Tag: America

It is the foolish farmer who buys a goat expecting it will sire a calf

The world seems more unprepared for a Trump presidency than Trump is unprepared to occupy that office. Though Trump’s victory was an upset, it should not have been an utter surprise. Donald Trump represents a strain of hard-bent Americanism almost as old as the republic itself. Trump is a far more accurate envoy of American history social realities that the aberrant Obama or the aloof Hillary Clinton. Obama was an experiment that failed to produce the extraordinary results required to justify it to those Americans who were intrinsically opposed to such an exotic presidency. Obama did not exude Americana. He was afternoon tea and crumpets, a taste of wine and caviar, served with panache and slight hint of soul. For all of his money, Trump has the style of a long-distance teamster. While he may serve the most exquisite cuisine in his private banquets, his personality speaks of hamburgers and french fries served on a paper plate, all to be washed down with a mug of cheap beer.
In a nation that globally advertises itself as the engine of global progress, Trump is an unabashed throwback yet he is also a new day coming. Trump is a man of New York City and Wall Street but circa 1950. Ensconced in the petty fiefdom enabled by his real estate fortune, Trump made a fortune in a manner related to but distinct from the global corporate financial network that controls the world economy. He was of the elite but only peripherally in terms of the functions he serves to the elite. He was wealthy but the establishment did not take him seriously. He was old school; the world had evolved beyond him.
His personalized, one-man-show way of business was quaint. Trump saw himself as a great success. The real engineers of the economy saw him as two generations behind the times.
Trump thus occupied a unique, underestimated position. He was in the elite but could portray himself as not of it. He could thus partake of its benefits and yet not be faulted for its wrongdoings. In fact, he could become an acerbic critic of the club of the wealthy despite the fact that membership in this very club has been the driving force of his existence. He was the rich man who could appeal to the poor and disgruntled man because the temperate and style of his money making deviated from that of the core establishment. Politically, this made him more potent than his opponents could fathom. He was able to take hold of an American tradition dating back to Andrew Jackson.
The seventh president, Andrew Jackson broke the monopoly Massachusetts and Virginia held on the office during the early years of the nation. He represented the frontier state of Tennessee. He was a self made man, rising from a meager beginning into a very successful military and legal careers. The first to be dubbed the “people’s president,” Jackson rallied the small farmer and common man to his side. He championed their cause against the Eastern establishment. In the view of that educated establishment, Jackson’s presidency meant the backwoods and the gutter had taken over their beloved new republic. They feared Jackson and his cohort would be the ruination of the nation so newly wrought. Their fears were exaggerated much as the establishment fears are now.
Jackson’s was raw, bigoted nationalism. Jackson loved slavery. He hated immigrants. The America he envisioned was for Anglophonic whites only. He would drive the industrious, peaceful and literate Cherokees and other great native tribes from their lands in southeastern United States to push them to harsh reservations westward. Thousands died during the forced march of over one thousand miles. This exile would be known among Native Americans as the “Trail of Tears.” It was worse than that. If you know the strain of American politics that produced Andrew Jackson then you perhaps could foresee the electoral success of Donald Trump. Him and his policy to construct a wall to thwart illegal immigration are but the progeny of the Jacksonian political tradition.
Trump, like Jackson before him, appealed to the insecurities of the average white man. In Jackson’s time, the dream was to own a farm. The common man believed the elite wanted to turn them into laborers or reduce him to servitude not much different than the black man. This is one of the reasons, poor white came to loathe the black man. In the present time, the dream is have a secure job that provides such a wage sufficient to purchase a home, a car and take the occasional family vacation. The people feel the elite wants to take this from them, reducing them to modern peonage and third world work conditions and wages. Judging from the looks of things for the past few decades, the people have the bulk of evidence on their side. The time was ripe for an eruption of old-fashioned Jacksonian politics.
Though a novice at electioneering, Trump is an astute if bawdy salesman. He understood the mood of the people better than his opponents did. He brewed an effective moonshine, mixing bigotry on cultural matters with a surprisingly progressive stance on economic policy and on foreign policy toward Russia. As such, he appealed to the raw prejudice of many who still envision America as a nation by, for and of white people, with blacks in a secondary yet accepted role. The influx of so many people of so many different hues from so many other lands ruined this simple picture and thus befuddled many Americans. They see danger in the demographic evolution taking place. They seek to arrest the tide. On these issues, Trump dug in like a staunch nationalist. He protected his right flank.
On economic matters such as trade and jobs, Trump outflanked the Democrats to the left. His position on the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty (TPP) resonated with both the conservative who saw the TPP as an affront to national sovereignty but also with many liberals who saw the TPP as an attack by the global corporate machinery against the working class and poor. The confluence of these two trends of support was enough for Trump to upset the coronation of Hillary Clinton and to assume the White House for himself.
This vain, temperamental and jaundiced man now leads the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. His ascent is more an account of the defeat of Clinton and the establishment than of a Trump victory. The establishment erred in believing its control of mass media gave it equivalent control over public opinion. Unknown to the elite, enough average people would reject the mainstream propaganda so as to quash the anticipated victory of Mrs. Clinton. Trump’s victory was a repudiation of the establishment attempt to hoodwink people into believing that Clinton was the only and best thing possible. Even if they did not know whether Donald Trump was the truth, they viscerally knew that Clinton was not.
The powerful interests that Clinton represented would fight back. They see themselves as the architects of a new world. They are not about to let all that fall due to the antics of the braggart with the unkempt orange mane. He attacked them and they would counterattack. As usual, their primary tool would be the corporate global media. Their secondary tool would be to finance protests by allegedly progressive groups on their corporate payrolls. To see this as a fight of good versus evil, virtue against vice is to miss the entire point. The current battle of the American institutional media against Trump is one of bad versus worse; we have yet to figure out which side will prove the most egregious in their wrongdoing. America has reached the point where night and day are enemies of each other because they are both too much the same thing.
We have experienced the first month of Trump in office. There have been quakes but civilization has not been destroyed. Life on earth still chugs awkward toward itself.
The media reports the White House is near chaos. Trump retorts that his White House is already a well oiled machine despite its brief tenure on the difficult playing field. The truth is that this month has not been nearly as disastrous for Trump as the media claims nor has it been a sign that Trump is an angel of Providence as he asserts. Three main issues describe the month: 1) Trump’s rejection of the TPP, 2) his immigration policy, including the failed travel ban, and 3) his policy toward Russia.
Trump is no savior except in his own mind. But he is also no demon though millions of people have concluded this of him. He is possessed of a dangerous egoism that tells its owner whatever he feels is right notwithstanding the avalanche of actual facts that speak to the contrary. This gives him the capacity to do great harm. Yet, he has done no great harm thus far. If we are to look at the three major issues of this first month, we must say that Trump is on the better side on two of them.
Trump’s stand on immigration, especially the travel ban, is odious. The media played this to the hilt. Yet, something is amiss. The travel ban violates the constitution in such a fundamental way that I see no other way a reasonable judge to decide than to discard the measure. People had a right even a duty to protest the hateful policy. Yet, in the overall scheme of things they protested too much against too little. They were protesting more the image of the man than the weight of what he had done. Trump banned entry of people from seven designated nations. Not by coincidence, these nations are ones the Obama administration had bombed for reasons less than wholesome, killing thousands of innocent people in the process. In Yemen, the administration has dropped bombs on a people’s movement, on fighters seemingly struggling for their freedom. Also in Yemen, Obama executed several American citizens without attempting to arrest or charging them with a crime. Such extrajudicial killings are more sinister violations of the core of the American constitution much more than Trump’s recent pettiness.
The media and left acquiesced as Obama trespassed the constitution and moral decency by engaging in these killings and bombings. There were no issues of conscience or even the smallest protests at wrongful deaths caused by Obama. Yet, Trump’s attempted ban is greeted by supreme outrage. Banning travelers because of religious affiliation is horrid policy. Yet, I can think of worse. Obama certainly thought of and did worse. Killing people is a greater evil. In fact, if America was not so intent on bombing these places or fomenting war therein, fewer refugees would seek America’s shores. Trump’s ban was bad. The prior administration’s bombing campaign was worse. That the left and the media would remain silent at wrongful deaths yet turn the spigot of self-righteousness to castigate the lesser wrong of denying entry into America is sheer hypocrisy. If they cannot protest the greater harm it seems illogical to demonstrate against the lesser one with such vehemence.
In his first week, Trump renounced the TPP. Steeped in secrecy, the TPP contained provisions amounting to an unprecedented transfer of government sovereignty into the hands of the global corporate network. National governments would have been further hamstrung from enacting measures the corporate world disliked as if this were not already a problem. Rejection of the TPP may be the best act of his entire presidency. He saved the working class in many nations for great harm. hat he might in the future act to undermine the economic welfare of people is a possibility that cannot be dismissed. Yet, for today, he saved rather than forfeited the common man. Meanwhile, Obama and Clinton Democrats had dressed themselves as pied pipers and Judas goats eager to lead naive followers to the abattoir. The mystery remains why Obama was such an unabashed champion of this horrid pact. In burying the deal, Trump made himself a mortal enemy of the global corporate complex. Those who hate Trump so feverishly, should cool down a bit to better grasp what this means.
The elites are after him with a vengeance. Many common people will be fooled. Because they share a dislike for Trump, people will think the corporate complex is own their side. They will not understand that their dislike for Trump comes from an angle different than the corporate complex’s animus. They will ally with the complex in fighting Trump not even realizing the corporate complex may be the greater enemy. Institutional media would have succeeded in its primary but clandestine mission: getting people to support issues and institutions that actually flow against their real interests.
Last, Trump is being pilloried for his stance toward Russia. In American politics, hatred toward Russia is now an article of faith. To seek a cordial relationship with Russia is apostasy. Democrats have surpassed Republicans as hot warmongers. The drums of war are beaten without the slightest reticence. Stoking hatred against Russia is madness.
Russia has done little to warrant the animosity. The claim that Russia influenced the American election is legerdemain, an attempt to deflect attention from the real cause of the election result. Democrats and the media repeatedly proclaim Russia influenced the election. They also assert the email revelations about candidate Clinton were of minor importance. Both positions cannot be true.
The gravamen of the complaint against Moscow is that it released hacked emails from Clinton and the Democratic Party. Well, if those emails were inconsequential and had not bearing, then Russia did not sway the election. If those emails did sway the election, then the real culprit is not Russia for it did not fabricate the emails. If the emails tell a sordid tale of Clinton and her campaign, the real culprits are Clinton and her campaign. She is liable for her own doings. Don’t pin this on any other party save the ones that authored the damaging missives. Moreover, evidence is scant that Moscow hacked the emails. More likely, the disclosures resulted from leaks by Clinton operatives disenchanted by her legendary underhandedness.
Still, the media and the political establishment is on an all-out offensive to pressure Trump to abandon hope of a decent relationship with Russia. The intelligence community already ruined Obama’s tepid try at cooperation with Russia in Syria. They did that by purposefully bombing Syrian army positions immediately after the American-Russian agreement for cooperation on Syria was executed. Some important power blocs in America want hot confrontation with Russia for reasons only they know. I see no good coming of such a situation. At the moment, Trump is the lone prominent American figure standing against martial enthusiasts getting their way. If they manage to weaken him to the point where he must follow their direction, war with Russia becomes a likelihood.
Those who wish for the quick demise of Trump and a return to the “normalcy” of the corporate complex and a president of that ilk should partake of a deep rethink. We are in a dangerous jetty. This is no time to allow ourselves to be deceived by those adept at tugging on our emotions. We can’t allow our disdain for Trump to lure us into accepting policies that might be even worse in the long run. We are not in a situation where the options are between good and bad. Things are more delicate. We must now navigate among bad, worse and truly disastrous. In such a clime, your most obvious enemy may sometimes be the closest thing you have to a friend. The time for wisdom of counsel and not the counsel of anger is upon us.
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