induced to ridicule the religious, worship the secular, and respect any belief that laid claim to scientific rationality no matter how socially reckless and ultimately inhumane. Both sets were persuaded to accept living on less income but greater debt without questioning why such a burden should befall the inhabitants of the most affluent nation that ever existed. The material affluence of the nation and the cruel, relentless logic of the economic dynamics said to produce this unequal affluence have not buoyed the spirit of the people nor led to greater enlightenment. Instead, the press of life has caused the bulk to be a frustrated and angry lot while the elite see themselves as inherently beyond mere mortals. Compassion exists in scant supply. Hatred and mean impulse abound. A chilled indifference toward thy neighbor and the relish to bomb to destruction distant foreigners is the American creed. The Red, White and Blue waves supreme but also waves cold and unfeeling.

Trump the reformer did not come to the White House to change this darkness to light. He came to compound this lack of light with a special darkness all his own. If he is anything, Trump is a tabernacle of social pathologies that he duly worships for it is but the worship of himself.  However, this crass elevation of self lined him against a certain faction of the political establishment. Overlords do not like being lorded over by a novice.

The newcomer Trump wanted to change foreign policy slightly. His motive was not to give humanity a respite from woe and war but to solidify Money Power’s control on precious resources far and near. Unwittingly, Trump uncorked a fight where he represents the section of the elite more concerned with making of money as a means to power. Those opposing him, best symbolized by the Clinton political universe, represent the belief the expansion of power is the best way to sustain material affluence. Heretofore the two sides had travelled in lockstep. Trump interrupted this harmony of venality and arrogance. When he proclaimed during the campaign that he would jail Clinton, Trump merely formalized the inadvertent declaration of war against the other side of the establishment.

Consequently, his entry into the White House was occasioned by disharmony unprecedented among the elite. The corporate media, so aligned with to the Clinton worldview, attacked him with the alacrity of a lunatic canine. Sections of the intelligence community have openly rebelled, trying to undermine him with a flood of unsavory leaks of information against him. The government bureaucracy resists him and leaks as well.

Trump is accustomed to being his own man and getting his own way by having subordinates fawn over him as if their paychecks depended on it. He is not used to standing alone against the machinery of powerful institutions run by people who care little for him and who believe they can outlast him while making every minute of his tenure a form of agony through public ridicule and possible censure.

To save himself, Trump figured he had to make a pact with the devil. In that he has probably done such contracts several times before, this one would give him no moral indigestion. He could stomach it for his internal organs had become as cast iron years ago. To prevent himself from complete isolation within the power establishment, Trump brought the military to his bosom. Candidate Trump gargled that the Pentagon and its generals did not understand strategy. He would teach them. President Trump is a different animal than he was as a candidate.

Abdicating his role as commander-in-chief except in a few isolated circumstances, Trump has ceded all strategic and tactical authority to the men in uniform. With this, he purchases their loyalty. This is the irony of political infighting. Your preferred enemy may become your friend by necessity. Trump who represents the establishment faction that prefers money over war was compelled to ally himself with the War Machine to secure his political hide from the bites of those who were more naturally aligned with the military.

This marriage has already had material consequence.

The most redeeming quality candidate Trump exhibited on the campaign trail was the stance he took against perpetual war and his call for a better relationship with Russia. In comparison, Clinton was a fervid war hawk clamoring to escalate American involvement in Syria and Ukraine. The literal interpretation of her views meant inching closer to hot conflict with Russia than prudent statecraft would recommend. That someone as testy as Trump would appear to be more of a candidate for peace showed how far the Democratic Party had fallen into the hands of War Machine.

Despite his wealth or perhaps because of it, Trump is a man of vulgar disposition who never should have become president. He holds no principles dear except that of self-survival. All other thoughts are cast to the wind. Uneasy due to the heat from the media and because of the opposition within the bureaucracy that is supposed to serve him, Trump feels the need to show he is in charge and not merely being taken on a ride not of his choosing. Such a sentiment can lead a wise man into folly.  It can lead a person with the temperament of Trump into exuberant disaster.

Added to this is Trump’s obsessive hatred of his predecessor. That the son of an African was his president, makes Trump seethe with crimson madness. In all things, he must prove himself the opposite and the better of Obama. Anything Obama did, Trump would undo. Where Obama feared to go, this abrasive man would enter head first. The reported chemical weapons attack in Syria presented a convergence of malign considerations and interests that led Trump to take action where action was without adequate warrant.

Obama did not bomb the Assad government after the 2013 chemical attack. To Trump, this signaled cowardice. Yet, Obama’s refusal was proper. Obama discovered the Assad government had not authored the gas attack. The gas came from those American sponsored. Blame was not Assad’s. Obama would not bomb them. For Trump, Obama’s inaction was a mistake he would cure.

When confronted with media images and reports of a purported April sarin attack in Syria, Trump jumped at the chance to demonstrate he was stronger than Obama. That the media and the great mass of Americana who lust after war would support this action indiscriminately would be an added political bonus to the psychological victory gained in outdoing Obama. Finally, this act would bring the military hardliners closer to him. Thus, he decidedly quickly to hit a Syrian military airport in retaliation.

There was one stubborn problem. No sarin gas attack had occurred. One may blame Assad for many things. This is not one of them.  The American military and intelligence components on the ground knew the true nature of what had happened. They reported no sarin attack had occurred. Trump and his White House hacks, joined by hardliners in the military, decided not to heed the information given by their people. For political reasons, they determined that the truth was an insufficient basis for choosing a course of action. They would bomb simply because they wanted to, not because Assad had done wrong in this instance. That the corporate media served as the minstrels for this parade of lies confirms the media has forgone journalism because better money is to be made by airing the propaganda of establishment.

The truer account is a story largely untold. Russian and Syrian intelligence identified a building in the city of Khan Shaykhun that served as an ISIS headquarters. They had intelligence that several important ISIS leaders would be in the building. They also knew ammunition and ingredients for improvised weapons such as fertilizer and chlorine gas may have been in the facility.

Pursuant to the “deconflicting agreement” then operative between America and Russia, the Russians beforehand informed their American counterparts that they provided the Syrians with a smart bomb to specifically target the building. Prior notice was given so that no American aircraft or intelligence assets would be in the vicinity at the appointed hour. The bomb hit the target. Evidently, a secondary explosion ensued due to the things stored in the building. Witnesses claimed seeing explosions and gas clouds as well as smelling gas.

This evidence testifies against the presence of sarin. First, a sarin-laden ballistic does explode to release the gas. Such a delivery system would be counterproductive; the explosion and fire would consume much of the gas before the gas reached its intended targets. Second, sarin is colorless. It would not evoke a dust cloud. Third, sarin is odorless. To smell it is to smell something else. The lack of color and odor is what adds to its fatal effect. If a victim is unable to detect it, he cannot discern which direction to run in order to escape vaporous death.

In effect, the death cloud was the secondary consequence of aerial bomb meeting ordinance stored on in the building. This is a pitiable outlay of war. It should be condemn for what it is and not made into something it is not. However, America could not condemn what really happened. It is something America does with an astounding regularity in in several nations including Syria.

We know this is the more accurate account due to the work of veteran journalist Seymour Hersh. Due to his investigative prowess, Hersh was hired to investigate the incident by a major western media house. That media outlet was convinced Assad was in the wrong. They thought Hersh would return with a scathing report castigating Assad. Instead, his objectivity led him to exonerate Assad for using gas and to question Trump as well as the Western media’s lack of balance.

In this instance, the Western media and Trump were allied because of the love of war against recalcitrant non-western governments that now resides in the Western psyche. The American and British media houses that usually publish Hersh’s articles declined his story although one had paid him to write it. They refused to acknowledge the truth. They had gone far too far down the path of wrong. Instead of correcting the record, they would add to their wrongdoing by preventing its correction. Hersh finally found a German newspaper willing to print the more accurate account.

Hersh found support from a MIT professor who is a leading expert on forensics. The professor scoffed at the report released by the White House allegedly proving the use of sarin gas. The White House report was a quilt of inaccuracies woven by people with insufficient knowledge of physics to make a conclusion on such a grave matter. He said the White House report proved the opposite of what it claimed. The information contained in that report rendered it physically impossible that sarin was the culprit. (Another telling sign that something was amiss is that neither the American military nor intelligence agencies published an unclassified report. Only the White House did. The reason the other agencies did not publish a report or endorse that of the White House is probably because their conclusions vastly differ.)

That Trump embarked on such an ill-advised frolic freighted with the potential consequence of direct conflict with Russia is discomfiting in the extreme. He has proven himself to be as unstable and unfit as Clinton proved to be with her advocacy of war against Qaddafi’s Libya and her desire for a no-fly zone in Syria. While Clinton lusted for war as if an opiate, we now see Trump can be easily pressured into similar addiction. Watch a bully long enough; you find a coward. This flaw in Trump makes him a walking tragedy in prospect.

He does not believe in anything strongly enough but his own political survival. He will sacrifice the souls of his own troops and the destinies of other nations to secure his tenancy in the Oval office. Russia is no threat to America. Trump increased the American military budget by 55 billion dollars over Obama’s last budget. That increase was approximately 10 percent of the military’s allocation. Yet, that amount is roughly equal to the entire Russian military budget. Russia’s overall GDP is less than South Korea’s. A military and economy of such limited relative dimension cannot threaten American interests. It dare not.  To cast Russia as an ominous threat is to call a puddle a pond, a pond a lake, and a lake an ocean, so by this concatenation of false equivalents a puddle becomes an ocean.

This muddled thinking brought on by the unrestrained passions of avarice and domination may not conclusively spell war but the augury of war is there for all to see and fear. Upon the flimsy reed of the collective temperament of Trump and his various henchmen hangs the peace of the world.  Mankind now dances a most dangerous dance.

 

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Strife is to the wicked as water is to the sea

The power of the gun and of money have gathered in frightening alliance to subdue collective light of the soul and of the mind of humanity. Such is the tenor of our times.

Many who continue reading will misconstrue this piece as an apology for President Trump. You would have misread my words and wasted your time.  Trump is an indigestible morsel. However, the troubles that afflict the world are of a larger dimension and come from a well deeper that this single man, no matter how brutish he may be. Trump is but a sign of the times, an augur of harsh things to come less we rectify how important things are decided and done.

To believe media attacks against Donald Trump is to be deceived by half, which in this instance, is synonymous with being deceived on the whole. Trump is a man of coarse ideas and animal disposition. He deserves to be criticized for the folly of his policies and actions. But the same charges can be levied with equal severity against most of his political opponents in the American leadership establishment.

You would be the victim of an intricate deceit to believe those who most vociferously attack him would be significantly better in guiding America and influencing world events. Trump is genuinely bad news; sadly, his rivals in the American establishment are substantially no better.

The media and establishment Democrats focus on Trump’s silly tweets and abrasive public persona. As such, they blinker you with a false equation; that his darkness means they are light. But their light is as false as his darkness is true. They fume that his tweets and comments are setting the world on fire and belittling America’s presidency. They would deceive you into believing style is weightier than substance, that air is heavier than stone.

To them an inane tweet chastising the media is more harmful to the world than a president ordering aerial strikes that kill thousands of innocent civilians by the month in the half dozen nations troubled by the American penchant to drop bombs on a wholesale basis. In Syria alone, American strikes kill an average of 500 civilians monthly. For the American elite, these deaths matter not at all when compared to Trump lampooning media houses for inaccurate reportage.

These people ferment with self-righteous indignation at Trump muddying their reputations. Yet, they cheer these distance massacres. As such, their real vocation is that of the hypocrite. Where there is hypocrisy, there is also evil. Their unequal reactions to Trump tweets and their government’s slaughter of innocents suggests a moral barrenness that should unsettle us if we maintain even a scant nexus to humane compassion. Trump may be slinging mud for the wrong reasons but he tosses much of it in the right direction. Their deeds are more soiled than any dirt Trump has hurled their way.

They question not the role of America in extinguishing the light of peoples and entire societies in faraway lands that pose no threat to American existence. They implicitly cohere to a wicked conviction that killing innocent people is inherent to the presidency. For them, the American president must be a person of such moral flagrance that he commerces in wholesale massacre in pursuit of undefined interests not vital to national security.  They then hail the president as the leader of the free world.

In recent years, the American president has been less a heroic figure and more a glorified butcher, a perpetrator of war crimes who revels in gratuitous evil veiled essential justice. For a flicker of a moment prior to the elections, candidate Trump suggested he would depart from this tradition. He lied. President Trump has embraced the tradition of bringing unnecessary death to others; this is simply integral to the presidential job description – murder and destruction in pursuit of a freer, more democratic world that never seems to come to pass despite increasing violence done in chase of it. In short, Trump does not care enough about others to do the difficult work required to amend that job description.

After ordering a drone strike a few years ago, President Obama joked he was getting good at this “killing thing.” He seemed untroubled that he had ordered the deaths of thousands of harmless women and children during his tenure. Hillary Clinton giggled and joked when told Qaddafi had been sodomized then executed. None of this was deemed to signal derangement or indecorous temperament. Yet, great umbrage is taken at Trump’s tweets. His messages may make some uncomfortable but they have yet been confirmed to have proven fatal to human life. To the imperious mind, murder is to be countenanced without reservation but a misspoken or indelicate word is grievous indeed. This is perverse.

That people like Obama and Clinton, and Bush before them, so cravenly embraced violence abroad and social indifference at home made the emergence of Trump inevitable. He is but the least groomed member of the cult of American leadership led astray by their thirst for power and their overindulgent resort to violent means to obtain wicked ends.

Trump exposes the corrosion in American democracy. If ever America was the archetypal democracy, it forfeited that mantle years ago. No matter how old and well-grounded a nation’s democracy, there always exists elitists and fascists who would brutally impale democracy if given the chance. 9/11 provided the opportunity of the ages. Draping what they always wanted to do in the cloak of patriotism and security, they began erecting the evil of their choosing. They created a surveillance capacity that now monitors every telephone call in and out America and most other electronic transmissions. In doing so, they have whittled down the constitutional prohibition against unreasonable search into something more honored by its breach then by obedience thereto.

They have ballooned an already bloated military machine. Such a monstrous instrumentality must be in constant use lest it collapses of its own irrationality or turns to consume its maker. Master becomes servant. The war machine has been set against nations that have done nothing against America. Their sole crime had been to follow the logic of their own interests instead of the dictates of Washington. Such governments have been listed for extermination. Any American who questions the new militarism and loss of democracy is ridiculed as naïve. If he insists in asserting his freedom of opinion, he will be colored with the scarlet letter of seditious guilt.

We have stumbled upon the crux of the matter. America is not a fecund democracy. It is a dictatorship of ideas travelling under democratic forms and institutions. The news media is controlled by a few major corporations.  Reporting is skewed to favor the community of corporate interests, not the interests of the community. People are not regarded in the main. What the company wants is the higher order. A second, informal constitution has covertly supplanted the formal, more renowned document. The preamble to the first constitution began “We the people,” Today’s operative constitution begins “We the corporations and the few who own them.”

Most Americans favor a nationalized health care system as other developed nations have. If America functioned as a democracy, most politicians would advance this objective because it is both practical and publicly desirable. However, few politicians dare. To support this position is to wave goodbye to the corporate money so vital to party politics. The objectives of the two major parties are not to answer the people’s needs. The parties’ prime objective is to obtain enough donor funds to enable candidates to campaign for office and to allow party leaders into the club of the moneyed elite. Even if they lose elections, they still win so long as the funding continues.  Plutocracy rules. Democracy laments.

Consequently, Americans are told the only choices are the byzantine Obamacare and what can before it. Trump seeks a return to the old way. The corporate establishment restricts debate to these two false choices. Why? Choose either; the establishment still profits similarly. For the elite it is win-win. For the people, lose-lose. Thus, health care encourages relatively little debate compared to the storm brewing over childish Trump tweets and allegations of collusion with Russia.

The media hysteria over Russia should trouble everyone; these antics presage the further reduction of democracy and the possible approach of more needless war. Trump is a traditional right-wing elitist on domestic policy. Thus, the media gives him mostly a free pass on his unjust policies. They berate him on style and the true reason for that is his slight deviation on foreign policy.

The American war elite, which includes almost every political institution and major figure in Washington, targets Russia and Iran in that order. Trump departed from this. Coming into office, he was fixated on Iran but wanted a cozy time with Moscow. The elite would not tolerate this slight amendment. Russia had the effrontery to checkmate American designs in Ukraine and Syria. For this compound wrong, Russia tops the list of nations to be disciplined if not utterly crushed.

Not a career political insider, Trump was unaware the decision to maul Russia had already been made by a permanent elite more powerful than any occupant of the White House. Putin had to be taught a lesson so that Russia might never again interfere with American global designs.

To scare Trump off Russia, the fable of Russian hacking and of Trump collusion became the primary fare of corporate media. Every trick has been deployed to get people to believe this as an article of faith. The media has concluded Russia hacked the election because they were ordered by their bosses to publish this canard.

It is said Russia hacked the Democratic Party computers. However, no federal agency has examined the computers. The conclusion of hacking comes from private firm. Coincidentally, that firm is headed by a Russian who detests Putin.  The firm was already found to have lodged a false claim of Russian hacking against the Ukrainian military last year.  That on such an important question American intelligence agencies would accept the findings of a private firm agency with a known bias against Russia begs many questions. There is no wisdom in this.

The American media and intelligence agencies take this firm’s word as gospel not because it is true but because believing it will excuse the wrongs they seek to unleash in the name of global peace and order.

The American media reported that Russia hacked the French election. French agencies openly contradicted the report. Still, American media harps on alleged Russian election hacking. Foul play occurred in the election but the true foul was cooked in the very kitchen of the American establishment. Purported statements from disaffected members of the Clinton campaign suggest the Russia hacking story was invented to cover what was a devastating blow to Clinton and the bulk of the establishment.

Both Democratic and Republican establishment sided with Clinton yet she lost. That she ran a horrid campaign could not be the final verdict. That would give too much legitimacy to Trump and also show the trick they played had boomeranged against them. These masters of the universe had outsmarted themselves. More so than losing to Trump, they were beaten by their arrogance. They invented the narrative of a stolen election to conceal the truer account that theirs had been a plot to engineer the outcome that had gone terribly awry. The collusion was not between Trump and Russia.

The real collusion was the overlapping connections between the Clinton faction of the establishment and the corporate media.

There is a credible body of evidence indicating that media houses purposefully gave an inordinate free coverage to Trump, Ted Cruz and Ben Carson during the Republican primaries. The reason was not that the trio was imminently newsworthy. The rationale was more sordid. It had been decided to elevate these men because they were perceived as the weakest rivals to Clinton among the herd of Republican candidates. The calculation was that Clinton would have a far easier time in a one-on-one election against one of the three than against someone like Ohio Governor John Kasich.

Thus, Trump became the beneficiary of billions of dollars in free media coverage. Ironically, this turned out to be the biggest self-inflicted wound in American political history. Clinton and her allies concocted their own poison. The undisciplined bronco Clinton and the establishment selected as their pace horse beat them down the stretch.

Neither they nor Clinton accurately weighed the anger of the electorate. Trump spoke to the feelings of enough people. Meanwhile enough people recognized the artificiality of Clinton. They knew she only spoke for the big and powerful. Although Trump was one of the elite, he forged with some voters an intimate, visceral connection alien to Clinton’s aloofness. Clinton and the media joined to handicap the election in her favor. She still lost. That which is fated not to be, shall not be.

The evidence of Clinton collusion with the media is more substantial than that of Trump collusion with Russia. While in neither instance is there sufficient evidence to sway a court of law, it remains odd that the collusion with the stronger evidence remains swept beneath the carpet while the weaker case is depicted as fully proven.

Stung by their self-injury, the media and establishment have determined to get Trump to behave or topple him. Trump has responded by fighting the media while trying to satisfy the military, which is a portion of the power structure that even this political novice came to quickly understand is stronger than he. Trump’s strategy is to secure his possession by getting the elite’s strong muscle, the military and the conservative factions of law enforcement, on his side.

Trump flails at the corporate media every chance he gets. This makes him look undignified. He cares less. Dignity was never his strong suit. Meanwhile, he has pulled the media into a street brawl where they too look grimy. The media has stuck its head in his snare. Their reportage of him is too subjective and overtly prejudicial. If they were objective professionals, they would have maintained some decorum and objectivity. They go after Trump with tooth and claw bared.

In that Trump was always a reduced commodity, his ability to trick the media to descend to his level means he has won the larger war against them. Surely, they will win future battles and skirmishes against him because of his excessive nature and lack of coherence when faced with complex issues. However, he has caused them to reveal that they are not in the profession of impartial journalism but are but the hired larynx of a section of the American elite. This is a good thing for it will help people identify those critical places where American democracy is in need of the greatest repair. This will be one of the sparse, unintended benefits of a Trump presidency.

The dangers of his presidency far exceed any contemplated benefits. The man is a bully; thus he is also a coward. Faced with the reality that the vast array of the American political structure wants to bend Russia to its will, Trump has shown that he will not stand against this even though he knows confrontation with Russia is wrong and reckless. Thus, he has shifted from his position of befriending Russia. To satisfy the power structure and hopefully secure its acquiesce to his administration, he moves to be-foe Russia.

Syria is the flashpoint of probable collision as is Ukraine to a lesser extent. That America has   perturbed the delicate nuclear balance by partially surrounding Russia’s western borders with antiballistic missile systems cannot be ignored. That the crass Trump is perhaps slightly more restrained in his militarism than many who pass as America’s best statesmen sings to the lunacy of our times and to a gross defect in American political thought. The world is being pushed to toward war by men too blind and arrogant to see that their desire to rule everything is what has buried past empires.

The actions they think will expand their empire may bury it. We pray that they will not ignite generalized war in the process. In a world being hurled by such a dynamic, the least of our worries are Trump’s tweets – better to suffer imperfect tweets than perfected war.

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A mighty army is required to defend a great nation yet but one froward tongue can destroy it.

Due to the specious leadership in both the Democratic and Republican clans, America has cast itself into an existential struggle. It fights to seek which of its inferior selves will become the nation’s dominant visage. Withered, perhaps, gone is the best of America, orphaned by the decision of the nation’s modern leaders to sell themselves to venal special interests that seek a powerful nation populated by a weak, debt-subservient populace. The contradiction is obvious yet lost on those engineering this asymmetry.

Since the era that terminated with the Civil Rights Movement, America’s national leaders have increasingly shunned the pursuit of economic justice and reform. They have accepted a growing inequality as if the inevitable order of things. Their policy has been to fool the poor, accommodate the wealthy and personally advance as far as Machiavellian ambition and lack of principle can take a career operative. The sole difference between Republican and Democrat is the pace and fashion of implementing the barren policy.

As with all empires, America’s greatest danger is of the homespun variety. Maintenance of an empire built on military prowess and far-flung holdings is not conducive to the long-term governance of the nation at the core of imperial project. Geographic expansion beyond its close proximity does not enhance a nation. Such expansion is purchased at the exorbitant cost of internal improvement and social justice. No land has ever managed to be fairly governed at home yet perpetually expansive in its conquests and military reach.

By the 1930’s, the British empire was being torn both inside and out. Colonies, with India at the forefront, clamored to break old shackles. The British working class seethed with unrest at the austere reply of their government to the exigencies created by the Great Depression. The British elite saw communists everywhere, under their beds, in their closets, drawing crowds in Hyde Park and leading independence movements in distant but dear colonies.

Due to this fear, the British ruling class fraternized with the authoritarian lunatic enthroned in Berlin until he finally turned on them. Had he not done so, they might be siding with him still. The appetite of the rich and powerful conceals them from the poignant lesson. All they see is domestic and foreign conquest. They see not the danger of their ways. Both military conquest abroad and financial conquest of the home population depart from the democratic openness and vitality that helped prosper the nation. At such a point, the nation flirts with decay only to marries decline.

Today, this historic phenomenon regarding the self evisceration of empires is coupled with the modern debt peonage affecting most Americans due to the rapid conversion of the national economy from mean capitalism to carnassial financialism. Only the financial sector and big corporations allied to it profit. All others must take on ever increasing debt to maintain a modest standard of living. The harder an American works, the more indebted he becomes. He works not for the good of his family or community; he works to remain one step ahead of the bill collectors who seek to torment him and extract his last dollar in payment of some obligation he is convinced to bear in order to be possessed of the American way of life. He has been deceived to acquire real debt to purchase false prosperity.

Car, television and home, all are mostly borrowed, not owned. With so much debt placed upon him, the borrower belongs to his creditors. America is not a nation of the free. Despite its great abundance, America is the land of modern day sharecroppers and debt serfs. Such economic feudalism is not the basis for greatness. Any person who seeks to lead but not reform this iniquity cannot be trusted with the welfare of the average person. Sadly, both Republican and Democratic elites are wedded to this profound unfairness.

America borrowed much from ancient Rome. Like Rome at its zenith, its military prowess is unrivaled. Rome was also the first major society from the Mediterranean/Mesopotamian outcrop of civilizations to dispense with the curative of periodic debt forgiveness for the poor debtor, even the slave. In Rome, money lenders and the military took undue control, corrupting the political class and the important institutions of the political economy; all was slowly drained of vitality; then all was lost. Clownish and ghoulish dictators came to rule where august figures once led.  The lesson America seems to have learned from its remarkable ignorance of history is that, in the case of empire, it is best to do as the Romans did. The outcome will be the same.

Because the American political elite treated the populace with such cool disdain for such a long time, enough people revolted to elect Donald Trump. He came about not so much because people wanted him. They wanted to signal to the smug establishment that something profound was missing from governance and from their lives. A vote for Trump was an act of desperate rebellion, of mindless defiance. Sadly, this symbolic gesture brought to power an actor fixed on doing the opposite of what most of his voters had in their hearts. They voted for Trump because he was new and they had their fill of the old establishment. That he chucked stones at parts of the establishment deceived them into believing he was for them. Yet, the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend. You need to carefully study the basis for their disagreement. Their dispute may be limited to a difference in how to carve and cook you then who shall dine on your choicest morsels.

Instead of a hero, the people selected a buffoonish impostor with an ill temper and a dictator’s heart. He is a bloated caricature of America gone wrong in much the same way Nero personified the felony that Rome had become unto its citizens. While one must blame Trump for what he does, the blame for his presence in the White House lies with establishment Democrats. In the smug comfort of their inflated intellectual prowess and false moral superiority, they were blind to the travesty they had made of themselves. In truly imperial style, Obama treated the party as subservient to his ambitions. During his years in office, he soaked up all the sunlight, allowing the party to desiccate as an organization. Structures at the state and local levels atrophied. His concern stretched no farther than the Oval Office. Rarely has a two-year incumbent left his party organization in such tatters.

Compounding this error, the Democrats ran perhaps the only candidate who could lose to Trump. Clinton deepened the ditch into the party would fall by embarking on one of the most insipid campaigns in the annals of American national elections. It was as if the Democrats tried to lose. The sad truth is that, for establishment Democrats, losing to the Republicans is not much of a defeat. Over the years, the parties have become increasingly combative over social issues. The feuds over abortion, gun control, gay marriage are intense.

This veils a deeper truth, deceiving the innocent into believing the parties are far apart. The parties spend more time battering each other over these few issues because they stand in general accord on the order of things economic and financial. Regarding core economic and national security issues that really dictate the trajectory of a nation, the leadership of the two parties are kissing cousins. The incessant partisan battle over these other emotional issues is but a mirage to cover the profane unity between the parties on how the bread is cut and who gets most of the slices.

Be not distracted by the theatrics surrounding Trump’s presidency. He sees himself as a man of action, In fact, he is a child of privilege who has the scornful disposition to prove it. He is prone to say what comes to mind notwithstanding the quality of the idea. The media has frenzied over this. Yet,  most of what they focus on is but straw in the wind. The media has feasted for days over the spurious claim that Obama wiretapped Trump’s phones. This is silly confusion. The media conveniently forgets to remind people the NSA illegally eavesdrops on every phone call in America. Obama needn’t specially tap any phone. Trump’s calls were already captured in the NSA universal dragnet.  In a manner, Trump is both right and wrong in claiming his conversations were surveilled.

But this skips the larger issue. After NSA illegal operations have been disclosed, they have not been ended. America has blatantly gone from a nation of laws into one where government can flagrantly break the law by rationalizing the illegal excess as necessary to battle terrorism and protect national security. This is not the hallmark of a mature democracy. It is in the manner of a police state where weak leaders feign strength by scaring people into the forfeiture of their rights. The people are told they are being kept safe from a wicked and omnipresent enemy. Yet, these enemies are neither numerous nor strong enough to harm but a handful of the 300 million people who are America. It is more likely an American will be struck by lighting than by a terrorist. To complement his proposed southern wall, perhaps Trump will build a ceiling over the nation to protect people from the terror of a chance lighting strike.

Establishment Democrats, Republicans and media obsess that Russia “hacked” the election to favor Trump. That there is no proof of this seems not to bother those spewing the tale. They can’t even prove Russia hacked the Democratic Party’s computers. There is no sign of Russia tampering with election machines or tabulations. Consequently, there is no evidence that Russia influenced one single vote. That such nonsense and non-proof are paraded as sure evidence of Russian perfidy can mean but one thing. The establishment wants confrontation with Russia for reasons they dare not disclose. They will not allow facts to obstruct such designs. Thus, they must beat Trump into submission. Trump’s position toward Russia is the wisest tree in his thicket of folly. Yet, it is the thing for which he has drawn the most ire. He is not used to pressure and to standing alone. Eventually, he will succumb to the dictates of the establishment, that powerful state within a state.

We dare not think Trump a pacifist. He merely thinks clashing with Russia is bad business. Like the rest of the establishment, he remains in need of foreign monsters to kill and foes to maim. He would just rather bully a less powerful Iran. Overcoming Iran and taking its oil is a less troublesome venture than confronting Russia. There is no true restraint in American leadership. They all seek to subdue some nation and exterminate some false enemy. Trump’s problem is not that he has the concept wrong; he simply prioritized the wrong foe as public enemy number one.

Even Trump’s travel ban is a relatively minor infraction. At most, a few thousand people in a world of 7 billion are touched. More concern is placed on the ban than on why America bombs the lands from whence these people come. Halting the bombing would be a humane act toward stemming the flow of refugees. Should not the death of thousands of innocents concern us more than whether a few are lucky enough to escape the carnage.

Mercy dictates that safe haven be granted to those fortunate in escaping the hellish bombing. Yet, it would be better to end the wanton destruction and have no refugees than to ignore the bombing yet encourage refugees. The latter is but a hallow consolation to genuine humanitarian concern. Pandering always to the lesser truth, the American media berates Trump for the bigoted travel ban. However, the media mentions not a word that the new administration has escalated the pace of bombing these African and Middle Eastern nations in excess of Obama’s already high levels. Seems that it is fine to kill multitudes as long as you don’t treat rudely the handful that make it to your border. The morality of this position is curious and could not be more perverse.

Fortunately, the courts have nullified Trump’s travel order. Yet, Trump has a sobering trump card of his own to play. The way his administration will mince the lives of poor and working class Americans may answer his refugee problem. America will become such a harsh place to its own that only the most intrepid foreigner will seek respite there.

The bitter truth is that for all of Trump’s foolery, there is little difference between him and the united Democratic/Republican establishment. Elite Democrats are no longer liberals or leftists. They are the Republicans of the thirty years ago. Today’s Republicans are yesterday’s reactionaries. Republicans have defined the American political economy since 1980. Instead of fighting this, the Clintons and Obama joined the choir. On the economic issue which most people vote, the difference between Clinton and Trump was minor. In fact, Trump was more left-leaning on trade and job creation than Clinton. Thus, the election boiled down to a choice between a wild but real Republican and Democrat who acted like a Republican. In such a contest, the Republican usually wins. Democrats immolated themselves with the losing strategy of being Republicans in Democratic dressing. Not only did Clinton lose, Democrats were decimated in all elections from president to town crier.

Stylistically, Clinton/Obama and Trump are worlds apart. Trump is a disheveled waste bin while Obama and Clinton cut the accustomed figure of a political leader, albeit in different ways. Yet, in terms of where they want to take America, this unlikely trio occupies the same room. They sit side by side. They seek to further institutionalize an economy tilted in favor to those who need no favors. These people want to turn Social Security into a private pension so Wall Street can profit in multiple billions of dollars from the fees and commission that would newly arise from such wrongful engineering.

They seek to turn public education into a private, for profit enterprise as well. They call this freedom of choice. In reality, is will give poor people less opportunity to overcome the education gap, assuring their status as a permanent underclass with no social mobility, accentuated by no social services due to the massive budget cuts that will imminently ensue. The choice this really gives to the people who need help is but one: abject failure.

Democrats and Republicans spar over the health insurance law. This shadowboxing has little to do with actual health care. Any insurance law Trump may pass will closely resemble Obama’s, except the new version will exacerbate the flaws of the prior one. With Obamacare, the gigantic insurance firms did a public relations masterpiece. They publicly complained about Obamacare but privately profited due to the measure’s lax cost controls. They will profit even more under whatever careless remedy Trump may concoct. The people will suffer a great hidden cost, that of a lost vision for something profoundly better. Burdened by Trump’s monstrous repair, they will dream of returning to the flawed Obamacare instead of hoping for something better like the cheaper, more efficient universal health care extant in other Western nations.

Perhaps Obama is more at ease with a Trump victory that we dare believe. Conventional wisdom was that Obama wanted Clinton to preserve his legacy. However, his tenure was one of heady oratory but policy in the miniature. The best way to preserve such a meager legacy may be to destroy it, then institute something worse in its place.  The glass barely full is only better than no glass at all. A slave who moves from a master that beats him once weekly to one where beating is a daily affair starts to view the prior warden more favorably. Freedom stops being the option most considered. In this way, the slave becomes an unwitting accomplice in his own servitude. Such is the way of America.

American leadership is now a choice between wrong and wronger. What is right is no longer part of the bidding. Greatness recedes. Mediocrity and compromise take hold. Leaders who are smaller than the issues confronting them are selected because the power behind the power bristle at change. They want a government that functions to secure their dominate position. It is as if the rich and powerful hold a mortgage on the rest of the nation. The sons of debtor families are sent to war in distant nations for reasons they barely understand. They fight a thousand miles away from their shores but are told they protect the homeland. Becoming comfortable with such lies, a nation steals its own greatness. Decay scribes its name on all institutions, great and small. Evil readily enters. Not long afterwards, so does someone like Trump.

 

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