Trump Is Now Breaking His Core Promises

The only benefit of Trump over Clinton — and the reason I was happy when he won — is unmentioned in this article despite the fact that it was his most important promise, one which he is in the process of breaking: cooling of tensions with Russia. Further cuts to safety nets, the continuation of a bipartisan effort over nearly 40 years, are insignificant in comparison. All his appointments and his failure to mention Russia in his address to Congress indicate that he has abdicated his independence in the face of significant backlash. One may argue that he was forced into this position; I doubt that future historians, if any exist, will be so kind.

The only real positive to come out of Trump winning was that Hillary lost, but even the benefits of her losing are not being realized because the Democrats are stubbornly refusing to change their ways and have even doubled down on their insane anti-Putin rhetoric. As to whether America will fail more quickly under Trump than Hillary, I think that is pretty much a toss up.

The next major market crash will likely be the moment when America’s collapse really begins to accelerate.

@The Stephen Miller Band

Meals On Wheels ineffective? Just how much cheaper can you get than delivering institutional food prepped by cooks on minimum wage and delivered by volunteer unpaid drivers? What are these people thinking?

” It will happen faster than it would have under Clinton”

Highly debateable. Clinton wanted our military to expel Russia’s forces from Syria, after all.

At some point we should observe that neoliberal austerity and Keynsian open-ended credit expansion are two sides of the same (debased) coin. Von Mises did nothing wrong. Obama doubled the national debt to $20 trillion – what do people think is going to happen if this continues? The middle gets crushed by hyperinflation, just as the poor get crushed by austerity. Or do people you think we are going to pay the debt by “taxing the rich”? Only if we go full Bolshevik. Hugh’s “nahgahappen” anaphora in the last thread is on point.

In a wiser epoch, Hume foresaw the dangers of credit expansion. Is there any great evil of our time that can’t be traced back to it directly? De Jouvenal could have warned you what would come of putting the tool of unlimited credit into the hands of Power. There’s no way this ends well, but there are two golden rules of politics in the Current Year: 1) DC delenda est 2) Never doubt Trump.

StewartM, it’s disgusting, isn’t it? I mean, come on, Meals On Wheels? That’s like the Tzar Nicholas II cutting back the Soup Kitchens. Hmmm….

Problem is, there are no more Lenins. Plenty of Stalins, but no Lenins. I’m not advocating Communism mind you, but that type of fearless leadership in the face of incredibly daunting odds is something to behold. Lenin was resilient and persevered when most would have thought all was lost. He was able to convince a country of peasants to overthrow their masters and then Stalin kindly thanked him for doing all the hard motivational work and promptly poisoned him and consolidated power and created his own brand of perverted Communism called Stalinism and here we are.

It’s why Revolution must become Evolution, otherwise, we’re just hamsters on the hamster wheel.

The irony today is that it is the radical rightwing and people like Steve Bannon who take Lenin’s theory of revolution seriously, not the left.

The left currently appears perfectly corralled by a mixture of McCarthyism and faux identity politics.

My question is how will the radical right react to the slow burn of Trump’s betrayal? Will they resign themselves like liberals under Obama? Or is the disillusionment enough to stark a more dramatic split with procedural party politics? And what form would that take?

@Mallam:

George Wallace never delivered on economics either, but he kept getting elected again and again.

Interesting you say that, because I thought that hoping that Trump being another George Wallace was probably the best possible scenario.

I had a friend who was politically active in Alabama during those years–fascinating person, her telephone was tapped by the FBI and she used to joke about FBI agents following her. And she knew the person who was the informant to the FBI and who tagged the Klan on the Schwerner-Goodman-Chaney murders. Anyway, she was convinced that George Wallace was not only *not* a strident segregationist but secretly worked for desegregation’s success, duping his segregationist supporters into supporting policies that were bound to fail. For instance, Wallace assured segregationists that–leave it to him!– he’d fight desegregation in Alabama in one big court case, which she believed he knew he would be sure to lose all along, and as a result *all* of Alabama’s schools would be desegregated in one fell swoop (as opposed to elsewhere, where it was being fought district-by-district, city-by-city, county-by-county).

Her position is not nuts–it is supported by the fact that Wallace did not begin his career a strident segregationist and moreover by the 1970s was actively working with African-Americans, winning their votes, and appointing them to his cabinet and to state positions.

So, what I was hoping for Trump is a series of obviously unconstitutional Muslim bans that were bound to be struck down by the courts (well, so far, so good), and a Ryancare bill and austerity measures that he manages to sink. A lot of ‘red meat’ speechifying to his base, to be sure, but managing see actual policies implemented that would be a lot better than would be enacted by “respectable” Republicans like Pence, Romney, Ryan, and Bush. I’m not optimistic that this will actually be the case, but that was my best hope.

You’ve misread Trump the entire time, Ian.

The problem with Ian’s political analysis of Trump is that it has largely pivoted off his understanding of why the establishment Democrats have failed. Analysis of the Trump phenomenon as a thing in itself becomes secondary — the failure of the Democrats sets up a narrative framework that Ian can use to project Trump’s political aetiology and options. But Trump is a phenomenon in himself, partly independent of the failure of the establishment.

Perhaps Ian is now ready for this fine site.

Still, is now a good time bring back the term “credibility gap”?

BlizzardOfOz — I wonder how many years you’ve been howling that hyperinflation is just around the corner? People like you make me laugh.

Brennan it’s not my fault you fell for the huckster out of your hatred of Hillary Clinton — and you’re still in denial about it. You sound like Obamafans yelling about 11 dimensional chess with this bullshit about Trump “negotiating”. It’d be amusing if it wasn’t so sad.

” It will happen faster than it would have under Clinton…” made me think of the Colin Powell emails, and in particular his succinct description of Hillary Clinton, ” Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris.” I do think things stood a very good chance of moving from bad to we’re fucked in record time with Hillary at the helm. I was hopeful Trump would gunk up the cogs and slow the decline, fearful Hillary would triangulate us to record breaking fuckery, sad at the missed chance Bernie represented. It’s still early game and if the past few months are any indication, things are likely to take a few abrupt tuns sooner rather than later. Its in the air, change is welling up, the steady, manageable flow is going to have its bucket jostled and I’m not sure it would have mattered none but misery and death measured in months against years of the steady turn of the screw.

And the Wheel turns…

The key point to keep in mind is that Trump has always been a huckster and a con man (and that those who are most desperate are most easily conned).

He conned people out of their money to pay for his worthless Trump U degrees.
He conned investors in to investing in to businesses that he promptly ran in to bankruptcy.

Who are most desperate right now? The plutocracy or those without a college education?

It never made sense to me how a kleptocrat who was born in to riches and appointed the richest cabinet in US history could be seen by anyone to be on the side of working folks.

“You sound like Obamafans yelling about 11 dimensional chess with this bullshit about Trump”- Mallam

Apparently Mallam; you don’t come here often, or have a limited reading comprehension. I was quite critical of Trump dumping Flynn, his domestic tax policies and [see the comment above], which you either didn’t comprehend or are feigning willful ignorance of.

But if their is an idiot in the room…it’s those who think Hillary wouldn’t have already tried/failed to establish a “no-fly zone” in Syria and thus thrown the US into another useless war…but with the strong possibility of starting WW III. On that point alone, Obama/Hillary supporters will always be the lamest of the lame.

I bet the Dems run Michelle Obama against Trump in 2020. Don’t laugh — she’d probably win (whatever win means in this context) and bring back Obamacare and so, every four years, the most D.C. will do is reinstitute and/or then repeal Obamacare in perpetuity until one day we wake up and realize we’re finally Russia and Putin can say, as he lifts his glass of champagne to a toast with his fellow kleptocrats, Mission Accomplished.

If I was Putin and I was hellbent on imploding America and turning it into a client state, I’d start that long game process by infiltrating & compromising America’s intelligence services. Who do the alphabet agencies really work for? How would we determine that? You have to work backwards to determine it. I’ve been working backwards for awhile now, and I believe America’s intelligence services have been infiltrated and compromised. It’s now doing Putin’s bidding. The soft coup is unfolding as planned. Remember what I said about those little piggies. They are not our friends.

Now, if you don’t mind, I need to take a nap before I meet with Kim Jong-un. He wants to play a little one-on-one with the goal lowered to eight feet so we can dunk.

Well, it seems to me that among Trump’s core promises were the promise to push back against crazy runaway political correctness, and the promise to push back against blatant and rampant media dishonesty and manipulation. Two very major problems afflicting us.

At least he is delivering as to those, and I think they are important.

I think it will take awhile before we truly know how he delivers on any of the others. The early signs don’t look too good, but it is really too early in the game to be making judgments about end results.

If he is another Great Betrayer like Obama, hopefully the People will be angry enough to finally rise up in a meaningful way.

I’ve never had much hope for this country if the People continue to behave like passive livestock.

What this Trump budget proposal tells me is that bloodshed is inevitable. Even many progressives are starting to realize that the far right Republican plan is to, as Dickens put it, ‘decrease the surplus population.’ This will not be stopped by yet another march or by signing a petition. As I’ve said before, the only question is when this will begin. How it will look at the other end is anyone’s guess, really. My own opinion is that the US will break up along the lines of the Roman Empire.

@Hugh,

A country sovereign in its own currency can not go broke.

Maybe true for some definition of “go broke”. For another, better definition of it, America has already gone broke, and is getting broker. Expansion of the state and its incentivizing of useless activity takes its toll, although conveniently hidden.

So the national debt is mostly an abstraction and handy means to promote austerity for the rubes.

Ask the Chinese or any domestic holder of US debt, if they consider the money owed to them an “abstraction”.

When the rich want money to bail themselves out or return to the casino, guess what, it’s there.

When you give the state the ability to print money, did you suppose it would be used for the social good? Surprise, surprise: power has its own ends.

The current debt is $19.846 trillion, but $5.482 trillion of that is money the government owes itself, most of this in the fiction of the Social Security Trust Funds.

Does the trend line worry you? The 1945 debt was due to a world war, and the country had decades of expansion ahead of it. The 2017 debt is due to … what, exactly? Does each US president now need to add $10 trillion to the debt in “stimulus” just to tread water?

@Arthur,
the far right Republican plan is to, as Dickens put it, ‘decrease the surplus population.’
and the neolibs’, too. while at the same time, both sides have their hands in our pockets.

it’s really as simple as mob rule. otherwise described as collective insanity.

and who masters/ plays mob rule? the military.

@willy,
the klepto’s play inside the beltway. the citizen majority play outside, and t.v. is likely as close as most of us get to citizen participation. while wearing ourselves out running inside the hamster cage of purchasing our most recent debt product that our functional life is.

the immersiveness of big screen storyboarding is so powerful that the citizen majority buffaloed by hollyworld propaganda simply cannot imagine hitler as anything but the purest evil. when, in fact, he’s a distant third to nety. (take a few days to read some cesar tort.)

With everybody talking about a 3% cut to “meals on wheels” it’s kinda interesting to “look under the hood” at things being cut that never should have been funded in the first place. The groups being cut are those groups who helped create the mess in Libya; Syria & Ukraine…and that is a good thing. NGO’s, which are the tools of the non-elected neoliberal/neocolonial policy makers should be eliminated, if you can’t get elected president of the USA, you don’t make foreign policy [somebody tell McCain, because he wouldn’t know the US Constitution if it slapped him in the face].

“Under the Trump proposal, the budget for the State Department and the Agency for International Development would be cut by 28%…State Department [funded] advocacy groups immediately expressed outrage. Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House, which advocates for press freedom and democracy around the globe, said the slashing “Foreign assistance and diplomacy are critical to defend democratic values and U.S. interests”

http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-trump-budget-slashes-state-department-1489671887-htmlstory.html

I think Hillary’s reading me and it’s prompted her to “come out of the woods.” Sorry Hillary. Too late. Pandora’s Box is open and you don’t have the capacity to close it. You and your husband and Obama are Trump and Trump is all of you and it’s time to throw the miasma that is all of you to the curb once and for all.

Don’t Be Fooled Again.

The only way forward is another way that’s still coalescing. It hasn’t taken shape yet so any number of shapes are possible, but rest assured, the way forward will not be via any established political party unless the majority prefer to go backwards or remain in place.

Hillary Clinton Says She’s ‘Ready To Come Out Of The Woods’

“I’m like a lot of my friends right now, I have a hard time watching the news,” Clinton told an Irish women’s group.

But she urged a divided country to work together to solve problems, recalling how, as first lady, she met with female leaders working to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

“I do not believe that we can let political divides harden into personal divides. And we can’t just ignore, or turn a cold shoulder to someone because they disagree with us politically,” she said.

Friday night’s speech was one of several she is to deliver in the coming months, including a May 26 commencement address at her alma mater, Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The Democrat also is working on a book of personal essays that will include some reflections on her loss to Donald Trump.

@Peter

There are some republicans in congress who think Trump should leave the ACA in effect and allow it to implode

The ACA isn’t “imploding”, not according to the Congress’s own CBO:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/upshot/obamacare-isnt-in-a-death-spiral-its-replacement-probably-wont-be-either.html

If you listen to many Republicans in Washington, the Affordable Care Act’s insurance markets are in a “death spiral,” “imploding,” “collapsing” or “will fall of their own weight.” That’s part of the rationale behind the new House proposal to reshape the health care system.

But the new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office contradict this long-held talking point. According to the budget office, the Obamacare markets will remain stable over the long run, if there are no significant changes. The House plan would cause near-term turmoil, it found, but the markets would eventually become stable. “The nongroup market would probably be stable in most areas under either current law or the legislation,” said the report, using the technical term for the market where people buy their own health insurance.

Now that it is clear that Trump is not going to help the Clintonites

The rollback of Medicaid expansion, plus making medical insurance essentially unaffordable to many pre-Medicare eligible older white people who voted for him, is definitely doing more than “not helping Clintonities” but in fact is hurting the Trumpsters who believed in Trump’s version of “Hope and Change”. In fact, people who voted for Clinton are more likely to “win” under TrumpCare than will Trump voters (due to being eligible for the tax cuts in his plan). Here is the breakdown:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/upshot/why-trump-supporters-have-the-most-to-lose-with-the-gop-repeal-bill.html

Of course, if you were a *rich* Trump voter and all you were concerned about was getting your taxes cut even if it meant an additional doubling the national debt you were a “winner”.

http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/310078/trump-21-club-get-taxes-down-dont-worry-about-it-video/

Of course, that promise doesn’t include most of my neighbors here who voted for Trump.

(Ian, delete the first comment).

The Vietnam War was one giant War Crime. America had no business picking up where the French left off and escalating a conflict that resulted in 3-5 million Vietnamese dead — NEEDLESSLY.

I brought it up as an example because Trump has made it clear that America will not lose any more wars and that necessarily means America has to use any and all means to win and that means that the next war, and there will be one, will be all out Total War like Nixon & Kissinger, and LeMay before them, wanted to do in Vietnam to win.

Of course, for victory to have been possible in Vietnam, the entire country would have to have been blown to smithereens with all manner of ordinance to include nukes and the jungle canopy everywhere would have to have been entirely defoliated and pretty much 90% of the Vietnamese people would have perished and perhaps 150,000 American deaths in the process.

This is the implication of Trump’s words if they’re put into action, therefore it’s incumbent upon you and everyone to understand the past precisely in order to prepare for and prevent a repeat of it in the future.

America did the same thing in Korea before Vietnam and, considering the building tension with North Korea and Trump’s adamant assertion that America won’t lose a war under his watch, it looks like America may pull a Korea 2.0 but this time with nukes.

My kind of Veteran is the kind of Veteran that stood, or still stands, shoulder to shoulder with the American Indians in their peaceful, non-violent protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The Veterans who stood up against the progeny of Erik Prince’s private Blackwater Security Firm to help prevent yet another ecological disaster. If I were to visit any Veterans, they would be the Veterans I visit and I’d give them a big hug and my mutual respect.

S Brennan, why cut Meals on Wheels at all? Why not increase funding to it? Why not cut the trillion dollar F-35, the plane that doesn’t fly, or the littoral combat ship, the bloat that doesn’t float?

Matthew 7:15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

7:16 You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?

7:17 Even so every good tree produces good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit.

Trump biblically explained.

BlizzardOfOz PERMALINK
March 17, 2017
At some point we should observe that neoliberal austerity and Keynsian open-ended credit expansion are two sides of the same (debased) coin.

Sigh…You need to read some Keynes. Keynes never advocated unlimited private debt expansion…in fact the very opposite, he wrote and warned about it often. In fact it was the right wing so called ‘monetarists’ that pushed for that by advocating de-regulation of the financial system under their mantra ‘the Market is always right’.

The Von Mises crowd are idiots with their obsession about Govt spending and debt …and their total ignoring of the far more dangerous (and the cause of every major economic crisis) private debt (and all the associated speculation, rentier capitalism and capital value inflation).

Ideologues little different to the religious nut jobs …..who seem to be their greatest supporters. But if you substitute ‘Market’ with the word ‘God’, or vice versa, what difference is there between them?

As soon as he sided with the religious right of course he was going to break all his core promises…as I warned.

The US religious right, just like other countries versions, are not just right wing about women and LGBTI people (with their not so hidden racism as well), they are extreme right wingers in every area.
Just read their platforms. They are against any health insurance (public or private), any social security of any kind…in their minds just some ‘christian’ charity will do…but only for those that deserve it of course. They love military spending (but hate spending on vets, etc) and have never seen a war they didn’t love (and want more).

Add in some so called ‘alt right’ (who are really nihilists) people and his cabinet and executive are dominated by them…so what did everyone expect?

As usual it was we LGBTI people, on the front line, warning about this and no one (including many now regretful, women) listened.

It is such a blank spot in nearly all the people here’s (including Ian) political knowledge and thus analysis framework. I find it amazing the blindness to them. You have the VP stating endlessly he wants to create a ‘christian’ theocracy in the US…and yet you all ignore it. You think they are making it up? They mean it.

You will never understand what is really happening until you open your blinkers. They are a Major Political Force in the US and especially within the GOP both Federally and in the States.

For some of us who have spent considerable time in uniform, we know by experience that there exists a moral code in the office corps that bends only under extreme pressure (think Rumsfeld/Cheney) but never breaks (think Mattis’ resistance to Trump).

That might have been true of your officer corps once but it hasn’t been true of either the overwhelming majority of your officer corps, or the overwhelming majority of your NCOs and other lower ranks for at a least a generation.

If someone wast’s to learn about how our ‘modern’ version of capitalism works I highly recommend Prof Steve Keen, one of the very few economists that predicted the 2008 GFC.

This is a link to a great series of lectures, just this section (out of many) on the history of economic thought is worth going through, but I recommend all the rest as well.

History of Economic Thought
Introduction/Antiquity (Very large file [9MB] because of large images!)
Antiquity to Physiocrats/Smith
Classical to Marx
Marx to Robbins
Robbins to Keynes
Keynes to Monetarism
Monetarism to the Cambridge Controversies
More on Marx
More on Keynes
Finance
Methodology
Debates: Nature of money and capital
Debates: Economic Dynamics

“sglover, have you looked at the cost of education and healthcare lately? You fell for the magician’s trick of misdirection.”

Yeah, well, speaking of misdirection, originally you were hyperventilating about the awful Federal debt. Now, for some reason, you’ve decided to veer off into some tangent about how some sectors have become really really expensive. I can’t keep track, and after years of enduring hyperinflation cranks, I don’t want to. I guess you should just keep hording those gold ingots. You’ll show us all when Weimar II rolls around, right? Any day now….

I was poking through Keynes, and chartalism / MMT on Wikipedia and came across the name Abba Lerner. I remembered that name because Larouchies would always crow about the infamous (in their circle) debate from 1971. It’s on Youtube now! Lerner vs Larouche. The timing of this debate makes it interesting: December 2, 1971, 3 months after Nixon “temporarily” (ie, permanently) suspended the USD’s convertibility to gold, which led swiftly to the collapse of Bretton Woods.

The debate is bonkers. Lerner supports Nixon’s wage and price freeze to control inflation — not because he thinks inflation is a problem, but that other people think it’s a problem which was leading them to apply a cure worse than the disease. Larouche accuses Lerner of austerity via these wage freezes, which he claims will require fascism to implement, because you would need to atomize and suppress the trade unions. Lerner counters that his policy isn’t austerity, because although nominal wages will fall, real wages would stay the same. Larouche claims that Lerner is Literally Hitler because Hjalmar Schacht had the same austerity policy in 1933. Lerner confirms that Hitler Did Nothing Wrong (economically speaking!) but that the (good) economic policies can in fact contra Larouche be implemented without the (bad) fascism.

One thing that jumps out is that the meaning of “austerity” has changed in the intervening 46 years. Then it apparently meant the government artificially suppressing wages; now it means reducing government handouts (we’ve come a long way). Another thing is that Larouche’s prediction – that “capitalism”, or whatever you’d call the post-1971 economic system, would tend to cannibalize the population in favor of fictitious paper – seems correct broadly speaking.

Anyway … I’m sticking to what I wrote earlier in the thread. The solution to runaway Keynsianism isn’t more Keynsianism, just like the solution to a heroin addiction isn’t heroin. The problem is, how do you go cold-turkey in a democracy when the addicts are the voters? Hmm …

TSMB–

It may be off topic. But I think you go astray to imagine Putin masterminding the miss-steps of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. These miss-steps come out of American self-righteousness and self-absorption–the idea that reality must conform to our most cherished self-delusions. Along with that is the obsession with enemies: Americans cannot live–literally do not know what to do with themselves–without enemies. Partly, but only partly, it is practical: Our own American oligarchs find foreign enemies very profitable.

Russia is a country with a different history from the US, and a different outlook on life. The terrain is inherently insecure from a military point of view, and over its 700-year history, Russia has been invaded about twice per century from the west. It has also been invaded from other directions. So Russians do not think of war as something fun, or an opportunity for great riches, but as a grim necessity in which people you know and love will die. This could not be more different from the American view.

Russia has had its imperial periods. The expansion of Russia eastward to the Bering Strait was the result of such a period. And during Soviet days, the Soviet Union was frankly imperial. (The US also being imperial but dishonest about it.)

With the collapse of the Soviet Union the existence of Russia itself became problematic. The Yeltsin years–much celebrated in the West–were a time of political and economic disaster during which Russia was looted out and partly dismantled. That this happened at the behest of American advisers and to the benefit of American banks and businesses did not escape notice over there.

Putin was of course selected and advanced by Yeltsin himself, but perhaps did not do the job expected of him. Putin formed a political coalition with the nationalist oligarchs to fight against the “atlanticist” oligarchs–Russians who were happy to take their gains out of Russia and live (in luxury) in places like London. The nationalist oligarchs have different priorities–living in Russia for the long term they need the country to be a functioning entity. Putin became the focus of this shared recognition.

Russia has been in open conflict with the US since August 2008, when the US used a color revolution in Georgia and an ethnic war against Russian nationals in an attempt to flip Georgia to NATO. The Russians considered this a life-or-death threat and responded with main force. The entry of Georgia into NATO was forestalled.

Each act of Russian “aggression” since has been the blocking of an American attempt to extend NATO or American proxies into former Soviet territories. The Russians are coming or have come to believe these moves constitute yet another western invasion, analogous to those in previous centuries such as the First and Second World Wars in the 20th century.

From a Russian point of view, the US-sponsored coup in the Ukraine and the US-armed Sunni rebellion against the Syrian Government were both aimed directly at existing Russian naval bases. As Crimea was attached to the Ukraine by Nikita Khruschev during Soviet days when internal borders did not matter, the view that Crimea is eternally part of the Ukraine does not carry much legal weight–even less since the US dismembered Yugoslavia–and in any case it is a military necessity. The population of Crimea is of course not Ukrainian–it is Russian and Tartar, which is a different story.

Syria has been an ally of Russia since Soviet days. Although disliked by the US, the Syrian Government is still legally recognized internationally, and will remain so unless or until the United Nations decides otherwise, regardless what particular countries or individuals might think. Russia adjoins the Islamic world, and the funding of jihadi terrorist groups by Saudi Arabia and their arming by the US are matters of Russian national concern and dismay.

While Russia may decide to become an empire in the future–that is not a certainty–right now Russia is fully occupied fending off the political and economic pressures against it and the military threats surrounding it. It has been remarkably successful, but it is still in the midst of its struggle.

The sanctions against Russia were not welcomed there, and yet proved to be a blessing: Russia needs for reasons of national security to diversify and become more self-sufficient. Under the pressure of the sanctions this is happening.

Russia is both hurt and helped by the stupidity of American policy. Russia is hurt because American policies are aggressive and destructive, being driven by the need for financial expansion during a period of imperial over-reach and material decline, but Russia is helped because the policies are tactically stupid and thus vulnerable to Russian counter-measures.

In this context I would say that the idea of Russian influence on the CIA is laughable. Certainly it was not in Russia’s interest for the US to arm the Islamic State as the CIA did for the last half-decade. (Whether it was in America’s interest is equally doubtful–but a different conversation.) It is important to remember that although CIA policies are often very evil, their implementation is often incompetent. The CIA is subject to the same group-think, over-reach, and preference for favored theories over fact as the rest of the American political establishment. This will not change: It is part of the process of American imperial decline.

The main lesson is this: Increasingly, what is claimed to be 11-dimensional chess will prove in fact to be the chaos and incompetence that it appears to be.

–Gaianne

TSMB–

From the point of view of peace, dismantling of the State Department is a good thing: It has long since given up its mission of diplomacy and has been the strongest advocate of all our recent wars (Iraq, Libya, Syria, the Ukraine). This goes doubly for the NGOs that–whatever good they may have done in the past–have become devoted to overthrowing governments and undermining societies.

Ironically, the Pentagon, at least in the lower ranks, is a hotbed of pacifism. Not because they are against war in principle but because they do object to getting killed in stupid wars with no purpose, and because they do understand–as most civilians don’t–that the US cannot win a hot shooting war with Russia.

Does that sound extreme? But think about the proper meaning of winning a war: It can only mean achieving strategic objectives through force. And that is precisely what we cannot do–achieve strategic objectives on Russia’s border by force of arms. And any war that grows big enough to wreck Russia will destroy the United States as well.

Sane people will choose other means for conducting policy.

In fact the Pentagon, wasteful and parasitic as it is, has been the main stabilizing, reality-oriented force in American policy for nearly a decade.

By comparison.

–Gaianne

Lisa–

Thank you for your thoughts. In general, I suspect you are right.

It may have been a big mistake for women and LGBT to align with liberalism, for when the neo-liberal project went bad–as it had to, being based on plunder and allocation upward rather than production–it was inevitable that we would become the designated scapegoats.

We are certainly overdue for a new and better strategy.

–Gaianne

Ian,

Have you read this, by Corey Robin?

https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/the-politics-trump-makes/

The idea of Trump being a “disjunctive” president is quite interesting, and it seems a lot of the ‘data points’ are backing it up.

Trump is not breaking his core promises. He is not doing the things he said he’d do, which are not necessarily his core “promises”. I like Ian’s old “meta-promises” framework. As realitychecker points out, Trump is fulfilling his most important promise, breaking “political correctness”, i.e., stomping on the cultural gains of minorities. That’s the coriest promise of the Trumpian discourse there is! There was nothing more core than that. And he’s clearly fulfilling it!

Mandos, there is a difference between breaking political correctness and just being a jerk. I think this is going to be one of the areas of cognitive dissonance for his followers. They thought he was making a point, but he wasn’t. He was just being the narcissistic, egotistical asshat he is.

Yet, Don defends Putin concerning accusations that he had all those journalists murdered and Nemtsov and Litvinenko. I think Putin was behind all of that, but I also believe it will never be proven. Putin and his Henchmen are too intelligent to leave any discernible proof but they will leave symbolic calling cards as a kind of in-your-face and warning to other potential transgressors.

Why did Don go out of his way to defend Putin against these charges and yet go out of his way to accuse Obama of founding ISIL/ISIS/The Islamic State/Daesh? Why does Don avoid saying anything negative about Putin, and worse, why does Don carry Putin’s water for him?

Donald Trump Defends Vladimir Putin Over Alexander Litvinenko Murder

Like the formation of Daesh/The Islamic State, there are many contributing factors to the ascension of Donald Trump to the Presidency. One such factor is the Citizens United Effect. Politicians have always been bought & paid for, but with Citizens United, the gloves are off and donating has now become a steroidal-embellished slugfest amongst the various competing feudal overlord Plutocrats.

We must Deport The Rich. They own the political process from start to finish and Government now works for them, not with them as it did before Citizens United.

The Blow-It-All-Up Billionaires

RE: Trumpcare, this is a broken promise. Trump promised to repeal and replace Obamacare with something better for his people, and Trumpcare seems to be nothing of the sort.

However, it is and yet it isn’t, depending on which of his people you are talking about. Trump had support from two major voting blocks — the Rural White Poor (“Crackers”) and the Urban White Conservative Middle Class (20 to 40 something-year old “Trumpies,” the modern “Yuppies”). Trumpcare throws the Crackers under the bus while supporting in full everything the Trumpies wanted. The Trumpies either get their health care through their companies or buy it personally (if they feel they need it, they are the younger middle class who are still making good while the older former middle class members are being thrown over for the younger, cheaper crowd).

Trump figures he will keep the Crackers on his side as he gives them everything they want in their racist, immigrant-hating dreams; they were really only a minor part in his victory, anyway. It was the Trumpies that really won him the presidency, as they were the major difference in the swing states.

RE: Russia, of COURSE he loves Putin. Like attracts like, and Putin is a nationalist autocratic kleptocrat, just like Trump. Remember, Hitler was best buds with Mussolini (though like Putin no doubt considers Trump, Hitler thought Il Duce was not his equal). Tyrants almost always LOVE other tyrants, unless they are blood enemies. Ergo, Trump loves Putin. I’m sure he will get along fabulously with Le Pen when she wins. They are all one big happy family. Of course, there are always the red-headed stepchildren of the family, such as Kim Jong-in, but then, he’s not white, anyway.

RE: Theocracy, we’ll get plenty of that when the Republicans finally are done with Trump and throw him under the bus in favor of Pence, unless Bannon is able to purge the party first and make it a true Trump party (unlikely, as Trump would need to have real allies at that level of the party, and he does not, not even prospective allies). And then Heinlein’s long-held prediction of the rise of Nehemiah Scudder shall finally come to fruition, merely an election late…

RE: Money, it’s all a joke. I hate to bring in Marx here, but money is meaningless, it is all really about controlling the means of production. And THAT is a big problem today. Most production is done today by virtual slave labor in China; most that is left in the States is being done by robots (even farming is going to be done by robots shortly). Money is meaningless; we will find that out shortly after Trump nukes Pyongyang. How quickly can the rusting, abandoned US factories get geared up to produce anything? Will it be fast enough to keep people from rioting in the streets? Will fracking provide enough energy for both the war effort and civilian needs (including heating in winter and cooling in summer)? Good luck trading in ounces of gold or piles of cash to bribe people for their small, nominal, subsistence rations…

@highrpm
Not sure what your point is, but what nety (bullying workplace newbies) and Cesar Tort (racism) appear to have in common in this context here, is that the citizen majority find it easier to eat their own when under economic pressure, instead of doing the hard (and riskier) work of cutting the head off the snake. Are we on the same page?

@ Mandos

Not “runaway’? Not “crazy”?

Really?

Go micro-invalidate yourself, then.

Ed–

“So, if neoliberalism has run its course:
1) What should replace it?
2) How do we make that happen?
3) Is there a way to do so without massive bloodshed?”

1) Relocalization. The idea is to give up on large organizations (falling into corruption and profit taking) and long supply lines(vulnerable in every way) and to start producing locally for local needs. The basics, things you actually need, are most important–really the only things that matter–food, water, shelter, warmth. Concentrate on easy things first: Organic gardening can be producing much of your vegetables sustainably within a single season. In wet climates rainwater collection can free you, when necessary, from deteriorating public (or suddenly privatized!) municipal water systems. (I became a believer when one fine summer day without warning, brown sludge started coming out of my tap.) Water purification can be done by filtering and treating with chlorox, on the one hand, or solar distillation to remove inorganic contaminants, on the other. Caulking, winterizing, and insulating can reduce the energy requirements of heating or cooling a dwelling. Dressing warmly in winter can also reduce winter energy requirements.

When you have done the easier things, start on the harder ones. Growing staples is hard because of the land requirements, but the Three Sisters Garden–corn, squash, and beans grown to mutually assist each other and make a nutricianally strong diet–is compact and modest in energy use and labor. Medicinal herbs will become important as modern medicine becomes increasingly dysfunctional and predatory, but remember that most drugs came from herbs in the first place and this can be relearned.

Move as much of your life out of the money economy as possible. Everybody needs money for taxes and rent, granted, but every time you find a way to meet your needs without using money you have improved your prospects for survival. Often you will do this by sharing work, skills, tools, and products with friends–either by bartering or gifting. Money is going to disappear from your life–slowly or suddenly–regardless of what you do. It goes without saying that you cannot afford to waste it on useless crap from China. This is a big sticking point for people, but you will come to it sooner or later. It might as well be sooner.

2) Forget about national politics, or indeed all politics–at least temporarily. National governments will never willingly help you. Start with the practical things you can actually do. That will often mean finding people you can work with right where you live to get practical things done.

Naturally, most of what you want to do is illegal. This is not an accident. Our economy was deliberately designed to shift wealth, benefits, and power upward–away from the people actually doing the work. So cultivate the art of staying off the radar. Staying off the radar is an essential skill.

But staying off the radar is not always possible, and you may have to deal with local politics such as zoning ordinances. Take a positive attitude of public benefit and you can meet more success than you might expect. For example, a few years ago the town next to mine–a green-grass lawn suburb–legalized chickens! It can be done.

Working regionally or nationally is much harder. But sometimes there are organizations–such as organizations for organic farmers–who are on the same page and have already been working. Join them.

3) No. There really isn’t. But you should be organizing your strategy now that you will most likely not be part of it. The bloodshed will come from people clinging to a way of life that does not work, and becoming violent as it fails them. It might be oligarchs or the state trying to extract wealth that no longer exists. It could be factions fighting over the shrinking economic pie. To the extent possible you should be already exited from that pie. But the good you do might also be targeted. Be prepared for the fact that through no fault of your own, there may be no good answers. Even so violence will rarely serve you and your should try to avoid it. Negotiating skills and personal diplomacy will be some help.

–Gaianne

@ Mandos

Nothing is as you said. It never is.

Most of the country considers people like you to be ridiculous. Most Americans consider that political correctness did some good a long time ago, but has now gone to an extreme that makes reasonable people laugh or shake their heads in disbelief.

Those people voted for Trump, and he is delivering for them by de-legitimizing people like you..

You think we need MORE political correctness.

There is no hope for you, Mandos, and no “safe space” big enough to make people like you ever feel safe enough.

Continue to tremble your way through your life, while trying to censor everyone else’s speech and thoughts. Continue to imply that everyone who is not as extreme as you must be a racist, seeking to undo all the progress of all the oppressed minorities.

I don’t think the future belongs to people like you.

Core promises. I hear you. You’re not wrong.

President Donald Trump.

@ IBP

I know you are trying to be funny, but I will nevertheless point out to you that the population at large is not at all identical to the population that voted in the last election.

@Ed and @Gaianne,

About re-localization, self-reliance, community co-survivalism, preparation, etc.; . . . I think the internet, web, etc. will survive in its current useful form for at least several years yet. That gives people several years to find out about these things on interwebnet sites and sources and begin practicing and applying those things that people feel might be useful

So among all the several million websites/ netsites/ blogsites/ etc. that exist, what might be a few good ones since no one person or even community will read millions of sites? Hopefully different people might come here and offer a few ideas and links to their idea of good useful sites. Here are a few from me.

There is a site called Journey To Forever by some young people interested in decent subsistence and survival in a descending industrial civilization for whole bunchloads of people at a time and in groups. Aside from describing some of the things they themselves do, think and study; they post many other sites letting the linker-reader find more information in other places. Here is the link:
http://journeytoforever.org/

Survivaling will probably work out better in the suburbs than in the cities. Suburban houses on mid to large size lots offer enough roofspace for survival roofwater harvesting and collecting, enough yard space for some survival gardening and micro-orcharding, etc. If big long downturns happen, many suburbs may become high-density semi-rural slum villages where survival will still be possible. Whereas the Great Urban Shitholes will become Great Urban Deathtraps for many. So what guidance sites exist on the interwebnets for suburban survival preparation information? Here is a very creative one by someone who is really doing it. http://members.efn.org/~spencerj/New%20Website/Suburban%20Pages/Suburban%20Renewal.htm

There are near-endless web-sources for herbal medicine knowledge. I don’t know enough to know how to rate them. Professor James Duke ( botany) is senior in his field and respected by many. Here is a wikipage about him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Duke
Here is a link to his online database of medicinally relevant plants.
https://phytochem.nal.usda.gov/phytochem/search

By the way, Professor Duke assembled a bunch of referrences for a book about plant bio-energy/ bio-mass he was going to write but never wrote. He put the titles of all the referrences he assembled online, for anyone who wants to take the long hard time to run them down.
https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/refs-z.html

And here is Professor Duke’s database of potential energy-crop plants its own self.
https://hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/dukeindex.html
Why is that relevant? Because if you have to provide your own fuel from grown and harvested plants, it is better to know than to not know which plants might help you.

Interested people should probably start reading these and other things starting now. Because when the Web and the Net goes dark, everything that was ever posted to the WebNet goes dark with it. Never to be accessed again, ever. Ever.

So start reading now.

I posted a link to this diary, as well as Ian’s related diary “Trump Has Not Yet Lied About What Matters Most”, on reddit/r/The_Donald. I posted them within seconds of each other.

I’ve now been banned, due to the link to this diary:

You’ve been banned from participating in r/The_Donald

You have been banned from participating in r/The_Donald. You can still view and subscribe to r/The_Donald, but you won’t be able to post or comment.

Note from the moderators:

https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/60cncg/trump_is_now_breaking_his_core_promises/

If you have a question regarding your ban, you can contact the moderator team for r/The_Donald by replying to this message.

Reminder from the Reddit staff: If you use another account to circumvent this subreddit ban, that will be considered a violation of the Content Policy and can result in your account being suspended from the site as a whole.

I’ve asked for a reason why, but can’t say I’m shocked. A quick perusal of the front page rarely shows anything critical of Trump. Apparently, it’s more of a fan page than anything else. There’s more serious criticism of Trump at breitbart than at r/The_Donald

@Gaianne and @different clue

I appreciate the resources–bookmarked for later perusal.

That said, I’m not quite ready to go full survivalist. For one, that only works until the Feds come up with an excuse to kick in your door (see Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc.). For two, that would require relocation, since I live in a semi-arid locale that’s only going to get worse water-wise according to the local climate change forecasts (yes, these can be found, if you’re persistent, for much of the world). If we’re going to relocate, we might as well move to New Zealand as somewhere more sustainable in the States.

I’m also more optimistic that we can find some solutions that don’t require complete withdrawal from the world. I’m more cyberpunkish about the future than post-apocalyptic.

However, I do think localism has to be a key for whatever’s next. The Federal level is broken and unsustainable. The questions then become ‘how do we help our local community thrive?” and “how do we protect ourselves from the machinations of the Federal level?”

Some of these resources will be helpful in answering those.

“It will happen faster than it would have under Clinton, and more Americans will suffer sooner, but the trend lines remain intact.”

That’s one of those assumptions that one will ‘never know’. In the least, I don’t know how anyone can quantifiably provide proof or site facts that can be independently verified. (even though I understand the process has fallen out of fashion.)

I’m not a Trump fan although I did vote for him. And I agree he has started to break many of his core promises. But one implied core promise from Trump is that he would stop Clinton and the lost hope of Obama. In this core promise, he delivered.

@Knot Galt,

Exactly. Trump was our Tire Iron of Justice to swing into the Evil Mouth of Clintonism. And it has worked provisionally. If the Clintons can be driven from public life as thoroughly as the Bushes have been driven, then we will have achieved something to build on.

The next step would be to purge and burn every last little filthy Clinton cancer cell from every corner and out from under every rock of the Clintobamacrat Party. No Clinton and No Bama. Make the Clintobamacrat Party Democratic again.

If the Clintons were both as evil and as all-powerful as the Diff Clues of the world perceive them to be, then why are Diff Clue–and so many, many more Clintonophobes–still unjailed and breathing? For that matter, why isn’t Hillary in the White House now, if the Evil Clintobamacrats (to use the eternally baroque quasi-English dialect of Diff Clue) are so widespread in the upper ranks of society, and so mighty?

That reminds me of a fallacy of the anti-Semites: If *THE JEWS* are so well-organized and almighty, how did Charlie Chaplin’s Evil Twin From Another Mother ever manage to rise to power?

But then, if I expect clear, rational thought from such people, I guess I am even sillier than they. 😉

I voted for Trump because I thought that, unlike Clinton, we had a chance for peace with Russia. That was my number one concern. He seems to be losing the battle with the MIC on that one, but I sure hope he prevails on that one.

@Peter,

The utilities could partway solve that problem if they became buyers-brokers-resellers of very distributed solar power bought from roof-top solar powermakers at wholesale price and sold it to whomever at retail price. That way at least some of the solar powermakers would stay on the grid and keep helping pay to maintain it.

I wonder if affluent rooftop panelizers would have gone full-standalone-panel if utilities had been more co-operative and welcoming to begin with about integrating renewable rooftop power into their systems. I also wonder if a full and total production and life-cycle audit of the solar panels would reveal more or less carbon having been skydumped in their cradle to grave making and use . . . as against a panelized homeowner’s own little pro-rated share of the cradle to grave carbon skydump involved in having made and maintained and fed their own little pro-rated part of the power grid.

Regardless, if the defection of the affluent plays out as you say, perhaps the rising price of electric power charged to the remaining non-affluent customers will become high and then punitive enough so as to spur forced conservation lifestyling among the non-affluent power customers.

@Ed

My point is that all these problems/solutions are connected and can’t be treated individually. Your town may build a solar power instillation but they are still connected because when the clouds come or the sun sets they need a gas fired backup power supplier ready to fill their demand. Waiting for the mythical better battery is at about thirty years and counting now. I’ve seen some hype from researchers about wonder batteries but nothing economical or near production has emerged.

I know that solar instillations have a strong visual and even emotional effect on people because in operation they seem so clean and green and are often profitable. It’s too easy to disregard the long trail of co2, pollution and destruction that is required to build this new green industrial revolution along with other unintended problems with their adoption.

@Ed,

I am guessing you live somewhere in one of the Southwest or near-Southwest states, but I can’t get any more specific in my guessing than that.

If you are interested in reading about broader energy and energy-engineering issues, you might like a blog called The Ergosphere by “Engineer-Poet”. The actual post that the link will take you to first thing is depressing, but there is a lot of interesting material there going back through time. Several years ago, for example, Engineer-Poet wrote a post about how while it is difficult to store electricity, it is easier to store the things it does. Or that we can do with it. He gave the example of Holland’s small national network of super deepfreeze meat storage lockers. For safety, that meat is supposed to stay at O degrees Farenheit. So the Dutch were sending some of the electricity produced by their windspinners WHEN the wind is blowing . . . to the chill-works components of those meat storage lockers. They use the windmade electricity to cool the lockers down beLOW O degrees. The longer the wind blows, the farther beLOW zero the lockers get. When the wind slows or stops enough that a “surplus” of windmade electricity cannot be committed to those lockers, they are permitted to “warm” back up to zero degrees. If there is still no windmade power after that, then they have to start drawing from the fossil power grid. But they don’t often have to do that. Intermittent wind power can be effectively stored in those lockers as surplus chill in those lockers.

How could that be relevant to your situation? If you are making surplus solar power in the cloudless daytime, you can air condition your house down to as cold as you can stand it. When night comes, or clouds block the sun, you can let the house warm back up to the hottest acceptable level before tapping the grid or your batteries. If you have a solar powered freezer AND fridge, you could spend the surplus solar power on having your freezer freeze “cooler-style chill blocks” which you could put in your fridge to help keep it cool without running its own motor so much.

If you find such thinking fun to do and read about, here is the link to The Ergosphere.
http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/

I notice you said you remain on the water grid. There might be a way to use less gridwater.
There is a book called Humanure about how to build and use a simple waterless composting toilet. http://humanurehandbook.com/ He has also put the less-than-most-current version of the book online. If you click on the little word rectangle near the homepage top called “the book” , one of the choices is the whole book itself on line. He also sells, for people who don’t want to build it themselves from plans, something called The Lovable Loo.
http://humanurehandbook.com/store/LOVEABLE-LOO-Eco-Toilet.html

While Mr. Humanure claims that his process will naturally de-pathogenize the accumulating pee and poo harvest, it is understandable that some people might not agree. Living in a high-sun area with much solar energy would allow you to solar boil and therefor totally sterilize the output beyond any doubt, to where it is totally safe to put in a garden. That would allow for living very lightly indeed on the water grid.

These are the kinds of things I would do/ will do if I ever had/ ever have a real house on a real yard of my very own. Till then, I can only read and think about some of these things in my little co-op dwelling unit.

@different clue

My dad was a nuclear researcher. It’s worth rethinking if for no other reason than it’s almost never been rationally considered and discussed in the USA. The hysteria because “it’s nuclear!” has overwhelmed serious discussions about risks, ways to mitigate those risks, and what the benefits are.

For example: if my father had died inside the plant, regulations prevented his body from being removed. The natural radioactivity inside the human body is higher than what you’re allowed to remove from a nuclear facility. But efforts to explain that to the public were a waste of breath because “we can’t have *anything* radioactive leave that facility!” Say ‘radioactive’ and rationality leaves too many people…

@Peter

Solar panel production in China is an economic/trade issue. Nothing to prevent us from making them here. Ditto wind (got a good friend who’s a wind turbine designer).

As for nukes–my issue is simply that we’ve had damned few rational examinations and risk assessments, especially compared to the costs of things like coal mining. It’s a species problem. We have trouble engaging some subjects rationally (cf: war on drugs).

That said, we’re in agreement that reducing consumption absolutely needs to be highest focus. That’s the basis of the problem indeed.

OmiGOD, he’s PRO-SEMITIC!!!!!!!! AAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

No Tom, I am not complicit and if you told me that to my face, you would be picking your teeth up from the floor.

It is amazing how someone like you can damn a whole generation.

Of course, if you feel like spouting off Mano to Mano, grab a few of your buddies and head down to a veteran or cop bar, I know who my money is on, if a challenge is offered.

@DC

I trust Hansen’s science. I am less trustworthy of his politics because I know he’s got an axe to grind. The Bush Jr. Administration actively tried to destroy his career, even forcing him to send his scientific papers to the White House for review before he could submit them to scientific journals or give them at conferences (yes, they pulled some serious dirty shit because he was such a vocal climate change supporter). So his comments on the “full fast” design being suppressed could be true, or could be exaggerations because he’s projecting similar suppression elsewhere.

As for lowering power consumption, there are ways to implement changes besides having the affluent pull off the grid. Back in the mid-90’s, for example, the Maryland Public Utility came to the houses of every customer and *gave* them compact fluorescent bulbs. In Tucson, they made changes to street lighting decades ago, in part to protect the telescopes, but with the side effect of cutting power consumption. Local communities have a lot of options if they make it a priority.

As for where I live–I live in Colorado, where we get 310+ sunny or mostly sunny days a year. We also get a lot of snow, though with climate change we’re getting less and less. So I don’t know what you mean by “real genuine winter.” I realize that it makes solar more viable for us than other places, but that’s the hand we were dealt: lots of sun year round, enough wind to make that viable too, but a serious issue with lack of water.

@ DC.

Thanks for the pointer. Colorado winter is all “snow on Monday, melt on Friday” so moving it around generally doesn’t happen.