Now Donald is president: an open discussion
So, contrary to the worst of the doomsayers, Trump was not assassinated before taking office, Obama did not call a state of emergency and void the election, the college didn’t overturn the vote. And Trump is president.
What next?
Will he really change the world order as both his detractors and admirers claim? Will he try but be prevented by threats or persuasion, or even a “color revolution”? Or was this never his intention at all?
Is the unprecedented and hysterical hate from the liberal media and Establishment, and the bizarre warnings from the security services just an elaborate piece of theatre to make us believe Trump is an outsider? Or does he really represent a perceived threat to their interests and aims?
If so, how exactly did he come to power? Why was he “allowed” to win an almost certainly manipulated election? Who backs him and who does he really represent? The “people”? Sane and compassionate capitalism? Or simply another group of oligarchs/neocons with slightly different aims and ambitions?
And do we necessarily want the changes he promises? “America First” is a slogan that worries a lot of people. And populists taking power in times of stress and deprivation don’t have great track records for peace, prosperity or human rights.
Tell us what you think.
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You’re right. I am pessimistic, extremely pessimistic. What the hell is American gonna look like after eight years of Trump? We’ve just had eight more wasted years under Obama, apparently the most ‘leftwing’ president ever… help! I’m not sure the UK during WW2 was really ‘socialist’ at all, though I know people on the left like to think so. I once heard Michael Foot waxing lyrical and nostalgic about the ‘wartime spirit’ and all that. For a moment I was grabbed by his rapture, then I wondered… so soicalism and war are… linked. That seemed like a high price to pay. Anyway, what about the strong ‘national socialist’ spirit that characterised Nazi Germany during the war, was it all that different than the ‘socialist spirit’ that people believe gripped the UK?
I was merely making observations. I don’t feel able at this juncture to get into a tremendously complex set of explanations about how and why we’re in the dire situation we’re facing now, let alone offer any solutions! Give me a break! To be honest, I don’t really think there are any… solutions to the kind of capitalist civilization we all live in. Capitalism would seem to have wiped the floor with all the various challenges that have emerged over the last couple of centuries. Russia dropped socialism and so has China. Socialism has failed and isn’t on the political agenda today, anywhere, except as nostalgia or something close to kitsch. It would appear that today the only real debate, which hardly exists, is about the nature of the capitalism people want to live under. Pretending that socialism is lurking somewhere on the horizon, is, I think absurd.
I know this sounds terribly harsh, but how long are we supposed to grasp at ideological and political straws? This… thing, our captialist materialist civilization, is gonna run its course. We’re actually moving further and further away from socialism and are embracing brutal nationalism and new fascism instead.
I try to stay away from confusing Socialism with Communism at least where Western First World Nations are involved. Every First World nation today practices some form of Socialism except the US! That is fact, not conjecture. The people who live in all of these nations are a good sight happier than Americans as a whole. These individuals are participating in the economic well being of their various countries without having to be wealthy. They are recognized by their political leaders as being worthy of sharing the wealth of the nation. Terrible isn’t it?
The ‘art’ of mind or narrative control has to use the forces that are generated as a result of such overlay of false definition. So in a sense it only intervenes at specific key points while mostly allowing a ‘fallen’ human nature to do the work along mostly predictable lines.
So ‘control’ is not of the outcomes so much as of the perceptions that lead to outcomes that are likewise perceived.
My sense of the ‘anti-Christ’ or fragmenting destruction of true will to the ‘victory’ of a usurping and negatively polarized fear – is that it is a negative ‘creation’. Fear mis-creates all things in its own image – which is that of the wish of power over life, others, world, and our own consciousness. This last is the key. The reintegration of true consciousness in place of a masking fragmented personae recognizes that even as our hate and fear, never really left to reside in the scapegoat – nor does our power leave us to be used by ‘others’ or our ‘past’ against us.
To wake only to deceits and fears is but a stirring from which a true desire can regain attention from a compulsive mind-trap.
No matter what is presenting itself as our world – its interpretation is our reality experience – which need not limit itself to the orthodox or official ‘reality’.
It is EASY to ‘see’ what is wrong with anyone – because it is a skill we have developed as a means to disrupt communication. But in this we can only ‘see’ facets of our self that we may or may not recognize.
Our reality experience mixes or attempts to co-fuse the true and the wishful – making us confused and as likely to see the reverse of true and unable to test reality reliably at all – without relinquishing the wish to power over – and listen or receive in an honest willingness for true help – rather than false guidance that suits are egos but leads us ever deeper into fear.
As is obvious – I trust – the psychic-emotional aspects of ‘narrative control’ or ‘identity’ assertion loom larger than the possibility of ever further loss of true willed consciousness to a fake self in its fake world – in which the true is sacrificed to keep a dead idol ‘gratified’.
Great again… under Israel? – seems one facet here – but the notion of exposing and taking down the medical mafia is a lure to invest in an outcome!
But I rest in that I align truly in myself and live from that – rather than wait on outcomes as if my life is on hold until they resolve OUTSIDE me.
If I were seeking power in the world, I would use every outcome – expected or outsider bet – to serve my purpose. But I find my purpose in aligning with joy in being – rather than fear of loss. Yet such is the nature of the Choice I feel we are brought to, by the unfolding of events – regardless of ‘sides’ that work together to disrupt true communication.
Oh please!
I think socialism is an interesting… idea, but really no way to run a complex society, and it’s about as likely to succeed as a society built on Christian values, fine in theory, but not very ‘realistic’ given the type of creatures we are with a remarkbly close biological affinity to the other large primates. This is probably why I read and apprectated Marx, but never really agreed with his prescriptions, way too idealistic for people like us. The Communist Manifesto is pure poetry wrtten by romantic young men intoxicated with their own brillance and dreams, at time when they appeared to be on the verge of coming true. Today, however, I think it’s all close to absurd. Socialism would require us to be highly motivated and rational beings, and I don’t think we are.
Trump is as much ‘us’ as he is the ‘other.’ He’s a product of our civilization as much as Einstein, though at the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum of course. Unfortunately, I believe he represents a great lurch in history, something truly significant. We are turning our backs, at least in the West, on an era, leaving rationality behind us along with a facts. If we accept that we are entitled to define our own facts then we can also choose our own version of reality which might have more serious consequences. Trump represents a massive failure for the West in the sphere of… Ideas. It’s the triumph of a super-nova of… nostalgia, nostalgia for a great past that never really existed, that’s gone and won’t be returning. That can’t return. It’s like wishing one could make water run uphill again.
The West is abandoning education too because increasingly education is in open conflict with what we believe as a society. Only what we, or most of us have been taught to believe and want, isn’t possible anymore because we’ve sucked the planet dry. We don’t have the courage to admit this and the tremendous challenges we face as a civilization, so we are increasingly ignoring them and retreating into fantasy and dreams, creating our own facts and reality because the real world is too hard for us to live in.
I am a baby boomer based in the UK.
The one thing I know is that during the Second World War capitalism was largely abandoned and socialism (by which I mean a centrally planned and directed economy) was largely adopted in the UK and elsewhere.
Without a whole-society approach towards waging the war, Britain would have been the loser.
The war-time forms of organisation were gradually dropped after the war ended but the lesson remains.
A society organised for the benefit of all is superior to one organised for benefit of a few.
What we all now need is for someone of the calibre of an FDR or an Attlee to lead such as movement.
Maybe there are young people who will follow the lead set by Bernie Sanders in the USA?
Maybe there are young people in the UK who will follow the lead set by Jeremy Corbyn?
While the reactionary forces represented by Trump and Clinton reign supreme for now, will they always?
I consider it a distinct possibility that the people of America and Britain could elect completely new political leaderships within the next 4 years if they are able to emerge through the existing party systems.
If my decades on this Earth have taught me anything it is that change comes in phases and that they are often preceded by seemingly impossible developments, like the election of Cameron in the UK and Trump in the US.
As the famous philosopher Scarlett O’Hara said in the film Gone With The Wind “Tomorrow…is another day”!
“A society organised for the benefit of all is superior to one organised for benefit of a few.
What we all now need is for someone of the calibre of an FDR or an Attlee to lead such as movement.”
No, we need people with the “caliber” of Lenin and Mao, who can lead vast masses of workers in a bitter struggle consciously aimed at the overthrow, rather than the amelioration, of the capitalist system and the bourgeois state. Sanders-style capitalism is still capitalism, and as such will eventually lead straight back to regular capitalism and the complete demoralization of the working masses. The hard brick wall of capitalism and capitalism-imperialism needs to be smashed and broken through with a hammer – the workers organized and ready to FIGHT – not have some polite water balloons thrown at it. We can fumble around with trying to “build bridges” to a “more equitable future” (or some other vague, amorphous and class-neutral stance), or we can wade through the water, fight off the sharks, and cross the river.
What you are calling for is – in my honest opinion – an impossible leap.
Remember that before Lenin (who could never have got back into Russia without Imperial German assistance) there was Kerensky and that before Mao there was Sun Yat-Sen.
Something similar has to happen in the West and elsewhere if socialism is to be successfully reintroduced.
I also do not support democratic centralism but – instead – democratic socialism.
Democratic centralism in both Russia and China has failed – anyone can see that.
That is why it is necessary to have real genuine democratic support for socialism.
Vanguard elitism is not the answer.
If you think that the capitalists are going to reform themselves out of existence, then your kind of politics is certainly not the answer but just a way of sheep-herding the masses back to capitalism. While the Russian and Chinese socialist experiments eventually failed, and while similar revolutions seeking to overthrow capitalism may yet fail, there’s no question that Sanders-style “socialism” is guaranteed to. You’re going to have to get realistic about the fact that you can’t be “democratic” with the bourgeoisie if you want to expropriate them and install the working class as the ruling class. Show me one place in the world where socialism has been successfully introduced through parliamentarism and a commitment to legalism. The working class has to shed this tiresome baggage that will only doom it to endless quagmire and aimlessness.
I’ll take the bridges any day over the death and destruction your way ensures! Americans have practiced that way of altering economies and government structures all over the World instead of diplomacy and have never won over one mind.
“I’ll take the bridges any day over the death and destruction your way ensures! Americans have practiced that way of altering economies and government structures all over the World instead of diplomacy and have never won over one mind.”
Why are you mistaking revolutionary struggle with imperialist aggression?
For young people today socialism is an abstract concept derided by their history books and the surging far-right. American right-wingers are especially ignorant of basic political concepts, hence Obama and Hillary are “socialist” or “Marxist” in their eyes. Only staggeringly ignorant fools can make such claims earnestly…and indeed they make those claims and make them often and loudly. And very rarely are their fallacies pointed out to them.
Then there is the fact that even if a social-democratic or an actual socialist government were to take power they would soon find that it is impossible to implement any changes to the status quo that involve taking power back from the banks and corporations. Funding for social programs, a liveable wage and legislation that gives workers meaningful recourse if they are treated unfairly? The MSM fake news cannons would be firing non-stop, investors and “wealth creators” screaming bloody murder and threatening to relocate to a more “business friendly” environment.
The social-democratic left has become the neoliberal Chicago School right (called “the left” by the MSM), the traditional right has melded with the neoliberal right to become part of “the left”…and a few hardy souls have moved their stakes to the xenophobic, “nativist” far-right, and now make up what the media simply refer to as “the right”.
The choices are right and righter….with the former being conflated with “the left” at every turn. Socialism does not stand a chance at the moment.
The left let itself be seduced by neoliberal Third Way agents and effectively died when Clinton (Bill), Schroeder (Gerhard) and Blair (Anthony) pushed their respective centre-left parties to the right and most of the less influential western liberal democracies followed suit.
Bernie Sanders is no socialist. He’s an American remember. And he voted for every war that America started during his long political career. “Revolutionary” indeed. Jeremy Corbyn actually knows what socialism is. If he is wise he is playing a long game and planning for the future. accordingly.
The far-right is ascending and nothing is standing in its way. Corporate Democrats and moribund, semi-atrophied losers like Hollande, Merkel and their ilk? They are so tone-deaf and out of touch that they think their media propagandists hysterically shouting down Trump and LePen etc. will convince the people that they are “wrong”. If that doesn’t do it, patronizing and condescending opinion pieces in the Grauniad and NYT will make them come to their senses. Lol.
What many old-school leftists and neoliberal frauds alike don’t get is that public anger and dissatisfaction with the status quo is finding an outlet on the far-right. Mark my words….there will be “shock” and gasps of disbelief when the European right starts winning elections. What then? Martial law? Civil war? We shall know soon enough.
Before socialism has even the slightest chance again there will be upheaval and violence to contend with.
“I think socialism is an interesting… idea, but really no way to run a complex society, and it’s about as likely
to succeed as a society built on Christian values, fine in theory, but not very ‘realistic’ given the type of
creatures we are with a remarkbly close biological affinity to the other large primates. This is probably why I
read and apprectated Marx, but never really agreed with his prescriptions, way too idealistic for people like
us.”
What’s “way too idealistic” is to think that humanity can survive capitalism. That’s utopian thinking, to borrow
a term that is often thrown at communists. But suppose that humans are as you say they are. That would actually be MORE of a reason to try to get rid of capitalism, not less.
“The Communist Manifesto is pure poetry wrtten by romantic young men intoxicated with their own brillance and dreams, at time when they appeared to be on the verge of coming true.”
Nice caricature, except that revolutionary theory and practice didn’t end with the Manifesto, and the Russian
and Chinese revolutions, inspired by Marxists analysis and practice, were anything other than “pure poetry”.
“Today, however, I think it’s all close to absurd. Socialism would require us to be highly motivated and
rational beings, and I don’t think we are.”
People become highly motivated and rational during the process of building a revolutionary situation. It’s
absolutely true that people are not currently highly motivated and rational, because of years of capitalist
indoctrination and obfuscation. Again, this is precisely why we need to get rid of this filthy system.
“Trump is as much ‘us’ as he is the ‘other.’”
He would love for you to believe that, because then he can expunge all thought of class dynamics from your
analysis. We’ve heard it over and over again that in America there are “no classes’, and counting Trump to be
“among us” (the working class) is to acquiesce to the entire bourgeois narrative that justifies exploitation and
inequality. The working class will never win emancipation if it is continuously mired in the ideological and
conceptual swamp of motifs such as “Trump is just a reflection of us”. Even if that were true, it still wouldn’t
explain just how it is that people came to be the way they are. You seem to think it just happened in a vacuum,
or that it reflects “our biology”. This lets the entire capitalist system off the hook by ignoring how individuals are embedded and situated within a system of production, about who gets to expropriate what, and about which interests are derived from these relations. For you, it’s just “Trump is a human and so are we, so let’s not even bother with trying to get rid of capitalism.” This isn’t just useless, it’s poisonous.
“Unfortunately, I believe he represents a great lurch in history, something truly significant. We are turning our backs, at least in the West, on an era, leaving rationality behind us along with a facts. If we accept that we are entitled to define our own facts then we can also choose our own version of reality which might have more serious consequences. Trump represents a massive failure for the West in the sphere of… Ideas. It’s the triumph of a super-nova of… nostalgia, nostalgia for a great past that never really existed, that’s gone and won’t be returning. That can’t return. It’s like wishing one could make water run uphill again.”
You offer no explanation for WHY any of this is happening. You don’t even so much as hint at what you think the
processes underlying this lurch to reaction are. It’s just a mystery, apparently, and the only “realistic” thing
for the working class to do is accept it (in order to make progress? Prepare for extinction? What exactly? You
don’t know). These sorts of liberal-capitalist “analyses” are precisely what the working class can do without.
They offer nothing but fatalism, pessimism and capitulation to the system that exploits them. These “analyses”
regurgitate narratives about capitalism being the be-all and end-all, which serve no one other than the capitalists themselves. They offer the prospect of nothing other than the very thing liberals lament: civilizational collapse, barbarism and the end of humanity. Workers would do well to consider whether “being realistic” restricts them to this.
“The West is abandoning education too because increasingly education is in open conflict with what we believe as
a society. Only what we, or most of us have been taught to believe and want, isn’t possible anymore because
we’ve sucked the planet dry. We don’t have the courage to admit this and the tremendous challenges we face as a civilization, so we are increasingly ignoring them and retreating into fantasy and dreams, creating our own
facts and reality because the real world is too hard for us to live in.”
Again, no attempt at an explanation about why any of this is happening, which isn’t surprising given that you
reduce everything to humans being “primate-like”. In other words, you propose no solution, only moping and
wallowing in species self-pity at “our failure” “to be rational”. You turn what you lament into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Liberals become complicit in the endangerment of humanity because they can’t get off the capitalist train. They think it’s “necessary” even when they see that it will lead to humanity riding off a cliff.
israel
This election has exposed the utterly rotten core of the capitalist system and the attendant ideological muck that its defenders, and its ostensible “opponents” of the liberal-reformist hue, are mired in.
Those imbued with an authentic class perspective wasted no time at all with “hopes” that Trump “might” be anything other than what he clearly is: a demagogue, a billionaire and a vicious class enemy of the workers, every bit as much part of the “establishment” as he decried Clinton for being. Those who choose to take the word of billionaires with a history of abusing and cheating workers, denigrating women, engaging in fraud, and issuing a steady stream of racism, misogyny, sexism and vulgarian nationalism can only have done so because of a militant commitment to believing in “America’s” cherished chauvinist myths. If the election spectacle could be characterized in one sentence, it would be “My billionaire isn’t a fraud! YOURS is!” This disgusting charade, this miserable, infantile spectacle, is held up as “democracy” (Trump assures us that “control has been returned to the people” and that he will “drain the swap” even as he fills his cabinet with reprehensible swamp creatures), with the winners being a foregone conclusion: the capitalist class. There are differences in cultural and strategic content between the Clintonite camp and the Trump camp, but their collective commitment to the capitalist system and the United State’s imperial hegemony are not in question.
Once again, workers have gotten funneled and boxed into debates about class-neutral identity politics, about who counts as “really” American; once again they’ve been made to chase their own tails at the pleasure of the bourgeoisie, who set them off on humiliating games wherein workers compete to out-“American” one another. In the US, before one is allowed to criticize any aspect of the capitalist system or the state that ensures its survival, one has to first prostrate themselves to “Americanism” i.e. loyalty to the ruling class and its system of exploitation and imperial plunder and warfare. “As an American, I…”; “What Trump is doing is un-American..”; “What Clinton is doing is un-American..”; “We’ve got a lot of amazing police officers…”; “Our brave men and women in uniform…” ; “Our Constitution…” The ideological muck that pervades the entire “political spectrum” is a dead-weight around the necks of the working class and a poison to its historical mission of emancipation. It is a filthy quagmire than precludes clarity; it is a means of short-circuiting authentic class solidarity and action, of getting it bogged down in fetishisms for legalism and “Constitionalism”, by diluting the ideological content of mass movements and distilling them into safe, manageable and agreeable husks that seek accommodation with exploitation an continued bourgeois dictatorship. Those who indulge in and wallow over sectional debates about “the Constitution”, “not my president” or “Trump’s lack of grace” are simply pulling the working class back from the process of discarding its illusions about this rotten system. They are acting as garbage monsters and enforcers for capitalism, throwing their lot in with the same giant ball of mucus.
Trump won because of corporate Democrats, who were more worried about losing to “socialist” Sanders (a mild liberal reformer of the European social-democratic type) than about letting the monstrosity of Trump win. The Democrats apparently promoted Trump as part of a “Pied Piper” strategy, which backfired spectacularly on them. But this is just part of a structural shift towards increasing fascism that has been playing out over many years. When you keep kicking a hornet’s nest by abusing people’s trust and brutally betraying their hopes (as Obama did for eight years), then eventually you’re going to get stung by hornets. Liberal pundits then feign “shock” that this “could possibly have happened”. Trump’s victory, of course, was no an aberration, but a culmination of a “bi-partisan” gravitation to the right.
Bourgeois “democracy” has become simply a conveyor belt and ratchet for fascism and right-wing politics, wherein the “reasonable” party only has to be slightly less awful than the overtly fascist one in order to present itself as offering “progress”. This means that that “reasonable” party can keep on being more and more fascist itself, so long as it’s only a little less so than the gutter reactionary alternative. This has become the defining feature of “lesser evil” politics: the masses can choose the PACE of fascism, but not whether there’s a tendency towards it. Democrats assumed that they could simply rely on being (or presenting themselves as being) slightly less awful than Trump in order to extort people to vote for them (“You’ve got no choice. After all, you wouldn’t want Trump getting elected, would you?”). It didn’t work for them, but it should surprise no one that a large portion of workers became fed up with “business as usual” politics and policy. It makes sense that, lacking a concrete class analysis due to decades of capitalist indoctrination seeking to expunge any class content from their minds, and needing an emotional and psychological valve through which to vent their frustration, they would choose a fascist demagogue feeding them a steady stream of racist innuendo about “illegal” immigrants “stealing” their jobs. It makes sense that Trump’s racist dog-whistling gained traction, because the soil on which it gains traction was being continuously laid down and compacted over years of both liberal and conservative administrations catering to the needs of US capital.
That Trump bills himself as, and has been denounced as, “anti-establishment”, should in NO way lead workers to think that he is “their man”, that he is going to “drain the swamp” or act in their true interests. This is historical idealist nonsense of the highest order. One only needs to look at the sickening spectacle of a group of reactionary billionaire men smirking around a table as US capital’s warlord in chief rescinds aid to organizations providing abortion services. Trump offers the meager gruel of atavistic cultural motifs and an intensification of capitalist prerogatives to workers desperate for an improvement to their lot; he is therefore a deadly enemy of the working class both in the US and abroad. Protestations tot he contrary are based on wishful thinking, a predilection to being deluded (a tried and tested feature of capitalist individualism and a formidable tool in the bourgeois arsenal) and a ruthless rejection of class content in political thought. Trump is gutter trash.
But just as importantly, we can ask: what are liberals doing? Unable to engage in an honest appraisal about why they lost the circus they call an “election”, they indulge in stupid debates about Russian hacking and how Trump “isn’t my president” because he’s a “Putin’s stooge”, as though such things mattered. Do these morons not realize that Obama, who was anything other than a Russian stooge, consistently sided with US finance-capital against the interests of the working class? Do these imbeciles not realize that their rhetoric pitting Trump against the CIA simply turns them into stooges for the American deep state and its program of mobilizing the US working class for the purposes of US imperialist war on behalf of American capital? But this is the essence of politics that comes with living in the bourgeoisie’s pigsty: to terminate critical thought; to funnel people into supporting the interests of capital whether they want to or not; to wed them to idealist moralisms ungrounded in material reality; to convert workers into champions for one section of the ruling class on the rotten and exhausted basis of “lesser evil”, “seat at the table” and reformist politics.
The only recourse that the working classes of the world, whether in the imperialist centers or the brutally exploited “Third World”, is class struggle and class war. No more cheering on fascist demagogues promising to be “outside the establishment”; no more cheering for liberal reformists who can’t extricate themselves from the system that gives rise to fascism in the first place, that incubates it in its womb, that coddles and protects the interests of an alien class sucking the blood of those who toil. No more promoting the stupidity of “Americanism” (what’s the message there, anyway? That white, black and brown people in the US should “come together as Americans” to collectively enjoy the fruits of plunder and destruction of the Third World?). No more giving this disgusting system yet another license to pillage, kill, rob, exploit, divide, incarcerate, impoverish and make redundant the world’s working masses. The workers of the world need to engage in a protracted people’s war against capitalist-imperialism wherever this murderous, blood-sucking system bursting at the seams with filth and corruption has taken hold.
Cast away illusions; prepare for struggle!
WOW! I’ve always said that Republicans don’t win elections, Democrats lose them, and you just explained why. Thank you.
You’re not being sarcastic, are you? If you are, please explain your misgiving with what I wrote.
If you agree with what I wrote – if anyone reading it agrees – disseminate it as much as possible, please. It desperately needs to be heard, grasped and acted upon.
yaaaasss, now thats the good stuff. ^_^
I found your Marxian analysis very interesting but as I have grown older I have come to the realisation that such sociologically-based analyses are open to question.
I don’t perceive capitalism – by which I mean the formation of human and material capital converted from human and non-human labour and energy – as constituting a problem if it is formed for the right reasons.
The roads, railways and canals of the world are not in themselves necessarily a problem.
They simply represent objective forms of labour and energy combinations.
What is really important is the human motivations which lie behind the processes of capital formation.
If – as they usually do – these capital formations permit particular small groups of individuals to accumulate massive amounts of wealth at the expense of everyone else in society, that is the real problem.
I see both Trump and Clinton as representing cults of the personality, where “ordinary” people are invited to join their teams or gangs in the mistaken belief that the quality of their own lives will be enhanced as a result.
Ultimately, what rules is gang culture; you are either a member of the Trump gang or the Clinton gang.
Even then, the gang leaders are so “civilised” that the contest is not one to the death.
The fact is that all the gang leaders conspire together to some degree against the interests of “ordinary” people.
How to change the system?
The only way I can see is if “ordinary” people realise that the gang leaders are all part of the same rotten system.
Then, they need to establish their own gang with the objective of working collectively for them all.
Only by disestablishing the current power system and replacing it will the new un-capitalistic society be formed.
It would take a long time to achieve this new society.
With modern technology, a centrally planned economy and society is now within reach.
The role of money in any new society could be gradually phased out and resource allocation made directly to all.
Public services – like education, public transportation health care and social care – should all be freely available.
Societal goals could be ennobled to the good of everyone in our global society.
Capitalism as we perceive it today has to go if the new and better world we all want to see is to emerge.
“I don’t perceive capitalism – by which I mean the formation of human and material capital converted from human and non-human labour and energy – as constituting a problem if it is formed for the right reasons.”
The problem isn’t the reasons for which it’s initially formed (though these have often been far from admirable), it’s the inherent dynamics of capitalist accumulation. Initial motivations mean nothing when they’re avalanched by subsequent capitalist expansion, the tendency towards ever greater concentrations of wealth at the top, and the indoctrination of the masses in capitalist modes of thinking.
“What is really important is the human motivations which lie behind the processes of capital formation.
If – as they usually do – these capital formations permit particular small groups of individuals to accumulate massive amounts of wealth at the expense of everyone else in society, that is the real problem.”
Except that this has happened without exception, and is not just something that “might” happen. Even when these disparities are ameliorated by using state actions such as welfare provisions, taxation on the rich and investment in public infrastructure, you still leave in tact the institutions that have a structural imperative to undo all those reforms, and these institutions have become experts at dampening, impeding, deflecting and eventually undoing these reforms.
“The only way I can see is if “ordinary” people realise that the gang leaders are all part of the same rotten system.”
Your aversion to using class terminology is suggestive of a certain reticence towards identifying the actual class dynamics that capitalism entails. This can only lead to the undermining of an emancipatory program since it wouldn’t explicitly identify those dynamics in order to be able to pull them out by the roots. What you’re saying is a good start, but you need to carry the analysis all the way through.
“With modern technology, a centrally planned economy and society is now within reach.”
It has long been “within reach” if we properly understand what central planning should actually entail. You seem to be mistaking it for micromanaging the entire economy. It isn’t. Central planning can be done by coordinating the overall economy for the benefit of the whole working class, but allowing individual enterprises to make certain decisions due to their greater understanding of the local conditions and prospects for local initiative. Indeed, one of the things that would strengthen central planning is precisely that many (but not all) decisions be made locally rather than issued from the center. Micromanagement gets in the way of local initiative, creativity and, ultimately, efficient coordination. Please read “The Shanghai Textbook” for details.
The Dems didn’t promote Trump did they? I absolutely agree that Trump is clearly backed by all or part of the Establishment, but that doesn’t justify rewriting or simplifying recent history.
Let’s remember the Dems opposed Trump vociferously, as indeed did a lot of the senior Republicans, the media, intelligence services and much else. The question before us is – how and why did Trump win in the face of this opposition?
Was it because this frantic and universal opposition itself was phoney, or because there was another, silent but powerful, portion of the Establishment that ended up considering Trump to be the better bet and made sure he got to the White House?
I suggest the latter. I suggest that we can almost identify the time that this silent group (the Deepest Deep State if you like) decided Clinton was too risky/damaged/compromised/sick to be worth backing any more. I think we got Trump as a last ditch switch, maybe because Wikileaks has just too much dirt on Clinton for hr to be viable.
Which doesn’t mean he’s the People’s Champion or anything else. But might mean he’s a genuine loose cannon, which makes the next few months potentially quite interesting.
“The Dems didn’t promote Trump did they? I absolutely agree that Trump is clearly backed by all or part of the Establishment, but that doesn’t justify rewriting or simplifying recent history.”
You misunderstood. The Dems (by which I mean Hillary Clinton and the forces arrayed around her) wanted Trump to become the Republican front-runner because they wanted the most horrible GOP candidate to go up against their own candidate. Their hope was that, faced with the choice between Trump and Clinton, people would choose Clinton. This was part of the Democratic strategy of foisting upon voters wary of “politics as usual” or “establishment politics”. They miscalculated just how sick and tired voters were of this, and many chose Trump instead.
I don’t know if any “Deep deep state” was backing Trump, except for elements within the FBI. The working class has no stake in any of these bourgeois turf wars. My general point is that the working class needs to organize to jump off the capitalist bandwagon altogether before it’s used as fodder in another inter-imperialist world war.
As long as private banking families are allowed to control our currency and extort hundreds of billions each year in interest, money we pay to borrow our own money, nothing will change. The Fed has WAY too much control over our economy, and has its own private stock trading desk, and with its ability to print up an unlimited amount of money, it can make markets move in the direction they want.
That’s type of hidden control of our lives and economy is tyranny, not democracy.
And then there’s the irritating self-righteous stance the adopt at the Guardian in relation to what the choose to call… ‘Facts.’ The Guardian’s use of the term ‘facts’ is interesting, because it’s selectively applied and even changes dependent on who’s presenting the ‘facts.’ Facts aren’t just facts for the Guardian, they are weapons employed in an information war. Statements by people one like and approves of aren’t scrutinized to the same standards compared to the ‘enemy’ or people one doesn’t like. In fact the Guardian is quite prepared to accept things as sacred ‘facts’ which are highly controversial, unproven, and not really ‘facts’ at all. Whether something is called and accepted as a ‘fact’ depends on the source and who is uttering them, but that’s a ‘fact’ the Guardian doesn’t want people to talk about too much. ‘Facts’ really means ‘good’ in this context as opposed to ‘bad.’
Rumours quickly change into ‘facts’ if powerful actors on the right side repeat them long enough. Like the Russian’s hacked the DNC, despite no actual proof or real evidence that this actually happened. Or, Obama has shown restraint in Syria and not launched a military attack against it. Or, Gadaffi threatened the population of Benghazi with genocide. Or, Cameron stating that their were 50,000 moderate rebels fighting the government of Syria. The list of sacred Guardian ‘facts’ is endless and growing exponentially… and that’s a fact!
Above there is plenty discussion of how disinformation campaigns are so complex, one cannot possibly know what is really going on, and that perhaps a character like Trump has been planned all along in order to create division. I’m sure that there is some truth to this, but it seems to me that there must be warring factions even within the .1%. At the very least, there are always turf wars between various US government agencies, even when they both have the same ultimate goal. The Department of Defense and the CIA seemed to be rather at odds in Syria, for example, although both want to destroy the country in their own way. Also note how the CIA has been much more enthusiastic than the NSA about the supposed Russian hacking. In the end, I think Trump, like any other president, will simply try to cut some deals with the various major players (that’s what he was doing in his recent visit to the CIA, I think) and that not much will change. Even if somehow a person genuinely interested in change was elected president, I don’t think any serious change is possible. In the long run, the most that the rest of the world can hope for is that the US government consumes itself from the inside and that the resulting destruction doesn’t spread too far abroad.
One must not leave out character. The people comprising the wild beast of corporatocracy are self-modified and reflect the society and system that they have unwisely embraced and feed. They have jettisoned principles and Jesus Christ’s, and sane people’s, ‘golden rule’ of ‘Do to others as you would have them do to you’. In the place of that paradigm you now have the paradigm of ‘riches for the strongest’. You’ve heard the expression ‘dog eat dog’? I also think the analogy of a pack of wolves is good. They work together to accomplish shared goals that each individual benefits from, but they are still hungry, dangerous wolves, certainly to their prey. They believe in collective society-building and collective problem-solving – for their class, since in order to have ‘strong’ players, there must be weak players who lose. That’s us, namely ‘we the people’, not all whom are automatically righteous just because they are victims of US-inspired, directed or direct action, including economic (neoliberalism) and military action. Factor in the players’ character. Always.
“… [Populists] taking power in times of stress and deprivation don’t have great track records for peace, prosperity or human rights.”
I think to assume that populist politicians not having great track records for peace, prosperity or human rights is dangerous. Not all populist politicians can be tarred with the same ideological brush if that is what is implied in the statement.
If populism as a political phenomenon is defined as a movement aimed at mobilising an alienated / marginalised majority against a government seen to be controlled by a remote and out-of-touch elite minority, then Bernie Sanders was as much a populist politician as was Donald Trump in the early stages of the US presidential election season last year because both ran on anti-establishment platforms. In Latin America, populism has long been a significant political trend closely associated with socialist politics and leaders like Hugo Chavez (before he died), Lula da Silva (before 2011), Evo Morales and Rafael Correa campaigned on populist platforms. Who can deny these leaders have not reduced (if not eliminated) social and economic inequality in their nations, and in so doing, come into the cross hairs of Washington imperial designs?
Obviously the irony was lost on Aaron Blake. Article attacking Trump’s press secretary while himself using a memo circulating on social media claiming to be from someone who worked in the White House.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/22/kellyanne-conway-says-donald-trumps-team-has-alternate-facts-which-pretty-much-says-it-all/?utm_term=.8dd46563986b
The only thing I like about Trump is that he’s adding a kick in the teeth to mainstream media.
Suddenly the Washington Post want to fact check the White House making announcements? Because inauguration attendance figures is so damn important. Meanwhile the biggest whoppers over murdering people abroad – well…..we’ll just let that pass.
Kicking them in the teeth for public consumption.. throwing out his gold teeth with them in private……to see how they roll:
I’ve been looking at the Guardian today and the coverage of Trump is simply appalling. I don’t see, given their class affiliations, that there’s a significant difference between Obama and Trump, only that Obama is a far more professional and accomplished liar compared to Trump. But then Obama appears to have been schooled by the CIA for a long time.
So many of the comments at the Guardian seem incredibly ‘religious’ in character. Frighteningly partisan and sectarian, split on party lines. The same people who criticise Trump’s rhetoric as unacceptable and vile, are ready to call him and his supporters morons, idiots, monsters, fascists, creeps, racists and much, much, more. It’s one set of rules for Trump and another for them. Then one is informed, on principle no less, that there is a world of difference between Trump’s use of language and their own, because Trump, allegedly attacks whole groups and races and genders, whilst they only attack an individual, and that, apparently makes all the difference! It’s not about indivisible principles of behaviour but depends on the size of the audience beinng abused. I don’t accept that.
Then I pointed out that people had been ordered assassinated by Obama for using words, language, similar to Madonna’sa abot blowing up the White House. This, I was informed, with a slapping down and condecension, what an outright ‘lie’, a ‘rightwing conspiracy theory’, ‘really? I must have missed Obama ordering assassinations!’
It’s staggering and really quite depressing. Obama ordered the assassination of Alwaki in Yemen, who was an American citizen, for ‘encourgaging terrorism.’ Alwaki didn’t fight himself. He told people they had the right and duty to resist US attacks on Muslims and their countries and defend themselves. This was enemy propaganda and because he was an articulate American Muslim with a world-wide audience, he was judge to be a traitor by Obama, who ordered his murder to shut him up, permanently. Alwaki’s father even attempted to plead with Obama not to murder his son and went to court to have the murder threats declared unlawful and unconstitutional. It didn’t help. Alwaki and his son and a friend, were successfully assassinated in an illegal US drone attack a couple of years ago.
And I have to listen to ignorant and partisan Obama lovers of a liberal/left bent, telling me that I’m lying and they’ve never heard anything about any of this, therefore, it never happened! I’m guilty of lying and spreading ‘fake news’ and not ‘facts’!
This is indicative of the intellectual standard of most of the journalists and many, many, of the people who read and comment at the Guardian. They’re actually proud of their ignorance and lack of knowledge and immediately assume one is deliberately lying if one challenges their heartfelt dogmas and prejudices.
All this is really rather depressing and makes one feel despair and loathing in equal measure.
Don’t let the media grind you down. It is what they want from you.
By encouraging all thinking people to despair, they achieve their hegemonic aims.
Eric Blair (George Orwell) identified this in 1948 in his book “1984”.
He wrote about peoples’ minds being filled with pap and “catchy” tunes to whistle.
Everything and anything to stop them from really thinking.
Also – don’t forget – some people do not enjoy original thinking.
Erich Fromm’s book “The Fear of Freedom” was very aptly titled.
Really, not a lot has changed, especially among the middle-brow people.
Prior to the election, I wrote on this blog several times that I felt sorry for the American people.
The “choice” they were presented with was no choice at all.
Both eventual candidates – Clinton and Trump – were complete rubbish.
Both were tied-up with zionist control – look who their daughters were married to.
Perhaps inchoate rage is exactly the right response, even if the respondents don’t understand why?
And Kafka is even better….not science fiction or social fiction…showing how all human behaviour is animal instinct made art form:
True enough. It’s not talked about often or at length but humans are animals, mammals to be precise, and we are as locked into unconscious patterns of behaviour as much as any other animal.
We think we have mastered control over ourselves and while we do have some control, or at least the illusion thereof, we are all still crashing through the forest like bewildered, stampeding beasts on autopilot.
This terrifies people so they choose to live in a world of illusions and comforting delusions. I recommend reading Camus, Ballard (J.G.), Kafka and John Gray for glimpse behind the curtain of BS humans have constructed to avoid facing the truth of their violent, meaningless and ultimately pointless existence.
That’s pretty damn stupid comment if I ever read one: blaming daughters for their choice of husbands! Anti Semitic much?.
V“““`Very, very true! This has been American modus operandi for the last 50 years. Unfortunately this policy has never taken into account the welfare of the citizens of the nations being dismantled. Those poor people have been killed, their homes destroyed, their nations infrastructure bombed back to the stone age, all because for some reason, US national security required it! Talk about hubris and unaccountability. I consider Obama to be a war criminal , much like Bush before him. Since US justice is corrupt from top to bottom, his accountability will take place at the Pearly Gates!
Like many others here, I was surprised at the apparently low intellectual capabilities of the protesters.
Marx’s definition of the lumpen-proletariat came to mind.
The people who are easily biddable and bribeable, who lack class consciousness.
Is this not the sort of thing that people like George Soros are alleged to organise?
Might these large-scale demonstrations be being organised to flush-out (so to speak) all the dissidents, so that the state authorities can identify who they are for later action?
Like others, I wonder just how many are agents provocateurs and how many are just the following sheeple?
Is Madonna an example of an agente provocatrice? Was she paid for the gig?
What the protesters may be inviting – without realising it – is an institutional backlash, under which individuals freedoms and human rights may well end up being curtailed extensively.
Instead of defending democracy, the marcher-protesters may actually be undermining it.
They may be providing the justification required – if it is even required – to fatally undermine civil rights.
If that happens, two groups will be satisfied: the establishment control freaks and the anarchist lunatics.
To the marcher-protesters, “Be careful what you wish for” and “Remember the ‘law’ of unintended consequences”.
Two pretty terrible candidates led to one being viewed as more of a risk to the world than the other. I think it is that simple and that the Democrats, rather than welcoming this global media hate-fest surrounding Trump’s victory, should accept responsibility because, nothing is more certain to me, Trump won because his opponent was Hillary Clinton. If he is “divisive” then she is even moreso and we have her personal track record to look back on to justify the deep reservations many Americans, even Democrats, had about voting for her.
One particular point in the campaign illustrated a great deal. Trump……..”I want to work with other countries to find common solutions without going to war.” Hillary……..”I will impose a no-fly zone over Syria.” There you go! Those two statements spoke volumes to me. (I’m actually shocked Clinton came out with that since memories are so fresh concerning her own conduct in other foreign matters, not least Libya. Did she think our recollections had all been deleted along with all those emails of hers?)
As a non-American I did not envy those who had to make a choice, I understand those who chose to stay home and I understand those who would normally vote Democrat but could not bring themselves to vote for Hillary and gave their vote to Trump. She is the reason why this happened and the Democrats should recognise that by caving in to Hillary’s ego and letting her stand they erred greatly.
I keep saying I’ve never witnessed anything like this before across the media but that’s the truth and it isn’t stopping. As another poster has observed, the Guardian still hasn’t let up but, if anything, the bile from that source worsens by the day against Trump. Ironically the “alternative facts” furore made me chuckle for has the media not done “alternative facts” for decades? (I think we call it spin. Why, we even invented our very own “spin doctors” like the awful Alastair Campbell whose purpose in life was to invent “alternative facts” to put out there. It’s become an industry now in the media, both broadcasting and print.) But since this election result it has all become highly alarming so intense is the hate and the obsession the media has with Trump. Some of the things we’ve seen are terrifying and moreso when this media claims to be representing “democracy” when, in fact, they’re seeking to undermine a result which simply didn’t suit them. The determination to lead us all to believe this result didn’t happen is astonishing.
The comments made, at a public rally/protest, by the “celebrity” known as Madonna were to me very shocking indeed. Had any Muslim uttered the same comments about “blowing up the White House” (particularly after what happened to the Twin Towers and the Pentagon) they would surely have been immediately escorted to Gitmo as a “terrorist threat to US security” and as someone who had been “radicalised”. Yet she is permitted to incite in this manner with no questions asked? Her words were irresponsible and, even allowing for the principle of free speech, utterly inappropriate not to mention potentially dangerous. Yet there she is bleating that her words were “taken out of context”. Just how to you interpret someone who claims to have considered “blowing up the White House”?
It seems unnecessary to point out that Trump isn’t great in the communication department but what I cannot believe is that he’s appointed people who are equally incompetent in that department. What on earth possessed him to appoint either Kellyanne Conway or Sean Spicer as spokespersons? If you can’t do the job well yourself and you need help then for God’s sake find people who are good at it who can help you. Don’t get idiots who are going to go out there and make things even worse. The performances of both were cringe-worthy. If the media wants to chant, “More people came to see Obama than Trump!” then let them get on with it. They’re in a hissy fit, a tantrum; they’re pissed that Trump won. Don’t rise to it. Get on with the job and ignore the bile.
As for this man Brennan of the CIA, well!
“John Brennan, the outgoing CIA director, said Trump’s remarks were a “despicable display of self-aggrandisement” that left him “deeply saddened and angered”.
“Trump should be ashamed of himself,” Brennan said in a statement.”
I know J Edgar Hoover wasn’t crazy about the Kennedys but Brennan’s arrogance and outright aggression towards Trump beggars belief and his words alone show a great deal about him personally that suggest he wasn’t fit to hold the office he has just vacated. Some might consider him “brave”. All he has shown, however, is that he isn’t concerned with his country but more with cheer-leading for Clinton. He is the one who should be ashamed.
What lies in store isn’t clear. But if Trump is to achieve anything he needs to tone his rhetoric down and get rid of Conway and Spicer fast.
Given Mr Trumps ‘Mob’ background; how he actually got started in business, it would appear William M Tweed is now President. The ‘rally round the flag’ mentality will ensure yet another socio path retires comfortably.
Interesting comments.
Having just read Nick Davies’ Flat Earth News I am viewing this from the perspective that the propaganda war (primarily of US/ UK institutions) is now so complex and far reaching that it is darn near impossible to figure out what is going on.
His first visit as president was to Langley, where he said he was “right behind the CIA”, thereby kind of acknowledging that the deep state is leading the way. That, to me, lends support to the notion that much of what is happening is, as Douglas Valentine says, ‘planned many years in advance’, and that the Trump phenomenon is a product of extreme manipulation with the aim of creating division.
I am fascinated that Trump seems vulnerable, in the sense that embedded political elites could run rings around him due to his inexperience of the bureaucratic maze of government, and also that he could be impeached, manipulated or killed quite easily.
People say that he has ‘a movement’ behind him. I am not sure what that means. It certainly seems to me that there are no political movements anywhere in the West- at least none like those of the last century (the capitalist realism of the past 35 years has de-politicised everyone). Like Corbyn in the UK, it seems little more than a knee jerk to political stasis, one that manifests as a reactionary vote and mass rallies, but no more as yet.
I agree with those writers who identify climate change, resource depletion and the particularities of our monetary system (-more to the point, the interaction between those three) as the underlying drivers behind world events. The era of sustained economic growth is coming to an end, and the culture which is fundamentally founded on the idea of ‘progress’ is imploding.
I cannot see how his economic policies could work without military confrontation with other nuclear powers.
I honestly cannot see any more or less likelihood of thermonuclear catastrophe if a nationalist resurgence takes the place of globalist Neoliberalism. The system needs a world war. We absolutely cannot have a world war.
I think the liberal/left reaction to Trump is close to hysterical and dangerous. Take the Guardian as an example. They get almost everything wrong about US politics for an entire year and back the wrong horse, but does that cause them to reflect, not for a minute. They merely carry on from where they left off as if nothing’s happened.
After eight years of Obama, the best and most successful liberal President ever, apparently. A guy full of grace, beauty and coolness, eight years; and then Trump wins, how come? Surely there was something wrong with Obama’s eight years that so many Americans rejected Obama’s party and Clinton? And it wasn’t just the national presidential election they lost, they lost the other regional and state elections big time. Clearly something went very wrong for the Democrats and it’s gonna take them a long time to recover.
Madonna, an entertainer who’s made a career out of selling her ‘pussy’ suddenly emerges as a ranting revolutionary, raving about a terrorist attack on the White House and the assembled sisters scream their collective approval. Wow! I bet she’s glad she’s rich and successful and not some Muslim kid venting his rage after the latest Israeli atrocity in Gaza.
That liberals and the left abadoned the working class to their horrible fate in a changeing marketplace and allowed Trump to scoop them up turning himself into a champion of the working man, deserves a book, not a comment. How the hell did that happen?
Shouting that Trump’s supporters are fascists; ill-bred, ill-educated, ill-informed, morons who voted for an idiot, doesn’t explain very much. Why does America have so many ill-educated, ill-informed people? How can one even have functioning democracy without proper and engaged citizens? Democracy without citizens is impossible, unless this really disguises rule by an elite at the expense of democracy.
What are the liberals gonna do with all these tens of millions of dim people who vote for a guy like Trump? It it all Trump’s fault or a sign that US democracy and political culture is sick and dying? Trump merely had the courage and balls to kick the door in, a door that was merely a husk covering a void.
The left and liberals are blaming everyone for themselves for Trump’s triumph, that’s why he’s on course to win in 2020. Trump didn’t win because he was so strong, but because what passes for the left in the US is so weak, compromised and without vision or ideas, or even a language that communictes with ordinary people anymore.
Obama was a liberal president??? And the liberal candidate lost the 1932 German election for president.
“I think the liberal/left reaction to Trump is close to hysterical and dangerous.”
I wholeheartedly agree and it exposes the divisive, identity ideology that is now deeply embedded in their collective psyche. This distracts completely from any collective and coherent focus on fundamental issues that affect most people, an economically secure and basically good life for all and our children and grandchildren. Compartmentalizing it into identity ‘rights’ and issues is divisive and a major distraction. Divide and rule is embedded in liberal/left at this time and is going to be used to full effect to cause more chaos, unrest and division if the marches and most MSM output is anything to go by. Trump is the perfect focus for this divisive identity politics unfortunately.
Wow, that the eight years of the former Presidency of Mr Hassan Obama is considered ” the best and most successful liberal president ” ? Must surely indicate a sample of gross amnesia on the part of MICHAELK – given the wide scale international acts of murder and genocide by the USA Nation, as well as the highly illegality of Mr Obama personally ordering the murder of thousands of individuals, human beings without legality or the benefits of criminal charge or trial against all international norms of civilised behavour ??
Did I misunderstand or misread michealk’s comment? Oh well.
The operative word that you omit from your quote is “apparently” – as in “the best and most successful liberal president, apparently” – it changes the meaning from a definitive statement to sarcasm. Apparently. It’s customary to read a comment before going off on a tangent.
Sorry Manda, that comment was meant as a reply to BALDEAGLE11.
“FLY MY BEAUTIES!”………”FLY!”
Look, you misread what I wrote. I wrote ‘considered’ to be the best and most successful liberal President. Thats how the liberal/left and the Guardian ‘considers’ or ‘perceives’ him. Personally I consider him to be a kind of fascist.
A Kind fascist?…WHAT! next thing you’ll be trying to tell me is that Hitler was a better dancer than Churchill?.
This discussion between Chris Hedges and John Ralston Saul gives some support to idea that the Neoliberal/Neocon system we are under in the west is fascist. Personally I found it pulled many of my thoughts and impressions together re what has been and is going on.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=14952
Watching in demos against Mr T (or should I say President T), I was particularly struck by one woman sitting on the ground letting out a series of incoherent, banshee howls when it was announced that Trump was confirmed as POTUS. What exactly was she expecting from Trump? An introduction of Sharia Law perhaps? Women accused of adultery to be stoned to death? Legalisation of rape? The demented little incident was a microcosm of the blind, irrational, rage and venomous hatred of the liberal establishment who seem to assume they possess the aristocratic prerogative of divine right to rule in perpetuity. What seems to be emerging from both the Trump and Brexit episode is not only the rebellion against the liberal, and neo-con world order, but what can only be described as liberal totalitarianism: a set of beliefs and ideology which will be forced down the throats of the great unwashed whether they like it or not. The civil war and fight for democracy has begun.
Well, he canned the TPP on Day 1, so that’s promising.
It is, I remain cautious though. Lots of smaller deals can still amount to a similar outcome, we need to watch very closely.
Trump has not mentioned TiSA at all.
Who got Trump elected President? The mafia?
They were behind the election of JFK but bumped him off when his brother went crazy.
Russian mafia hacking (not state hacking) is certainly credible.
The mafia are heavily invested in property and land in Jerusalem.
If Trump moves the US Embassy to Jerusalem, it will boost land and property values.
Arguably, his New Jersey casino would have required sanction from the local mafia.
The US mafia have been trying for decades to get “their” man in the White House.
Now – with Trump – maybe they have finally succeeded.
Trump’s handler was a fella called Roy Cohen. One of Lanskey’s boys I believe. It was the Kosher Nostra that protected The Donald from the Cosa Nostra.
They (the mafia) also got the US Wehrmacht through Italy at the end of WW11 without firing a shot. The bill? A gambling suburb in the state of Nevada. Wiseguys, wijsseggers Kings, drones,soldiers workers, and the superannuants of the Holy Roman Empire that still cruise the cloisters of the Vatican, looking for children to bless…. Who are you? I am dominion..,who are you?
Hillary Clinton presented a public relations nightmare for the entity consisting of the billionaire class known as “U.S.A. Incorporated” or “Deep State”, so Donald Trump was selected USA Inc.’s new Chief Executive Officer. Trump worshipers aren’t able to name any transforming plans, jaw-dropping statements or specified amazing actions by Trump, essentially the status quo is proceeding as “normal”, and, because Trump is President, no powerful persons will become prosecuted for major war, financial or other crimes. For those who control the wealth and power, everything is cool.
The Trump army hat the best trucker-caps.
In times like this, I tend to pull focus and look at the big picture. It’s just another “pale blue dot” moment for this tiny planet in the middle of nowhere, too full of members of the arseoisie who think they are Big Cheese, and their petty games of divide and conquer carry on in a cloud of ignorance and pathetic stupidity. The Donald’s so freaking obsessed with his own shining image that he cannot comprehend how ridiculous and damaged he really is. That someone so insecure who has spent his whole life in pursuit of gold-plated toilets, trophy women and vindictive revenge for the slightest jab, can have any room in his tiny heart for a whole nation, let alone a whole planet is quite laughable. Sad.
I see your point. It takes a big ego to run for President. The fellow that preceded him had a giant one himself. Obama kept the military/industrial/security complex operational…lots of money changed hands. This network of characters will not want to turn their weapons into plowshares.
And Hillary’s ego was the greatest of them all. Yet, in my view anyway, the Democrats brought this very triumph about by being insane enough to allow her to stand!
Or a nigger in the woodpile? ….literally misinterpret that….its the right thing to do.
The arseoisie….G’eez I wish I’d said that.
I can neither confirm or deny that the Arseogise have Jewish Mothers in law………………………………………………………. ………MODERATOR!
VVHAT! HERR CHRISTIAN TRINITY!! You haff build a Pyramid from zhee top down?…HOW DOES IT FLY ? ………
The less the sweat the more the pelf / The public service serves itself / The bourgeois belt blames someone else / The prols in cotton-pickin hell..Through a class-selective prism / The haves wil self fulfill conditions / What’s good for one is twos’ recession / Through dialectical materialism..Down at the base of the fiscal cliff / The poor are all a little stiff / They’ll finally start to get the gist / Then ACME simply prints more shitt:
I had problems in London on Saturday afternoon because of the Trump demonstrations causing chaos at the tube stations. As I was trying to make my way to the ticket barrier at Embankment Station that was as packed as i had ever seen it, one woman next to me explained that the police had closed many other tube stations.
I asked her why she was protesting. ‘Because Trump is president’ she said. ‘But he is not president here [Britain] I replied’. To which she had no answer.
I am no fan of Trump but felt he was less bad than Clinton. Whatever Trump has said, why not judge him by his deed over the coming period, instead of acting like programmed sheep and bleat at him in vain.
PS. How many articles is the Guardian going to publish that are anti Trump? Yes, we’ve got it. That publication gets more puerile by the day.
You should have asked her what she thought her protest would achieve. Would she be happy if a coup overthrew the elected pres? And why is she out protesting an election when she was sitting at home fat dumb and happy while Obama murdered people and trampled the constitution. The human race – is it worth saving?
You have a point. However, being surrounded in a crush of people all carrying banners on sticks proclaiming their hatred of Trump etc., is not conducive to calm, quiet and rational dialogue. The woman in question had written ‘nasty’ on one cheek and ‘woman’ on the other cheek, in something like mascara or eye liner pencil. Strange times.
I happily tell anyone that I am no fan of Trump per se, but feel H R Clinton was a far worse choice due to her war mongering, corruption, lying, neoliberalism etc., etc. I just pray Chelsea never tries to step into the breach.
I’m wondering how many of these people are even real. I can accept a core of intel operatives inciting well meaning idiots and hate-junkies through social media. But I wonder what the ratio of operatives to idiots is.
Via the identity politics over the last years people have been whipped up emotionally and corralled in their campaigning and self serving ‘issues’ so are easy to manipulate. I think a few operatives will be required on the ground, more on line whipping up the respective troops.
It was actually a pretty accurate description of Hillary the “nasty woman” comment. He said it in direct response to a spiteful dig she’d just had at him yet for retaliating he was the one called the bully.
Bernays wrote “The Crystallisation of Public Opinion” in 1923. All public opinion is largely determined by the ruling classes in order to protect their wealth in a variable democracy. I agree with the saying that if your vote mattered they would not have given it to you.
How Trump, and not the Establishment/MIC candidate HRC, came to take the Presidential Oath is a fascinating story – and I hope that it gets written one day (though likely not in full.)
In the meantime, allow me to speculate on the part that the Intelligence Community (IC) counter-coup played: if even a single ‘byte’ of information on HRC’s server was derived from a Special Access Program (SAP) that could be the single reason why she is still a private citizen (regardless of whether Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills or even the maid had access to it.)
Forget treason, ‘pay-to-play’ or even paedophilia – they are all ‘Kompromat’ that the IC could use to their advantage – a compromised SAP would represent the single most serious breach of National Security – as such it simply could not be tolerated.
Forget the Russians, HRC represented a internal cyberthreat to the IC if she became POTUS – which is not a chance they were willing to take with anyone. Even Trump (a political ‘cleanskin’) would be preferential.
Of course, as I do not have an above Top Secret security clearance, I can neither confirm or deny my theory – only a handful of people in the IC would ever know. The only way it may ever come to light is if she is prosecuted. It is but one aspect of this Gordian Knot, that seems as though it may never be fully untangled.
I am thinking exactly what you are thinking….
So, I will wait and see; but also, I will continue to work on the issues that are most important to me –
Firstly, an end to global arms manufacturing in order to stop the killing, maiming, orphaning and displacing of the world’s children.
Secondly, environmental justice and an end to fossil fuels – and nuclear.
What is your energy source replacement? Windmills and solar panels can not power a world economy. Please enlighten me.
Some nations have already stated that outside of transportation they will be powered by 100% renewable energy in just a very few years.
No offence @Archie1954, but which ones? Other than a few exceptions (e.g. Iceland, Norway… which are well endowed with geothermal and hydro) I am not aware of a leading industrial nation that is on the cusp of 100% RE. Germany leads the way circa 25% (apart from one blustery day when they peaked at 75% RE.) The countries of which you speak are among the worlds poorest (Costa Rica comes to mind.) Trust me, I share your sentiment (and @Thelmas) I just don’t see it borne out in reality.
Indeed. Renewables are (as yet) just too inefficient to provide a serious source of energy unless you live in very particular locations. Even the vast arrays of wind farms and solar panels in deserts and natural wind tunnels don’t produce predictably viable amounts of energy. This is the problem, which os too easily glossed over by the underinformed.
You are correct. The nations already there are Albania, Iceland, Paraguay and Costa Rica.
It is long past time for the ordinary people of America to be recognized and for their concerns to be addressed. The military/industrial complex have had their way with the government for 70 years. They have compromised US governance for much too long. If Trump can change that then I’m behind him 100%. I believe that unlike the Bushes and Obamas of this world, he fully understands that the constant wars, the constant killing, the constant destruction is not protecting national security, it is destroying it!
Here are my Points:
„Trump Inaugurated to be the 45th US President!“: https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2017/01/20/trump-inaugurated-to-be-the-45th-us-president-trump-ist-45-us-praesident/
Regards
Thanks! I just added your site to my favorites in order to go back to read some of your articles closely.
Nothing to add to what is already in the comments above regarding Trump except to agree that things will be unpredictable and therefore interesting. It is quite exciting really. His inauguration speech was not very inspiring and Sean Spicer’s first news conference was ridiculous … at least get somebody who sounds rational and assured.
The false narratives of the MSM have now been challenged and exposed in such a way that almost everybody now questions them but have we ever been more confused about what the actual truth is? Shouldn’t we worry when a Government can very plausibly dismiss news stories as fake?
Yes we should (for the sake of their sanity,) but that won’t stop the ‘alternative facts’ coming from the likes of Spicer and Kellyanne Conway – or the 3am 140-character ‘truthbombs’ coming from Trump (via Twitter.) It will be fun watching the lying presstitute M$M trying to claim the ‘true’ moral highground. I doubt either will pass a basic ‘truthiness’ test, as Obama so eloquently put it.
its important to remember that while trump is not part of the “liberal establishment” or w/ever names we are using, he is still part of the ruling class as a whole, as are all his picks forposts in govt. There may be changes in the orientation of imperialist policy, but no changes in US imperialism itself, imperialism isn’t just something that can be turned on and off at whim, its the actual stage of capitalism that the US operates in.
More chaos. Increasing.Trump is a sign if the global system of capital, political systems, and all social relations becoming more chaotic in the sense of non-linear dynamics. The result will be decreasing predictability of the public sphere.
It is refreshing to see someone leaving the door open to dialogue about Trump, including what we expect and/or want from him. Thank you!
I don’t believe anyone knows what will happen, because Trump’s a loose cannon. However, his cabinet may be far more predictable, and those are the people who will really be pushing for change. Like all other Presidents before him, Trump is now largely a spokesperson for his administration. Since he isn’t a politician nor a wonk I think he reached out to the people on his cabinet, because he knew them, and knew they wanted to have a hand in changing things.
I don’t think the people will be very happy with the changes that are going to come, based on the personalities who are in charge. But Trump is a big personality and like Reagan will be used by the administration to soothe and gain cooperation from the populace.
I am very concerned about the military; considering Trump’s previous statements about our (obvious) over expenditure overseas, I think it’s very likely the generals had a talk with Trump and let him know he depends on their goodwill to remain in office. That seems to have changed his tone a bit.
It remains to be seen what the ultimate outcome will be. I am not running around with my hair on fire – I’ve got too much living to do.
Peace!
Contradictions galore … I thought he had said during the campaign that he would close (some) American bases overseas. That wasn’t in his inauguration address – though there was an interesting comment about the US ‘defending other countries better than the US’. So his promise to strengthen the US military could be consistent with closing foreign bases – but then there’s his apparent wish to contain or challenge China (not sure how that sits with being friendlier to Russia!).
Europeans shouldn’t expect Trump – or any other American – to deal with Europe’s problems, the most pressing of which is the aggressive expansion and posturing of NATO, especially in relation to Ukraine. How did we get to the position where NATO has become a law unto itself – in effect a subversive force within European politics?
There’s a German campaign against Ramstein. There would need to be a much bigger and wider campaign against US interference in Europe, but as long as the majority of the public keeps swallowing the lies of ‘Islamic jihadist terrorism’ in Europe, with its ‘Gladio/strategy of tension’ purpose of creating fear and a plausible reason for governments to tighten their already obscene level of control of the public, there is unlikely to be a mass movement for peace, de-escalation and police, military and surveillance cut-backs.
So his promise to strengthen the US military could be consistent with closing foreign bases – but then there’s his apparent wish to contain or challenge China (not sure how that sits with being friendlier to Russia!).
That one is straight from the Kissinger/Brezinski playbook. No chance prevailing against a Chinese/Russian alliance so detach one, in Trump’s case, Russia, in the ongoing containment of China. Makes sense in geopolitical terms. Whether the Russians and Chinese will fall for it, however, is a moot point.
The focus from one minute to the next from Russia to China doesn’t mean much methinks. I tend to follow the theory that the US ruling class follows Zbig’s grand chessboard approach. You can’t really knock Russia off the table without knocking China off the table as well. The great Eurasian landmass (Harold Mackinder and Nicholas Spykman [who based his ideas on Mackinder’s] conceived geopolitics [geography determines politics] which I’ve always regarded as the mere organization of aggression by the global 1% / organized chaos?) most of which Russia sits on, has always been the target of the imperialists of the West. And with the gangster corporatocracy in charge of the world, the mafia capitalism which it embraces will not be constrained. Which means that there will be no constraints – including rational leaders – on capitalist expansion, which is running out of areas into which to expand (making the corporatocracy state more and more dangerous). As Todd Gordon notes, capitalist expansion has a geographical component.
Trump threatens Iran, Russia’s and Syria’s ally, the last I looked. Maybe Putin thinks by making nice with POTUS he can use Trump to push back against the neocons who would take America, one way or another, into confrontation with Russia. I suppose that’s rational. All I know is that we the people (who are not all automatically righteous just because we are of the 99%) pay, dearly, for the 1% to play.
Some, like professor Wolf and Noam Chomsky, that democracy is the solution. But democracy is a system. You have to factor in the character of the people, individually and collectively. Obviously, more democracy would be nice. Chomsky and others believe in democracy in absolute terms, because they don’t believe in God. They see no salvation coming from a higher power. It’s us, with all of our faults, or no one. I do believe in God ‘and’ democracy. Therefore, I have a slightly different view of democracy than Chomsky. And, before the final solution (God and Armageddon) arrives, I see the need for gaining democracy and losing money. As long as you have unprincipled, uncaring, greedy people ‘and’ a money system that they can get their hands on, then no one and nothing is safe. I also don’t believe in money in absolute terms. (The only reason for money, in my opinion, is so that some can have more of it, and more of what it can buy, than others.) We could, even as imperfect humans, have a money system and peace and security for all, if we all had good intentions. We could overcome capitalism’s (moneyism’s) flaws, the way we did for a short while post World War II. But once this system of things is gone and people are being healed along with the planet and ‘beasts’ don’t roam the earth, Why would we have a money system? It’s one thing to make the best of a bad situation (that we can’t evade). It’s another thing to have an inferior social economic system when we don’t have to have one.
Only close elections can be manipulated or rigged. Trump would have won the election in a landslide if he had the same media and establishment support as Clinton, or even a balanced narrative. Trump has a movement, it’s called conservative populism.
“conservative populism” aka white settler nationalism
If he does not expose the exponents of the world trade center destruction…he is an arsehole like all the rest and we are deluded fools to look elsewhere and ponder on the distraction of “change”.
I think it is time for the American people to understand that they elected Trump to be their president under the rules that govern American presidential elections. That is reality and now the people must support the man as president and oppose those of his policies that are egregious to them. Don’t oppose him, he is the President, oppose his policies. Sincerely the constant criticism of his personal style and idiosyncrasies needs to cease. They are not important. What is important is what he does with his power! That is where the American people must be alert.
“I think it is time for the American people to understand that they elected Trump to be their president under the rules that govern American presidential elections.” Exactly. And there are written and unwritten rules. Lawlessness itself is therefore embraced and in play and has been, in some areas, codified. Citizens United and voter suppression laws and laws allowing dark money would be examples of codified lawlessness.
cheers admin.. here’s a tag for conservative populism oz style.
……tiers etat…..
Pauline Sauline..are you the peoples limousine?
Or Pa’ulina Sa’ulina…..are deux ex machina?
I tend to agree with this. Many US citizens have had enough and who can blame them? Living standards and incomes falling but costs rising, no hope of things improving under previous administration and with Clinton.
I think if he channels funds into infrastructure improvement, that will create a lot of jobs. He seems less likely to be aggressive militarily and has expressed the wish to get along with Russia. Also, he is a practical person, not an ideologue, and appears flexible. He says one thing day but changes his mind the next. This is probably good. Also, he doesn’t need more money so he is doing it for ego, or even possibly, hard as it is to believe, from altruistic motives. But, all I can say is that we can only hope that he is an improvement over the leadership American has had over the past several decades (or even longer – when was there really a proper leader there, ‘Eisenhower’, ‘Kennedy’? – it is hard to know, but perhaps those two were the best of the lot, post WWII).
His infrastructure plans are a mess. It’s PFI on steroids i.e. handouts to big business.
I’m not familiar with PFI, but I’m sure that you’re talking about public, private partnerships, aka privatization by stealth. Indeed, Neoliberal politicians everywhere, at every level, are busy facilitating this grand theft of public assets. Expect nothing different from a politician who is not only neoliberal, but comes straight out of the business community.
PFI = Private Finance Initiative, heavily favoured by Tony Blair, to use private finance from private financial consortia to build and operate public sector services, such as hospitals and schools.
They have proved to be so expensive that even the UK Conservative Government has now dropped them.
Some of the first PFI contracts generated a Return On Capital Employed (ROCE) of about 25 per cent per annum.
The terms of the contracts were 25 years, at the end of which the property would revert to the public sector.
PFI contracts are so lucrative that there is a secondary derivatives market in PFI contracts.
Added to the initial PFI contracts were also facilities management contracts, under which the privately formed financial consortia were granted additional contracts to provide all the non-medical or non-educational services for similarly contracted periods of time. Any variation in contract requirements – however small – would involve paying steep fees additional to the fees payable under the terms of the original contract.
Put simply, these PFI contracts are a mechanism for asset-stripping the public sector to benefit the private sector.
It is part of the mechanism that conveys wealth from the 99 per cent to the 1 per cent.
You can see why such mechanism are popular with politicians.
They cut the ribbon or the cake when they publicly open “new” public facilities – and then walk away, leaving taxpayers and the public sector to pick up the bill – however inordinate and however long-term that bill may be.
Many of the same politicians go on to serve on the management boards of PFI-related businesses.
Great for them but PFI inevitably results in a dragging down of standards in the services involved.
This is why the UK NHS is facing £22 billions in funding cuts right now.
As the boy Bush once put it: “Yo Blair!”
Brilliant comment – nails PFIs – but I’m not sure that is how Trump is planning on funding his ‘revenue neutral’ infrastructure projects.
The completed projects remain wholly private; the construction is funded by a mixture of debt from income tax and private equity (incentivized by an 82% tax credit.) Somehow, the income tax and corporate tax paid by the contractors employed on the projects will offset the investment and make it a zero sum game for the taxpayers. The operators profit will come from charging usage tolls for the lifetime of the project.
It’s a scam, and a barely workable scam that will not put infrastructure where it is most needed – in poorer areas where operators won’t get a decent ROI – even though their investment will be minimal.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-12/trump-infrastructure-plan-feasible
Trump is no socialist. If he said his P3 infrastructure financing (however he labels it) is going to be revenue netral, that’s like saying “I’ll keep those goldfish safe and dry. I promise.” It doesn’t even make sense. He’s all about PROFITS. And he’s not going to deny them to other profiteers. That wouldn’t work (for him).
I see that others have examined Trump’s plan to do infrastructure spending. Michael Hudson talks to Sharmini Peries on the Real News Network (http://bit.ly/2kkMPJk). Like Trudeau and Morneau in Canada, Trump plans to rob his citizens of their country, a la Greece, and tell them it’s all for them. They are to have jobs building roads etc and fixing roads etc that will then become owned by the for profit private sector. Michael Hudson gives an example (a subway in New York) that he’s pretty sure can be regarded as the model that Trump will follow. It’s already cost the poor and working poor who use the subway. The private company involved is guaranteed a certain return on it’s investment, which is then taken, by the government, out of the pockets of the taxpayers who are supposed to benefit from the project, but who instead find that, because of the increased value of properties in their area and their reduced finances, they end up having to move somewhere where they can afford to live.
Or poetically…PFI = political bullshit.
It’s a mechanism by which governments use private funding instead of spending new government money to build things. Thereby giving their wealthy friends an income stream through entirely unnecessary economic rent.
There are real question marks over JFK’s record in office.
Ike at least warned us all about the industrial-military complex.
The pity is that he did nothing to curtail it while he was in the White House.
The probable answer to your question is that every US President has had flaws of one kind or another.
Ultimately, they are all just human beings and they all make human mistakes.
As Bob Dylan pointed out, “…even the president of the United States Sometimes must have to stand naked”
Congress and the Supreme Court ensured Obama achieved very little.
The same could happen to Trump too.
JFK did something to curtail militarism. He refused to invade Cuba after the failed Bay of Pigs planned by the CIA as Dulles wanted and he eventually fired Allen Dulles from the CIA. After JFK was assassinated Allen Dulles was put on if not in charge of the “investigation”.
And as Mrs Zimmermans little boy also said, ” All the ladies in Washington are scrambling to get outa’ town..looks like something bad’s go’na happen better roll your airplane down.”
I say… 9/11… you know who done it..tell your friends and tell your family and damn the jingoism and national loss off nerve.
It is looking like Trump will work along with the international bankers to bring back jobs to America. Usually societies have been stimulated back into life by expelling the parasite and the state taking over the business of money creation ( a la Hitler and Napoleon). It might be that the bankers are changing their game. Whatever happens, if Trump does not deal with The Federal Reserve by taking it over, he will do nothing useful in the end… he will most likely lead the world to war on their behalf. If he takes over the Fed that could mean war also. Best to hope for an ongoing process of global awakening and understanding.
Trump as a new Hitler or Napoleon is not a hopeful thing, but I can see the possibility of him going that way .
The Fed is a government agency and it has far less power than your libertarian friends would have you believe.
The Fed really isn’t a govt agency in the sense most people mean it. It’s precise legal definition is fudged, but it is essentially a private bank licensed to make loans to the federal government and to regulate the money supply in the form of loans. I’m not sure what you mean by “less power”, but any institution that controls national government’s debt and is empowered to create and destroy money must have a pretty impressive amount of power both directly and indirectly.
And no, I’m not a libertarian 🙂
It isn’t a private bank in any sense and it doesn’t ‘lend’ the government anything.
It does not create or destroy money nor does it control the government’s ‘debt’.
@Jag37777: wrong, wrong and wrong.
The Federal Reserve is both a privately owned Central Bank with Federal Appointees that control its governing board: so it is an independant private/public institution.
As the bank of the US Treasury it ‘buys’ bonds that the Treasury issues (T-bonds) with ‘money’ it creates ‘ex nihilo’ (literally ‘out of nothing’) and charges interest to the Treasury – sounds like a loan to me.
The US Treasury prints and mints the physical currency and ‘sells’ that currency to the Fed which distributes it at full dollar value – thus the seigniorage (the difference between the production cost [typically 5c per dollar] and face value) accrues to the Fed – not the Treasury.
As Libertarians point out (I’m not one either) the Fed controls the supply and the ‘cost’ of money (by setting the interest rate it charges.) Were the system set up differently (i.e. no Fed) – the full value of the money supply would accrue to to the Treasury as interest free (debt free) Sovereign Wealth – which makes the current system sound like a scam to me – and I haven’t even mentioned QE – which amounts to sovereign wealth transference to the already rich.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-biggest-heist-in-human-history-three-trillion-dollars-injected-by-the-fed-into-the-financial-system/5548910?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles
Nope. You don’t understand how a sovereign fiat currency works.
If the Fed were a private corporation why would they return all their ‘profits’ to the Treasury?
The Fed should be a part of the Treasury but that is in effect how it works anyway.
My friend, have you not considered that the way the Fed portrays itself (ably supported by politicians, the media and mainstream economists) is less than factual?
“If the Fed were actually a federal agency, the government could issue U.S. legal tender directly, avoiding an unnecessary interest-bearing debt to private middlemen who create the money out of thin air themselves. Among other benefits to the taxpayers. a truly “federal” Federal Reserve could lend the full faith and credit of the United States to state and local governments interest-free, cutting the cost of infrastructure in half, restoring the thriving local economies of earlier decades.”
The full article covers all the points you raise.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-owns-the-federal-reserve/10489
The Fed doesn’t lend money to Federal government.
You’ve been confused by charlatans and nincompoops.
The Federal government creates its own money out of thin air when it marks up balances in private bank accounts.
It sells ‘debt’ to soak up the excess reserves that its spending creates in the payments system.
It needn’t do that but that’s what they do. But it is not what you imagine to be the case.
The Federal government neither taxes nor borrows in order to spend.
Please define ‘money supply’.
“The Fed doesn’t lend money to Federal government.”
Oh my! You don’t understand anything about the subject. The Fed lends the Treasury Dept. money almost constantly–every time they purchase treasury bonds, they are, by definition, lending the Fed. Govt. money. Think about: how could the Fed do QE without first possessing govt. bonds to dump onto the market? (Incidentally, the Social Security Administration is also a huge holder of Treasury debt.)
And don’t ever imagine that only libertarians oppose the Fed. Unlike the Ron Paul types, I don’t propose going back to a gold standard. I want to replace the Fed with a 100% publicly owned and operated bank which would adhere to Modern Monetary Theory. Look up MMT and explore it a bit if you want to know about a better alternative to both gold and what we have now.
You don’t know anything about MMT.
MMT is the accurate description of the system that we actually have.
You obviously missed that fundamental part of it.
Probably with most of all of the rest of it.
Oh my indeed. You poor retarded old person.
The one good thing I like about Trump is not pushing for WWIII against Russia like Hillary, Obama, Biden, and the CIA which was based on disinformation. Also, why NATO wasn’t ended in 1993 when the Warsaw Pact ended? Bill Clinton was the one who ruined the Cold War agreement with his bringing NATO to countries bordering Russia.
Both Bill and Hillary are Neocons…..they allow the CIA to do all the dirty work and maintain the status quo. the GOP with Bush2 went along with the new American century and the ruination of the nations which genl. Wesley Clark had spilled the beans on. Over the years as all this was going on, the other elements of the Neocon vermin in many positions of power (Nuland ,Kagan, Wolfowitz, the toadies in the CIA and other hangers on) multiplied as fast as amoebas . They all help each other ! Also…it was during Bill Clintons 2 terms that the mess in Kosovo was whipped up . When the USSR was a power, Marshall Tito ruled with an iron fist and there was no dissent in Bulgaria. now it’s reduced to several smaller states….this is something that may happen in Iraq and they want in Syria. of course ,somewhere in all of this fits Israel …..and the Saudi’s are players in the scheme to break up large nations into smaller easily manipulated states. The Saudi’s would eventually get that treatment also….much like Saddam and Ghadaffi got.