United States: Regime change comes home
James Petras writes in 99GetSmart:
The norms of US capitalist democracy include the election of presidential candidates through competitive elections, unimpeded by force and violence by the permanent institutions of the state. Voter manipulation has occurred during the recent elections, as in the case of the John F. Kennedy victory in 1960 and the George W. Bush victory over ‘Al’ Gore in 2000. But despite the dubious electoral outcomes in these cases, the ‘defeated’ candidate conceded and sought via legislation, judicial rulings, lobbying and peaceful protests to register their opposition.
These norms are no longer operative. During the election process, and in the run-up to the inauguration of US President-Elect Donald Trump, fundamental electoral institutions were challenged and coercive institutions were activated to disqualify the elected president and desperate overt public pronouncements threatened the entire electoral order.
We will proceed by outlining the process that is used to undermine the constitutional order, including the electoral process and the transition to the inauguration of the elected president.
Regime Change in America
In recent times, elected officials in the US and their state security organizations have often intervened against independent foreign governments, which challenged Washington’s quest for global domination. This was especially true during the eight years of President Barack Obama’s administration where the violent ousting of presidents and prime ministers through US-engineered coups were routine – under an unofficial doctrine of ‘regime change’.
The violation of constitutional order and electoral norms of other countries has become enshrined in US policy. All US political, administrative and security structures are involved in this process. The policymakers would insist that there was a clear distinction between operating within constitutional norms at home and pursuing violent, illegal regime change operations abroad.
Today the distinction between overseas and domestic norms has been obliterated by the state and quasi-official mass media. The US security apparatus is now active in manipulating the domestic democratic process of electing leaders and transitioning administrations.
The decisive shift to ‘regime change’ at home has been a continual process organized, orchestrated and implemented by elected and appointed officials within the Obama regime and by a multiplicity of political action organizations, which cross traditional ideological boundaries.
Regime change has several components leading to the final solution: First and foremost, the political parties seek to delegitimize the election process and undermine the President-elect. The mass media play a major role demonizing President-Elect Trump with personal gossip, decades-old sex scandals and fabricated interviews and incidents.
Alongside the media blitz, leftist and rightist politicians have come together to question the legitimacy of the November 2016 election results. Even after a recount confirmed Trump’s victory, a massive propaganda campaign was launched to impeach the president-elect even before he takes office – by claiming Trump was an ‘enemy agent’.
The Democratic Party and the motley collection of right-left anti-Trump militants sought to blackmail members of the Electoral College to change their vote in violation of their own mandate as state electors. This was unsuccessful, but unprecedented.
Their overt attack on US electoral norms then turned into a bizarre and virulent anti-Russia campaign designed to paint the elected president (a billionaire New York real estate developer and US celebrity icon) as a ‘tool of Moscow.’ The mass media and powerful elements within the CIA, Congress and Obama Administration insisted that Trump’s overtures toward peaceful, diplomatic relations with Russia were acts of treason.
The outgoing President Obama mobilized the entire leadership of the security state to fabricate ‘dodgy dossiers’ linking Donald Trump to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisting that Trump was a stooge or ‘vulnerable to KGB blackmail’. The CIA’s phony documents (arriving via a former British intelligence operative-now free lance ‘security’ contractor) were passed around among the major corporate media who declined to publish the leaked gossip. Months of attempts to get the US media to ‘take the bite’ on the ‘smelly’ dossier were unsuccessful. The semi-senile US Senator John McCain (‘war-hero’ and hysterical Trump opponent) then volunteered to plop the reeking gossip back onto the lap of the CIA Director Brennan and demand the government ‘act on these vital revelations’!
Under scrutiny by serious researchers, the ‘CIA dossier’ was proven to be a total fabrication by way of a former ‘British official – now – in – hiding…!’ Undaunted, despite being totally discredited, the CIA leadership continued to attack the President-Elect. Trump likened the CIA’s ‘dirty pictures hatchet job’ to the thuggish behavior of the Nazis and clearly understood how the CIA leadership was involved in a domestic coup d’état.
CIA Director John Brennan, architect of numerous ‘regime changes’ overseas had brought his skills home – against the President-elect. For the first time in US history, a CIA director openly charged a President or President-elect with betraying the country and threatened the incoming Chief Executive. He coldly warned Trump to ‘just make sure he understands that the implications and impacts (of Trump’s policies) on the United States could be profound…”
Clearly CIA Director Brennan has not only turned the CIA into a sinister, unaccountable power dictating policy to an elected US president, by taking on the tone of a Mafia Capo, he threatens the physical security of the incoming leader.
From a Scratch to Gangrene
The worst catastrophe that could fall on the United States would be a conspiracy of leftist and rightist politicos, the corporate mass media and the ‘progressive’ websites and pundits providing ideological cover for a CIA-orchestrated ‘regime change’.
Whatever the limitations of our electoral norms – and there are many – they are now being degraded and discarded in a march toward an elite coup, involving elements of the militarist empire and ‘intelligence’ hierarchy.
Mass propaganda, a ‘red-brown alliance, salacious gossip and accusations of treason (‘Trump, the Stooge of Moscow’) resemble the atmosphere leading to the rise of the Nazi state in Germany. A broad ‘coalition’ has joined hands with a most violent and murderous organization (the CIA) and imperial political leadership, which views overtures to peace to be high treason because it limits their drive for world power and a US dominated global political order.
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“One has the impression that upon gaining the required experience in Kiev they may go as far as staging Maidan type protests in Washington in a bid to prevent Trump from taking office.”
Is Putin openly taunting Soros/ CIA/ Kagan-type UkroNazi neocons? Or does he know something about tomorrow we don’t?
A quick trawl of the headlines, inter alia – Marine le Pen in Trump Tower and then to tour Crimea? The Taiwanese and Israeli settlers to be represented at the Inauguration? Outgoing CIA Director Brennan spits dummy and issues veiled threats against Trump. US ‘enabled ISIS to take Dier Ezzor’ whilst also dropping weapons for them near Raqqa? Mexico petitions ‘Russian political intervention?’ World ‘free trade’ advocate Theresa May brown-noses Davos and sends tanks through the Chunnel to prepare for Kursk 2.0? Corbyn a ‘Russian sympathizer?’ Gun caches in DC? Is the whole world going mad?
The regime will change in Washington for sure – worldwide, the entire NWO looks set for a shake-up. Welcome to 2017, the UN Year of Peace – when the ‘continuum of war’ segues into the ‘continuum of peace.’ Enjoy.
Today the Guardian publishes this:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/19/womens-marches-across-the-uk-what-you-need-to-know
It tells women in the UK “what you need to know” about “protests” planned throughout the UK against Trump’s presidency.
Everywhere on UK TV this week we’ve had programme after programme featuring Trump, none of them positive, and this is set to continue throughout tomorrow. Once again the BBC has been shameless in its rush to join in with the Guardian and others. Again, I have to say, I have never in my life seen anything like this following a US election.
During Hitler’s rise, many attempts were made to discredit him. He was accused of being not a whole man, due to a war injury, etc. One of the ploys that seems relevant today, was having an aspiring actress émigré claim that Hitler had paid her defecate on him. Few people actually believed such nonsense. Those who were close to Hitler knew how fastidious he was, and how “sexually” private. So much so that not even his manservant, if I remember correctly, had seen him naked.
Wait… is this a pro-Hitler comment? Or is it merely sly anti-Trump? Just… um… asking…
PS He preferred golden showers with his niece Geli, no?
What is passing strange is that the lies now being applied to Donald Trump always turn out to be recycled several times over. It’s as if the CIA works from old computer templates with blank fields located where the name of the individual to be slandered has to go.
And smearing people with innuendo once applied to Adolf Hitler tends to insinuate that somehow they’re on the same moral level as he was regardless of what they actually stand for or what their principles are. This is an old ploy that works every time whether the victim is Putin or Trump. Dan should explain what he means by putting up that comment about Hitler.
Simply a fact, make of it what you will. I am not equating Trump with Hitler. Just pointing out that those who wish to discredit someone often go for this kind of perverted sexuality charge. It was done in Hollywood in the 30s regarding Hitler and with Trump now. It is easy enough to bribe or pay people to make such claims. I do not have a position pro- or anti-Trump, by the way. For the record, I voted for Hillary–not because I was rooting for her. I had no enthusiasm for her at all. I just happen to be a life-long Democrat. The only Republican I’ve ever voted for was Mark Hatfield, and he deserved my vote. I am hoping Trump turns out to be a good President and that some long-standing problems get resolved, above all détente with Russia, an end to destabilizing countries whose policies we disagree with, rebuilding US infrastructure, terminating our Middle East wars, and working on social and economic justice at home. I am an old guy, and I can honestly say this has been the absolute worst election I’ve ever experienced. It was an embarrassing, demeaning spectacle. The naked Trump statues did it for me.
“It was done in Hollywood in the 30s regarding Hitler…”
Seeing as Mein Kampf was published in 1925, how anti-Semitic must 1930s America have been if they needed sexual perversions to smear (no pun intended) Hitler with?
“I am hoping Trump turns out to be a good President and that some long-standing problems get resolved, above all détente with Russia, an end to destabilizing countries whose policies we disagree with, rebuilding US infrastructure, terminating our Middle East wars, and working on social and economic justice at home.”
POTUS doesn’t have the kind of power required to fiddle with most (if any) of these programs. Every POTUS gets to pick a topic or two that won’t mean shit to TFIC (like Obama’s Gay marriage gestures) and present feelgood speeches regarding them. That’s about it. In may not necessarily have always been this way, but it’s definitely this way now. Would anything be substantially different, now, if Bush Senior had remained in office this whole time…?
And is it funny or tragic that there were people who actually voted for BHO because they thought he would End War(s)…?
You tell us numptie…you have substantiation from your experience in French urinals don’t you?..according to your own depositions?
Changing the President of the USA every 8(or4) years from Democrat to Republican etc, seems to have about as much impact on how the USA is run and managed, as changing the deck chairs on the Titanic.
As the USA’s overdraft(National Debt) continues to rise, without any real attempt, at this stage anyway, to curtail spending, it was even suggested that the USA could eliminate it’s National debt simply by ‘minting’ a $14 trillion coin. (It would now need to be $18+Trillion). It would have to be a coin because the USA government doesn’t have the power to “print” paper money.
The suggestion got quite a run in the Wall St Journal about a year or two ago, and it seems that a lot of people(who should have known better) thought it was a great idea. Crackpot ideas like that are an indication that the level of insanity amongst America’s ruling elite have risen to the point where all pretentions of “sound responsible management” are no longer important.
The USA is in deep trouble, and the ruling elite have been reduced to the unedifying level of a Clown Circus.
Whilst I concur with a lot of what James says, I’m not sure where his idea of “left” comes from. I am a leftist but have nothing in common with liberals or capitalists of any variety because I see the job of leftists as the liquidation of imperialism/monopoly capitalism and the advance of society to the next plane of debate, thesis and synthesis on our road towards a more civilised state of affairs, with the fewest wars possible in achieving that goal. I have seen numerous items on this site which bandy about the words “left” and “leftist” as if they were insults whilst displaying no understanding of what those words do or should mean.
From the way Petras uses the terms “leftist” and “rightist” in the same sentence along with the label “progressive” in this sentence:
‘… The worst catastrophe that could fall on the United States would be a conspiracy of leftist and rightist politicos, the corporate mass media and the ‘progressive’ websites and pundits providing ideological cover for a CIA-orchestrated ‘regime change’ …’
you have to assume that he is being both sarcastic and also accurate in pointing out that there is a wide range and network of groups, institutions and agencies whose political views span or borrow from different (and often contradictory) ideologies who more or less agree that a legitimately elected President (no matter how compromised, corrupt or imperfect he may be, or how much he gamed the election process) should be ousted in an underhanded way that involves lying to the public with propaganda and slander, and / or rigging the political process.
Unfortunately “left” and “leftist” have lost any valuable meaning they once had, all too often because the individuals, groups and organisations claiming to be such themselves betrayed their original political principles. So it’s no wonder that such terms have come to be insults. It’s probably time to leave behind traditional notions of “left” and “right” as they have little relevance these days and are too simplistic to describe more complex political / economic ideologies.
While you may doubt where Petras’ idea of “left” comes from, have no doubt where his background might place him on the political spectrum:
http://petras.lahaine.org/?page_id=4
Yes, the “Left” / “Liberal” confusion is absurd. It’s bad enough that so many advertized the Clintons/ Obamas as Liberals… but I’ve seen them referred to as The Left! Part of that is just what you get when a Right Wing Culture discusses itself, of course.
OOFT!
It was Thucydides who pointed out at the time of democratic Athens and its great empire, the structural incompatibilities of a republic and an imperial realm. Once you have become an imperial power, you cannot step back from it; you have aroused too much hatred. You must follow that path to the end. It follows that since you can’t have both a republic and an empire a choice must be made. The real American conservatives like Pat Buchanan, favour a republic rather than an empire. The ‘war party’ (see below) wish to sacrifice America for the empire. The American people must make the decision as to whether they want to be a free republic or a superpower. A choice for the republic gains strength from the fact that the costs of empire increasingly outrun the economic advantages of imperial tribute. This was particularly the case in both the Roman and British empires. As these costs rise even the domestic costs of running the domestic state are affected, ultimately tending to arrive at their Minsky moment of national insolvency. The United States is rapidly approaching that moment.
According to Fortune Magazine February 2016:
”But as you broaden out the measures of debt, public and private, to include what we owe future social security recipients, and even further to include what we owe in promises to future seniors in terms of Medicare or current government workers in the form of pensions, you get the bottom number, that our actual debt load is a staggering 288% of GDP.”
The only way to write down debts of this magnitude is through default or inflation (i.e., default by the back door). It is possible that the draconian methods needed to keep social and political order may succeed (although this is by no means certain) but the great albatross of empire must be jettisoned due to its (un)affordability. The methods of controlling the uppity native peoples of the empire will be brought back to contain the domestic population, which is exactly what we are seeing develop, particularly in the United States with its incarceration rates and increasingly militarised police.
In what has become a profound crisis for American democracy, it is becoming questionable whether democracy, as we have known it, will survive. Those pushing this agenda – an agenda of sacrificing America and democracy to maintain the empire – are the war party of the neo-cons, ‘humanitarian’-interventions, utopian liberals, media, think-tanks both Republican and Democratic parties, the Deep-State, State Department, Pentagon, Security and Surveillance organizations and various other flotsam and jetsam who make up the US establishment. A massive coalition of the most reactionary, anti-democratic and dangerous groups on earth seemingly bent on war with Russia and/or China.
I wish Trump luck taking on this lot, but am not particularly optimistic about the outcome.
Trump is, I think, about the only person inside the US estbalishment, or ruling elite, with a snowball’s chance in hell of challenging the war party, precisely because he’s one of them, a child of the establishemtn, and seemingly he has no illusions about the system or the problems (though he probably underestimates them) facing the United States. Alone Trump can’t take them on, nobody can, alone. His only hope is the support from the people who voted for him, which he and his closest advisors understand as well, to turn them into a kind of movement, or a new political constalation that can stand up to the war party. It’s a gargantuan struggle that’s underway and the future of the United States, if not the world, hangs on the outcome, because if Trump fails we move even closer to war with Russia and the momentum may be impossible to stop.
We live in a pre-revolutionary situation. A period in which the Imperial ruling class has decided that the only way of holding on to the enormous power and wealth which it has accumulated is, simultaneously, to establish its dominance over all potential challenges, foreign powers, and to provide itself with the resources it needs to suppress, at the earliest stage, any attempt by the exploited classes to challenge its domination within society.
It is an old and trusted model and perfectly symmetrical: society is atomised and individually surveilled, any movement within the popular mind is noted and responded to, if necessary with ruthless force but, generally, in the first instance, by subtler methods of control.
It should be noted that-communist or capitalist, it makes no difference- Russia will be the enemy of imperialism until it surrenders to it and its ruling class reach an accommodation, become a part of a class which, by its nature aiming at monopoly, is constantly shrinking in size as it is increasing in wealth.
The very idea of multi-polarity is at odds with the idea of imperialism which cannot conceive of peace without victory in the Hobbesian struggle of all against all.
In the end Imperialism is a form of insanity, of the kind that led to Croesus’s demise.