by Eric Zuesse for The Saker Blog
On August 20th, Gallup headlined “More in U.S. Favor Diplomacy Over Sanctions for Russia” and reported that, “Americans believe it is more important to try to continue efforts to improve relations between the countries (58%), rather than taking strong diplomatic and economic steps against Russia (36%).” And yet, all of the sanctions against Russia have passed in Congess by over 90% of Senators and Representatives voting for them — an extraordinarily strong and bipartisan favoring of anti-Russia sanctions, by America’s supposed “representatives” of the American people. What’s happening here, which explains such an enormous contradiction between America’s Government, on the one side, versus America’s people, on the other? Is a nation like this really a democracy at all?
Donald Trump understood this disjunction, when he was running for President, and he took advantage of the public side of it, in order to win, but, as soon as he won, he flipped to the opposite side, the side of America’s billionaires, who actually control the U.S. Government.
While he was campaigning for the U.S. Presidency, Donald Trump pretended to want to soften, not harden, America’s policies against Russia. He even gave hints that he wanted a redirection of U.S. Government expenditures away from the military, and toward America’s economic and domestic needs.
On 31 January 2016, Donald Trump — then one of many Republican candidates running for the Republican U.S. Presidential nomination — told a rally in Clinton Iowa, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia and China and all these countries?”
On 21 March 2016, he was published in the Washington Post as having told its editors, that “he advocates a light footprint in the world. In spite of unrest abroad, especially in the Middle East, Trump said the United States must look inward and steer its resources toward rebuilding domestic infrastructure. … ‘I do think it’s a different world today, and I don’t think we should be nation-building anymore,’ Trump said. ‘I think it’s proven not to work, and we have a different country than we did then. We have $19 trillion in debt. We’re sitting, probably, on a bubble. And it’s a bubble that if it breaks, it’s going to be very nasty. I just think we have to rebuild our country.’” On that same day, The Daily Beast’s Shane Harris wrote that:
Trump’s surprising new position [is] that the U.S. should rethink whether it needs to remain in the seven-decades-old NATO alliance with Europe.
Sounding more like a CFO than a commander-in-chief, Trump said of the alliance, “We certainly can’t afford to do this anymore,” adding, “NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money.”
U.S. officials, including former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have said that European allies have to shoulder a bigger burden of NATO’s cost. But calling for the possible U.S. withdrawal from the treaty is a radical departure for a presidential candidate — even a candidate who has been endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Withdrawing from NATO would leave European allies without a forceful deterrent to the Russian military, which invaded and annexed portions of Ukraine in 2014. That would arguably be a win for Putin but leave U.S. allies vulnerable.
It also wasn’t clear how Trump’s arguably anti-interventionist position on the alliance squared with his choice of advisers. …
One other Trump adviser had previously been reported. Retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn had told The Daily Beast that he “met informally” with Trump. Flynn was pushed out of his post as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and has since spoken out publicly about the need for the U.S. to forge closer ties with Russia.
Five days later, on March 26th, the New York Times bannered, “Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds on His Foreign Policy Views” and David Sanger and Maggie Haberman presented their discussion with Trump about this, where Trump said:
I have two problems with NATO. No. 1, it’s obsolete. When NATO was formed many decades ago we were a different country. There was a different threat. Soviet Union was, the Soviet Union, not Russia, which was much bigger than Russia, as you know. And, it was certainly much more powerful than even today’s Russia, although again you go back into the weaponry. But, but – I said, I think NATO is obsolete, and I think that – because I don’t think – right now we don’t have somebody looking at terror, and we should be looking at terror. And you may want to add and subtract from NATO in terms of countries. But we have to be looking at terror, because terror today is the big threat. Terror from all different parts. You know in the old days you’d have uniforms and you’d go to war and you’d see who your enemy was, and today we have no idea who the enemy is. …
I’ll tell you the problems I have with NATO. No. 1, we pay far too much. We are spending — you know, in fact, they’re even making it so the percentages are greater. NATO is unfair, economically, to us, to the United States. Because it really helps them more so than the United States, and we pay a disproportionate share. Now, I’m a person that — you notice I talk about economics quite a bit, in these military situations, because it is about economics, because we don’t have money anymore because we’ve been taking care of so many people in so many different forms that we don’t have money — and countries, and countries. So NATO is something that at the time was excellent. Today, it has to be changed. It has to be changed to include terror. It has to be changed from the standpoint of cost because the United States bears far too much of the cost of NATO. And one of the things that I hated seeing is Ukraine. Now I’m all for Ukraine, I have friends that live in Ukraine, but it didn’t seem to me, when the Ukrainian problem arose, you know, not so long ago, and we were, and Russia was getting very confrontational, it didn’t seem to me like anyone else cared other than us. And we are the least affected by what happens with Ukraine because we’re the farthest away. But even their neighbors didn’t seem to be talking about it. And, you know, you look at Germany, you look at other countries, and they didn’t seem to be very much involved. It was all about us and Russia. And I wondered, why is it that countries that are bordering the Ukraine and near the Ukraine – why is it that they’re not more involved? Why is it that they are not more involved? Why is it always the United States that gets right in the middle of things, with something that – you know, it affects us, but not nearly as much as it affects other countries. And then I say, and on top of everything else – and I think you understand that, David – because, if you look back, and if you study your reports and everybody else’s reports, how often do you see other countries saying “We must stop, we must stop.” They don’t do it! And, in fact, with the gas, you know, they wanted the oil, they wanted other things from Russia, and they were just keeping their mouths shut. And here the United States was going out and, you know, being fairly tough on the Ukraine. And I said to myself, isn’t that interesting? We’re fighting for the Ukraine, but nobody else is fighting for the Ukraine other than the Ukraine itself, of course, and I said, it doesn’t seem fair and it doesn’t seem logical.
The next day, March 27th, on ABC’s “The Week,” Trump said, “I think NATO’s obsolete. NATO was done at a time you had the Soviet Union, which was obviously larger, much larger than Russia is today. I’m not saying Russia’s not a threat. But we have other threats. We have the threat of terrorism and NATO doesn’t discuss terrorism, NATO’s not meant for terrorism. NATO doesn’t have the right countries in it for terrorism.”
It’s easy to see why Trump was opposed by not only Hillary Clinton and other Democratic Party neoconservatives, but also by all Republican Party neoconservatives. The main target of neoconservatives — ever since that movement (which only in the 1970s came to be called “neoconservatives”) was founded by Democratic U.S. Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson back in the 1950s — has been to conquer Russia. That’s the ultimate objective, toward which they all and always have striven.
Even Barack Obama, despite his pretenses for ‘a reset in U.S.-Russia relations’, had had actually the opposite of that pretension in mind — a doubling-down on the Cold War. And Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, doubles down on his predecessor’s double-down, there.
Of course, neocons aren’t only against Russia; they also are against any country that Israel and Saudi Arabia hate — and, of course, Israel and Saudi Arabia are large purchasers of American-made weapons, such as weapons from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics. In fact: Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest purchaser (other than the U.S. ‘Defense’ Department itself) of their products and services. In fact, soon after coming into office, Trump achieved the all-time-world-record-largest international weapons-sale, of $350 billion to the Sauds, and it was quickly hiked yet another $50 billion to $400 billion. It’s, as of yet, his jobs-plan for the American people. Instead of Trump’s peaceing the American economy, he has warred it. Consequently, for example, the Koch brothers’ Doug Bandow, who represents his sponsors’ bet against neoconservativsm, headlined on 27 April 2017 “Donald Trump: The ‘Manchurian (Neoconservative) Candidate’?” and he itemized what a terrific Trojan Horse that Trump had turned out to be, for the war-lobby, the ‘neocons’, or, as Dwight Eisenhower had called them (but carefully and only after his Presidency was already over), “the military-industrial complex.” They’re all actually the same people; they serve the same billionaires, all of whom are heavily invested in these war-makers — all against two main targets: first, Russia (which America’s aristocracy hate the most); and, then, Iran (which Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s aristocracies hate the most). Any nation that’s friendly toward those, gets destroyed. Other people (the masses) fight, kill, die, get maimed, and are impoverished, while these few individuals at the very top in the U.S. profit, from those constant invasions, and military occupations — which Americans admire (their nation’s military, America’s invasion-forces) above all else.
On the Bill O’Reilly Show, 4 January 2016, Trump was asked to announce, before even the Presidential primaries, what would cause him as the U.S. President, to bomb Iran, and Trump then was panned everywhere for refusing to answer such an inappropriate question — to announce publicly what his strategy, as the U.S. President, would be in such a matter of foreign affairs (in which type of matter only the President himself should be privy to such information about himself, namely his strategy) — but Trump did reveal there his sympathy for the Sauds, and his extreme hostility toward Iran, a nation which is a bête noire to neocons:
I will say this about Iran. They’re looking to go into Saudi Arabia, they want the oil, they want the money, they want a lot of other things having to do…they took over Yemen, you look over that border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, that is one big border and they’re looking to do a number in Yemen. Frankly, the Saudis don’t survive without us, and at what point do we get involved? And how much will Saudi Arabia pay us to save them?
The Sauds have already answered that question, with their commitment to paying $400 billion, and they’re already using some of this purchased weaponry and training, to conquer Yemen. But who gets that money? It’s not the American people; it is only the stockholders in those American war-making corporations (and allied corporations) who receive the benefits.
And what’s this, from Trump, about “at what point do we get involved” if Saudi Arabia’s tyrants “don’t survive without us”? America is now supposed to be committed to keeping tyrannical hereditary monarchies in control over their countries? When did that start? Certainly not in 1776. Today’s America isn’t like the country, nor the culture, that America’s Founders created, but instead is more like the monarchy that they overthrew. This was supposed to be an anti-imperialist country. Today’s American rulers are traitors, against the nation that America’s Founders had created. These traitors, and their many agents, are sheer psychopaths. The American public are not their citizens, but their subjects — much like the colonists were, who overthrew the British King.
Donald Trump just wants for Europeans to increase military spending (to buy U.S.-made weapons) even more than the U.S. is doing against Russia, and for the Sauds and Israelis also to buy more of these weapons from America’s weapons-firms, to use against Iran and any nation friendly toward it. Meanwhile, America’s own military spending is already at world-record-high levels.
That’s Trump’s economic plan; that’s his jobs-plan; that’s his ‘national security’ plan. That is Trump’s Presidency.
He lied his way into office, just like his predecessors had been doing. This is what ‘democracy’ in America now consists of: lies — some colored “liberal”; some colored “conservative”; but all colored “profitable” (for the ‘right’ people); and another name for that, in foreign affairs, is “neoconservative.”
About Russia, he’s continuing Obama’s policies but even worse; and about Iran, he’s clearly even more of a neocon than was his predecessor. However, as a candidate, he had boldly criticized neoconservatism. Democracy cannot be based on lies, and led by liars.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
I don’t think it is so much of a lie, as it is that he doesn’t really have a clear idea what his intentions are.
If he needed a policy, he would hire a policy expert for that … and then, if he doesn’t like the policy, he can hire another.
And then, there is the ‘swamp’ of political operatives he inherited with the office. Or the ‘blob’ according to some analysts. They seem to have him pretty well boxed in..
Trump says whatever will make the crowd cheer.
I saw a story about his “Drain the Swamp!” line that was highly popular outside the swamp. It had been suggested to him by an aide. Trump didn’t think it would work, and told the aide so. But that night at the rally, he tried the line anyways. And it worked. Boy did it work. So, after that, it was in the routine to stay.
Note that its whatever pleases the crowd, and no part of this story is related to any notion that Trump is thinking through policy as a part of this. Someone says “Hey, I think Drain the Swamp!” would make a good applause line. When it works, its a part of the routine. Someone says “Regime change wars are bad.”, when it works, its a part of the routine. If believing that peace is better than being annihilated in a global nuclear war works for the crowd, then its in the routine.
That’s all it was. I kinda-sorta knew it when I voted for Trump. But in the American fake-democracy, you only get to choose between coke and pepsi, and coke this time was Hillary. You at least learn to kinda smile when you drink that one symbolic pepsi.
Christmas came early in Nov ’16 and I savored my pepsi looking at the gobstruck faces
of the media goons. Trump is no hero of mine. I tell the coke drinkers that in fact they
are a good part of why Trump won. Self righteous, sanctimonious political “elite” pushed
many from simply not voting to pulling the lever for the “spanner in the works” guy. I see
him as a catalyst not a final result.
Is Trump Draining the Swamp or… Is Trump a supporter of the Swamp.. ?
…Is the Proof in the Pudding… Is the Evidence Overwhelming… Let’s See…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOI-M3BNMh8
A bitter pudding… Yeppers… Oh… You want more… Here ya go…
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=234036
We live in sad times… but I am with M. Gandhi… all the way…
Truth and Justice win in the end…
Sheldon Adelson tells Trump what to do, and he does it.
The Trumpster lied? Who would have thought that?
The only cure for the USA is to cut off public funding for the MIC and the only way to accomplish that is to remove the massive think-tank, lobbyist, Zio meddling from out of the government.
Whether that could ever be accomplished incrementally is doubtful. The collapse of the US $ is perhaps the only way to burst that bubble but that could be a pyrrhic victory.
Getting money out of the elections would be a good start.
Otherwise, nothing can change.
Go back to “one person = one vote” instead of “one dollar = one vote” and see if different candidates don’t start winning elections.
America desperately needs a Democracy Movement.
As I have written before, history will ascertain if Trump was placed under neocon control before or after the elections. What makes no sense is that during the elections he had the support of 200 admirals and generals. Why ? Why would senior military men support a 70 year old man who had no military or political experience, unless they needed a puppet in the White House.
And what has Trump done after assuming Office ? Has he kept any of his election promises ? He has done the exact reverse to what he promised, continuing where others stopped.
The chief question is if Trump can go alone against the neocons in Washington, even if he wanted to. The answer is no. Yes, I have read articles where Trump, ostensibly, is using the military for some very quiet cleaning of the swamp. I still have to see evidence of this. I also read that between 44.000 and 50.000 sealed indictments have been prepared, ostensibly against members of the elite. We shall see if there is any truth in this.
As things stand, it’s more of the same. At the same time, the world is getting very impatient and irritated with Washington’s imperial policy. Last Saturday Vladimir Putin attended the wedding of the Austrian Foreign Minister, the only foreign leader who was invited. There were no US representatives. After the wedding Putin flew to Germany, where he met Merkel. These are all important signs. The world is watching and drawing conclusions. Trump better do something concrete, before the US ends up all alone on the world stage.
> during the elections he had the support of 200 admirals and generals. Why ?
For example: he could have promise to funnel budget money more to Navi than to AirForce. LCS instead of F-35, etc.
For example: generals were not eager to attack Russia which Hillary insisted to do immediately even before getting elected.
> Trump better do something concrete, before the US ends up all alone on the world stage.
Why? Wasn’t he isolationists since 1990-s ?
Doesn’t he want America forgotten by the outer world (read: by globalists) and focused on its internal problems?
As part of the larger picture of what this is all about -sanctions towards Russia and indeed any country that does not grovel before the Hegemon, would anyone who is not an economist (it is axiomatic that the overwhelming majority of economists are always wrong) comment on this by F. William Engdahl :
“Today by far the deadliest weapon of mass destruction in Washington’s arsenal lies not with the Pentagon or its traditional killing machines. It’s de facto a silent weapon: the ability of Washington to control the global supply of money, of dollars, through actions of the privately-owned Federal Reserve in coordination with the US Treasury and select Wall Street financial groups.”
“The Fed dollar strategy is acting now as a “silent weapon” for not so quiet wars. If it continues it could deal a serious setback to the growing independence of Eurasian countries around the China New Silk Road and the Russia-China-Iran alternative to the dollar system”.
https://journal-neo.org/2018/08/20/washington-s-silent-weapon-for-not-so-quiet-wars/
The dollar being used as a ‘super weapon’ is sure catching everyone by surprise, although many econo-political commentators has alluded to such a possibility for years. Still, the way it is being used today exceeded most expectations. The dollar accomplished hegemonic status not by merit–Nixon’s scandalous decree in 1972 in effect turned the $$$ into a scandal itself–but by the laws of the jungle. The rest of the world acquiesced to this out of necessity and politics, but there was always the unwritten understanding that the US would be prudent in exercising its privileges and would set its own constraints against abuses. That understanding was blown to pieces in 2008; under Obama, and now Trump, the middle fingers have been flashed time and again towards the world.
However, the hands that own the middle finger fail to see that the power inherent in the $$$ is not endowed by physical law; it is granted by the ones who acquiesce to it. It can also be silently revoked. Under fear of a global hot war, lest the hegemon becomes desperate, the world would likely bite their tongues for the time being. But time is approaching when the hegemon lose its supremacy in laws of the jungle, in terms of weaponry or the ability to hand out goodies. Then watch out! Not only the fingers but the whole hand and arm could be chopped.
As a non-economist I forecast that hyper-inflation in the hegemon’s home court will flare by the mid-2020’s. Unless, of course, the hegemons are cool-headed enough to start shedding about 100 pound of its average weights and work to build up factories, infra-structures, and their depleted brain cavities.
Prior U.S. Administrations have been so craven that the prior assumptions about so-called trade war’s no longer apply.
There is undesputable, undeniable, and absolute proof that Trump’s actions on trade are creating U.S. jobs. . For example:
https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/08/17/study-20x-as-many-u-s-jobs-created-from-trump-tariffs-than-jobs-lost/
The dollar is a super weapon right now because China’s exploitation has backfired. They cannot live without the U.S. as a submissive dumping ground. And, U.S. submissiveness ended with the election of U.S. Patriot Trump.
Wonderful and he’s added billions to defense(making it the largest employer in the country) and a trillion or more to the debt, with untold trillions down the road,ten will get you twenty that if he’s in office 8 years the debt will have grown by 8 trillion,that is if we can service the debt that long.Jobs are still moving to Mexico,India and all points East the Feds easy money racket has goosed the markets and the hollowed out economy,wages are stagnant inflation (oh I know we don’t have any inflation,the owner of Barden Home said that his cost of manufacturing homes has increased 50% from last year) as for job creation who really knows for we the people are fed little but propaganda regardless of the source….
A123
Trump creating jobs ? You sure about that ? I have read quite a number of articles where analysts are stating that the US Government is playing with numbers. By the way, how many factories has Trump reopened ?
B.F.
Absolutely. Employment is up. Wages are up.
The Fake Press of Soros & Clinton wants to cover-up the truth and are failing.
Increased employment at existing facilities is a leading indicator for they economy. Starting new facilities or reopening cold ones is a lagging indicator. You will not see many new and reopened facilities until the momentum for expansion is quite strong and of substantial duration.
A123, I would take the numbers thrown in our faces by the “blob” with pinch of salt. Unemployment rates are extremely high and never reported. The only jobs available to people are the “alien employment” wages, forcing people to two or three part time jobs. If this is the so called “employment is high” then “blob” has you and many others fooled. Liberals have been pushing minimum wages up, but the employers are cutting their employment costs down by offering only part time jobs. People have no choice but work two or three part time jobs in order to pay the interest on the debts.
Anonius,
You are 99% correct. The official U-3 ‘unemployment ‘ number is bogus.
However, you can confirm the favorable employment trend from other sources such as:
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
When they cannot hold the line on ‘bad economy’ any more… The next myth that will be pushed by the Fake Stream News will be that there “are not enough workers”. As the Shadow Stats chart indicates we are still at above 20% even though things are finally moving in the right direction.
Children strive to surpass their parents, so is it surprising that the Americans are trying to outdo the British?
Interesting article, although somewhat harsh on President Trump. George W. Bush made similar statements against “nation building” when he was running for President. However, the quotes cited are a rather weak justification for a Trump advocacy of non-interventionism. Also, to be fair, every President ever elected to my knowledge has promoted the interests of the US weapons industry.
I have to disagree with some of the statements regarding the neoconservative movement, though. It’s true that Scoop Jackson was the conduit through which many neoconservative later luminaries such as Richard Perle entered government. However, the neoconservative movement was and is primarily an intellectual and philosophical movement with roots in Trotskyism. More important are names such as Leo Strauss and Max Shachtman. Writers and publishers such as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz were key as well. As a political movement the key defining moment for the neoconservatives was the Six Day War. There are a number of books on neoconservatism worth reading such as Jacob Heilbrunn’s They knew they were right This article is also a good reference:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article178638.html
One should also clearly differentiate neoconservatives from paleoconservatives. Both groups were hostile to the Soviet Union, e.g. Ronald Reagan. Much of the statements of Trump seem to reflect paleoconservatism with the glaring exception of his unprecedented subservience to Israel. Conservatives objected to membership in international institutions such as the UN as well as observing international law and conventions since these were believed to limit the sovereignty of the US. Traditional Conservative foreign policy is not against interventionism. It’s a “me first/bottom line” philosophy of unilateralism as opposed to the multilateralism of mainstream US foreign policy. By his own admission, Trump was opposed to the Iraq war because it was not cost effective. His statement that the US should “take the oil” is clearly not the viewpoint of anyone respecting the sovereignty of other nations.
The President has not run the US for the better part of a century. The country is run by think tanks – the CFR, Trilateral Commission, Brookings Institute, et. al. Their goals are put into action by lead actors such as FRB, CIA, FBI, MI6, MOSSAD, et.al.
When a President is gunned down in broad daylight, fifty-two witnesses, and film all indicate from the front, and a ‘commission’ in place to say all these facts are simply to be ignored, and all laws are circumvented to prevent lawful investigation is not permitted. Important to note here is POTUS can be removed at will with no consequences via a commission.
When three buildings in New York are demolished by supposedly two airplanes, and the Pentagon damaged one side by a supposed airplane, and a ‘commission’ is again put in place to tell you all the facts are to be ignored. During this the President is clearly being told by various players ‘what to do’ ? Important here is POTUS is told what to do and play the part and never be asked why via a commission.
In both cases the rule of law for the United States was simply usurped by ‘a thing’ called a commission. The government and media working in perfect harmony never challenge the commission. A crystal clear illustration the law and facts can simply be side-stepped to suit the cabal’s goals. The Trump Administration is showing painfully everyday the rule of law has been simply abolished. Whether on the US or World stages. Without a rule of law you have a chaos without logic, and to find a meaning or reason behind POTUS actions in chaos is futile.
Reading the vast library written by scholars, on all these various topics, one can only conclude POTUS is reading from a prepared script, written by others for him. Trump reads his script rather poorly, missing lines and even on occasion missed sentences. If POTUS veers one degree off course, he is simply put back on course by the ‘owners’. Listen to Trump after The Skirpal case, his 180 degree return from Russia, his claim the economy is booming, before and after speeches after his missile barrages in Syria, his position on Afghanistan, his position on Iran, on various sanctions, on China South Seas, all sound like cabal talk from a script and a story not based on fact.
What is truly mind boggling is the ‘blind hope’ people have that one man, POTUS can fix all that is wrong in America today…
I see more censorship, a bust up of the economy, and then war. Hope I am wrong.
I disagree completely, Trump didn’t lie. In fact, I doubt the man truly lies a lot at all. A lie implies intent, and I don’t see much intent on his part to deceive people. He is bumbling untruths on a daily, if not hourly, basis, but I don’t think he knows these things he says are not true.
What I see instead is a gullible, naive imbecile (politically speaking) who swallowed all the ridiculous “official” narratives without chewing, about “nation building,” “democracy promotion,” “NATO is for the defence of allies,” “Iran is the biggest sponsor of terrorism” and all the other ridiculous lies which came out of Washington. He also naively believed that the US president is the “leader of the free world” and the “most powerful man on the planet,” which is horsecrap.
If you keep this in mind while going back to read about or watch candidate Donald Trump before November 2016, all his talk makes a whole lot more sense. For example, if he truly though NATO is merely there to defend US’ allies, then it makes a great deal of sense why he doesn’t think the US should spend as much money while ballooning it’s own deficit and they should fork over their own money instead.
He also didn’t know the US was in the middle east to further geopolitical goals, no, he actually believed they are there to “police the bad guys” and “promote democracy” despite such obvious contradictions as working with Saudi Arabia to do so. The official narrative has precedence over reality in the minds of people like Donald Trump.
He also isn’t worth a damn as a strategist, all this jaw flapping by his supporters about his sheer inhuman 4d chess skills is a ridiculous attempt to explain away his erratic, incoherent policies, if one can even call them that. He wants to create a legacy, he wants to “live” forever. He wants future generations to cite his name alongside Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Reagan etc. That’s why he slaps his name in huge, golden letters on his buildings, that’s why he was so adamant about “solving” North Korea and why he is so frustrated that it’s not going fast enough, he doesn’t have much time left, ~2 or 6 years, that’s it, to become the “peace” president who ended the 7 decade Korean war. Look at his “Space Force” announcement through this lens, tell me what you see. A truly good idea which will benefit the country and the military, or a way to cement himself as the founding father of the fifth military branch… “Trumps Space Force?”
His economic skills tell him China is a threat, which, in terms of GDP, it is, Chinas GDP is now higher than that of the US, Russias is much, much lower. So Russia = not threat, China = threat. What’s the old mantra of US foreign policy? Keep China and Russia separate? You can find old clips of candidate Trump where he reiterates that long standing goal and criticizes Obama for bringing them together.
Trump is as simple as the man presents himself. There is no overarching strategy, he isn’t playing 4d chess, all his “successes” can be attributed to his very impressive improvisation skills (not sarcasm, he is very quick on his feet) and sharp manoeuvring to steer situations towards a favourable outcome, rather than carefully thought through and executed plans. He isn’t playing a role, he isn’t presenting a different persona in front of the cameras than he does behind closed doors. He is who he is, it’s really that simple.
Strange but I was alway’s taught that when you gave your word and then you went back on it you lied,now Trump has failed to keep his word on anything he promised while running for the crown,of course he never said that he would hand the corporations the golden goose or wall street the mine while the working class got the shaft.Now the so called deplorables all bleat to the same tune, or as Huey Long once said, don’t blame me,don’t blame thee,blame the fellow behind the tree,which of course is what they are doing by blaming the deep state as the reason Trump has never kept ANY of his campaign promises….
Like I said in the beginning of my initial comment, lying implies intent. If you are willing to separate intentional deceit and inability to fulfill promises, rather than putting them into the same category, he didn’t intentionally lie.
He was naive to believe he could do all he promised, once he got in, reality hit him like a truck and he found out the hard way how much, or rather little the “most powerful man in the world” can actually do. He did what he could though, like the embassy move.
Also, saying Trump intentionally lied during the campaign gives him too much credit. I don’t think he plans what he does to such a degree as to come up with an evil plan to lie himself into office, just to rob the nation blind or whatever else he supposedly is “really” after. I think his ADD makes him incapable of even making a meal plan for a weekend without an assistants help.
He’s a bumbling fool, not an evil mastermind. Not saying you should like him, I don’t, or change your opinion of him, but it’s the simple truth. There is no grand scheme underneath all those layers of hair.
An excellent assessment of Trump the man. I agree with you 100% that he has no idea much of what he uttered, during the campaign or now in office, are redneck nonsenses. Any surprise that he owed his early primary success in redneck country? This bona fide Yank from NYC is actually in complete synch with his redneck compatriots. The South has risen again!
Sort of makes sense. But I think he knows he is lying it’s just that in the world he inhabits it’s just normal and acceptable behavior. Obama lied consistently and blatantly but because his skill involved verbal slight-of-hand he seemed to be telling the truth. True con-men always look like they are telling the truth while Trump never felt he should fake it. Trump understands that USA-ans are almost completely uninterested in “truth” as such or anything we might consider “reality” but they are primarily interested in appearance and a “stance.” The sport that best explains the USA-consciousness is pro-wrestling–watch a few matches and you get politics in the U.S. Also, it’s important to watch the a sit-come that is aimed at the average person in the USA where conformity is regulated through ridicule, hatred for intellectuals, and repartee. Very few people in the US know anything about science of any kind or literature or history and “forget” past events that aren’t mythologized–this is, sadly, true of both “left” and “right.”
For a U.S. economy that has a razor-thin cushion of saving, dependence on rising asset prices has never been more obvious.
But are the fundamentals really that sound? For a U.S. economy that has a razor-thin cushion of saving, nothing could be further from the truth.
America’s net national saving rate — the sum of saving by businesses, households, and the government sector — stood at just 2.1% of national income in the third quarter of 2017. That is only one-third the 6.3% average that prevailed in the final three decades of the 20th century.
https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2018/02/26/Photos/MG/MW-GE418_netsav_20180226152619_MG.png?uuid=4d749e58-1b33-11e8-af2d-9c8e992d421e
To finance consumption and growth, the U.S. borrows surplus saving from abroad to compensate for the domestic shortfall. All that borrowing implies a large balance-of-payments deficit with the rest of the world, which spawns an equally large trade deficit. While President Donald Trump’s administration is hardly responsible for this sad state of affairs, its policies are about to make a tough situation far worse.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/theres-nothing-strong-about-us-economic-fundamentals-2018-02-26
Can i suggest to whoever is responsible for the blogpost formats / layouts, to use or add single line spacing between paragraphs. It makes it much easier to read the articles, at least on the mobile version of the website. Thanks !
It does not matter who is ‘the potus”,since JFK we all know that the real power is not in the WH.They are all puppets who just want to stay alive at the end of their term as Potus.We have been advised about the control of the US by the MIC,nothing new.It was stupid to expect anything different from Trump than Hillary.Considering Russia(ukraine,syria,iran)Trump is 50x worst than Obama who was already bad.
They want full capitulation,they know they will get it.Two solutions:wait untill the departure of Putin or kill him asap.The fith column is readier than ever with the sanctions biting them the most(see deripaska and co).
Sanctions will remain in place forever even Medvedev understood it.
The US can not survive beyond 2035/2040 without stealing or controling the natural ressources of Iran and Russia(Syria for the pipelines strategic route to the EU) and Venezuela to some extend.Shale oil and gas will be over in the States after 2025 maximum 2030.
“since JFK we all know that the real power is not in the WH.”
it never was
https://irishstudentleftonline.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/john-f-kennedy-the-warmonger-ireland-can-be-proud-of/
What’s missing from all the eulogies for John F. Kennedy in the media these days? Inconvenient things like Vietnam. The Bay of Pigs. Israel.
Yes, ultimately John F. Kennedy was just one more in a long line of US presidents promoting war and violence around the globe, intent on spreading America’s idea of ‘democracy’ to any country that suited its economic and strategic purposes in its global duel with the USSR. It was in the years immediately after World War II that the United States truly developed its current messiah complex, its vision of itself as the world’s policeman; and John F. Kennedy was a significant figure in entrenching that view in American foreign policy.
So just what is the real legacy of John F. Kennedy, beyond the whitewashed obituaries of the western press?
Vietnam. Kennedy was one of the chief architects of what would become the Vietnam war, a conflict unparalleled in the latter half of the 20th century for its barbarity and appalling loss of life. When Kennedy took over the presidency of the US from Dwight Eisenhower, the CIA’s plan for intervention in South-East Asia was already afoot. Did Kennedy roll it back? Hardly.
etc
etc
Read the book JFK and the unspeakable by James W. Douglass. He is tried to fight the deep state and lost. His Peace speech on June 10 1963 is one of the many things that triggered the deep state to go into a frenzy. JFK had to go with that speech.
“He is tried to fight the deep state and lost.”
Big deal.
“By the end of 1961, Kennedy’s first year in office, the number of US ‘military advisers’ in Vietnam was 3,205. By the time of his assassination in 1963 the number was 16,700 and rising. Regardless of idle speculation and ‘what ifs’, the fact remains that John F. Kennedy proactively laid the foundations for one of the most savage and costly wars in modern history, that claimed the lives of over 3 million Vietnamese people and over 57,000 US military personnel. In May of 1963 Kennedy assessed the situation in Vietnam, stating: “We don’t have a prayer of staying in Vietnam. Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out of there at any point. But I can’t give up that territory to the communists and get the American people to re-elect me”.
In other words, he put his electoral ambitions over the lives of both American soldiers and the people of Vietnam, who would pay the heaviest price for Kennedy’s warmongering. One wonders does this quote appear on any JFK memorials or plaques.”
I’ve been reading Daniel Ellsbergs recent book. Both Eisenhower and JFK fought with the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs for any control over the military.
During Ike’s term, Ike tried to cut the Joint Chiefs out of the line of command. He wanted authority to run from the President to the Sec Def to the commanders like CENTCOM or CINCPAC, bypassing the JCS whom he didn’t like or trust. In return, the JCS completely cut out the SecDef and the President from the nuclear war planning. They hid their plans for global nuclear war, calling them “capability studies” with rules that not even the name of these studies was supposed to be given to the Sec Def. If the SecDef doesn’t know they exist, he can’t ask to see the plans.
Later, during JFK, Ellsberg had a meeting with General Curtis LeMay, who at that time had risen to the chairman of the JCS. In talking about who has the authority to launch a global nuclear war that would have destroyed human civilization, Ellsberg says Lemay “took the discussion into territory I had never explored before. Suppose Washington had not been hit, he said (LeMay), when warning of an enemy attack came in. Should the President be part of the decision process at all, he asked us, even if he were alive and in communication?… speaking gruffly, he asked rhetorically, “After all, who is more qualified to make that decision [of whether to go to nuclear war on the basis of a warning]: some politician who may have been in office for only a couple of months— or a man who has been preparing all his adult life to make it? Both his lips and voice curled contemptuously around the words “some politician.” The “p” was an explosive puff. And the personal reference seemed pointed.” (Ellsberg, “The Doomsday Machine”)
LeMay had already in his life ordered the fire-bombing of wooden Japanese cities which killed tens of thousands of civilians, as well as being the commander who ordered the only two uses of nuclear weapons on civilians in history. Later, in the Cuban Missile Crisis, he would advise Kennedy to launch an immediate first strike upon the Soviets.
“Withdrawing from NATO would leave European allies without a forceful deterrent to the Russian military, which invaded and annexed portions of Ukraine in 2014.”
I stopped reading when I saw the above piece of propaganda rubbish. Russia never invaded Crimea. Crimea seceded from the US installed Nazi puppet regime in Kiev and asked to rejoin Russia. Constant repetition of the same western lie doesn’t make it true.
That statement was in a quotation. It’s neither the words of Trump, nor Zuesse.
It’s part of an excerpt from someone elses article, not this authors thoughts. It’s from a Daily Beast article, which is linked above.
@ Caleb — Spot on ! The USA needs a revolution. Here’s to hoping it happens. Sooner the better!
Unfortunately most Americans seem to be dumber than a brick & have never travelled.
They can’t appreciate how much they’re disliked & yes even hated around the Globe.
Being an Australian I would have voted for Trump based on his campaign rhetoric —
BUT now I think he’s just like all the rest of your previous Presidents – a complete War Mongering A/Hole.
– – and yes your Press is totally owned & supported by TPTB ! Bring it down.
Surely Trump is just a mouthpiece for the mob – It’s hard to tell who’s working for whom currently & I expect the money likes it this way. + I question if the US was ever not there just for money power & control over everything NY, London & the EU(say)Paris want. Try to forget ethnicities, countries sects, & for the ‘white man’ the picture becomes clearer. imo.
For me the news of happenings today, down here, in the ME, Europe & elsewhere was insane – I hope this means the extremes are losing control, but they do never give up, so we’ll see what, re. the new & remade power kids on the international block.
Back in the early ‘70’s, around about the Vietnam disaster, some Yankee Doodle Dandies rewrote capitalism after the soft revolution of the ‘60’s offered a better way (it’s on record but I can’t look it up, sorry) which essentially has brought us into the mess the planet is in today, and, if you are a fan of interconnectedness, of man. So, what is truth, who is truthful? ….The beat goes on.
“Is a nation like this really a democracy at all?”
Eric, step back a moment and ask a better question: “Can an entity like this be called a nation at all?”
I ask in all honesty because a republican democracy has rules which can be checked, but nations must be at heart partly tribal and partly intangible. Shakespeare’s “band of brothers” did not literally mean “born of the same mother”. It did mean that something more than laws and money have to connect us all — or there is not and cannot be a nation.
Trump was chosen for reasons I know not, but whether towards his own working class or others throughout the world, Trump’s worldview is largely more a product of fantasy than anything else. And speaking of the working class, they knew that he was not loyal to his own workers years before he contemplated public office.
This could exploited by any foreigner wanting to cut The Donald to the quick.
Our prospective foreigner would only have to flip what Reagan said about the old USSR:
“Any government that cannot keep promises to the people it represents cannot be trusted anywhere else in the world.”
Turnabout is fair play and now’s the time.
“Americans believe it is more important to try to continue efforts to improve relations between the countries (58%), rather than taking strong diplomatic and economic steps against Russia (36%).” And yet, all of the sanctions against Russia have passed in Congess by over 90% of Senators and Representatives voting for them — an extraordinarily strong and bipartisan favoring of anti-Russia sanctions, by America’s supposed “representatives” of the American people.”
It is aipac, not the american people, who determine how the u.s. congress votes. When one sees such a heavily lopsided vote like this, which resembles vote regarding israeli related issues, it is aipac influence. This war against Russia is a zpc/nwo strategy to maintain world dominance, with zionazis/israel now the dominate factor.
Trump is just following his foreign policy master Henry Kissinger who has admitted to advising Trump to inact a new detente with Russia in order to isolate China. It the opposite of what he advised Nixon, ally with China against Russia. Putin already knows this trick and won’t be taken in however.
“Could it be that the Trump phrase: being friends with Russia is not a bad thing (i.e. good thing), is no lie among the others? One of the positives the Congress and Senate support for an US World War is that the nation does not yet know that 9/11 was US supported because of those who demand war in order to make WW..remove Habeas Corpus. The assumption is the US Constitution is still the law of the land. Making all those US Senators and Congressmen who support world war completely insane….war no longer being possible. In time as the consequences of another war (it will be nuclear) the US population, today silenced, will speak it’s mind.
With Russian Federation new weapons there is time, a tiny amount of time compared to the age of the world, to enforce peace.