The Barbarism of Donald Trump

” I don’t know if Clinton will torture. I know Bernie Sanders won’t. ”

Hmm… Of course Clinton will torture. She’s a more warlike version of Obama. Sanders probably will too, though the difference between him and everyone else is that it will be reluctant. Sanders’ main focus would be on the economy, and the organized power factions are too strong to lose to him where he’s not focused.

So in the end the same argument for Sanders, but I seriously, seriously disagree that there’s any torture policy difference between estab. Dems and GOP at this point, especially Clinton. Maybe before Obama mainstreamed it.

Of course, Trump’s legitimizing rhetoric is a different issue, and is a danger of its own.

Consortium News: Neocon Kagan Endorses Hillary Clinton, February 25

Consider the fact that the global economy is in meltdown and we are entering the greatest depression in human history. The entire globe will never recover in our lifetime. An economic waterboarding for billions around the world and Donald Trump is the only one who can couple with Putin, Xi Jinping, hopefully Le Pen, and others who will break the backs of the bankers, who are on the verge of killing many times more innocent people, in the BILLIONS, than all the last century of waterboarding dictators ever did. Trump is it. As imperfect as he is to you and others who shun their responsibility, not only for themselves, but for others who don’t have a voice, I say shame on you for taking a morally ignorant stance. This election coming up is the single most important election in history. It will define if many survive or many die. Please reconsider and bring people to the light, rather than lead them away from the only thing that really matters. The people Trump is talking about waterboarding are the worst there are in the human race. Better we let them free like Obama did? To rape and behead innocent men, women, and children, by the thousands? This country will be protected at any cost, and since asking terrorists to divulge information about their plans to kill on a massive scale never really worked in all of history, waterboarding, or “worse” is the only way to stop what is taking place. I value life as much or more than you and I will wait as long as possible to stand in line and cast my vote for TRUMP!

OT: Twitter just removed #WhichHillary, a tag devoted to her heinous 90’s race-baiting comments.

It certainly throws into relief the notion that corporate “social media” could somehow threaten government power, to say nothing of the long-standing use of Twitter by “enemies” of Washington like ISIS.

The US has used torture for a very long time. It certainly did so under several presidents during Vietnam. The question is whether or not the president will or will not sanction torture as official US policy. Bush started the policy of doing so and the argument is whether or not subsequent prseidents should continue it.

Obama took it one step further. Not satisfied with the official policy of imprisioning without due process of law, he sanctioned assassination. We no longer capture suspected terrorists (note the “suspected” part of that) and then have the hassle of having to deal with them in some foreign prison, we simply kill them. No legal niceties are required, simply the “divine right of the President.”

I’m not worried about Trump’s rhetoric. It is mere rhetoric in any case, is is all campaign blathering. None of these idiots has the slightest intention of actually doing anything that they are promising to do, and most of it is well outside the power of the presidency in any case.

I don’t want a president who sanctions torture, but I don’t want one who sanctions assassination either.

Well Ian;

You have me on this one. You can see the future with absolute clearity, I am only human.

Clinton, Bill is responsible for the death of a million innocent children…and the world claps politely.

President Cheney is responsible for the death of a million innocents…and in DC, he’s still considered a “serious person”.

Barack Obama under Hillary’s tutelage is responsible for four “wars of aggression” and the death of a 350,000 innocent civilians…not to mention the genocidal extermination of 12-25,000 black people living in Libya….and liberals insists I clap louder.

Brilliant writing, but bullshit, I give it four EZ-Kliens Why? The people aforementioned have all tortured far worse than you describe, all…actually.tortured.people. None of the people aforementioned tried to stop modern day Nazis from taking over the National Security Apparatus, not one.

Trump has been talking smack to the proles in order to essentially lead a coup of the REPUBLICAN party, all the while putting together a national security team that is opposed to the failed policy of “regime change” a policy that has led to endless failed wars…and all the effing torture that goes with them. His tax policy is nuts, but everything else makes sense.

Why do we think DBA is a real possibility? Why would the the Nazis in the National Security Apparatus want Trump dead if what you predict is really going to happen? Why did the RNC & DNC work together to stop Trump? The RNC knows God damn well that Trump is to the left of Hillary, the DNC knows God damn well that Trump is to the left of Hillary, the Nazis in the National Security Apparatus knows God damn well that Trump is to the left of Hillary.

That is why DBA is possible, the nation, with the most imperfect of characters, under very difficult circumstances is trying to accomplish a bloodless coup. In the case of Sanders I believe the corporate apparatchiks in the DNC have the matter under control, Bernie is a “sheepdog” that got out of control, he will be caged at the appropriate moment. Maybe not, but the numbers are pretty clear, the war criminal Hillary Clinton, has been getting slaughtered in popular votes [caucuses = thievish thuggery], but maintains a clear delegate lead. And no doubt, the Republicans will rig their system like the Democrats did in 1974 so that another Trump will find it impossible…and last chance to escape the steel net of a total corporate ruled state, what FDR called fascism, will have passed us by.

I don’t know where this better than Ezra hitlerum ad reductio came from, but the best thing that could happen in this election is a Sanders vs Trump election, but Trump will in all likelihood be snuffed and Bernie will be humanely sent to the pound…if he goes meekly along with the final ruse.

But Dear Brother Ian; columns like this will held up as justification for Trump’s liquidation, a causam occidere, based on a conjecture, devoid of the context of the realities of the modern Republican nomination process.

Again, had Trump not used the language he has, he would have been yesterday’s newspaper, wrapping a fish at the market. We have three murderous Presidents in a row, all cowards, two of whom spoke in the most pleasant tones, with a great flourish of “humanity” as they went about the business of murder by numbers, that is not conjecture.

But back to America. I don’t know if Clinton will torture. I know Bernie Sanders won’t. I know there are options available in the American election that don’t sell the tattered remains of America’s soul.

Actually you can’t know that the American government under President Sanders were he to become President would refrain from engaging in torture, assasination, etc. I invite you to reflect long and hard on their behaviour in Central and South America when Carter was president before making such assertions.

mfi

There are few phrases more pretentious than “beyond the pale.”

Ian, this article was below your already cratering writing standards. It sounds like the rankings of a high school freshman.

Grow up. Sounds like “torture” is your trigger-word.

@lemonhead

Christ, you’re a petty, small person.

According to Billikin;

Clinton “is the lessor Evil”. Yes, it’s the Democrats shit slinging time again, the folks who supported the Iraq Invasion, AF-PAK escalation, Guatemalian, Libyan, Syrian, Ukrainian regime change, the neoliberals who keep selling us trade agreements are the “lessor of an imagined evil. Yes, it’s the Democrats trotting out the old tried & true war horse, their version of “thank goodness George Bush was in office during 9/11”.

Why is Clinton’s demonstrated venality less evil you might ask? After all, Hillary is responsible for the deaths of at least 350,000 innocent civilians, so Trump must be evil incarnate to surpass Clinton’s incredible record of death and destruction mustn’t he?

Well just listen to this unspeakable evil:

“A large proportion of Trump’s followers are authoritarian personalities.”

OMG!!! Can you believe that, how horribly horrendous is that? Surely nothing could be worse, than winning an election among goons with, wait for it, goons. Surely that’s as bad as say FDR, garnering Southern Democratic votes to enact the New Deal…isn’t it? But in reality, is a theoretical conjecture based on an unfounded premise worse than a GENUINE WAR CRIMMINAL? Billikin says it is…and so it goes.

“Lessor of two evils”, hmmm maybe Democrats should give that one a rest, it’s well past it’s sell-by-date.

The left should swear off the “authoritarian personality” psycho-babble. It’s pseudo-analysis by agenda-driven Jews who kept finding oy vey anudda shoah under every rock. Just as Ian’s last post demonstrated that the “good Germans” really were good, so “authoritarian” really just means normal, well-adjusted people from good families.

Oh no you didn’t Blizz, thou shalt not name the immortal Jew. There’s a home for people like us (/pol)

I love seeing more and more people take the red pill, especially on leftist sites like Reddit and here. Like watching them awaken from a decades long coma!

Well a return to 1950s US? White cis male people don’t know just how horrible a place it was for non whites, women and LGBTI people.

We LGBTI were arrested, jailed, put into mental homes and ‘treated’ with drugs, ECT, lobotomies and years, decades of incarceration.

Women who didn’t conform to the male ideal were also treated the same. Single mothers were treated like lepers. Women banned from working, no divorce even if you were endlessly abused (and how would you survive?).

Racial apartheid. Religious bigtory and all the sorry rest.

It was cruel hard time, well unless you were that white male cis person. Then it was great.

A society built, even more than today, on total lies and hypocricy. Paedophiles in positions of power running rampant …and everyone else covering up for them.

Of course Trump has a lot of the male white vote locked in, “bring back the good old days” they cry.

Another perceptive analysis from the Archdruid.

However he has a blind spot, which given his age and gender is understandable, the women vote.

If the Democrats put Sanders up he will win largely on women voters, while many are ambilvanet (at east) about HRC.

The usual votes will be locked in and the swing ones are disaffected working class white males and females. Most if not all women will vote for Sanders and enough of those white men will do so also to get him over the line.

If HRC gets up many of those women will just not vote at all and those males will vote for Trump en masse and, the AD is right, it will be landslide for Trump.

The Democratic party has to wake up and face the fact that if they go with HRC they are facing obliteration.

The mainstream feminist and LGBTI leaders and rgansation have to also wake up to the fact that if they dont push for Sanders then we face obliteration as well. Oh sure the rich cis women, gays and lesbians will be fine, but the rest will be hammered into the ground and we trans people will be eliminated from public existance everywhere in the US.

Really starting to think Canada should volunteer to build a wall on our US border.

But really, we probably should like, double our military spending if Trump wins. He’s easily apt to annex something unless we have a credible rapid response force that could at least make him take US casualties to seize territory. We don’t have to be able to stop a full fledged invasion, just be strong enough to make it not worth trying to grab something here.

I hate having to think this way, but in a Trump world, relying on US to only economically colonialize us won’t do.

For the record, Trump is not worse than Hitler, not even in the same ballpark. However, Trump has a gut understanding of the Führerprinzip and of the value of playing to animosities and fanning the flames of discord.

Ummmmm. Wow. I had something I was going to say after reading this post but I have forgotton it reading the comments.

Thoughts as best I can manage on phone:
To those who think Trump is the only chance to take down the current elites, please lookat hiw they are treating him vs how they are treating Bernie. It is very very very obvious that Sanders is who they fear more. Trump is a wild card. Sanders is a known quantity & the powers that be don’t like what they know.

Look at the last 50 years of his record: since the 60’sBernie has been trying to build something better. Hes finally in the position to do it, with our help. Hes also addressing climate change. Trump prolly believes n it but isn’t admitting it or showing any signs of doing anything about it. If he doesnt, no matter what else he accomplishes it will not matter. Civilization at thevleadtcand quite probably a lot more gonna go bye bye.

Look, I still think Bernies going to win this, but if itvwinds up being two people u think are horrible, no need to vote for lesser evils if u can’t stomach either of them n 4 heavens sake no needvto stay home. There’s green (my likely backstop should we fail yo put Bernie over), or write in for bernie, socialist libertarian or whatever floats your boat. Write in Quelcrist Falconer if u want to. Or killer Mike or Nina Turner or Elizabeth Warren. I think Bernie is our last chance at saving the planet short of a miracle, but Bernie being where he is right now seemed like it would take a miracle way back thisctime last year. Miracles have a better chance of happening when youbwork and fight for them.

Ian;

You are a little late to the party on this comment:

“The majority of you are going to get exactly what you are asking for, even if most of you don’t understand what you are asking for.”

We [the USA] have been under authoritarian rule for some time, our media has been on lock-down since the early 80’s, the Democratic party closed the nomination process in 1974, both parties agreed to “neoliberalism” back in ’78. The Republican party was “cleansed” in the mid 70’s. The intelligence community was purged in the ’74-’78 time frame. Assassinations/DBA’s, of those who truly MIGHT challenge the ruling elite have been going on regularly since the 60’s, they’re there, in plain sight for anybody with a brain. All of our judicial and regulatory branches of government were captured by 1998. And so it goes.

Fighting your way out of an ambush isn’t pretty, it’s not an intellectual exercise and it ain’t elegant, it’s not for the weak at heart, but the alternative is the killing floor. If you have a better ACTIONABLE* plan than an all up, all in revolt, like a Trump vs Sanders match-up represents, brother, “we’d all love to see the plan”.

* We’re here, we have to get to there, here’s how we can do it.

At the end of the day, what exactly is so fearsome about Trump? What are leftists scared of? His desire to send illegals back from whence they came? What exactly is leading to the comparisons to Hitler?

It really does look like a Jew undermining tactic when the default scare-mongering goes straight to “he’s Hitler.”

Illegals suppressing wages at the bottom, and H1Bs suppressing wages at the top. He’s against it. That’s why he has my vote.

It’s the economy, stupid.

Lisa,

You say \”Another perceptive analysis from the Archdruid.\”

You realize this isn\’t John Michael Greer\’s blog, right?

“Trump will do universal healthcare.” “Sanders won’t torture” “Hillary will be nice to minorities and gays” or whatever.

As Hugh and J Brennan point out, it doesn’t work that way.

Maybe what you mean is Sanders won’t go on TeeVEE and brag about waterboarding.

Torture (and genocide) has been US policy since at least the Phillipines in . Native Americans would place it earlier. Be serious.

However, the “democracy” theater is crumbling and the elites must rush around trying to prop up the scenery and keep the band playing. Sanders gets crowds of 30,000 cheering week after week and the TeeVee hardly notices. Hillary trots out a handfull of stage managed old ladies on walkers and their pastors and run it on loop. Trump’s braying boors cheer beat-downs and ethnic bashing with spittle and blood dripping from their chins. Even he, especially he, knows they are imbeciles. But they would beat the shit out of Bernie’s herbal-tea swillers in a street fight.

I would thoroughly enjoy a Sanders-Trump contest.

The deep state continues.

Amazing comment section. Truly amazing. Congratulations. The majority of you are going to get exactly what you are asking for, even if most of you don’t understand what you are asking for.

Can’t say it bothers me. Continue.

But why are you amazed? This comment section is precisely what I would have anticipated. You present a highly materialistic analysis of political failure, based on the idea that you can separate the economic aspect of Trump’s success from the identity politics. Then, rightly, you point out in this post that Trump supports ugly barbarisms, and you get pushback from people who like your writing precisely because you separate the (to them) “serious” stuff from the bleeding-heart “fluff”? And surprise surprise, so many of them think that it is because of the “immortal Jew”, betray their underlying rage about the pathologization of authoritarian tendencies, and so on and so forth.

Again, why is it amazing? If you look at the the tendencies all across the internet and all the identity squabbles, you find that a great many of the people claiming that they’re above “identity politics” and want to deal with “serious” stuff are actually harboring an underlying desire to reverse the gains that other groups have made. Unsurprisingly, some of these people are also willing to overlook Trump’s bluster. This is not an accident.

Mandos:

“many of them think that it is because of the “immortal Jew” How many? Name Names, give agency.

To Ian’s next post I say:

It’s common to hear some version of, “I’ll kill you for that”, I’ll probably hear it a couple of times today, I heard it once yesterday. But it is far rarer to see somebody commit murder. My point, verbal “smack talking” is NOT the moral equivalent of mass murder. But in this post, in very emotional terms, Ian doesn’t just conflate the two, he says verbal “smack talking” is incomparably worse than mass murder. I don’t just disagree with him on this, I think that’s nut’s.

That said, I think of Ian as a good person is rarely wrong.

@Mandos
Yes would like to reverse the gains of the cultural Marxists, who are in positions of power throughout all industries worldwide.

Holy Haruhi, the Dork Enlightenment Squirrel Bait Brigade is really turning out for this thread. 😆

To my question:

“Lisa; Can you kindly show me a quote with a link that shows Trump to be anti-LGBT, the guy lives in NY, NY so I kinda think we’d have hundreds of quotes on the subject if your accusation is correct, or are you using Billikin’s argument: “A large proportion of Trump’s followers are authoritarian personalities.” therefore he worse than Hitler, therefore candidate [x] is the lessor of two evils?

Lisa answers in the negative to the first question, failing to cite a single example of hatred. And to the second in the affirmative to the “A large proportion of Trump’s followers are authoritarian personalities.” therefore he’s worse than Hitler.

1] “Though Trump himself hasn’t shown either support or much antipathy for LGBTI people”

Not one example LGBT hatred in a lifetime in the spotlight, such can not be said of any other candidate, Republican or Democrat, save Bernie Sanders…weird huh?

&

2] “His administration by necessity will have a lot of GOP people in it and they hate us.”

For example; Log Cabin Republicans who successfully fought with the Obama administration to end DADT. That’s right, it was only when it was clear that they had lost that the Obama administration did a 180. Another example of uniform Republican hatred of LGBT comes from Secretary of Defense Hagel, who was attempting to green light transgender service when he was removed by Obama…such hatred by Hagel huh?

Clearly, the facts run counter to your unsupported conjectures on this count.

3] “He is a populist without conscience*, if he can win a few votes by throwing us under a bus (or into a camp) then he will do so.”

If there was a time to “win a few votes by throwing us under a bus” it would be the Republican Primary, not afterward. Again, the facts run counter to your unsupported conjectures on this count. The fact that he has not when he gains votes by doing so should be a good indication he will not when it will lose him votes…right?

Lisa; you have not one factually supported allegation, just conjecture that conforms EXACTLY to corporate consensus.

*yeah, like Hillary, except she’s a corporatist without conscience, yeah, that’s so much better morally

S Brennan

“Just this week, the Human Rights Campaign issued a report detailing an unprecedented 44 anti-trans bills now pending in state legislatures in 16 states across the country. The South Dakota bill has a built-in deadline of Tuesday; if the governor does not sign or veto the measure, it will become law without his signature.”

Bills targeting transgender students in education and sports (Nine States: Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin)

Limiting access to gender-segregated public facilities (Five States: Indiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Virginia, Washington)

Preventing transgender people from amending their birth certificates (One State: Virginia)…so far. Note that some of the other ligislation will do this too by covert means.

Requiring transgender people to disclose their surgical history when obtaining a marriage license (One State: Oklahoma)

Defining “sex” so as to exclude transgender people from state legal protections in employment and education (One State: Virginia)

“Why are these bills being filed?
These bills are being filed primarily by religious conservative lawmakers, many of whom are linked with the Family Research Council, Liberty Counsel, and the Alliance Defending Freedom. They are following a legislative template laid out by FRC to deny transgender people basic access to the workplace, schools, and public accommodations like restaurants and gyms and to deny them legal recognition. ”

http://www.advocate.com/transgender/2016/2/02/users-guide-years-transphobic-legislation

The right wing attacks on Planned Parenthood are so blindingly obvious to not need mentioning but add this:
Illinois Republicans Sponsor a Bill That Denies Birth Certificates to the Children of Single Mothers
“A law proposed in the Illinois House of Representatives isn’t just another run-of-the-mill right-wing attack on women. This time legislators have gone a step further and taken aim at children, too. Illinois state Representatives John D. Cavaletto and Keith Wheeler have co-sponsored HB6064, which would deny birth certificates to the children of single mothers who fail to name a father or financially responsible caregiver.

Snippet from the bill:
“Provides that if the unmarried mother cannot or refuses to name the child’s father, either a father must be conclusively established by DNA evidence or, within 30 days after birth, another family member who will financially provide for the child must be named, in court, on the birth certificate. Provides that absent DNA evidence or a family member’s name, a birth certificate will not be issued and the mother will be ineligible for financial aid from the State for support of the child.” ”

Expect more of these. Of course eventually they will stopped/wound back/etc but they will do a lot of damage along the way.

Trump: “But he is definitely speaking forcefully on his anti-gay positions to evangelicals on their media platforms, in their language, using the dog whistle on LGBT rights even if he’s using the fog horn on other issues. Trump is much smarter than many give him credit for. By speaking with the fog horn on many issues it gives the impression that he places low priority on the issues with which he’s using the dog whistle”

“In his Nevada victory speech, he said, “I love the evangelicals!” Only looking at Christian evangelical media forums, however, would you understand why they have reason to love him back:

Last week in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, Trump called the Supreme Court’s Obergefell marriage equality ruling “shocking” and told evangelicals to “trust me” on the issue, telegraphing that he would get the marriage equality ruling overturned.

On Fox News Sunday, Trump in fact said he’d consider appointing judges who would overturn the Obergefell ruling, taking up a position that Marco Rubio had announced weeks earlier. ”

“Trump came out in support of the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), which anti-gay Republicans introduced in Congress last year. It would allow government entities, non-profit organizations that receive government funds and businesses contracted with the federal government to discriminate against gays.”

“…hen pressed in an interview with me at the Values Voter Summit last fall, he expressed support for Davis and her position.”

“Trump has attacked Chief Justice John Roberts — who voted against LGBT rights consistently — as insufficiently conservative, and recently promised in a Christian Broadcasting Network town hall with Pat Robertson at Robertson’s Regent University that he would put far right extremists on the court who would get Roe v. Wade “unpassed.” ”

“Trump is a master of manipulation (of media and of constituencies) who learned that on the gay issue he could give mixed signals, implying “tolerance” of LGBT rights while on the campaign trail but then speaking to anti-gay bigots within their forums and telling them exactly what they want to hear. ”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/no-lgbt-people-arent-exempt-from-donald-trump_b_9318108.html

“Just ahead of the South Carolina primary, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is leaving no doubt that his anti-LGBT rhetoric on the campaign trail is no accident.”
http://www.hrc.org/blog/gop-frontrunner-donald-trump-doubles-down-on-anti-lgbt-positions

http://www.hrc.org/2016RepublicanFacts/donald-trump-opposes-nationwide-marriage-equality

“LCR*, in fact, got dumped by Trump as soon as Trump saw that many evangelicals would back him even though he’s thrice married, can’t quote bible verses accurately and owns and operates casinos. And now, trying to nail that vote down further — and knowing that he’ll need that constituency in South Carolina and beyond — Trump has thrown gays under the same bus he threw Latinos and Muslims.”
*Log Cabin Republican basically gay Republicans…and no friend of transgender people at all.

“The idea that any LGBT people could support Trump while he demagogues other minorities is not just sad; it’s repellant. But the Log Cabin Republicans’ thinking that he’d actually be “good for the gays” was also just plain deluded.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/gays-for-trump-log-cabin-republicans_b_9128882.html

As you well know, I am no HRC supprter at all

At the end of the day, what exactly is so fearsome about Trump?…

It really does look like a Jew undermining tactic when the default scare-mongering goes straight to “he’s Hitler.”

And that’s what’s “so fearsome about Trump” – his knack for drawing Nazi filth like you out into the open and unashamed of the Nazi filth they spew.

We’re interested to know who you think these foreign policy advisers are.

“Trump’s “Go-To” National Security Adviser Says He’s Never Talked Policy With Trump
Did Trump fib about his top military advisers?”

“Donald Trump’s Imaginary Foreign Policy Experts
Primary voters are loving Trump’s foreign policy, and Trump keeps promising to roll out the Best Foreign Policy Team Ever. But is anyone actually on it?”

Cripes;

Three posts ago I gave an example, I know you are too lazy to post links for your, so God knows you’d be too lazy to find stuff on your own.

https://www.ianwelsh.net/trump-wins-in-nevada/#comment-76671

Go read the linked article and give your BS a well needed rest.

@ J Brennan:

First, restrain your nasty tone. I simply asked you to name his “advisers.”
If you are curious to find the source of my headlines, then try google.

Even the Josh Rogin article you cite confirms Trumps campaign has claimed military advisers that deny it. Gen Michael Flynn is cited as talking to Trump and thinking he’s “smart” He talks to other republicans. So what?

Trumps website is devoid of any meaningful policy statement on the matter.

His “policy” links only to 5 topics: US-China Trade, Veterans Administration Reforms, Tax Reform, Second Amendment Rights and Immigration Reform.
Little importance to foreign policy there, is it? I read the Tax Reform “proposal” and it’s bad, real bad.

In the “issues” section of short videos featuring Donald extemporizing on matters he is ill-equipped to understand, there is only this:

“The Military
I will make our Military so big, powerful and strong that no one will mess with us.”

That clears things up. But do go see the whole video, Donald devotes 23 seconds to this “important” subject. You’ve already read most of it.

Yves Smith demolishes his so-called policy on health care here:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/donald-trumps-truly-absurd-word-salad-gibberish-health-care-policy.html

Your wishful thinking and bias is so blatant, you’re embarrassing yourself.

The Trump foreign policy doctrine is revealed
Josh Rogin, (c) 2016, Bloomberg View(c) 2016, Bloomberg View

Some leading foreign policy pundits are convinced Trump is shooting from the hip on foreign policy, making up glib answers to serious questions like how to defeat the Islamic State or deal with an aggressive Vladimir Putin. Top Republican national security officials who advise other candidates routinely tell reporters they have not heard from the Trump campaign, which leads them to believe he has not sought any expert input before his provocative statements, like lashing out against China or Saudi Arabia.

Trump’s advisers say they’re happy to be perplexing. The Washington foreign policy establishment has no idea what to make of Trump’s string of declarations, such as his promises to “take” the Islamic State’s oil, force Mexico to pay for a wall on the southern U.S. border, or bar all Muslims from coming to the U.S.

“This whole notion that he is devoid of advisers is wrong. We have a lot of smart guys around us and a lot of smart people helping us,” Sam Clovis, Trump’s chief policy adviser, told me in an interview. Clovis, a retired Air Force colonel and former Iowa Senate candidate, leads a policy team of two that works with campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to connect Trump to experts and former officials constantly, he said.

Following a couple of incidents in which Trump identified his foreign policy consultant — only then to have that person deny it — the campaign is mum on names. But other experts have regular interactions with Trump, including former Defense Intelligence Agency head Gen. Michael Flynn. Flynn, who has also met with other Republican presidential candidates, told me that Trump was a “superb listener” who asked “exceptional questions” and was interested in detail on a wide range of world issues.

“This guy is really switched on and has a strong understanding of what’s going on in the world,” said Flynn. “I walked away with a much stronger impression of him than I had previously.”

Sources close to the campaign told me Trump has also spoken with controversial historian Daniel Pipes and Israel’s current envoy to the UN Danny Danon, among others.

Trump’s advisers also claim that Trump’s wide-ranging foreign policy proposals, which include renegotiating the U.S.- Japan alliance treaty and outsourcing the Syria problem to the Russians, all fit into an easily understandable set of three “organizing principles” that form Trump’s governing doctrine on foreign policy.

“One, we want to take a very clear worldview in our foreign policy, dealing with the national interest, and let that be our organizing principles. Two is that we want to make sure that we engage in free markets, but we want those markets to be fairer as well. And three, if we do not have strong economic recovery, we can’t do the other two,” said Clovis. “If that’s not a Trump doctrine, I don’t know what is.”

The practical application of that doctrine plays out in several ways. Trump’s narrow definition of “national interest” does not include things like democracy promotion, humanitarian intervention, the responsibility to protect people from atrocities or the advocacy of human rights abroad. Trump believes that economic engagement will lead to political opening in the long run. He doesn’t think the U.S. government should spend blood or treasure on trying to change other countries’ systems.

“This is a long game; it’s not a short game,” Clovis said. He faulted neoconservatives who ” think you can go out there and in three weeks after Iraq collapses you can create a constitutional democracy over there.”

The Trump campaign thinks of this approach as pragmatic and realistic. Like classical realists, Trump wants to deal with states and governments, not non-state actors or international organizations. That, according to his advisers, is why he sometimes seems to praise strongmen who lead their states as executives with absolute power. Trump sees Putin and other dictators as businessmen doing what any CEO would do, fighting for their organization.

“Mr. Trump looks at them and he says, ‘OK, I know exactly what kind of man you are and I know when I sit down at the table with you I can get your measure,’ ” said Clovis. “That’s really the calculus that’s in place.”

Clovis said the problem in the Republican national security establishment is that the experts see everything in “micro- tactical” terms and want to solve problems immediately rather than taking a longer historical view. He said Trump’s narrower vision of America’s national interest is designed for the everyman.

“People get it,” Clovis said. “And you know what, he’s absolutely right.”

Sam Nunberg, who advised Trump on foreign policy early in the campaign before having a falling out with Lewandowski, told me that Trump’s foreign policy was “Reagan-esque realpolitik,” a stance designed to be able to make policies based on circumstances without being burdened by ideology.

“Reagan would go after [Libyan leader Moammar] Gadhafi, but he would do business with Saddam,” he said. “It’s a case-by-case basis of what’s in American interests.”

Trump’s foreign policy doctrine may be undecipherable from his public statements, and once articulated by his advisers it may be somewhat unsatisfying to experts. But it does exist. And it shows that as president, he would alter America’s global role in major way.

_ Josh Rogin is a Bloomberg View columnist writing about national security and foreign affairs.

For more columns from Bloomberg View, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/view

Why they hate Trump
by Justin Raimondo, February 29, 2016
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On June 14, 1918, a nineteen year old Italian soldier by the name of Bernardo Vicario was ordered by his commander, Carl Rigoli, to carry out a curious task. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Italian forces would soon be hit with a furious bombardment that would mean the death of most of them. Rigoli clearly knew this, which is why he told young Bernardo to write an inscription on the ruined wall of a home in the village of Fagare, where they were holed up:

“Better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep.”

Rigoli perished in the battle: Bernardo lived to tell the tale. And almost a hundred years later, a researcher looking for ways to smear GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump stumbled across a reference to it and attributed it to Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator.

A reporter for Gawker, the notorious gossip site that’s been sued for libel more times than I care to discover, had set up a parody Twitter account named “Il Duce,” and the reporter, one Ashley Feinberg, tweeted the not-said-by-Mussolini quote at Trump, who promptly retweeted it. Shortly afterward, Trump was confronted by reporter Chuck Todd, who wanted to know why he was retweeting something said by Mussolini. Trump wouldn’t back down: “It’s a great quote,” he said, quite correctly. That refusal, and the content of the quote itself, underscores and explains why he is wining and why the hysterical smear campaign directed at him and his campaign is failing big-time.

But why – why do they hate him with such ferocity? The accusations of “racism” and the way he speaks without regard for upper class niceties doesn’t explain the intensity of the hatred coming from the journalistic wolf pack and the Washington crowd. After all, shortly after Trump raised the issue of whether we should allow Muslims into the United States, the House of Representatives passed a bill – supported by libertarians like Rand Paul as well as mainline Republicans and Democrats – making it all but impossible for immigrants from Muslim countries to resettle here, or to even get a tourist visa. Yet we heard very little about that.

So where is all this vitriol coming from? David Stockman, former chief of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan, nails it:

“To be sure, there is much that is ugly, superficial and stupid about Donald Trump’s campaign platform, if you can call it that, or loose cannon oratory to be more exact. More on that below, but at the heart of his appeal are two propositions which strike terror in the hearts of the Imperial City’s GOP operatives.

“To wit, he is loudly self-funding his own campaign and bombastically insisting that America is getting a bad deal everywhere in the world.

“The first of these propositions explicitly tells the legions of K-Street lobbies to take a hike, thereby posing a mortal threat to the fund raising rackets which are the GOPs lifeblood. And while the “bad deal” abroad is superficially about NAFTA and our $500 billion trade deficit with China, it is really an attack on the American Imperium.

“The American people are sick and tired of the Lindsey Graham/John McCain/George Bush/neocon wars of intervention and occupation; and they resent the massive fiscal burdens of our outmoded but still far-flung alliances, forward bases and apparatus of security assistance and economic aid. They especially have no patience for the continued huge cost of our commitments to cold war relics like NATO, the stationing of troops in South Korea and the defense treaty with the incorrigible Japanese, who still blatantly rig their trade rules against American exports.

“In short, The Donald is tapping a nationalist/isolationist impulse that runs deep among a weary and economically precarious main street public. He is clever enough to articulate it in the bombast of what sounds like a crude trade protectionism. Yet if Pat Buchanan were to re-write his speech, it would be more erudite and explicit about the folly of the American Imperium, but the message would be the same.”

All this was on display during the Houston GOP debate, and yet its significance was lost amid all the histrionics. To begin with, look at this exchange between former AIPAC employee Wolf Blitzer, the moderator, and Trump:

“BLITZER: You said this about the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians – I’m quoting you now: ‘Let me be sort of a neutral guy. I don’t want to say whose fault it is, I don’t think it helps.’

“TRUMP: Right.

“BLITZER: Here’s the question. How do you remain neutral when the U.S. considers Israel to be America’s closest ally in the Middle East?

“TRUMP: Well, first of all, I don’t think they do under President Obama because I think he’s treated Israel horribly, all right? I think he’s treated Israel horribly. I was the grand marshall down 5th Avenue a number of years ago for the Israeli Day Parade, I have very close ties to Israel. I’ve received the Tree of Life Award and many of the greatest awards given by Israel.

“As president, however, there’s nothing that I would rather do to bring peace to Israel and its neighbors generally. And I think it serves no purpose to say that you have a good guy and a bad guy.

“Now, I may not be successful in doing it. It’s probably the toughest negotiation anywhere in the world of any kind. OK? But it doesn’t help if I start saying, “I am very pro-Israel, very pro, more than anybody on this stage.” But it doesn’t do any good to start demeaning the neighbors, because I would love to do something with regard to negotiating peace, finally, for Israel and for their neighbors.

“And I can’t do that as well – as a negotiator, I cannot do that as well if I’m taking … sides.”

That is nothing short of remarkable, especially if one recalls the Mitt Romney-Barack Obama debate in which both competed with the other in proclaiming their absolute fealty to Israel and their refusal to even recognize that there are two sides to the issue. Marco Rubio was outraged by this unprecedented display of common sense, and launched into one of his robo-responses, repeating word-for-word some editorial he’d probably read in Commentary or the Weekly Standard. And in the course of it he said something remarkably stupid: “The Palestinians are not a real estate deal, Donald.”

Now one assumes he meant the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t about a real estate deal, but the reality is that’s precisely what it is – a real estate deal gone bad. It’s all about land. And it will take fair-minded negotiating and – yes – deal-making to solve that festering problem. Rubio cannot acknowledge this because his donors won’t let him. As a creature of Imperial Washington – where Israel is always right and the Palestinians are always wrong – Rubio can’t allow himself to say or even think that.

Another example of why Trump has roused the ire of the political class: in refuting Rubio’s misleading accusation that he did not change his position in August 2011 and come out publicly against the Libyan intervention and starting another war in Syria – both of which he has denounced in no uncertain terms – Trump said this:

“If these politicians went to the beach and didn’t do a thing, and we had Saddam Hussein and if we had Gadhafi in charge, instead of having terrorism all over the place, we’d be – at least they killed terrorists, all right?

“And I’m not saying they were good because they were bad, they were really bad, but we don’t know what we’re getting. You look at Libya right now, ISIS, as we speak, is taking over their oil. As we speak, it’s a total mess.

“We would have been better off if the politicians took a day off instead of going into war.”

I bolded the above because it succinctly sums up not only the Trumpian foreign policy but also Trump’s critique of the past twenty years. And to make things even scarier for the War Party, he wants us to pull back from policing the world to attend to business that must be attended to:

“We can no longer defend all of these countries, Japan, Germany, South Korea. You order televisions, you order almost anything, you’re getting it from these countries. Whether it’s a Mercedes-Benz, or whether it’s an air conditioning unit. They’re coming out of these countries. They are making a fortune. Saudi Arabia, we are defending Saudi Arabia. Before Before the oil went down, now they’re making less, but they’re making plenty. They were making $1 billion dollars a day.

“We defend all of these countries for peanuts. You talk about budgets. We have to start getting reimbursed for taking care of the military services for all of these countries.”

Trump has called for pulling US troops out of Europe, where they’ve been sitting since the end of World War II: these countries are rich, he argues, and have to start defending themselves. He also questions what they have to be afraid of in Putin’s Russia, declaring he could get along with the Russian leader, with the implicit assumption being they could too.

Indeed, Trump challenges every major new American incursion into regions where it doesn’t belong: Syria, where he wonders why we’re subsidizing “rebels” and “we don’t’ know who they are”; Ukraine, which he disdains as simply a backwater where we have no interests; and Libya, where he points to the chaos caused by Hillary’s war and where we’re getting ready to revisit.

Trump represents a deadly challenge to the high command of the War Party – the neoconservatives who lied us into war in Iraq – and were called out for it by him. These people are the main driving force that is ideologically committed to maintaining Washington’s imperial pretensions even as we plunge further into bankruptcy. They are behind the vicious smear campaign that equates Trump with Mussolini, Hitler, David Duke, and the Devil himself. They see that they are losing control of the GOP – their pathway to power – and they are reacting like the cornered rats they are.

If Trump gets the Republican nomination the neocons are through as a viable political force on the Right. That’s why National Review devoted a whole issue of their magazine to the theme “Against Trump.” That’s why the neocons’ allies in the media are going after him hammer and tongs. That’s why neocons like Robert Kagan are openly declaring they will support Hillary Clinton, while others – including the formerly libertarian network of organizations funded by Charles and David Koch – are financing a “Stop Trump” campaign. There is even talk of the (impractical) idea of running a third party candidate in order to take votes away from Trump.

The rats are converging, squealing up a storm of abuse, and resorting to the most obvious smear tactics in order to keep their bread-and-butter on the table. Yet this, too, will backfire, just as all the other attempts to stop Trump have flopped – because people have had enough. They beyond angry – indeed, they’re happy! Overjoyed by the sight of the political class on the run – and determined to make them run even faster.

I hear Trump wears a bullet-proof vest, and has done so for years. If I were him I’d guard my head – and watch my back.

This is not to say I personally give one iota of political support to Trump – and Antiwar.com doesn’t endorse candidates for any office, period. David Stockman’s piece, linked above, describes some of the pitfalls of Trumpismo, which I fully endorse. Yet that is not my purpose here.

If Trump secures the nomination, the way is paved for transforming the GOP from the party of perpetual war to the party that honors the long-forgotten “isolationist” Sen. Robert A. Taft, who used to be celebrated as “Mr. Republican.” And if Trump actually wins the White House, the military-industrial complex is finished, along with the globalists who dominate foreign policy circles in Washington. While Trump is no libertarian, the effect of this sea-change in the foreign policy realm will be to objectively cut the dominance of federal power in our lives, first of all by saving us from bankruptcy and freeing up resources for the private sector, and secondly by reducing the blowback that has empowered terrorists.

Don’t be fooled: GOP bigwigs aren’t afraid Trump will lose to Hillary. They’re afraid he’ll win.

Trump, for all his crudity and contradictions, represents a populist uprising against the Empire and those who profit from our imperialist foreign policy. That’s why the political class hates him – and has vowed to destroy him.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/02/28/the-lion-and-the-sheep/

Jesus Christ. S Brennan sez:

“We [the USA] have been under authoritarian rule for some time, our media has been on lock-down since the early 80’s,”

Right. Which is why we’re all typing at each other about how rotten the political and economic system really is. I mean, I believe in notions like “manufactured consent” and “repressive tolerance”, but… “Authoritarian?” “Lock-down?” The way you use those terms negates their meanings.