There are many reasons for Democrats, Republicans and the media to unite against Trump: his obvious insanity, his uneven stewardship of the economy, corruption, allowing migrant children to die in US custody. What it actually took to get the establishment riled up against him, however, was not those legitimate concerns but his moves toward peace in the Middle East.
After All the Crap He Pulled, What Got Everyone Angry at Trump was His Moves Toward Peace
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Yes, Virginia, there is a «Dark State» (which, of course, is also a generous Santa Claus to the military-industrial complex)….
Henri
Sun Tzu
The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.
“against Trump: his obvious insanity”, Can you be more full of shit? The buy has weathered every bullshit accusation and political machination since before he was sworn in and he STILL HAS MORE WINS RACKED UP!
Why do fools always underestimate the opposition?
This is enlightening, I’ll post the best parts and hope someone can follow a link then follow other links to the articles mentioned.
http://www.unz.com/chopkins/beware-the-trumpenleft/
Beware the Trumpenleft!
C.J. Hopkins • November 26, 2018
Angela Nagle’s recent piece in American Affairs is a perfect example. Nagle (who is certainly Trumpenleft) puts forth the fascistic proposition that mass migration won’t help the world’s poor, and she claims that it creates “a race to the bottom for workers” in wealthier, developed countries and “a brain drain” in poorer, less developed countries. After deploying a variety of Trumpenleft sophistry (i.e., fact-based analysis, logic, and so on), she goes so far as to openly suggest that “progressives should focus on addressing the systemic exploitation at the root of mass migration rather than retreating to a shallow moralism” … a shallow moralism that reifies the dominant neoliberal ideology that is causing mass migration in the first place.
This is the type of gobbledegook the Trumpenleft use to try to dupe real leftists into putting down their phones for a minute and actually thinking through political issues! Fortunately, no one is falling for it. As any bona fide leftist knows, there is no “mass migration problem.” The whole thing is simply a racist hoax concocted by Putin, Alex Jones, and other Trumpian disinformationists. The only thing real leftists need to know about immigration is that immigrants are good, and Trump, and walls, and borders are bad! All that other fancy gibberish about global capitalism, Milton Friedman, labor markets, and national sovereignty is nothing but fascist propaganda (which needs to be censored, or at least deplatformed, or demonetized, or otherwise suppressed).
But Angela Nagle is just one example. The Trumpenleft is legion, and growing. Its membership includes a handful of prominent (and rather less prominent) fake leftist figures: Glenn Greenwald, who many among the “Resistance” would like to see renditioned and indefinitely detained in some offshore Trumpenleft gulag somewhere; Matt Taibbi, who just published a treasonous article challenging the right of the US government to prosecute publishers as “enemy agents” for publishing material they don’t want published; Julian Assange, who is one such publisher, and who the US has scheduled for public crucifixion just as soon as they can get their hands on him; Aaron Maté of the Real News Network, a notorious Trump-Russia “collusion denialist“; Caitlin Johnstone, an Australian blogger and poet who the Red-Brown Putin-Nazi hunters at CounterPunch have become totally obsessed with; Diana Johnstone, who they also don’t like; and (full disclosure) your humble narrator.
Now, normally, the opinions of some political journalists and rather marginal political writers wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but there’s a war on, so there’s no room for neutrality. As I mentioned in my latest essay, over the course of the next two years, the global capitalist ruling classes need to make an example of Trump, and Assange, and anyone else who has had the gall to fuck with their global empire. Part of how they are going to do this is to further polarize the already extremely polarized ideological spectrum until everyone is forced onto one or the other side of a pro- or anti-Trump equation, or a pro- or anti-populist equation … or a pro- or anti-fascist equation.
War is peace.
The state of Peace is war against the state.
Pride and ignorance stroll hand in hand through history.
“War is the health of the state,” the radical writer Randolph Bourne said, in the midst of the First World War.
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnwarhea14.html
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), was a United States Marine Corps major general, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
From a speech (1933)
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
From a speech (1933)
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
From a speech (1933)
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.
War is a racket (1935)
Henry II: I’ve snapped and plotted all my life. There’s no other way to be alive, king, and fifty all at once.
Henry II: I found out the way your mind works and the kind of man you are. I know your plans and expectations – you’ve burbled every bit of strategy you’ve got. I know exactly what you will do, and exactly what you won’t, and I’ve told you exactly nothing. To these aged eyes, boy, that’s what winning looks like!
Henry II: When the king is off his ass, nobody sleeps!
Henry II: Oh God, but I do love being king!
Henry II: I’m villifying you for God’s sake – pay attention!
John: A knife! He’s got a knife!
Eleanor of Aquitaine: Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history’s forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can’t we love one another just a little – that’s how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.
Wait … people care what happens in the Middle East? When did that happen? Is it a New Year thing?
LOL. My first good laugh of the new year. Thx, CrazyH.
Ted,
I’ve got one quibble. I’m one of those dyed-in-the-wool craven little cowards who thinks that my enemies aren’t the people of the various nations of the world but rather the leaders of the people of the various nations of the world. To wit: If Barack Obama, beloved by so many because he’s just so great, can keep people in little metal boxes on a military base in Cuba because he’s too much of a poltroon to give them their day in a real big boy court (I mean, to be fair, he’s only a constitutional law professor), what’s to stop him from eventually getting around to classifying me as one of those who ought to be rounded up and made an example of? So, yeah, I’m scared to death of Obama. And Cheney. And Bill Jeff. And former CIA murderer GHWBush. …
I don’t think Donald Trump pulled the troops out of Syria out of any sort of moral calculus concerning morality, decency, strategy, practicality, etc. I think he did it because he thought it would generate some positive coverage for him. In that regard, he is quite doctrinaire as far as most of the politicians of the past two generations: do a photo shoot at a soup kitchen as you ladle up some watery slop to some poor bastard before you jump in the limo for a quick bite at 21 before being whisked to a six-figure speech at a Goldman Sachs luncheon (a la Hillary Clinton and her war criminal buddy, Henry Kissinger).
Thus, I don’t think your thesis holds up. If Trump had done this to save lives,–i.e., for peace–okay. But he didn’t. He did it as one more ploy is his running game of bitchslap against the press (sic). He did it to save his own skin. And in that regard, he’s just like Ronald, George Herbert, William Jefferson, and Barack Hussein. Every single one of them dropped bombs on children, and a compliant press never made a fuss once told to simmer down.
“classifying me as one of those who ought to be rounded up and made an example of? ”
BINGO! That’s not even a slippery slope argument. We’re already at the bottom when we deny due process & habeas corpus while allowing torture & outright murder.
To Alex:
Re: ” … what’s to stop him from eventually getting around to classifying me as one of those who ought to be rounded up and made an example of?”
In case this was not a rhetorical question, the answer is: NOTHING since the NDAA of 2012 gives the US president the power to “indefinitely detain” US citizens, without charge or trial, arrested on US soil.
Apparently this fucking worm of a constitutional lawyer had the same relationship to the “founding principles” as Betsy DeVos has to education, .
Instead of vetoing the bill, sternly reproaching the congressional cretins who passed it and demanding recall elections for all Dems (~138) who voted for it, he signed it claiming he would use this power sparingly, as if no other presidents would follow.
The House vote is linked immediately below, the Senate vote is linked in a separate, following reply.
House Roll Call Vote @ NDAA2012
Note: the passage of the bill was in was in calendar year 2011.
Senate Roll Call Vote @ NDAA2012
«Thus, I don’t think your thesis holds up. If Trump had done this to save lives,–i.e., for peace–okay. But he didn’t. He did it as one more ploy is his running game of bitchslap against the press (sic).» To my mind, Alex, analyzing Mr Trump’s motives – or those of any such political figure – is an exercise in futility ; surely the motives of the gang criticising him for this move – if, indeed, it is a move and not merely a tweet – are hardly less self-serving ? The point, rather, is that withdrawing US military forces from yet another country they have illegally – according to both international and US law – invaded would be a positive step, irrespective of Mr Trump’s motives. Mr Trump – and, indeed, the corporate media in North America and Europe – may believe that he’s the biggest thing that’s happened to the universe since the Big Bang, but we are not forced to view current affairs through that peculiar prism….
Henri