This is a bunch of anti-American rhetoric and communist crap again and again and again
Sent from my iPhone
> On Jan 10, 2019, at 7:39 AM, Carl Jarvis via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:
>
> The following is worth reading and considering.
> Carl Jarvis
> *******
>
> Has the Ruling Class Finally Had Enough of Trump?
>
> Andrew Harnik / AP
>
> As the United States lurches toward its 2020 presidential election cycle, it
> is useful to revisit the central tension of Donald Trump's presidency. I'm
> speaking, of course, about his phony populism and the politico-financial
> establishment's utter contempt for his political ascent. As the Democratic
> field slowly takes shape, the question now is whether the ruling class has
> finally had enough.
>
> This is not to suggest that these elites dislike Trump for the same reasons
> a Truthdig reader might. Those who stand atop the nation's power structures
> have long been comfortable with American corruption, patriarchy, racism and
> outright sociopathy. For evidence, look no further than the disparate
> presidencies of the so-called American century.
>
> No, what's different and problematic for our country's oligarchs is that
> while the presidency has long served America's imperial interests, it has
> typically done so while purporting to stand for something more noble. The
> U.S. government and, above all, its executive branch, are expected to
> masquerade as forces for "good"-democracy, liberty and peace, at least in
> the abstract, and an outwardly multilateralist management of world affairs.
>
> Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both Ivy League law school graduates, were
> skilled and telegenic masters of that ruse. Even the comparatively dimwitted
> George W. Bush had the basic courtesy to cover his hideous machinations in
> Iraq with the rhetoric of freedom. "Dubya" knew better than to openly and
> theatrically boast of U.S. arms sales to the murderous and absolutist rulers
> of Saudi Arabia.
>
> Trump is a new and different kind of presidential animal. He makes no
> pretense of himself, the presidency or the United States being about
> anything more than mercenary and socio-pathological self-interest. He gives
> not one flip about racial and ethnic diversity, equality or the state of
> global affairs, much less the fate of our planet.
>
> Trump openly mocks and assaults science, expertise and intellectual rigor,
> denying the obviously anthropogenic nature of our climate crisis. Openly
> assaulting the very notion of veracity, he repeats the same false statements
> long after they've been proven false by exhausted reporters.
>
> The president adamantly refuses to pretend that he, his office or the nation
> he represents lay any special claim to the notions of dignity or integrity.
> He eschews civility and graciousness, instead basking in an Archie
> Bunker-like disregard for political correctness. And he continues to use his
> Twitter account to pounce on his perceived personal and political enemies,
> turning Washington into an "Apprentice"-style (un)reality show.
>
> Trump embodies what we might call American unexceptionalism, behaving like
> one of the bizarre and petulant Third World dictators the U.S. has long
> sponsored around the world.
>
> But beyond being bad for the brand, Trump brazenly flouts ruling-class
> institutions and conventions. He does not consult the Council on Foreign
> Relations, the Atlantic Council, the Wilson Center or the Brookings
> Institution on foreign or domestic policy. He doesn't read policy briefs or
> white papers from establishment think tanks.
>
> Instead, he prefers to take advice from fellow wacky billionaires and
> right-wing media personalities with whom he regularly consults by phone late
> at night, alone in his bedroom, or via Fox News. He claims to know more
> about developments in other nations than his own top generals and spooks.
>
> It is unimaginable that any previous U.S. president would have defied his
> own intelligence agencies' finding that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin
> Salman ordered the killing of Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist
> Jamal Khashoggi. Or stood next to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki to say that he
> believed the Russian president-and not the CIA-when he said that Russia did
> not interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
>
> Neither would any previous American president have deployed troops to the
> southern border in a transparent attempt to rally Republican voters on the
> eve of a midterm election. Or shut down the federal government, possibly
> "for years," in Trump's words, if Congress doesn't give him the money to
> build a useless wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
>
> Ultimately, Trump is the first man to ascend to the post-WWII U.S.
> presidency from outside the global consensus. In and of itself, that has
> been an incredible development, bothersome indeed to the United States'
> economic and military establishment. (The bad news, for the rest of us, is
> that he emerged from the white nationalist right rather than the egalitarian
> and social democratic left.)
>
> Still, there are real limits to the establishment's discomfort with Trump,
> who has been useful to the nation's rulers and owners in four key ways.
>
> First, for all his talk of protectionism, Trump is a rapacious neoliberal
> who has rewarded the 1 percent with personal and corporate tax cuts, as well
> as deregulation designed to funnel wealth upward. The superrich and their
> retainers in Washington have been willing to tolerate his misbehavior
> because his policies have lined their pockets.
>
> Second, the endless Trump circus functions to divert the masses from the
> corporate looting that his administration and much of Congress is advancing
> behind the scenes to devastating effect.
>
> Third, even as he serves the moneyed elite, the mendacious mogul currently
> occupying the White House has been deceptively labeled a "populist." His
> base is widely (and, for the most part, falsely) considered to be "the
> working class"-the white and "heartland" working class more specifically.
>
> The ruling class especially likes that. It allows it to point out what
> happens when the rabble is allowed to run rampant in politics, without
> proper checks and balances from the top down. It also gives it cover to
> suppress the genuine populism it fears most-democratic socialism. Unlike the
> reactionary "populism" of the right, which directs its rage at vulnerable
> communities, Bernie Sanders and his ilk are seriously and substantively
> opposed to corporate plutocracy and its enablers in the professional class.
>
> Fourth, Trump's awfulness lowers the bar for whoever might replace him in
> the White House. "Anybody but Trump" is understandable, but it opens the
> door for millions of Americans to gratefully welcome a Wall Street Democrat
> like Joe Biden, a cipher like Beto O'Rourke or, perish the thought, Hillary
> Rodham Clinton herself. Anybody-but-Trumpism is hard to resist, given the
> creeping fascism of our current president, but it intensifies the deadly
> superficiality of a candidate-selection process that functions to elect
> presidents well to the right of actual majority-progressive public opinion.
> And it marginalizes a genuine progressive like Sanders, who would likely
> have defeated Trump in 2016.
>
> So could the dual pressures of the working and corporate classes end Trump's
> presidency before the 2020 elections, whether through impeachment, the 25th
> Amendment or resignation? Up until last year, I felt highly confident in
> saying, "Not a chance," given the durability of his base and Republican
> control of the Senate, where 67 votes are required to remove a president
> following impeachment in the House.
>
> But things have changed radically since November.
> .The Mueller investigation, which likely contains blockbuster findings, is
> finally coming to a head-this after guilty pleas from Trump's former
> campaign manager and deputy campaign manager, his former national security
> advisor, his personal lawyer and a bevy of lesser players, all of whom have
> turned state's evidence on their former boss. It is distinctly possible that
> the final report will reveal Trump has engaged in criminal and impeachable
> activities.
> .Longtime fixer Michael Cohen named the president as an "unindicted
> co-conspirator" in criminal payoffs meant to keep Trump's sexual peccadillos
> out of the media on the eve of the 2016 election.
> .Robert Mueller's inquiry has invited separate inquiries into Trump's
> business practices, his administration and his associates. Subjects include
> obstruction of justice, money laundering, influence peddling by Gulf
> monarchies, and corruption in Trump's inauguration committee. It's about
> much more than just alleged collusion with Russia.
> .The midterm elections damaged Trump's stature in Washington, with the
> record Democratic turnout a referendum on his chaotic presidency.
> .The new Democrat-controlled House will bombard the administration with
> subpoenas, document requests and hearings that will certainly produce new
> disclosures of corruption, both in the executive branch and the Trump
> organization.
> .Numerous key White House personnel, including a chief of staff and a
> secretary of defense, have all but quit in disgust, and Trump is finding it
> difficult to fill the vacancies.
> .Top Republicans who were once strong Trump backers have publicly criticized
> some of his recent actions, including his unflagging support of the Saudi
> kingdom after the gory murder of Khashoggi, as well as his abrupt decision
> to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria. These Republicans have expressed open
> dismay over former Defense Secretary James Mattis' resignation.
> .Trump's approval rating has recently fallen to its lowest level since he
> infamously acknowledged "good people on both sides" of a neo-Nazi rally in
> Charlottesville, Va., in the summer of 2017.
> .U.S. stock markets just had their worst December since the Great
> Depression, with top financial analysts reporting widespread concern that
> Trump's trade policies-above all his trade war with China-could bring on a
> recession.
> .Economic turmoil seems ever more imminent, something that will sink Trump's
> approval rating to new lows, making him more of a liability than ever to
> many Senate and House Republicans.
> .An unhinged, increasingly isolated Trump has opened the new year with a
> ridiculous and highly unpopular government shutdown that has left roughly
> 800,000 federal workers without paychecks-all in the name of a preposterous
> wall along the southern border.
>
> All of this and more could convince the rich and Republican elites that
> Trump's presidency poses clear and present dangers to their economic and
> political bottom lines, and that it is therefore time to unseat him before
> the next national elections. Whether he stays or goes, however, the American
> ruling class is likely to escape a long-overdue rebellion that transcends
> the narrow confines of U.S. electoral and constitutional politics.
>
> Paul Street
>
> Contributor
>
> Paul Street holds a doctorate in U.S. history from Binghamton University. He
> is former vice president for research and planning of the Chicago Urban
> League. Street is also the author of numerous books,.
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