Donald Trump’s unlikely election is a Brexit-like blow to the global elites who espoused an arrogant mix of neocon foreign policy and neoliberal economics that has hurt many common citizens, says ex-British diplomat Alastair Crooke.
By Alastair Crooke
So, there it is: Brexit, as I had earlier suggested, was no extraneous “flash in the pan,” but a manifestation of wider and deeper discontents in Western society. Let us be clear: not only did 60 million Americans vote for Donald Trump, but a further 13 million, who voted for Bernie Sanders (in the primaries) similarly voted for strategic change – albeit from within a different political orientation.
I do not intend, here, to attempt any post-mortem on the U.S. election, but rather to try to see what may stand hidden behind the Brexit and Trump events – obscured for now by their overly prominent presence on the forestage of the media and politics.
Donald Trump and his vice-presidential running mate Mike Pence during the Republican National Convention. (Photo credit: Grant Miller/RNC)
The first concerns Donald Trump: Unsurprisingly, his personal foibles and his billionaire background have become the focus of a hostile media who question whether he has the ability to bring about strategic change, or not. This is an important question, but still it misses the point. The point here is that there are few – very few – opportunities for elected officials to challenge the status quo – especially when Western centrist parties have patently conspired to offer voters mere nuanced variants of the same “progressive,” liberal, globalized agenda.
In short, there evidently has been a constituency building up, so exasperated at the imperviousness of the elites to the true situation of this constituency, that they want the status quo gone, by whomsoever’s hand is there. Whomsoever: that is the point. It was never some sort of chief executive beauty contest: Would Bernie Sanders have been an ideal President? Would Nigel Farage have been one? Will Trump be able to deliver a new era? — we do not know (but should not foreclose on that possibility). The Whomsoever aspect rather speaks to the depth of alienation that lay latent in American society.
But the message that is in danger of being obscured by the outsize focus on the outsize personality of Mr. Trump is precisely that the “discontents” at democracy, at cultural “identity” politics, at globalization and its sufferings, will not simply disappear now. Mr. Trump will succeed or fail, but the uprising will persist in one form or another – and is likely to spread to other parts of Europe, leaving the latter in turmoil and politically incapacitated.
Profound Alienation
It represents a profound alienation. We should not expect any early return of the liberal world, should Mr. Trump somehow fail.
Russian President Vladimir Putin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on May 10, 2015, at the Kremlin. (Photo from Russian government)
Nor should Mr. Trump be viewed as some sort of outlandish political freak. In fact, he fits quite closely to one of the mainstream orientations of American conservatism. It is an orientation that is, by instinct, doubtful of grandiose schemes of political or social re-engineering, preferring to take human nature as it is; it is more inclined to focus on domestic needs, rather than uncertain foreign adventures; is financially conservative; is not economically determinist; and tends to see the family as the indispensable building-block of society. It is a Zeitgeist that sees other countries (say Russia or China) as normal countries with whom one should talk, and to pursue common interests.
That Trump should be regarded as some bizarre oddity, rather than as being in the line of Burke and thrice Presidential contender Pat Buchanan (who admits to a certain paternity, as it were) – speaks more to the success of the neoconservative hijack of American conservatism beginning in the 1960s than reflects the historic spectrum of this intellectual current.
One might say that the neoconservatives were never Conservative, in the sense that neoliberals were never Liberal, in the traditional understanding of these terms. What is new is that the President-elect seems to have put together a new Republican constituency of half the American electorate. And this new constituency is not just one of “red-necks” (white, blue-collar workers). It has cut across social classes and ethnic divisions. Even Wall Street traders (supposedly aligned with the Clintons) reportedly were enthusiastically yelling “lock her up” during Mrs. Clinton’s concession speech – and college-educated women only gave Mrs. Clinton a 6 percent edge over those who voted Trump.
It is possible “that this election [originally] was intended to facilitate the triumphant return of the neoconservative-neoliberal paradigm all wrapped up in ‘new packaging.’ For various reasons, the decision was made to assign this role to Hillary Clinton,” according to the Oriental Review.
Perhaps this was because she was viewed as well placed to fuse the liberal-interventionist and the neoconservative trends to the Clintonite “cultural identity politics” base – or possibly, simply because it was “her turn” at the Presidency. If so, it has failed spectacularly.
The Clinton Failure
Why did it fail? One aspect of the discontent (as I have outlined before – see here) relates to the slow demise of our financialized, neoliberal, debt-driven growth model. For many in America and Europe, the reality has not been one of economic prosperity, but one of anxiety – and for the first time in the post-World War II era – a sense that the next generations’ prospects will be much tougher, and worse, than ours were.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking at Planned Parenthood Action Fund membership event at the Washington Hilton on June 10, 2016. (Photo by Lorie Shaull, Wikipedia)
Here (no friend to Trump) is Naomi Klein’s assessment: “They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame ‘Bernie or bust’ and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.
“But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves … [financialized] neoliberalism. Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatization, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.
“At the same time, they have witnessed the rise of the Davos class, a hyper-connected network of banking and tech billionaires, elected leaders who are awfully cozy with those interests, and Hollywood celebrities who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous. Success is a party to which they were not invited, and they know in their hearts that this rising wealth and power is somehow directly connected to their growing debts and powerlessness.
“For the people who saw security and status as their birthright – and that means white men most of all – these losses are unbearable. Donald Trump speaks directly to that pain. The Brexit campaign spoke to that pain.”
Here it is represented visually:
Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-09/source-our-rage-ruling-elite-protected-consequences-its-dominance
Of course, this was not the case for the urban élites:
Source: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-09/source-our-rage-ruling-elite-protected-consequences-its-dominance
Cultural Resistance
The second aspect to the present discontent has been cultural oppression (or, in the rhetoric of the Democratic Party, “identity politics” – one of the mainstays of the Clintonite electoral base). Its roots are complex, and lie with philosophic currents emerging out of Germany during WWII that somehow fused with American Trotskyist intellectual thinking (which then migrated to the Right). But, in gist, this current of political thought borrowed from the emerging discipline of psychology the concept of clearing the human mind – shocking it, or forcing it into becoming the “clean slate” on which a new mental program could be written by the psychiatric (or political) therapist respectively.
The political aim here was to eliminate totalitarian thinking, and fascist mental “programming,” and to replace it with a liberal-democracy circuit board.
Indeed, the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was promoted by this intellectual group precisely in furtherance of the notion that concepts such as “national culture” would become meaningless as a result of immigrant cultural dilution. By the 1970s and 1980s, the objective had evolved to implant the idea that there was really no politics to modernity (Fukuyama’s End of History) since all governance somehow had boiled down to technocracy: ensuring effective liberal market functioning — a matter best left to experts.
In political terms, the “clearing” of the mind’s inherited cultural clutter was to be achieved by cultural wars of political correctness. The class war had become discredited, but there were other “victims” on whose behalf war could be waged: the war on gender discrimination, on racism, on denial of gay rights and sexual orientation stereotyping, on verbal micro-aggressions, on sexist language, or any ideas or language which disturbed the individual’s sense of “safe space” were used as tools to clear away old cultural “brush” of inherited national culture, and open the way for an American-led, globalized world.
The ostensible factor linking all these notions of victim “wars” was that their antonym amounted either to fascism or authoritarianism. The problem with this has been that any white American blue-collar worker who attended church, who believed in family life, and was patriotic, became potentially a fascist, a racist, a sexist or a bigot.
Many ordinary Americans (and Europeans) disdain this “cultural” war which places him or her (according to Hillary Clinton), in the “‘basket of deplorables’ Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic, you name it,” and who looked upon his or her community as representing nothing more than a “fly-over” state in the view of the U.S. coastal élites.
The deplorables have now risen up. Donald Trump’s salty language was no liability – it was an electoral asset by thumbing his nose at this correctness, and at so-called ”snowflake” sensibilities. Trump’s ‘incorrectness’ touched on a deep vein of resentment within American traditional society.
Not only does “flyover America” resent being termed “deplorables,” they feel too clearly the disdain in which the American and European elites hold them – and dislike their arrogance in suggesting that there is only one rational, sensible way of doing things, and that they – the elites, being the experts and a part of the Davos set – should tell the rest of us what it is: (despite their decades of failures).
High Emotions
Emotions are high on both sides. To gain a sense of how bitterly the cultural war will be fought, listen to this from the partly-Soros-funded populist mobilization movement Azaaz (linked to America’s Move On organization): “Dear Mr. Trump: This is not what greatness looks like. The world rejects your fear, hate-mongering, and bigotry. We reject your support for torture, your calls for murdering civilians, and your general encouragement of violence. We reject your denigration of women, Muslims, Mexicans, and millions of others who don’t look like you, talk like you, or pray to the same god as you. Facing your fear we choose compassion. Hearing your despair we choose hope. Seeing your ignorance we choose understanding. As citizens of the world, we stand united against your brand of division.”
Billionaire currency speculator George Soros. (Photo credit: georgesoros.com)
In short, with Brexit and the Trump victory, we are witnessing an historic point of inflexion. As I noted in mid-October (quoting British political philosopher John Gray): “If the tension between [the globalization project on one hand] and the [sovereign] nation state, [on the other] was one of the contradictions of Thatcherism … From Bill Clinton and Tony Blair onwards, the center-left embraced the project of a global free market with an enthusiasm as ardent as any on the right. If globalization was at odds with social cohesion, society had to be re-engineered to become an adjunct of the market. The result was that large sections of the population were left to moulder in stagnation or poverty, some without any prospect of finding a productive place in society.”
“If Gray is correct that when globalized economics strikes trouble, people will demand that the state must pay attention to their own parochial, national economic situation (and not to the utopian concerns of the centralizing elite), it suggests that just as globalization is over – so too is centralization (in all its many manifestations).”
Well, the global trend does not seem to be going in the Avaaz direction. It seems rather to be heading toward prioritizing the recovery of the state, of state sovereignty, and of state engagement in the pursuit of economic policies appropriate to the particular circumstances of the state, and in the state’s ultimate responsibility for the welfare of the community as a whole.
The question is what does this mean geo-strategically? And, secondly, can and will, Trump be able to deliver the new era? The short answer is that this new era seems to presage a period of political volatility, financial volatility and in Europe and the Middle East, the prospect of continued political “shock.”
It is clear that Mr. Trump is not a globalist. It is also clear that he is aware of some of the dangers of the present global monetarist policy. He has spoken of the U.S. Federal Reserve creating “big ugly bubbles” and that the next economic and financial crisis has been “kicked down the road” by Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen – and clearly awaits whomsoever becomes U.S. President on Jan. 20, 2017.
Painted into a Corner
But three decades of debt-led, financialized “growth policies” leave the President-elect effectively painted into a corner: global debt has spiraled; the bubbles are there still (kept afloat by Central Bank coordinated intervention), and bubbles are infamously difficult to deflate gently; zero or negative interest rates are undermining many a business model, but cannot easily be foregone, without crashing the bond market; and QE (printing money) is systematically eating away at consumer purchasing power through the dilution of its newly created purchasing power, and the latter’s re-direction from “main street” into the financial sector – lifting nominal asset values – but creating no tangible wealth.
China’s President Xi Jinping.
America and Europe effectively are in debt-deflation. How then to grow incomes so that producers of goods and services can also afford then subsequently to purchase these goods and services? Trump’s answer is to spend on domestic infrastructure projects. This may help a bit, but is unlikely – in itself – to lift and float the entire U.S. economy.
The reality is that there is no obvious global engine of growth (now that China’s “industrial revolution” has stalled at best). Every nation now is in search of new engines of growth. And it is not easy to imagine that Europe or America will succeed in retrieving all those jobs lost through globalization. Indeed, the attempt so to do – in, and of itself – might just precipitate a further deceleration of world trade, and a consequent decline in output.
In brief, the global economy may see a brief “honeymoon period” thanks to a likely spurt of U.S. fiscal indulgence and a concomitant psychological lift, stemming from – at least – the U.S. construction sector enjoying something of a boom. But ultimately the very economic crisis which Mr. Trump anticipates may prove to be the only way to cut the Gordian knot in which three decades of unprecedented debt and money printing have fettered us.
And if he is to steer through the expected crisis, Mr. Trump will have to eschew the Siren voices of the present elites telling him “TINA” (there is no alternative, but to continue as before).
Where Mr Trump might look for an early (and relatively easy) success however, may be in foreign policy. As “Nixon went to China,” so Trump can go to Russia and China, and begin to treat them as normal nations with whom it is possible to find an intersection of interests (as well as areas of disagreement).
This would be revolutionary. It could change the geo-strategical map. And as President Putin keeps repeating … the door is open (at least for now). Nothing is forever in politics.
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum, which advocates for engagement between political Islam and the West.
….”The reality is that there is no obvious global engine of growth (now that China’s “industrial revolution” has stalled at best). Every nation now is in search of new engines of growth”. Not so! In The US…when they legalize marijuana…and especially…industrial hemp… along with the associated new line of hemp-based products that will kick-start a recovery the likes of which he country has never seen before….
Trump going to Russia and China, to soberly sit down with them and say “Let’s talk. Let’s do a deal…” Could actually spark a global renaissance in international relations. He’ll hear about the Silk Road Projects, and be invited to join in on it. He’ll hear about the very special contribution to this project that only Russia and USA can make: the World LandBridge (or Tunnel) to span the Bering Straits, connecting, thru the Siberian side, all of Asia, Europe, and Africa; and, on the Alaska side, North, Central, and South America. It’ll be a connection via rail lines, pipelines, power lines, communication lines, almost making air and sea travel obsolete. It’ll also deliver the bacon to the blue collar crowd of Trump supporters (“I will not let you down” he said) as millions of good jobs will be created to build and maintain and operate it (WPA/PWA/CCC/TVA here we come!). This real e$tate tycoon will see mere villages in Alaska turning into megalopolises, dwarfing L.A. and NYC. He might just accidentally, without intending to, back into becoming “The New FDR”. This would hilariously complete the cycle of Coyote Trickster (but one can never predict what Coyote will do).
Mr. Crooke’s post-election assessment is, in my opinion, exactly right about the historical significance of Trump’s victory, no matter how one personally feels about Trump himself. This victory (combined with Brexit and other recent developments) presages something even bigger, whether or not his brand of cheap populism proves as debilitating as the elitism of the liberal establishment.
What Mr. Crooke is talking about has been in the works for decades. But it is obviously coming to a head where it began: in the Anglo-American world. In the US, the underlying dynamic has always been between the Neoconservative “permanent revolutionaries” and homegrown conservativism. Every country has some kind of homegrown “conservative” roots, both intellectual and cultural.
Traditional American conservatism was no friend of hubris-driven social engineering or grand schemes about creating the New Man in a land where hubris is drunk like milk. But it has also mutated into a presently unknown factor. This does not alter the fact that the main political dynamic has nothing to do with liberals or Democrats being an alternative to a fictitious right. It turns out that liberalism has always been the Right, for all intents and purposes, notwithstanding the War on Poverty, which every 1930s fascist was equally able to combine with war-mongering.
Traditional American conservatism–like Germany’s before Hitler rose to power on the wings of a host of “revolutionary conservative” and other reactionary elements–had nothing to do with upending the world in order to save it. We have almost forgotten that the elements which coalesced into fascism after WWI in Italy, Germany and elsewhere included some of the most prominent liberal intellectuals and politicians. The “liberal establishment” was very well represented in fascist governments, at least those elements of it that did not run off to New York and Istanbul to be at a safe distance. It supplied the most capable leaders and intellectuals who defended the fascist solution as the new permanent revolution.
In short, this “liberalism” we like to hail represents the same reactionary political force ruling on the left and the right, both of which have been running fictions as far as the elites are concerned. Time to change how we view politics.
But the harder truth for otherwise well-meaning people to digest is that liberalism and its “progressive” wing have been at the forefront in the assault on the rest of the world. When it is not fantasizing about bringing socialism to the world or homogenizing French society, that part of the political spectrum envisions unlimited Western world domination. True, American involvement in Vietnam began before JFK, but it was JFK and his epigone, L.B. Johnson, who really took over the reins in Southeast Asia from the French “revolutionary” colonialists bent on “civilizing the world.”
It is the Atlanticist cabal (both liberals and neoconservatives) that has come closest to destroying the world in a bid to extend the short history of crisis-ridden domination by the West (US, England and France)–all told, a history no more than a century and a half old. The efforts of those who defend this Atlanticist ideology portend more destructive consequences than anything in the past. This is the state in which they are leaving our world today.
Interesting, too, that Mr. Crooke should mention Fukuyama’s strange idea of the “end of history,” based on a liberal-democratic utopian ideology that has been bandied around the world by liberal/neocon circles since WWII, in a world dotted by blood-thirsty, Western-sponsored terrorist regimes in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
One more thing I would like to mention, if I may, that may be of interest to your readers. Although Fukuyama has since distanced himself from his own thesis, I have used it to approach the subject of my book “Modernity, Civilization and the Return to History” (Vernon Press, forthcoming December 2016). One of my book’s central themes is the concept of identity, which Mr. Crooke appropriately mentions. The question of identity is where the West has gone off its rails and where the chickens are coming home to roost.
Remember when we progressives fought like hell to elect the 1st black president with a middle name of Hussein? We all thought he would stop dubya’s wars, end the tax cuts for the wealthy, and fix healthcare. Instead within the 1st 30 days he enlisted a cabinet picked by Citibank. And the left was blamed for going home and not applying pressure to “make him” be the agent of change he said he would be.
Trump will also break the hearts of many who believe he is some kind of Messiah who will reverse the trends of globalization, and get all those closed steel mills up and running again. I agree with Ernest Spoon, while the people did clearly say they want to throw the elites out, they will get utter continuity, with the added element of more social acceptable racism and mysogyny. However who knows if he will actually succeed in deporting more immigrants than Obama? Make no mistake, Trump is no agent of positive change for the masses, this guy is a maniac, a narcissistic sex-offender, who has had alot of success in the current system. Therefore nothing is broken so why would he fix-it?
We must reject the duopoly of the demoplicans. I really don’t care what your political leanings, go to a third party, unless you are a wealthy technocrat you should never vote democrat or republican again. Progressives run do not walk to the Green party. It is not perfect but the most viable place to start.
Trumps biggest problem is having both houses to go along with whatever. Seeing he is the whomever. Republican majority in both houses were funded and backed by the same people that backed Clinton. The Corporate state in US is well entrenched. Will he be able to clear the swamp. IE Wall Street, the fed,industrial military complex. Last but not least the so over staffed security secret complex. Dubbua Bush increased the level of spending to astronomical levels.. The only room he will have is the infrastructure budget. If the schills in congress and the senate were to block that they would be committing political suicide.He would even have the capacity and possibility to introduce universal health care. If by chance the globalist made a last minute deal which we never know. Once his administration is revealed we will get a better sense of where he is heading. One thing is 4 sure with Trump we heard words of detente and not military adventures. He has critisized Libya , Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan military adventurism. He also has stated that the OIL assets should have been taken so more white establishment exceptionalism. US political system will always have that trait. Until then lets hope these fools stop saber rattling and enough regime change around the world. Heres to a needed paradigm shift in western civilisation.
This writer couldn’t be further from the truth when he falsely implies Trump thumbs his nose at the monied elites. Trump is part and parcel owned/controlled by the Zionists, the same Zionists that the global cabal is made up of well over half of it’s personnel.
PLEASE READ: This is just an FYI, maybe a very important one.
George Soros and his social warriors may be at work.
Below was forwarded to me by a friend in law enforcement, I took out the name of the actual place for reasons of privacy (mainly mine), but I was told this is going on across the nation.
“A friend of his was walking her dog and wearing a headscarf. She was harassed by a Trump supporter, who then called the police on her. XXXXXXX county police came in with guns drawn, fired on the dog as it ran away, and handcuffed the woman. They let her go after they realized they couldn’t charge her with anything. The police acted outrageously and need to be held accountable. Please call the numbers listed in the link and spread the word!
Michelle”
The officer told me this was a total hoax, absolutely no such event happened. He also told me such false claims were being made across the nation. The goal seems to be they are trying to set up “social warrior network”, very much like they did in Kiev, Georgia…and everywhere else Soros spreads social unrest. The concern is this could be laying the groundwork for something bigger. They build these networks now to react when some catalyst is perpetrated, a “black flag” perhaps. They repletely ask for help from “white people of good conscience”. They put out this false claim, on social netowrks and try to form oganizations to protect the police…I noted the useage of a “Trump supporter” in the original message, pretty pathetic.
The organization is called: “UP Racial Justice Peace Makers” Sounds like a George Soros color revolutionary perverse terminology to me.
The first step in avoiding a trap is knowing of its existence. This could be nothing, but considering what just happened with the election, something is coming.
Martial Law
There is an article in NEO that claims the nation-wide protests against the Trump election win is part of an orchestrated domestic color revolution for regime change of a government that has not even been installed yet.
http://journal-neo.org/2016/11/12/is-obama-staging-a-color-revolution-in-the-us-2/
“Emotions are high on both sides. To gain a sense of how bitterly the cultural war will be fought, listen to this from the partly-Soros-funded populist mobilization movement Azaaz (linked to America’s Move On organization):”
Alastair should check, but I believe that it is Avaaz not Azaaz.
Excellent points. Now will trump be able to resist the potential multi-trillion $ globalist green lobby?
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The left is making the biggest mistake it has made in my lifetime. No one on the left seems to have grasped the deep and profound nature of Trump’s election. Far from just a defeat of Clinton it was a strong rebuke of the entire entrenched power structure which was behind her and through everything they had at Trump AND LOST.
A huge bomb went off in the center of political life. The center is now scattered and in tatters, there can be no left or right if there is no center a new paradigm must form. There is no more a Democratic or Republican party they have corrupted themselves into oblivion.
What is left are the insurgents – Trump – and the deeply wounded establishment, no more right left those ideas belong to the last century.
The former left should be calling every Trump representative and trying to get meetings and join the insurgency – The enemy of my enemy is my friend. – work with Trump on killing the trade deals, work with him on restoring jobs work with him on every possible issue and offer to help with immigration and other issues. Hate and window breaking will guarantee progressive ideas will never get a hearing.
What should be most important to everyone is getting good progressive policies in place to help people – working with the insurgents offers that opportunity – working within the same corrupt established order and whining in the streets is doomed.
This is definitely how it is and what must occur. The faux left are acting as quislings following fascists of the centre like Soros and the totally discredited Clintons. They are useful idiots for the establishment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-danger-of-going-soft-on-russia.html
November 12, 2016
The Danger of Going Soft on Russia
Will Donald Trump, who has been Vladimir Putin’s apologist, change his tune in the White House?
[ Here then is the New York Times, all that really matters. ]
Anyone can see it’s all Putin’s fault. Thanks NYT.
The Soviet Union had Pravda; the yankee imperium has the New York Times. I support the irony. I’d rather be soft than dead.
There could be a big peace dividend if Trump follows through on campaign pledge to get out of mid-eastern wars, that Obama pledged to end, the reason that this disappointed peacenik voted for him twice. Instead we see that wars growing to Ukraine, Libya and Syria, largely orchestrated by Hillary and her neo-con friends. Recall that Bill Clinton’s much vaunted economic recovery years occurred during a time when the Soviet Union collapsed, and massive military base closings took place all over the US. In my stomping grounds, Northern California, the military base closure included the massive Travis Air base in Marin, the Presidio in SF, the Alameda Airforce base, the Oakland Army Base and Naval Hospital, the Vallejo Naval Base, and the massive army base in Monterrey. So massive were these holding that now, some twenty years later, those bases still have not been redeveloped. This was replicated throughout the US. No one has even tried to calculate the enormous sums of money in savings provided by these military cut-backs. An end to the mid east wars, along with policies of peaceful co-existance with China and Russia could provide far more.
Oh, please, both Brexit and Trump´s victory is merely replacing one set of ¨elites¨ with another. The working class dupes who voted for the forces of reaction will get nothing in return if they thought they were voting to restore outsourced manufacturing jobs. They will, in the US at least, get a repeat of the subprime home mortgage/derivatives financial collapse of 2008, as our time-share condo salesmen-elect has promised further banking industry deregulations.
And let us not forget the inherent racist appeal of both the Brexit campaign and that of Donald Trump´s. I can not ascribe economic motives to the obvious glee of the fellow who cut down a diseased tree in my back yard as he related what he heard will be Trump´s first executive order: A massive racial profiling operation to round up all Hispanic looking citizens; those any without proper I.D. will be hustled to an undisclosed location in Nebraska where 3,000 railroad freight cars, outfitted with chains and benches, shall transport the deportees to the Mexican border. I failed to ask him how that would aid his fledgling tree service business.
Interesting article, the creatures of the New World Order gang, are all still around, and in control. The money system is in their hands, and the political puppets do their bidding. It will be a miracle if Donald Trump can bring this gang to justice..
“The New World Order is a world that has a supernational authority to regulate world commerce and industry; an international organization that would control the production and consumption of oil; an international currency that would replace the dollar; a World Development Fund that would make funds available to free and communist nations alike; and an international police force to enforce the edicts of the New World Order.”
Willy Brandt, Former West German Chancellor and former chairman of the Fifth Socialist International, Chairman of the Brandt Commission in the late 1980’s
Is a “New World Order” already here and openly imposing its agenda? I believe there is ample evidence available that appears to show some kind of organized control is happening. The following list details how it could be done….
{read more at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2014/12/is-there-open-conspiracy-to-control.html
Might we say that Clinton’s loss is also a rebuke to the Elite?
I certainly hope so!
But we will not get any empathy from the Elite, only anger.
So…….BRING IT ON !!! The American people have had enough.
Alastair Crooke has a way of apprehending the Big Picture.
Watching the Clintonite college kids in conflict with the Trumpian “deplorables” isn’t exactly the revolution Bernie wants, but it’ll do for now.
The problem with this and most of the other post-mortems on the election is that the fact that the election has been stolen is not being acknowledged. Republican operatives have been working on removing Democratic-leaning, minority voters from the rolls since at least 2013, and over one million of them have been disenfranchised.
Check it out:
http://www.gregpalast.com/
Consortium News should be on this one – big time.
What you say is true – the recent election was stolen in critical states. This issue is like the no-verify electronic voting machines and gerrymandering in that everybody figures they might come in handy some day in their own cause, and therefore nobody wants a genuine fix. Back in 2008 the Democrats had both houses of Congress and the presidency. They did nothing at all which would help with issues like this. But saving the butts of the Big Banks and enacting a compulsory but crappy health care system, YES!
It is remarkable how all the media and many others choose not to take seriously the stolen election we just witnessed. As with G.W.Bush, Donald Trump is an illegitimate president – the Republican officials running elections in multiple states conspired to rig the election through multiple means; electronic voting machines with audit functions turned off,caging, purging,etc.
A worthy goal would be a federal takeover of the federal elective process. Without that, you can kiss what’s left of our democracy goodbye.
The counter-theft based on voting machines and various tactics documented by O’Keefe and others and the fact of the 24/7 media brainwashing of the electorate, the fixing of debates, and the TV news and major press fully in the bag negate what Palast has brought up, though he is generally to be respected. As for the Crooke article, it is one of the best discussions of the election and its result which I have seen. Meanwhile, we can enjoy the next several years without fear of war against Russia.
Exceptional!
“Trump’s Win — A Rebuke to the Elites”
It must not be forgotten that the Elites don’t like to have their noses tweaked. Also, their power and money grabs have caused them to have enormous resources, including ownership of most all of the Corporate Media. If Trump is going to cause them trouble, it must be expected that they’re going to cause him plenty of trouble too.
In any discussion of neutralizing a sitting president one possibility must never be mentioned. And in any event, Trump rather foolishly (in my opinion) chose his antidote to that one badly. But consider the view of Allan Lichtman, a man who “has now correctly called each election since 1984.”
Historian who predicted Trump’s win says he’ll be impeached
That would give us President Mike Pence. That outcome would be, in my opinion, at least as bad as President Hillary Clinton. Probably worse.
Pence was and still is a devout fan of the TPP-type trade agreements. He was and still is a stout fan of bombing the hell out of anyone and everyone if doing so will help Holy Israel.
He’s a fanatical nut on domestic issues too.
So those Elites are hardly helpless. I can’t guess what they’ll do, but if they can’t “take over” Trump, I expect they’ll neuter him one way or another.
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There are many negatives related to a Trump presidency of which Mike Pence as vice president and his being in charge of the transition team are two of the most serious.
What disturbs me the most about Mr. Trump is that he lies about everything, nothing that Mr. Trump says means he’s going to do any of it. I believe his mind is like an Etch-a-Sketch, if you shake it a few times any evidence of what was on it before disappears, and what was on the Etch-a-Sketch an hour ago has nothing to do with what’s going to be on the etch-a-Sketch an hour from now
As I write this he’s already backtracking about the wall, one of his first promises, now it may be a fence. He also said he was going to drain the swamp, By picking new people, The best of the best and millions of people voted for him based on this. And if you look and see what he’s doing now, he has drain the swamp, but he is literally pouring it into his cabinet. Donald Trump is literally nothing more than a ConMan a puppet put up by
Breitbart, and FOXNews. Our new emperor literally has no clothes and no intelligence.
( and where are his tax returns that he promised to release, looks like someone shook The Etch-a-Sketch.
Why do we keep calling these self serving scum ‘elites’? I do not get that at all. That being said this was a good piece by Cooke. I think Pat Buchanan was saying something very similar on his blog The other day.