Hello!
In this post I will sketch out my thoughts on the inauguration of Trump as the 45th President of the United States.
In every democracy there are necessarily powerful people behind the scenes, who influence the decisions made by government. “Yes Minister” was a dig at the influence of the civil service, said to be shockingly accurate by those in the know. Other influencers include media moguls, the owners of strategically important industries, and the simply very rich. This influence is unavoidable and inevitable, and in a well run democracy it is open and transparent and regulated.
In no country is this influence more pervasive that the United States, which some wag quipped is “the best democracy money can buy”. President Woodrow Wilson was the first to hint at this, saying that “… there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above whispers when talking of it..”. Eisenhower warned of the power of the Military-Industrial complex, and similar power has always been suspected in the hands of the Investment banks, as documented in “The Creature from Jekyll Island”; Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan in particular have an extraordinarily close connection with government and the Federal Reserve. Agribusiness Big Oil, Big Pharma are also extremely influential. David Rockefeller famously thanked his friends in the Media for their help in supporting his program for world government at the 1991 Bilderberg meeting, and these enormously rich and powerful corporations have recently been joined by the giant corporates of Silicon Valley. It has reached the point where democracy in the US is more or less openly corrupt, and it is not going too far to suggest that US policy is effectively decided by an affiliation of the leaders and owners of private enterprises and other key organisations. These “powers behind the throne” have sometimes been called the “shadow government” or “deep state” (see Wikipedia for more details and links). A key component in the mix is the CIA, a more or less openly criminal organisation funded by drugs trafficking, which for decades has been engaged in bringing down any country that holds out against US corporate power.
It is said that new scientific ideas do not persuade their opponents; they outlive them. Similarly, world political movements move on a 25 year cycle, the span of a human generation. In the 1930’s and ’40’s the world was swept by a tide of nationalism and fascism, in Europe, North America, South America and Japan. The post war generation reacted against this, and the 60’s and 70’s were a period of socialism in Europe, Africa and South America, an age of hope and optimism when governments actively tried to create equal societies. In the 80’s and 90’s, the new generation adopted neoliberalism, the religious belief that unregulated exploitation leads inevitably to the greatest happiness for the greatest number. In each case, the American deep state has reflected the prevailing zeitgeist.
In 2001, the destruction of the Twin Towers presaged the arrival of the next generation of American princelings, and for the last 17 years, a holocaust has been visited on those countries which stood out against American coporatocracy. In the preceding decades, any government in South America that dared to place the interests of its own population above those of the States was overthrown by more or less covert means, and this program was now rolled out quite openly across North Africa and the Middle East. The view seems to have been that American military superiority had reached the point where the US had nothing to hide and nothing to fear in simply bombing any country that resisted its power, and uncounted tens of millions have died in the aftermath of the destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Syria among others. The formula is simple; foment protest and unrest against the government; ensure that the protests become violent (in the case of Ukraine by sending in snipers to shoot at both sides), and use this as an excuse to bomb the country and replace the leadership.
After 17 years, and trillions of dollars spent, the program has failed. Iraq has put up enormous resistance; a war that was supposed to be won in weeks is still raging 14 years later, and the policy of fomenting civil war by funding and arming religious fanatics has created ISIS, a mad dog only partially under US control. Libya was successfully destroyed, but is not under US command, and the project has finally ground to a halt in Syria, where Russian technical and tactical superiority has brought the program of destruction by proxy to an end.
No-one can be elected president of the United States without the support of powerful sections of corporate America. The influence of money and the media is enormous, and both the Bush Junior elections were characterised by flagrant electoral fraud. If Trump was elected president it is because he was allowed to be president. What can we conclude from this?
All the leadership of the US are agreed that the US has a manifest destiny to be the worlds only superpower, but there are disagreements about how this is to be achieved. Ever since the program of destruction began in 2001 there have been deep divisions between the proponents of violent world conquest and free trade (led by Oil, Defence and the CIA), and those who advocate protectionism and America First (led by agriculture, pharma and the FBI?). The investment banks that hold the casting vote. It seems that the leadership of the deep state has concluded that the policy of war has failed, and that the new focus should be on rebuilding the broken infrastructure and economy of the United States itself.
Trump is openly hostile to the CIA and their friends the Clintons, and the hostility is mutual. There is a struggle between two factions of the Deep State, but the consensus among the most powerful factions is that it is time to try something different. The CIA and their affiliates are sore losers, and have stirred up big protests but Trump is here to stay. And surely, given a choice between holocaust and mere bullying thuggery, Trump is the lesser of two evils.