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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
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One wonders if people remember the flawed but witty movie by Fellini called Satyricon which reflects cleverly also the present chaos of US political life. Indeed, one could paraphrase Marx in saying:” History repeats itself first as farce then as tragedy”. From Watergate to White Water we have now Stormy gate and all its tentacles. The political discourse especially it seems in the US is divided into two levels, that of the public infighting in the media supported by their factions in congress and senate with a sprinkling of one-sided intellectuals and an assortment of military and legal ‘advisors’ and on the other hand what is called the deep state but are in fact the deciding and ruling cliques. What goes on there is not published nor ever discussed because that would be like giving the game away. It is very carefully hidden from any public discourse or oversight and thus the myth of democratic action and participation is kept alive. The repeat of the present political farce may well turn into tragedy in the way it is now going, so fasten your seat belts.
The problem with seeking out and/or targeting miscreants in high places is that power is given to these people by the society itself, the structure of the system that allows certain groups of profiteers to grow. For example, the haute-bourgeoisie that already ruled the economic life of France during the Ancien Regime, benefitted by the destruction of the profiteering aristocracy, to the effect that during the Directorate and the Napoleonic era, the bourgeoisie rose to total power never released even till today.
The French Revolution, carried by the French masses became simply a passing on of power from prior bourgeois generations to following bourgeois generations with a popular Constitution that sealed the transformation into laws benefiting like in the US, a constellation of freedoms designed to foster trade and industrialization. A greater deception could not have been perpetrated on the public.
But to reach their goal scapegoats were expressly designed to direct the concentrated fury of the oppressed classes in France to the high aristocracy and royalty so that the haute-bourgeoisie could survive. The guilt of the nobles in power depended solely on the rights that were given to them and were protected by the Ancien Regime’s laws. That these laws were instituted and enforced by the powers-that-be to benefit only them and no-one else is logical within a system that will allow it.
In short it makes no sense to direct one’s hatred towards an upper layer of society that profits from the labor of the many without an understanding that it is society itself that is the culprit. Therefore, it is not just a Rockefeller but a cadre of similar profiteers that use and misuse the system. And thus, rather than revealing the deep structural problems of capitalist society which could open a venue towards change, the task for the media and the political pundits is to protect the societal structure by pointing to power holders.
Removing them like in France does not change the underpinnings of the problem. A deluded, fallacious media will keep vilifying Trump as if his removal will solve all, but by design they deliberately hide the fact that the capitalist structure will remain intact with all the ills attached to it. Changing actors does not to the trick.