By Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog
Since 1996 Americans have proven that they know their own country: polls show they have correctly picked the winner of the popular vote every time. Even though Trump’s approval rating is under 50% and poll aggregates show he trails by 8%, Gallup just asked who they think will win and 56% of Americans picked Trump, including 24% of Democrats, while just 40% picked Biden.
That’s a big spread, but it confirms what everybody tells me from small towns to Chicago, and I ask everyone. It’s pretty pathetic to see the fear in the eyes of some Biden supporters – you aren’t Afghans planning a wedding party during the Obama era, ok?
Given the extraordinary economic disaster and mass unemployment (in a country with no social safety net) it seems totally impossible for any incumbent to survive, but we should not forget that Democrats are the half of the duopoly which is paid to lose: they are here to provide a safety valve against real leftism (they are Bernie Sanders writ large), and to divert people away from leftist solutions to America’s lack of a social safety net with fake-leftist divisiveness.
Trump has caught coronavirus, and – I’m sure he’s saying – it’s the biggest, most stupendous, most world-famous case of corona ever! It is – Trump is finally not over-selling. But so will be the recovery, no? A recovered Trump (and a 74-year old man has just a 3% chance of dying after contracting corona) who doesn’t make Biden’s willingness for even more devastating, unbearable, technocratic lockdowns a top-two issue would prove that corona does indeed cause lasting brain damage.
The Deep State and their proxies have obviously done everything – fair or foul – they could to stop Trump, and yet I haven’t seen anyone discuss the idea that the White House corona outbreak was injected there on purpose? If anybody could and would do it – and then see Trump survive and overturn their best-laid plans – it would be US Democrats, no?
Trump has the good fortune of running against a Democratic Party which – the ousting of Bernie Sanders and the elevation of Kamala Harris shows – is dominated by a tiny cabal of well-connected Clintonistas, the corporate board members residing in one of the world’s biggest tax havens (the state of Delaware, home of Biden) and Hollywood media liberals who will get incredibly upset at my upcoming use of the term “Frenchmen” instead of “Frenchx”.
Indeed, the biggest achievement of US liberals since 2016 may merely be forcing people to use “Latinx” instead of “Latino/a”. At the “China: Isn’t It Time to Turn To Us?” first presidential debate I don’t recall Biden uttering the word “impeachment”, and he definitely didn’t talk about Russiagate – Democrats can’t possibly run on their own pathetic record?
Yes, the US is such a politically-ignorant country that Trump can accuse “Corporate Joe” Biden of being a “radical socialist” and actually find believers, but Western fake-leftist parties are increasingly being punished by voters for their “right-wing economics and right-wing foreign policy but with political correctness” platform.
It’s amazing that the Clintonista faction wasn’t forced from power after stunningly losing to a reality show star in 2016, but if they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory again will there finally be a fair reckoning?
Could defeat in November break up the ossified, out-of-touch and certainly ineffective Democratic Party?
There is a recent Western precedent for such an abrupt exit: the Socialist Party of France.
In 2017 they were rejected so emphatically that their perpetual post-WWII duopoly-dominance became quickly irrelevant; the fact that in 2012 they won both the presidency and 36% more seats than any other party in Parliament became quickly irrelevant. What cost the Socialist Party was the patsy Francois Hollande’s appalling backtracking on his campaign promise to end austerity – it finally became totally clear to Frenchmen that the Socialist Party should be called the “Neoliberal Party of Brussels”.
The French left remains in total disarray, as they should be, given how they refused to listen to their constituents and how they proved themselves to be elitist, duplicitous and amoral technocrats. The trend in France is for the Green Party to be given a chance next, as they are the only other not-yet-discredited option other than the tiny true left and the “paper tiger” far-right.
Yes, unlike the US the French political spectrum contains more than just two parties, but the bigger difference is that the French voter was smart enough to be out for blood in 2017: the #1 reason people voted for Emmanuel Macron was to block Marine Le Pen, but the #2 most-stated reason was to sweep both mainstream parties out from entrenched power – it worked spectacularly well against the Socialist Party.
The United States is far more more prone to hysterical fear-mongering than the cool and politically-experienced French, and “never Trump derangement syndrome” does help explain why there isn’t a similar “cast your vote to kill the mainstream party” movement like France had in 2017. Of course, votes for Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries were made for precisely this reason – this is totally forgotten/covered-up/ignored/misunderstood in 2020 USA.
Such a movement is certainly good sense (which American leftists rarely have), though, as well as political justice.
Yet it seems impossible to imagine someone like Nancy Pelosi – eating her $13 ice cream while getting an illegal high-class haircut – wouldn’t be made the fall-guy (“fall-guyx”?) for yet another Democratic debacle, but was there any change whatsoever after Hillary’s loss?
Is there any doubt that a Biden win wouldn’t see Hillary taking a top cabinet post, replete with royal re-coronation media coverage? Hillary’s certain return is never, ever discussed here because it would obviously turn many voters away from the Democrats in disgust, even though she’s already said she’s ready to join Biden’s administration. A vote for Biden is indeed a vote for Hillary.
But when did Democratic Party leadership ever care about being popular among the masses?
They don’t have to care because the reality is that the American system is incredibly undemocratic at the upper level. Maybe at the local levels we can talk about a face-off between a small town’s two richest lawyers as being a marginally democratic election, but at the top the American system is a most-rigid Politburo dominated by politicians, lobbyist-connected generals and billionaires who never even paid lip service to ideals which weren’t grasping Western individualism, self-righteous arrogance and realpolitik greed.
Forty years ago Democrats in Detroit and in the farming Delta may have said things which condemned those obvious flaws in the neo-aristocratic (bourgeois) US model, but now Democrats only say such things at election time. Take, for example, the discussions about African-American reparations during the Democratic primaries – LOL, no top Democrat has talked about that since Biden’s victory, and they won’t again… until 2024.
Cynically insist all you want that the Democratic Party, the oldest voter-based party in the world, is too entrenched, too privileged and has had too long to game the system in order to ever pay the price for such phony politics, but history says otherwise – just ask France’s fake-leftists.
Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.
Trumps their man and don’t ever forget it,he’s one of the picks of the 1% if not he wouldn’t have been in the election, and he was the one picked to win he rest is nothing but bullshit and propaganda, as he loaded up his inner circle with neocons which of course fits right in because Trumps a neocon too and Biden’s no different.
Trumps done nothing for the working class and why they would vote for him remains a big question,he’s spent trillions on the 1% let the rest eat cake,75% of all bankrupcies are due to medical bills but everything must turn a profit so there’s no change within the medical field and they will keep running it until they can’t, and that’s not far away!!!!
i agree. and if it wasn’t the case, he would of been taken out long ago.
there’s not the slightest chance anything can change thru the presidential election, even if the re-incarnation of the che made to the white house. we’re talking about thousands of greedy people on all levels of government running the show.
Mr. Dogg, Trump’s base is solidly Christian Zionist. They think the Earth was created 6000 years ago. You will never ever talk them out of that, just like you will never ever talk them out of voting for Trump. Pastor John Hagee says that there are 50 freakin’ million of these no-nothings, all ready to vote for Trump. And, they all have guns. Heaven help us all…
Yes, we’re defeating the feckless and immoral duplicitous scum of the Democratic Party. Only out of it’s ashes might there be a chance of creating a genuinely nationalist, populist, and yes, socialist party to give the GOP some actual competition.
Good people on all sides. We just need some real political options and real representation, not robber baron Capitalism under the camouflage of identity politics.
The analogy to the French 2017 presidential election has a big wrench in the gears: Macron was 100% fabricated by their mainstream media which is 25% subsidized by the taxpayers, but 100% owned by billionaires. In the US, the mainstream media is shamelessly anti-Trump and a large part of the electorate understands this, even if only about Trump the man.
However, it’s accurate to compare the Democrat Party to the French Socialist Party. Without getting into too many specifics, both parties sold their voters into destitution and wars for over a century.
I am now 98% convinced that all candidates are Manchrian Candidates. My guess is that Reagan was the first
Manchurian Candidate. Reagan’s inexplicable behavior as President referring to movies that he played in as serving time in war, and the fact that this was tolerated and he was not forcibly impeached on the grounds of mental incompetency by congress basically is proof that he was not in charge, and everyone agreed to pretend that he was and had everything under control. George W. Bush also exhibited Manchurian Candidate Behavior. Hillary Clinton also displayed Manchurian Candidate bizarre and inexplicable behavior as well as the Secret Services’ MIB ( Men In Black ) control over her, and I believe that Trump and Biden are also Manchurian Candidates, as well as Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff. I think that George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama did not pose any threat to the “intelligence” community and deep-state, otherwise, they probably would have had illegal surgery performed on them, but Bill Clinton and Barack Obama may have been on hypnotics for mind control. George Herbert Walker Bush was the head of the CIA, so, I doubt that he was a Manchurian Candidate. So, they are kind of crazy cyborgs controlled by evil monsters, which is not very comforting or encouraging. I guess that the Secret Service is in charge of all of this, from what I witnessed with Hillary Clinton.
Andrea Iravani
I was with you until the “hypnotics”. There is a far better explanation: all those people are basically con men and women who lied their way to public office and then did whatever was necessary to stay there. Nothing more.
Well, you might be right on Clinton and Obama. Obama broke all of his promises to his voters, which is the trend in politics. Promises from a politician now carry as much weight as promises from a using drug addict. Honest people just find this baffling and bewildering. It is why I thought that maybe they are Manchurian Candidates. Maybe it is just a cop out tactic that they are attempting to gas light people into believing. The say that even a person under hypnosis cannot be compelled to do something that they find morally wrong. I have no experience in hypnotizing people or in people under hypnosis and how they react, so I really do not have any direct knowledge of it, but the CIA has had MKULTRA as well as Manchurian Candidate program and logic would dictate that if they wanted to control anyone’s mind in particular, it would be politicians and the extremely wealthy, or, maybe that is the psy-op, to convince people that they are not responsible for their own actions because of a mind control program. Clinton was a con artist of epic proprtions. He had a history of corruption for his entire career with CIA drug cartel and trafficking planes in Arkansas that he was aware of as Governor, in addition to everything else that he was involved with and the trail of dead bodies as well as the trail of what he referred to as “nuts and sluts” or women that he used and if they came forward they were either accused of being a nut or a slut.
Bill Clinton in trance during campaign for pres. elections ? Sure seems like it.
youtube.com/watch?v=W5ifieNCoq4
The remake of the original Manchurian Candidate, points right to your thesis. In that movie, two officers of a platoon in Iraq are ‘captured’ and subjected to mass brainwashing and mind control. One of them then is set up for the Vice Presidency, with the idea that the President would be assassinated and the candidate hand picked by The Manchurian Corporation moves from VP to President. Of course he and his fellow officer are trained to be hypnotized killers with brain implants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2c5-L5qBvM&t=44s
Obama and Bush fit the profile of guys with CIA connections. Caleb Maupin points to the elites psychologically profiling the ones they want to be chosen to run the country (as a puppet). He specifically cites Kamala Harris as the latest.
I cannot access youtube because of hackers. Thanks though.
Ramin Mazaheri he spins a false tale of the 2017 election with the “Socialist” party comprising “the left” in order to confect an analogy with the USA.
In the first round 2017 French Presidential vote, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the “Rebellious France” (really left) party got 19.6% of the vote. The top four candidates were squeezed in the interval [19.6, 24.0], something USA readers should stop to consider. Among ages 18-34, Mélenchon got 26.5% of the vote, more than anyone else.
No attacking the author. Mod.
Correct me if my memory fails, but I was in France in 2017 when the “Penelopegate” scandal arose. Francois Fillon, the “Spitzenkandidat” of the French centre-right to defeat Marine Le Pen, had, according to the custom of the country, given his Welsh wife Penelope a no-show patronage job, and the press suddenly started making a fuss about it. The sums involved, though, would be peanuts to Hunter Biden. Anyway, Fillon was out, and the French 0.1% was panic-stricken that the second round of the presidential would be between Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Melenchon. Macron suddenly appeared out of nowhere with no party and no organisation, the Fascist-sounding “La France en Marche” also suddenly appearing (“marcher” means both “to walk” and “to march” in a military sense). There was a ?wikileaks? dump of Macron-up-to-no-good files, but these were suddenly unmentionable after he became president: there was a conveniently-timed Islamist attack, after which a state of emergency was declared. Emmanuel was adopted by the Macrons as a baby, and one of the rumours flying around was that the partner at the Rothschild bank who engineered his extraordinarily rapid rise was in fact his natural father. Can Rahmin comment on this, or do French lese-majeste laws make comment illegal? The BBC, of all sources, published a pre-election picture of Macron in left profile head-to-head with Le Pen in right profile, which inevitably contrasted Le Pen’s ordinary, straight nose with Macron’s large hooked one. (The graphics designer responsible is probably selling The Big Issue….)
Let me make some corrections, starting with the most important.
1. The MSM promotion of Macron from a nobody into “presidential material” started at least a year or two before the elections, so it was not a last-minute thing. The 0.1% always work with foresight.
2. The accusation against Fillon that his wife (and his daughter) did not actually work for their paychecks is probably false. It was certainly common practice in the Senate, so when Fillon was singled out, it was a career assassination by hidden hands. As a member of the Senate and a long-time honest politician, he had no money and no one cared until Le Canard Enchaine acted as the Court Jester (flicking out those whom the rulers dislike.) Only the dissidents discuss how quickly the other “leaders” of his party, the UMP, joined the attack on him. This shows the hidden masters because these leaders destroyed their own party and thus damaged their personal careers. Hara-kiri ordered from on high.
Fillon had no German connections and doesn’t deserve the “Spitzenkandidat” label. He was a nationalist – unlike Macron – and a practicing Catholic. When he was Sarkozy’s Interior Minister, he earned the hatred of the left and the dissidents, but in 2017, the dissidents supported Fillon against the fake charge. The court did find Fillon guilty, but justice in France is – dare I say it ? – hobbled by prosecutors being allowed to judge-shop.
2. Melenchon ? Give it a rest. Because he’s a fake leftist, he always gets more publicity than he ever got votes. He only looks good to the non-French who get their “news” from controlled media. The billionaire-owned press simply ignores the few real leftists, who are not numerous after the French Communist Party was drowned about 40 years ago, unable to protect working-class living standards against waves of immigrants who are thrilled to work hard for far lower wages. There is hardly any scum lower than fake leftists.
Melenchon has never met a war he didn’t like. He’s a fraud and always was.
UK commentators borrow the word “Spitzenkandidat” (peak candidate) in discussions of European politics because there is no generally agreed succinct and accurate translation – “leading candidate” implies some sort of measurement to establish the lead. It is neutral, and doesn’t imply any German connection. There s no body, like the Academie Francaise in the case of French, policing the importation of foreign words into English
Thank you for the explanation.
The possible biden cabinet would be an absolute horror show: rice, clinton, power, flornoy, vindman (maybe), nuland, and on and on and on with some of obama’s more despicable holdovers.
Of course, we still have now the ziocon goon pompass and his merry band of goons, busily sowing hate and violence throughout the world. Humanity would be well served by seeing the backside of pompass and his goons.
“Yes, the US is such a politically-ignorant country…”
From my experience with Americans, I find this statement generally true.
It amazes me how otherwise intelligent Americans are prepared to believe utter nonsense. Anyone who has watched the nightly news or cable news channels in the US will notice most news is couched in emotional terms. Gossip spreads across the US faster than coronavirus on an aircraft carrier.
I have often asked in which other country could the invasion of Iraq ever have been sold by simply talking about “Iraq” and “9/11” in the same sentence.
This is the natural culmination of a process of reducing attention spans to the point where these people literally get their worldview from 30 second long soundbites from TV talking heads.
The other thing is tribalism. I don’t know if you have any experience of tribal societies. I’ve lived among them all my life. In a tribal society the individual has no right to think for himself or herself. Whatever he or she thinks or wants or believes, if the tribe decrees something he or she has to follow the decree or risk expulsion from the tribe. Amerikastani politics is tribalism, nothing more.
Rings very true.
A right wing tribe that somehow all share the exact same worldview, ie. God, bible, white supremacy, climate change denial, voting for Trump. It’s like they all get together for meetings and decide their exact beliefs that they are going to collectively hold. I guess that’s church?
And the left wing tribe, and who knows what they’re even about anymore. Transgender bathrooms, LGBTQ rights, …someone help me out here?
Just now I see why every American on here is right wing. Because the left is preposterous. The left is just there to make the right look good.
It’s really ingenious how they manipulate the American public.
Good point. I remember reading it De Tocqueville, noting how ideologically “individualist” Americans are, but at the same time very conformist.
Mr Mazaheri, your thesis is wrong in one thing only: the belief, which of course is the normal standpoint in a world where political parties exist to win power, that the Democratic Party has not been preselected to lose. I’ve been following elections since 1984 and Amerikastani elections since circa 1988, and I have long since become absolutely convinced that
1. There is one party in Amerikastan, not two.
2. That party wears a double identity, two masks if you will, one labelled “Republican” and the other “Democrat”.
3. These two (fake) factions take it in turn to put up a sacrificial guaranteed loser against the establishment choice, who is selected well in advance by the powers behind the throne.
4. This loser needs to be absolutely certain of losing so candidates who might win are removed by any means possible and, for instance, a corrupt senile far right war criminal is sent up against the most incompetent incumbent one could imagine.
5. If the guaranteed loser looks like he might possibly win by accident (Al Gore), he concedes before all the hanging chads can be counted.
6. If the guaranteed loser *does* win by accident (for instance, voters becoming sick and tired of the two faced One Party manipulation) then he will be crippled and made to fall into line, so much so that he becomes the establishment choice next time around.
I can assure you that Trump is going to win in a landslide. It’ll be like Obama vs Romney all over again.
The only industry that has stake in a close election is the media, this is why just about every election is polled as a close one, its “rigged” as the president would say.
A strategic benefit of “close” elections is that the elected official does not have a mandate from the people to change things very much. It takes a careful balancing act to do this year after year, but the process of impotent politicians was perfected in the late 1800’s. TPTB can do it in their sleep.
Biswapriya Purkayastha
That seems to make real sense in a world gone bananas, and also helps clarify why the orchestrated attacks against Trump have taken place, paradoxical, and very cleverly orchestrated.
Pretty correct in most respects, your scenario, in my opinion. A lot of the generated hysteria on both sides is misdirection. However, I cannot agree with your implied characterization of President Trump as ”incompetent”. Operating within the parameters of his political and socio-economic ideology (similar to Lincoln and Roosevelt actually) he is actually highly intelligent. He operates as a master persuader, having created a ”persona” for these purposes in keeping with the intelligence level of both most of his enemies and his allies.
If he really is so intelligent and he is sincere about the policy he intends to implement, why has he filled his administration with the same corrupt/compromised swamp critters as before.
IMO if he really wanted to implement his campaign promises he would have prepared a team around him to populate his administration. He didn’t, he put in secretaries and advisers that sabotaged his efforts and stabbed him in the back after he replaced them.
I can think of 2 possible causes for this failure to setup and administration that supports him. He was either naive or incompetent and really believed it would work. He might have thought that in D.C. politics it works just like a company, the boss (CEO, owners, shareholders) decides and the company/administration facilitates the implementation of the boss’s decisions.
Or he wasn’t honest during the campaign and did the usual thing, say the things that he (his team) thinks will get him the most votes. Clinton would be in jail, good relation with Russia.
Maybe he was naive, but very quickly understood that the Clintons(and deep state friends) wouldn’t react well to such actions. He probably would put his life on the line if he went there. Combined with good relations with Russia he could be signing his own death sentence.
I think he’s more likely to be a reasonable actor then a sincere, but naive/incompetent, outsider.
Further signs the fabricated ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory that was ‘confirmed as absolute truth’ by 550,000 mainstream media articles by time Mueller delivered his ‘nothing burger’ – is unraveling for all with an open mind (sadly few) to see.
https://thenationalpulse.com/commentary/exclusive-excerpt-how-the-dnc-hired-crowdstrike-to-frame-russia-for-the-hack/
A friend posted the way many of us feel:
BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW?
Trump is an evil clown of a president, a thug, a serial liar with the foulest, most divisive mouth of any president in living memory.
But millions are undecided. Is this devil better than the one waiting in the wings?
Trump has sought to destroy some of Russia’s most valuable allies. His vendetta against China has been one of crippling tariffs, attacks on Chinese companies and a series of vengeful speeches, containing disgusting lies concerning Covid-19. In addition to China he has sought to undermine the governance of both Venezuela and Cuba. He presided over a vile propaganda and agitprop attempt to smear its lawfully-elected president through a campaign militarizing humanitarian aid coordinated with Britain and fifty other nations willing to do his bidding. Regarding Cuba Trump has been vicious, making the lives of Cuban’s ever-harder after they had some slight relief under Obama. And his hate-ridden words about Fidel Castro upon his death were malignant in the extreme. Those he spoke regarding Assad of Syria were no less so, calling him “an animal” and, as we now know his intent was to assassinate him. He was only convinced not to by his then Secretary of Defense, Mattis. Trump gave the green light for the delivery of lethal weaponry to Ukraine, something Obama refused to do in case it made the situation there worse. Trump cared nothing for the pro-Russians and indeed Russian volunteers who would be killed by those weapons or for the increased danger to Russia herself.
This is the devil that some think should continue in power in the USA. Why? As far as I can make out this is because they consider the devil that is the alternative worse.
In what way could he be worse?
Hope still springs eternal in the hearts of some that Trump will be as good as his word in 2016 and better relations between the USA and Russia. Despite all his lies and attacks upon every Russian ally we are supposed to believe Trump is trustworthy and keep his word on this point.
Some probably wish to see Trump continue as he is doing so much harm to those they hate, the permanent state of the U.S., those warhawks and exceptionalists who travel on from one administration to the next. Those that some call ‘The Deep State’. I wonder… just how much damage can be done to these people by ANY president? There are far too many of them, far too ingrained within Washington’s systems and far too strong in depth and far too wily to be much affected no matter what any president does.
Others still hope to see Trump bring U.S. troops home from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. He began this process however, those within his own party plus the Democrats stymied any further progress on this. Besides, Trump is far too greedy to release the oil revenues he is gaining in his Caeser sanctions in an attempt to completely crush the Syrian people into a condition of continuing misery, unable to use their own national resources to rebuild. In Yemen Trump will continue to make money for the USA by licensed murder perpetrated by the Saudis with his and others’ help. Regarding Israel Trump has shown his total dedication to helping the terrorist regime there to subjugate the Palestinians. He is not going to change his position except to further support them, that’s clear.
So what are people afraid of regarding the second devil, the other choice and supposedly the greater evil?
Biden is a heartless thug, a political bruiser. He always has been and he remains so to this day. He represents the vanguard of the smug liberal elite who are totally invested in further fomenting a new Cold War, one which will permanently divide the world in two, resurrecting the familiar notion of the West and all in its orbit as ‘The Free World’.
Biden will strengthen NATO and no more implicit criticisms of U.S. allies will be heard. He will work to create an ‘Iron Shield’ against supposed “enemies” who are supposedly out to destroy ‘Western Values’ by stealth and cyber attack interference. This ‘Iron Shield’ will rather be the continuance of an ‘Iron Spear’ aimed directly at Russia, China and all other nations not submitting to western patrician dominance.
These are negative points indeed, apart from the liberal totalitarianism he and the liberal elites would certainly seek to create within the USA. ‘Cancel Culture’ would be endlessly expanded to include anyone deigning to criticize the new consensus around America and the West’s “enemies”.
So there we have it. Two devils in diverse ways inimical to the progression of the world we desperately need toward unified coordination up to the task of planning for and overcoming of the worst of what may arise, whether that be the next pandemic or the certain catastrophes of oncoming climate change.
What’s your choice? Which evil do you choose?
Better the devil you know?
Or the one waiting in the wings?
Remarkable analysis, remarkable summary of the two “choices.”
Cannot disagree with the descriptions.
My only bit of optimism is maybe, just maybe, the arrogance, the incompetence, the impotence will alienate those parties that matter in the rest of the world that the us thugs no longer are a party, a player in things that matter.
Granted, the beast will still have large military capabilities and financial/trade leverage to work its “magic” via sanctions and threats but maybe that will force or forge a closer working relationship to neutralize the threats and mitigate the sanctions.
To my mind, the keys are the Russians, the Chinese, and to a lesser extent the divided Europeans. Let the US and Israel stew in their own toxic juices. They cannot be trusted, they are agreement incapable under either party.
Of course, this ignores the horrendous domestic situation which probably will continue down the socialist path of corruption and exploitation of the non-“elite” classes by the oligarchs.
Just a thought on this thoroughly depressing choice before us.
Neither one. It really doesn’t matter that much. I the US system the POTUS is, at best, a power broker between competing factions within the Deep State–at worst, just a puppet for some dominant faction or alliance of factions within the real ruling class. The “Devil” as such is already in charge today and will be, with some modifications usually to do with culture and money-flow in charge in 2021. The USA, as we all ought to know by now, a highly corrupt oligarchy at all levels–only more so at the top.
In my honest opinion,as a stranger looking in, you don’t have democracy, in any shape or form, in the US. You’ve reached the end of the road with a one party (deep state) dictatotship totally controlled by Zionist Khazars.They’ve led you by the nose into endless unwinnable wars, bleeding you dry in the process, they’ve made America, a word to be spat out of ones mouth and the American people loathed and despised worldwide. They’ve bankrupted you to the point of total and unavoidable collapse…just as your good “friend” Netanyahu promised he would. You’ve been reduced to the mode of a common thief regarding Syria’s oil and as detestable as the Somalian pirates regarding Iran’s oil. Your president is a self-confessed murderer ( Gen Soleimani ) and a war-criminal and I can’t see a future for the US in its present state and unfortunately I don’t see anyone with the integrity, morality, honesty and intelligence emerging in your society to pull you out of this unfathomable hole
In my most humble opinion the least impotent and whining ideas here (Ramin’s and Uncle Bob’s) ……….which are.most at LEAST leaning toward giving the Orange Wrecking Ball a little more time to demolish the Fake Left…….AND (more importantly Fake News …..and Deep State) STILL SUFFER from a certain……………..
… Ideological Fallacy of Composition……..
in fruitlessly trying to fit the present world into their ideological framework and life experiences.
What’s at stake is not Left vs Right……it is National Sovereignty versus Globalist Empire.
It is not Republican vs Democrat………. within the US…except on the most immediately superficial “electoral” aspect:
Under that surface, within the US It is the Constitution and it’s NOT.(…this predated the seating arrangements of the French Parliament during the Terror…where “left” and “right” wings of the same bird were born…..) ‘left” General Welfare (this meant Well Being in the 1780’s….not food stamps) …Clause of the Preamble versus financialization of the US Economy so that General Well Being is no longer attainable by a majority through a manufacturing base……………and instead the masses must beg for “socialist” “Welfare” crumbs and handouts.
The Deplorables don’t want that future.
Bernie’s Bums and Losers will take it in a flash. Because they’ve been degraded, dehumanized through decades of deindustrialization and culture wars.
Within France it is ALSO primarily Nationalism……or Gaullism Facing The End of Colonialism (as Charles faced it) vs Globalism.
And in that context….the desperation of the French Working Class to choose the GREENS…..might well become a Final Act of “Class” Suicidal acceptance of the Oligarchy’s Green New Deal to Terminate Their Posterity.
BECAUSE: More fundamentally what is at stake within the struggle of National Sovereignty (and the Orange Wrecking Ball and Valdimir Putin are the Best You’ve Got……right there folks….) versus Globalist MALTHUSIAN Empire…………
is nothing short of Human Life…and right to exist……versus PLANNED Mass Death…..GLOBALIST Depopulation on a breathtaking, world scale.
In that context I look at every nation’s and every individual’s Right to Exist and Prosper………not in these Party or Left/Right terms of reference but in terms of Freedom from the Agenda (2030 or whatever new one is subsequently cooked up when that date passes……to FORCE an Empire of Depopulation on the planet) of the Satanic Globalist “Elites” of an Immoral Garbage Can.
In Ramin’s terms of reference Iran, like every nation and individual human soul has every right to its existence and its posterity and its identity and its history. If this includes Islam (as it most certainly does) and “Iranian Socialism” (as it evidently does for Ramin and probably a clear majority of Iranians) SO BE IT!
But neither could probably ever survive to prove the validity and worth of their model….their case…without the even more fundamental Iranian NATIONAL Identity…….and Sovereignty.
Same goes for the USA! Where even Gender Identity is being inverted …..attacked
AND what many ideologically constrained minds here fail to grasp is that despite short term objections to the Trumpian style and constraints forced on him by the Deep State’s Security Apparatus, MSM BULLHORN and the Consciousness (or lack thereof) of the American Electorate ……and his own merely slightly less rotten Republic Party……y’all ought better hope like hell the Orange Wrecking Ball is freed up to SMASH Globalism in the next 4 years…..as best he can…..
and Destroy BOTH US parties in the process…..destroy that system and replace it for your own French, Iranian, Russian, Mexican, Chinese, etc better prospects of National Sovereignty and SURVIVAL longer term.
That’s the fight. And will be for the rest of the 21 st CENTURY……long after Trump is gone.
So if you’re planning on lasting a few more decades than he ………..there will be Plenty of Work to DO…and building to erect…………..for decades after his demolition contract is done.
And as screwed up as America may be at the moment….the outcome here….in less than one month………… is apt to positively (or negatively) affect the prospects for sovereignty of all nations…and ALL people on earth……. more than any other single event……………in the next decade.
Like It or Lump it.
Dislike it……….or Trump It.
I could not agree more, especially
“So if you’re planning on lasting a few more decades than he ………..there will be Plenty of Work to DO…and building to erect…………..for decades after his demolition contract is done.”
Building real parties of resistance need 20 years at least, and the 4 year election cycle is a distraction.
Also, the priorities of any resistance movement start with building self-protection against TPTB, which is different than the usual Red-White-Blue hokum.
“The Democratic Party, the oldest voter-based party in the world”…
The Americans always claims to be the first at everything (like “inventing white people”), but don’t you believe it. The Tories and the Whigs (nowadays the British Conservatives and Liberal Democrats) can both claim to have begun in 1678.
Honestly have no idea who’s been preselected to win the upcoming election charade and what the precise agenda will be thereafter, although I’m reasonably sure that whoever it is has already been decided. Either way, the broad strokes will be the same: more wars, more impoverishment of the little people, and even more obscene enrichment of the select few. Same as it ever was.
But the idea that Trump of all people could even possibly overthrow all of this by himself – which of course assumes both competence and intent, which are absolutely nowhere in evidence – is simply ludicrous. Like Sanders before him, he’s just an alternative candidate – a straw man or scarecrow, if you will – spit out by the system to keep the masses entertained and to throw up a smoke screen to obscure the real shenanigans going on behind the curtain, which always where the true powerplays are happening. The temptation to believe otherwise has long been inculcated in the mass psyche through 20th century advertising/propaganda techniques and the now pervasive mass media and it’s never been more powerful than it is right now. Unfortunately, it’s little more than a Virtual Reality game played out solely for our distraction, so only the most discriminating can possibly see through it, and even they only get momentary glimpses. The rest of the picture must necessarily be constructed by connecting the dots. Only the most persistent and intrepid of observers need apply.
This election will see a Trump win again despite all the efforts to stop that.
A Democrat strategy of trying to stall the election result with voting disputes court action so Pelosi can automatically be installed under the 1947 Succession Act is flawed because both it will see rapid action by the Supreme Court on the voting disputation, and ruling on whether the 1947 Act is valid given it contradicts Constitutional clauses which US legal experts have already noted* (* if invalid the the entire Act would be void and the previous 1886 Act would probably apply which gives next in line powers to cabinet members which would mean Sec of State would be caretaker President).
Those behind any attempt to disrupt the election process including flooding the country with mail-in votes in breach of laws and behind the rioting should all be placed under arrest along with any Big Tech operatives who are attempting to skew the result by filtering content.
Current mainstream media strategy (CNN CBS NBC NYT WPost etc) is to keep peddling the lie Biden is ahead in the polls as is going on now so when the real election result on 3 Nov shows a Trump win the media and Dems will say it is false and couldnt be true due to these reported pre-election polls and never happened.
The Clinton DNC mafia after this fiasco will fester like a sore for a long time but it will be too late in 2028 to prep Hillary for anything. Soros will be dead. And radicals like AOC & Omar may attempt takeover with the nod of the C-DNC but that will result in another disaster for them in 2028 & probably 2032. Trump will find someone similar to him to continue on – (Ivanka or Jared ?)
The Dems only hope will be some centrist group making a takeover after this election and that may be possible of the current lot are in jail. I doubt it can happen tho. Failing that the Dems will wither away and some new opposition to the GOP will form make up of moderate Democrats who have split off.
A shakeup of both parties is coming more the Dems but if GOP tries to oust Trump style forces and views they risk a split.
To deal with the polarization Trump needs to implement some reforms Democrat voters favor like the criminal justice system which in many areas is the same as it was in the pre-1970 period in Europe. And fix the health insurance and student loan system and health costs.
Trump was elected because Obama and the Dems were not delivering eco results to heartland USA.
Those voters know he has tried and made some eco inrodes before 2020 and wont blame him for COV-19 and may even see it as an attempt by anti Trump forces to attack not only him, but them.
My data says GOP vote will be a lot higher than anyone expects. Could this be why Pelosi looked rattled in her interview a few days ago ?
But as Ramin in this article puts – the comparison with France is relevant. In the end political parties have to perform and cannot keep spinning false promises to voter and expect support. But the only difference is Macron, a globalist operative, unlike Trump wont get another term. Le Penn will be the next one.
In Australia in the 1990s the left Labor Party under PM Keating kept spinning promising to deliver but by 1996 people realized it was a scam and he got turfed. The incoming Howard Govt had difficulties like Trump but managed to survive for 11 years because people remember things. Same with Labor in UK Blair & Brown and Corbin. Will average voters in the US remember all thats gone on in the past 4 years when nothing like it happened ever before ? You bet they will – and they will know who are the disruptors.
The election may come down to demographics as to whether the battle is between older voters who prefer Trump, and the younger ones who may be lured by idealistic promises of the left and go for Biden. And where geographically those voters are.
There is a clear divide regionally between north and south and middle and west with Dem pockets here and there. Dem voters are generally where the mass populations are and lesser industry.
The root cause of the divide really is the GOP’s failure to move with the times on many social & legal issues, and install fair and reasonable eco systems the past 50 years. Ironically the same corrupt corporate interests that have caused that are also funding the Dems (Big Pharma etc..) and many Dem voters don’t see that.
I suspect the plan is for the Dems to try to grab power on 20 January then Pelosi will resign POTUS installing Hillary, and apart from all the ruptions that would cause I wonder how Bernie Sanders and his supporters would view that ? They may even try to ignore the Supreme Court claiming its was stacked and try to secede various Dem controlled States.
Its going to be an interesting period the next 6 – 12 months.
I’m not sure what you are saying here but I can assure you that there is no similarity between French society and US society–they’re almost opposite. Americans are content to live in fantasy worlds including the ruling elite, the French are much more realistic in comparison. Also, the American system is run by the Deep State so it doesn’t matter that much who wins. At some point people will realize that if they want change they need to petition Goldman Sachs et. al. not waster their time voting. Just so you know, I lived and worked in Washington most of my life and know and have seen the game being played–it’s actually pretty obvious even if you don’t know the Washington scene.
Fortunately for the ruling elite can just continue to spread lies and fantasies and people, particularly on the so-called “left” (which is not really a left Europeans would be familiar with–the class-struggle and anti-war left is almost invisible). This is a sad reality non-Americans are just going to have to face up to. It’s possible that a Biden administration will be more sensitive to the needs of the American people but, so far, there is little indication that is the case.
October “Surprise”
DNI director releases document of FBI, CIA, Clinton, Obama Russiagate conspiracy! Hillary Clinton signed a document that proves that she was involved in an orchestrated conspiracy that has jeopardized national security and reignited a cold war with Russia?! The woman that had her own server and destroyed devices with a hammer and bleachbit that never used State Department email signed that?! That is totally shocking!!!!
Of course everyone knew that she was doing it, but it is shocking that she signed a documemt admitting that she was! So basically the FBI and CIA said, look Hillary, this peace thing is just destroying us, sign this document and blame Russia so that we have an enemy and we will win the election for you if you blame Russia!
https://sputniknews.com/us/202010071080689586-trump-authorizes-declassification-of-all-docs-on-russia-hoax-hillary-clinton-email-scandal/
https://sputniknews.com/us/202010061080688866-dni-reportedly-declassifies-cia-memo-revealing-hillary-clinton-plotting-russiagate/
Andrea Iravani