Joe Biden quietly sought to ethnically cleanse Gaza; Bill Clinton and George W. Bush deported millions; Clinton tried to shrink the state and Steve Bannon warned in 2019 what Donald Trump would do, notes Wilmer J. Leon.
Steve Bannon at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
By Wilmer J. Leon, III
New Pittsburgh Courier
“I don’t know who you are and I don’t know why you like this guy (Trump). I think what you like about him; he appears to be strong and the rest of us are weak… That’s what he’s selling…Here’s what you’re buying…He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for… He’s the ISIL man of the year.”
—Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on CNN 2015
There are periods in history… epochs, distinctive periods in time marked by notable events, that in many instances signal change.
Columbus stumbling upon the Americas where Indigenous peoples had been living for thousands of years. The French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the invention of the semiconductor, WWII, the Civil Rights era, etc.
In many instances, one may not realize that they’re living in the historic moment. It’s only upon reflection that you realize the significance of the time.
There are other periods, I call them Oppenheimer moments, where you know that you are in the moment. The first atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945. The bomb, nicknamed “Gadget,” released 18.6 kilotons of power.
We are told that Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, upon watching the first ever atomic bomb explode, quoted a line from Hindu scripture; the Bhagavad Gita, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Oppenheimer knew he was in the moment.
As we look at the current geopolitical landscape, we find ourselves firmly in the grips of the second Trump administration. There is a dramatic decline in the status of America, both domestically and internationally.
The economic outlook is uncertain. America is funding a war in Ukraine and a genocide in Gaza. Homelessness, unemployment and incarceration rates are continuously on the rise.
One can only conclude that we are living in a historic moment. Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign and White House advisor calls it “managed decline.”
One of the ironies in all of this is we have seen this movie before: We are watching Trump Redux. We are not just watching the film; we are actors in it.
For those of us who are old enough to remember, watching the news and political programs today is analogous to watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show. We find ourselves constantly yelling at the screen, except this is unscripted.
Trump hosting a reception for Black History Month on Feb. 20 in the White House. (White House/Joyce Boghosian)
People are aghast listening to President Donald Trump attack Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies, firing federal inspectors general, threatening to close the Department of Education and pledging to fire F.B.I. agents who investigated Jan. 6.
Steve Bannon told us in 2019 what was to come,
“…we had a whole tiger team of the White House counsel guys, the ‘deconstruction of the administrative state,’ which is a huge element…we want less (government intervention). In fact, we want to start to take apart certain parts of the apparatus.”
America, you were warned.
Now, the authoritarian for whom over 77 million Americans voted wants to disregard the constitutionally guaranteed right of “birthright citizenship.” He is impounding funds, freezing nearly all foreign aid, federal grants and loans as if he has been magically granted the power of the “ex post facto veto.”
Almost none of Trump’s policies have gone through legislation or House votes. Trump issues his edicts through executive order. The American people are being subjected to a flurry or whirlwind of executive action. Bannon called it “flooding the zone and muzzle velocity.”
“Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.”
Some people may think Trump is crazy. If he is, he’s crazy like a fox.
Trump Is Not Alone
But it’s not just him. Trump is not alone. The racist suggestion of Trump saying, the United States should own Gaza and develop it into “the Riviera of the Middle East” by displacing the Palestinians from their homeland to other countries in the region, was first posited by former President Joe Biden.
The AP reported, “A Western diplomat in Cairo said Egypt rejected similar proposals from the Biden administration and European countries early in the war.” Trump’s major faux pas was he made Biden’s secret proposal public.
Trump is not alone in his racist deportation efforts.
“According to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute,” CNN reported, “more than 12 million people were ‘deported’ — either removed or returned — from the U.S. during the Clinton administration. More than 10 million were removed or returned during the Bush administration. Far fewer — more than 5 million – were removed or returned during the Obama administration.” Lest we forget, President Barack Obama was dubbed the “Deporter in Chief”.
People boarding a deportion flight in El Paso, Texas, headed to Ecuador, Jan. 28. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Flickr, U.S. Government)
Trump’s ideas of deconstructing the administrative state, cutting government agencies or his privatization-neoliberal policies via Project 2025 are not new.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich proposed similar tactics with his “Contract with America.” Former President Bill Clinton thought he could make government more efficient, by employing principles from the private sector by “Reinventing Government as We Know It.”
The major problem with these schemes is very simple. The goal of private sector capitalism is the maximization of profit.
The goal of democratic/republic government is the protection of the people and the delivery of services.
Contrary to the beliefs of the oligarchs, government is not in the “business” of making money. It’s lucky if it breaks even.
Don’t let this context confuse you. Sen. Graham is correct, President Trump is “…a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot.”
This is evidenced by his baseless rants about Mexican rapists, his proposed Muslim ban, his lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace, his attack on the Central Park Five, his baseless attack on DEI programs, removing historical videos of its storied Black Tuskegee Airmen from Air Force training modules [that were restored after public outcry], supporting genocide in Gaza, just to name a few.
Remember, all of this resonated with over 77 million Americans.
Gate of the Exonerated sign just inside an entrance to Central Park in New York City named in honor of five innocent African-American men whose deaths Donald Trump publicly demanded. (Jay Dobkin, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
So, what are we to do? Well, for starters do not listen to Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Anyone who tries to insist that the election was not a rebuke of the Democrats is delusional and anyone who argues that Democrats don’t need to change is clueless.
I strongly suggest reading Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail —
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
Then read Frederick Douglass’ 1857 speech, If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress —
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
After that, read more and remember, when they tell you about their own, they are also telling you about themselves. Believe them.
Dr. Wilmer Leon is a nationally broadcast radio talk-show host. Author of Politics Another Perspective. Host of Connecting the Dots w/ Dr. Wilmer Leon. Go to his web page or email: wjl3us@yahoo.com and Dr. Leon’s Prescription at Facebook.com © 2023 InfoWave Communications, LLC.
The original version of this article was published by New Pittsburgh Courier
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Gotta laugh that Lindsay Graham was the one to call out Trump. The same descritions are just as applicable to the geratric Graham. Accurate but projection.
No doubt, “Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), CNN, Steve Bannon, Newt Gingrich, Clinton, Bill & Hilary, Bush, Obama, Biden, Harris” made history!!! And, imo, “re-writing” the history of U.$.Presidents’, 42’s-47’s, WH, M.I.C., Treasury, Congress ($enate & Repre$entatives) is a task in “managing decline.” Imo, the sources, the players, the cast have zero, zip, none, nada credibility. “Their” history is indefensible. It’s scandalous. Fugg’em, all!
“Lest we forget,” that “Cowboy from Texas, started his own war, in Iraq,” Agreed, “President Barack Obama was dubbed the “Deporter in Chief,” + the Commander-N-$peech + the Assassin-N-Chief + a “Community Organizer,” + “Fraud!!!” AND, #47, Trump-Vance, et al., have been “gifted” w/the same power, Presidents, #42-#46, owned. The “power” to use, abuse, abandon plant, animal & human life, in a heartbeat!!! AND, walk away, from accountability. To date, the “power” of the U.S. Presidency “lives” LARGE! “One of the ironies in all of this is we have seen this movie before.” (Dr. Leon)
….I.E., *“They, influence our decisions w/o us knowing it. They numb our senses w/o us feeling it. They control our lives w/o us realizing it….“They, LIVE.” (John Carpenter directs this heart-pounding thriller in which aliens are systematically gaining control of the earth by masquerading as humans; lulling the public into submission—-A lone drifter stumbles upon a unique pair of sunglasses that reveal the truth).”
IMO, things have changed. The economic outlook is certain. It’s “perpetual” decline, debt, debtors, homelessness, gloom & f/doom. Capitalism. Racism. Poverty. War. Climate Crisis, lives, large! IMO, the past & present Presidents’ WH, M.I.C., Treasury, Congress do zero, zip, nada, nothing about the continuing rise in the extreme decline of the Divided $tates of Corporate America; AND, NOW, Trump-Vance own it. W/o a doubt, “we,” the taxpayers; &, the incarcerated, are paying for Clean-Up on aisle U.$.A, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Gaza,the West Bank, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel. Agreed, before this sacred heart blows, read, again, 1) Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,”ADD the “footnote:” “[TIME] is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. [TRUTH] is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. You [DON’T] need anything else.” Malcolm X
2) Frederick Douglass’ 1857 speech, “If There Is No Struggle, There Is No Progress;” ADD the “footnote:” “DON’T be a sheep & follow the herd blindly.” READ, more: 3) “No Propaganda on Earth Can Hide the Wound that is Palestine,” Arundhati Roy’s PEN Pinter Prize 2024 Speech hxxps://pentransmissions.com/2024/10/15/no-propaganda-on-earth-can-hide-the-wound-that-is-palestine-arundhati-roys-pen-pinter-prize-2024-speech/…. AND, 4) Farah El Sharif, “Arab Regimes; the Betrayal of Palestine,” @ hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2025/02/07/the-chris-hedges-report-arab-regimes-the-betrayal-of-palestine/
TY. “Keep It Lit!”
Most Americans are likely unaware the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) recently published an immensely powerful documentary film titled “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone” – before near-immediately removing/censoring the film, after intense pressure was applied to take the film down, the pressure exerted on the BBC by the near-omnipotent Zionist lobby.
The film will shock, disturb and sadden to the point of weeping those who view it, most especially as the viewer gains the perspectives of three young Palestinians: First, the film’s narrator, the son of a Palestinian educator; second, a boy whose days are filled with helping Palestinian paramedics care for the constant casualties of war, while having dreams of growing up and also becoming a paramedic; and third, a good-hearted girl who tries to put on a brave, cheerful face while enduring the absolute horrors of war, becoming somewhat of a YouTube sensation along the way.
See the film here, but do please prepare to become emotionally shaken to the core:
hxxps://onenessofhumanity.wordpress.com/2025/02/23/message-from-gaza-my-biggest-fear-is-the-war-will-return/
Gee, I wonder how you combat this sort of thing in a democracy? I think there is supped to be some sort of organization through which citizens can fight back. I can’t remember what this entity was called, but the last thing I remember reading about them was they found a great way to fundraise off the troubles of the day. Come to think of it, that’s all I remember hearing of them for some time; somehow they had stumbled on the idea that the point of politics was fundraising, and accidentally ran with it. What a funny but pointless group they were. Now back to this dilemma, wasn’t there a way to organize ourselves? What was thing thing called again?
Oh, don’t ‘we’ just love our horror shows, so long as they’re only in “virtual reality CinemaScope” on our home screen devices!
Birthright citizenship was enacted after the civil war to ensure citizenship to former slaves. It was never meant to grant citizenship to a child of foreign parents whose pregnant mother happened to give birth while she was in the US. Look around the world. No first world country has the same unconditional birthright law. A few poor countries do, but most citizens are trying to leave them, not stay there.
Obama deported 2 mil.+ , had a weekly closed door “war/kill” targeting meeting, watered down Paris Accords result. I’ve voted Green 4 years w/a clear conscience.
Frederick Douglass also said: Power concedes nothing without a demand.
“The goal of private sector capitalism is the maximization of profit.” Exactly. Doesn’t matter this requires endless growth on a finite planet. Doesn’t matter that theory underlying the current econopathy dismisses devastation of human communities and destruction of ecosystems by defining them away as ‘externalities.’ However, trickle up is still flowing and there are amazing opportunities in the war industry.
It’s Robber Barons 2.0 and on the Dem side, the Ivy D intellectual war mongers of Best and Brightest 2.0. Plus the neolib usurpation of the D party in the late ’70s and subsequent purging of the New Deal and abandonment of the majority working class. The Ds did FOR the suffering unemployed of the Rust Belt/Appalachia same as the did TO the Wall St. vultures who caused the ’08 crash–NOTHING! The Ds under Clinton repealed the financial regs that would have prevented such reckless behavior. The perpetrators were bailed out. For the millions who lost jobs, pensions, houses? NOTHING! It’s no coincidence the R.B/A. region leads in what are called ‘deaths of despair.’
The Ivy D elite explains away 2016 and 2020 losses as that “basket of deplorables.” Adding insult to 40 years of injury. BTW, the ’71 Powell Memo is probably behind the neolib unfriendly takeover of the D party. What’s astounding is how much of the unsupported assertions of that Memo are now taken as econ gospel. What the Ds refuse to admit is the political result of allowing 60 million to be hit by mass layoffs since 1996 to finance stock buybacks that benefit only CEOs and banksters. Where mass layoffs in a county went up, D votes went down.
And here’s the kicker–at the same time, the same white working class voters became more and more progressive on social issues–BIPOC and LGBT. Look up the robust stats in Les Leopold’s 2024 book //Wall Street’s War on Workers (How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do about It.)// So much for distractions or wedge issues. I’m not saying Trump & Co. aren’t racist or aren’t race baiting–clearly they are. Only that the abandonment of labor by the D party and smug disparagement by Ivy Ds is a big part of the story.
Trump is the symptom.
Capitalism is the disease.
Socialism is the cure.
America became a hodge-podge of people from ’round the world. The dispossessed from European, African Wars, you name it, they came with very different ethnic backgrounds.
Add to that was the US Civil War, that destroyed Southern States, leaving the low income folks left bereft of any semblance of “a civil society.”
It was “every man for himself. Even in the 1900s, what flourished were 3d rate writers, and salesmen and fraudulent ministers of Truth, selling their cheap wares for the illiterate masses.
Oscar Wilde, in touring “America” in the 1860s: was spot on when he wrote:
“America is the ONLY country that went from barbarism to decadence without Civilization in between.”
We know of no other “country” that survived for long without BECOMING a CIVILIZATION, first.
Rubicon ia a truth teller
never cross him
What can we do? The first thing is to emerge from the Denial phase: The US has no functioning democracy and the rule of law is used as a weapon for oligarchs and plutocrats against the “little people”. Money is free speech, Congress and SCOTUS are openly bribed and have serious conflicts of interest. The “systemically important financial institutions” are Above the Law and the Oligarch-parasites are openly stealing what is left of public resources. The US is being asset-stripped in front of our eyes, yet few seem to notice.
There are no more “checks and balances” and one could say that “the Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper.”
We have the world’s richest oligarch making decisions, we the likes of Peter Thiel, Larry Fink, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos wielding huge power and influence over public policy. The oligarchy is in your face and THEY call the shots, the DT2 regime just makes it MORE obvious than ever.
No, the hypocrite scumbag Lindsey Graham is not one to listen to: he has proven to be a racist advocate of mass murder, pro-oligarchy, pro-kleptocracy for decades. The problem is not just one crooked Senator or 100 crooked Senators, it is INSTITUTIONALIZED CORRUPTION and goes well beyond superficial partisan politics.
So, let’s “keep it real” and emerge from Denial: There is no such thing as democracy in the USA boys and girls.
At this point, Trump is just deporting undocumented people who were arrested for a crime after arrival. Sanctuary cities were established to protect immigrants with a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their home country. Most immigrants know, especially undocumented ones, to stay out of trouble with the law, or suffer the consequences. Why did the Biden administration open the floodgates and provide benefits to immigrants that long-term homeless people never see? Was it to depress wages and incite race wars between citizens and immigrants?
Best description of the current situation I have read…
Once upon a time…the land of ‘milk and honey’ no longer.
There is nothing new in this human world; except new people who have to learn it all anew. What is new, however, is the immediacy of forces of change driven by our vast and increasing numbers, technologies well beyond our understanding, and the increasingly destructive assault on earth’s biophysical systems; it seems that we, new people, are not learning from them, but are applying all the old political and social ills in our desperation. We require a bigger vision than the ‘easy’ and narrow political arguments being made…because the issues driving the ‘solutions’ offered are so much bigger than either leaders or public understanding are comprehending. That is ultimately the challenge, to realize that the present attempts to deal with the national and geopolitical traumas are only stirring the pot, and then to act: bring clarity and action to population issues, find ways to bring technological development and change under broad humane control and slow (eventually stop) the damaging of biophysical systems. Until humanity in general can address these drivers of discord, we will be always trying to learn anew from all the wrong lessons.