Trump in the China Shop... Again!

Trump is well on his way to destroying his second presidency even before his inauguration. Its failure is being calibrated in weeks, not months or years.

Trump like Biden before him is a political dinosaur positioned to do more harm. He must first and foremost repudiate war and be instrumental in establishing a new equilibrium such that the West starts moving onward and upward toward better futures.

Contemporary men of power, accordingly, are able to command without any ideological cloak, political decisions occur without benefit of political discussion or political ideas, and the higher circles of America have come to be the embodiment of the American system of organized irresponsibility—

Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite

The above cartoon by Horsey first appeared in the Los Angeles Times eight years ago. This is Trump’s second time around and it appears he has learned nothing in the interim and the foreboding surrounding his second presidency is even worse and world war three hangs in the balance. He has publically commented that he knew nothing when he first arrived in Washington 8 years ago and it appears he still knows nothing.

As C. Wright Mills informs us there are two types of leaders, those of raw power and those of wisdom and intelligence. Trump like too many others is a man of raw power and he surrounds himself with kindred spirits to form a cabal. This has become the nature of the American presidency as they are not ordained to lead but cater to the empire’s every whim as dictated by the malicious war mongering corporatocracy parasitically feeding off the Republic, leaving it a bone yard of failed dreams and endless corruptions.

An essential corruption of the empire is that it relegates its best and brightest souls, the leaders of wisdom and intelligence, to the bleachers where they should be at center stage. Where it should be a shining citadel populated with renaissance souls it is a cesspool of self-serving grifters war mongers cretinous Neoliberals, Neocons and Zionists. Washington has never fallen so hard and its reputation so tarnished.

Just imagine how different the country might be if eminent souls like Jeffrey Sachs. Michael Hudson, Richard Wolff, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Jill Stein, John Mearsheimer, Paul Craig Roberts and a host of others could influence government. Boorish Washington is so dense any semblance of sweetness and light is barred, where souls of real standing are regarded as dissidents while the Republic suffers through a decades long unremitting insurrection.

The 1950s was a fateful decade for America as its future was set in stone. The president of General Motors Charles E. Wilson pronounced, “What is good for General Motors is good for America”. This was the catchy jingle that was coming to define America then and continues to destroy it today. In other words America has been in a rolling coup d’etat where the corporatocracy now has absolute power over all. The country has become a war mongering mammonocracy where the donor class rules, the Republic is cannibalized for foreign wars and the megalomania of the stinking rich prevails.

Politicians have become the social lepers who sold their souls to the corporate class so they too could adorn themselves in business suits. Even though fascists of earlier times wore brown and black shirts, white shirts are now de rigueur.

Cartoonist and social satirist Al Capp was quick to follow up on Wilson’s slogan when he created the cartoon character General Bashington T. Bullmoose

General Bashington T. Bullmoose, born in 1953, alive and thriving today

Bullmoose was the quintessential corporate man where money, power and profits were are his sole motivation, as the billionaire who wanted to rule the world to the exclusion of all other considerations and consequences which is too much of what America has become today.

Sociologist C. Wright Mills was soon to follow Capp three years later with his astounding book, The Power Elite, which is the bible on what America had become even then and more so today, documenting how corporatism steamrolled the American Dream and democracy out of existence to become the corrupted warfare state in full decline.

It should be deeply alarming that 68 years ago Mills and others saw what America had become and where it was headed, a very powerful endorsement among so many that History is so prophetic and how recklessly we ignore its teachings and guide posts as acts of willful ignorance.

We render ourselves children of adversity on the road to becoming the masters of perversity,… a perversity that goes to the very essence of our political cultures of the West. So called leaders do the opposite of what should be done which is testimony to the fact they are agents in the rapture of evil ideologies acting on others behalf, betraying their obligations to deliver peace, order and good government.

When nations become the sum totals of their egregious corruptions and endless wars it is clearly time for reform. This will never come about as long as a corporatist culture prevails.

Mussolini warned us corporatism is the very essence of fascism. Though Hitler was defeated, fascism was not and it percolates unchecked throughout Western civilization where democracy has too easily slipped out of existence. Fascism is the default position we fall into when we lack the will and diligence to maintain democracy, which is the essential process to maintaining a just and humane equilibrium in our societies. By definition, fascism is a defeatist terminal ideology where human progress stops dead in its tracks.

When democracy dies we are left with thug cultures led by thuggish leaders not accountable to the electorates they are supposed to serve. They serve the despots who have bought their souls. What should be a meritocracy becomes an autocracy where a minuscule percentage of the population rules over all and a very dangerous lack of accountability prevails and threatens all.

Thug cultures are infantilized where fear, ignorance, arrogance and jingoism rule. Foreign cultures are denigrated, scapegoated and vilify to justify thuggery. There must always be a nemesis at hand to justify the wars and violence, without which they have to be created.

9/11 was an essential false flag to replace the failed USSR as the nemesis, giving the warfare state a new impetus and license to declare its greater war on the world, now focused on Russia and China and their advocacy of the emerging multipolar world centered on BRICS. Both these countries have become our de facto protectors as they are determined to prevent WW lll where the thugs of Washington are determined to fight more wars. They just cannot graciously accept the world is in constant change and they must adjust to their new role in it.

Where the West is descendant and static, the East is ascendant with dynamic progressive change.

One of the favorite infantile sports of Western thugs is to vilify foreign leaders. China , Russia and their leaders must at all times be held in contempt as the threats and villains of the peace, when in fact history is the chain of evidence saying otherwise.

We may wonder why the likes of Oliver Stone interviewed Vladimir Putin in 2015 and 2017, followed by Tucker Carlson in 2024. What was their purpose? One might suggest to put a human face on a world leader so thoroughly vilified and slandered in the West. In those interviews he is revealed as an erudite statesman, with a sound knowledge of his country’s history and geopolitics, known to give 2 hour press conferences with a candor and lucidity unmatched by any Western Leader. Xi Jing Ping is lesser known to us but he has led China to its economic miracle.

Key figures in the Biden administration, including the president, have had little contact with their Chinese and Russian counterparts when this contact was critically important to peace and better diplomatic relations. American officials were no match for the diplomats and builders of a new world order, especially so when Biden was seen meeting with other leaders reading from prepared notes.

Why shouldn't we know what foreign leaders have to say? Why is our status quo so virulently xenophobic marred by hatred and hearsay? When Hillary Clinton so brazenly calls Putin the “new Hitler” she only reveals her vicious partisanship and ignorance of who he really is. We are a culture very vulnerable to stereotypes and the distorted visions we are spoon fed and obediently swallow.

Trump re-enters the China shop

That is the political meaning of the conservative mood of today; in the end, it is an irresponsible style of pretentious smugness— Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite

Everything that arises must converge. Trump is back for an encore performance as the incarnation of General Bashington T. Bullmoose. While the world stands by waiting on tenterhooks there is a power vacuum in Washington. As the world waits for Trump to enforce the peace he decides to slap tariffs on bordering states, Canada and Mexico. The three countries constitute the USMCA free trade agreement and these tariffs are illegal under the agreement. Much to her credit the president of Mexico sent back a strong rebuke:

“If even a small percentage of what the United States allocates to war were instead dedicated to building peace and fostering development, it would address the underlying causes of human mobility.”— Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum

Trump re-enters the game four years later in a fast changing world. If he thinks he can assume the “irresponsible pretentious smugness” of times past he only accelerates the diminishing fortunes of an empire in decline. The home front needs his undivided attention to “build back better”and “make America great again”. His sloganeering must now become viable realities.

Trump must be made aware the West is trapped in a self-isolating vortex of decline.

Trump like Biden before him is a political dinosaur positioned to do more harm or serve the greater good. He must first and foremost repudiate war and be instrumental in establishing a new equilibrium such that the West starts moving onward and upward toward better futures.