Wanting America to go back to how it was before Trump is like rewinding the same horror movie, writes Caitlin Johnstone.
Reliable Establishment lapdogs: Former Vice President Joe Biden, left, and U.S. President Donald Trump.
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
“I am with Joe Biden all the way- let’s get this country back to where it was before the orange man started destroying it!!!”, reads a viral tweet by tennis legend Martina Navratilova that was going around recently.
This idea that President Barack Obama’s vice president will restore normality to a nation that has been ruined by a highly abnormal president has been a very common sentiment among Democrats for a long time now, and it’s silly for a number of reasons.
Firstly, wanting America to go back to how it was before President Donald Trump is wanting the conditions which gave rise to Trump. This is like landing at the bottom of a well and wishing you could go back in time to a few moments earlier when you were merely falling down the well. Wanting the same status quo austerity, exploitation, oppression and warmongering that made people so angry they wanted an obnoxious demagogue to come knock over the whole apple cart is just rewinding the same horror movie to the scene right before the scene that’s scaring you.
Secondly, this fabled “return to normality” that Biden is supposedly offering is literally impossible, since normality never actually left. Normality never left, because Trump is a very normal U.S. president.
I am with @JoeBiden all the way- let’s get this country back to where it was before the orange man started destroying it!!! https://t.co/s8x60DW6aU
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) May 11, 2020
Don’t yell at me, it’s true. This is something people who love Trump and people who hate him will be equally vehemently averse to hearing, but it’s just a fact: Donald Trump is a normal U.S. president. If hearing this upsets you your gripe isn’t with me, it’s with reality.
To be clear, this is not a good thing. Trump has kept the bloodthirsty imperialism, corporate cronyism, Orwellian oppression, neoliberal exploitation and police militarization that holds the U.S. empire together ticking along in basically the same way as his predecessors, in some ways more egregiously and in some ways less so. For all the evils he’s helped inflict on our world he still hasn’t done anything as bad as the two wars President George W. Bush launched during his first term, or arguably even Obama’s destruction of Libya and attempted destruction of Syria during his.
Trump hasn’t even matched Obama’s deportation numbers, but he has imprisoned Julian Assange, re-started the Cold War, killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans with starvation sanctions, vetoed attempts to save Yemen from U.S.-backed genocide, is working to foment civil war in Iran using starvation sanctions and CIA ops with the stated goal of effecting regime change, occupied Syrian oil fields with the goal of preventing Syria’s reconstruction, greatly increased the number of troops in the Middle East and elsewhere, greatly increased the number of bombs dropped per day from the previous administration, killing record numbers of civilians, and reduced military accountability for those airstrikes. To name just a few of the ways Trump has continued and expanded upon the depravity of his predecessors just as they did theirs.
Trump is a very normal president. The media just yell about this president a lot more than usual because he puts an ugly face on the horrific normal that was already there. Sure, he makes rude tweets and says dumb things and has made a mess of the pandemic response, but by and large when you strip away the narrative overlay Trump has been a reliable Establishment lapdog advancing more or less all the same status quo imperialist and oligarchic agendas as the presidents who came before him. There are just a lot of Establishment loyalists with a vested interest in spinning the ugliness his oafishness is exposing as caused by and unique to him.
Translations
Former Vice President Joe Biden in Clear Lake, Iowa, August 2019. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr)
So, when they say “Biden 2020, for a return to normal,” all they’re really saying is “Biden 2020, for a depravity you can sleep through.”
“Biden 2020, for a return to normal. We can’t say exactly what ‘normal’ is; it will still definitely involve military expansionism, mass murder, ecocide, omnicidal Cold War escalations, crushing austerity and economic, social and racial injustice. But by golly, it’ll feel normal.”
“Biden 2020, for a return to normal. Nothing will fundamentally change, but the media will stop screaming in your face all the time about how freakishly abnormal this particular presidency is.”
“Biden 2020, for a return to normal. No, not a return to sanity, peace, prosperity, democracy and equanimity in America; America never had those things, so there’s no returning to them. We just mean we’ll return to making it easier for you not to think about that.”
“Biden 2020, for a return to normal. To when you were able to sleep comfortably through the violence, insanity and depraved psychopathy of the status quo instead of having it unpleasantly drawn to your attention by rude tweets.”
“Biden 2020, for a return to normal. A return to the days where a competent president makes important decisions in accordance with the will of the electorate. That’s right, a return to a fictional fantasy land where you can live in your imagination.”
“Biden 2020, for a return to normal. A return to the days when you could happily pretend that freakish, murderous madness spanning the entire planet is normal.”
“Biden or Trump 2020, for a return to normal. Because ‘normal’ never bloody left.”
Trump is normal. Trump is normal. Trump. Is. Normal. Trump is the thing that normal is.
And that’s precisely the problem.
It isn’t Trump’s abnormality that makes him truly heinous, it’s his normality. It’s his perpetuation of a status quo which is brutal, corrupt, and utterly fascistic. And which got there long before he did.
This is what your government is, America. This is what it’s always been. If you don’t like what you’re seeing, don’t just try to put a nicer mask on it so you can go back to sleep. Change it. Change your normal. Create a new normal.
Trump is everything America is. As one reader recently put it, “Trump didn’t make things the way they are, he is the personification of the situation. If the United States was a suit, then it was tailor made for Trump.”
Trump is normal. If you don’t like your normal, America, then push for real change, not cosmetic change. It’s not going to come from any president. It’s going to have to come from you.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Follow her work on Facebook, Twitter, or her website. She has a podcast and a book, “Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.”
This article was re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Please Contribute to Consortium News’ 25th Anniversary Spring Fund Drive
Donate securely with 
PayPal here.
Or securely by credit card or check by clicking the red button:
Normal huh? Twenty seven psychiatrists and psychologists in “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” argue that their moral civic duty goes beyond the normal ethical reticence to publicly diagnose a public figure. That Donald Trump is a dangerously, pathologically unstable individual.
Most Presidents have exhibited narcissistic and frequently sociopathic behavior. Trump exceeds this bar with his impulsive erratic and frequently fascistic behavior. He is a loose canon, his personality has been described among many other criteria as “malignant”.
All presidents lie. Trump goes beyond that into delusions, like when he said the Covid 19 virsus was a hoax. His son Eric still promulgates that. The response to the crisis has been a series of denials; he is actually sabotaging efforts to deal with the disease, regularly contradicting medical experts and refusing to respond on the scope that is necessary.
The Donald even thinks like a king; and says he can do anything he wants, Constitution be damned. “Alice in Wonderland’s” Queen of Hearts comes to mind. The article itself reminds me of a Bergman movie, anomie superbly played.
Then there is Biden and his sorry history. However this article is out of date; there is no mention of the series of task forces made up of Biden camp and Bernie camp people, (see Vox, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are building new, policy-focused task forces, May 13) Which will inform the platform and campaign policies. The climate change panel includes AOC and the co founder of the Sunrise movement. Two people not to be double crossed. There are many other impressive activists on that side, and Larry Summers is no where to be seen, but the progressive economist Dr. Stephanie Kelton is.
Of course campaign platforms don’t necessarily reflect the winner’s policy once in office; and this could all be cooptation and sheep dogging . Obama, master of bait and switch, is a good example of that. But the thinking is that the virus has “changed everything” in spectacularly exposing the country’s failures and vulnerabilities; so a return to normal is not tenable.
Carl de Villar May 23, 2020 at 21:43
I have my point of view about this article, and you have yours. If you should ever address my comments again try not to be so
condescending.
Capitalism is not financial but industrial.
The financial Northeast of the USA, at the time of the Revolution, wanted to be master of capitalism which was the prerogative of the economy of the South.
The promotion of the end of slavery by the North was therefore not for humanitarian purposes but rather to deprive the South of its workforce.
The strategy succeeded, the South took at least 100 years to recover from this collapse.
However, neither of them took care of these workers who were suddenly deprived of their means of subsistence.
Brutally arrived freedom carried no message of security and prosperity.
With few exceptions, they have continued to be viewed on the fringes of American society and those who have been rewarded with the recognition have been for their participation in the exploitation of the working classes by the numbness of mental faculties offered to the finance oligarchs by their contribution to the economy of entertainment experienced especially by proxy by a delighted people.
Gradually, from laws to regulations, finance has transposed the Law of slavery into labor laws, the latter meeting the same characteristics as the first.
The employer, like the owner of slaves, must pay enough for the work so that the worker can provide for his basic needs himself: clothing, housing, food.
The Slavery Law also provided that the owner should have 10% of the profits from the exploitation in favor of his slaves to whom he would distribute it for their personal use.
What employee remains at least 10% of their income today for uses other than basic needs: clothing, housing, food?
When the most productive part of this workforce from both slavery and the working class has managed to rise sufficiently in the ladder of the social and professional hierarchy to ensure itself of finance and security, finance deemed it too demanding and looked for a replacement.
She found it in all these needy but still hard-working nations of which China was the most willing and the best organized to offer the framework, the environment and the pool of labor requisitioned to serve or even adhere to the capitalism of which made him hold out the benefits for his people.
China has not confused capitalism and finance. China has used to its advantage the means which international finance had on its territory to exploit its capitalist forces.
China has become capitalist, whatever, internally, its social, political, economic and financial system.
China and the Chinese know that the virtues of their capitalism lie in the solidarity of the institutions with its workforce and of the workforce with its institutions.
It’s called economic nationalism, but also cultural nationalism.
The finance oligarchs therefore find themselves once again faced with their own contradictions: finance is not capitalism and it is capitalism which has ensured the security and prosperity of the West for a millennium of industrialization just as the security and prosperity of China for half a century.
They therefore virulently attack institutions that ensure the coherence and cohesion of Chinese society without offering other alternatives than their usurping predation of resources as well material, human as political, technological and financial.
By merging finance with capitalism, the remuneration of labor disappears in favor of the remuneration of capital and finance is no longer productive but speculative.
This is what has been dubbed the casino economy.
It will therefore invest elsewhere than in humans, even if it means destroying it or exterminating it if it bothers it.
This is what the American Patriots understood and they clearly expressed it by opposing what they call the orange scarecrow.
Trump and the Patriots have made it their mission to restore capitalism independent of finance and to put the human at the heart of the concerns of the Nation.
They will get down to breaking up the arms and legs of finance until it understands and accepts, of course, that it cannot grow on its own.
Only industrial capitalism can self-generate its profits, reinvest them in its prosperity and security.
Finance can speed up and amplify processes, but history teaches us that when it replaces capitalism, it is the human who disappears into the equation.
It is to this mathematics that Biden and the American Democrats belong, whose globalist scarecrow agitated for 75 years is called “military-industrial complex”.
The calculation of Trump and the Patriots seems to me to the effect that it is necessary to harmonize, each on its territory, the balance and harmony between capitalism and finance.
The exercise is as perilous for China as for the United States: to get out of the same claws, those that Biden and the Democrats would like to close and on both.
Le capitalisme n’est pas financier mais industriel.
Le Nord-Est financier des USA, au moment de la Révolution, se voulait maître du capitalisme qui était l’apanage de l’économie du Sud.
La promotion de la fin de l’esclavage par le Nord n’avait donc pas pour objectif des fins humanitaires mais bien plutôt de priver le Sud de sa main d’oeuvre.
La stratégie a réussi, le Sud a mis au moins 100 ans à se relever de cette effondrement.
Pour autant, ni l’un ni l’autre ne s’est occupé de ces travailleurs auxquels on soustrayait d’un coup les moyens de subsistance.
La liberté arrivée brutalement n’était porteuse d’aucun message de sécurité et de prospérité.
À quelques exceptions près, on a continué à les considérer en marge de la société américaine et ceux qui ont été gratifiés de la faveur d’une certaine reconnaissance l’ont été pour leur participation à l’exploitation des classes ouvrières par l’engourdissement des facultés mentales qu’offrait aux oligarques de la finance leur contribution à l’économie du divertissement vécu surtout par procuration par un peuple ravi.
Progressivement, de lois en règlements, la finance a transposé la Loi de l’esclavagisme en lois du travail, ces dernières répondant aux mêmes caractéristiques que la 1ère.
L’employeur, tout comme le propriétaire d’esclaves, doit rémunérer le travail de façon suffisante pour que le travailleur puisse subvenir lui-même à ses besoins de base: vêtements, logement, alimentation.
La Loi de l’esclavagisme prévoyait en plus que le propriétaire devait disposer de 10% des bénéfices de l’exploitation en faveur de ses esclaves auxquels il le distribuerait pour leur usage personnel.
À quel salarié reste-t-il, aujourd’hui, au moins 10% de ses revenus pour usages autres que les besoins de base: vêtements, logement, alimentation?
Quand la partie la plus productive de cette main d’oeuvre issue aussi bien de l’esclavagisme que de la classe ouvrière a réussi à s’élever suffisamment dans l’échelle de la hiérarchie sociale et professionnelle pour s’assurer elle-même d’une certaine sécurité et prospérité, la finance l’a jugée trop exigeante et lui a cherché un remplacement.
Elle l’a trouvé dans toutes ces nations besogneuses mais encore corvéables dont la Chine était la plus disposée et la mieux organisée pour offrir le cadre, l’environnement et le bassin de main d’oeuvre réquisitionnée pour servir ou même adhérer au capitalisme dont on lui faisait miroiter les bienfaits pour son peuple.
La Chine n’a pas confondu le capitalisme et la finance. La Chine a utilisé à son avantage, les moyens dont la finance internationale disposait sur son territoire pour exploiter ses forces capitalistes.
La Chine est devenue capitaliste, quel que soit, à l’interne, son système social, politique, économique et financier.
La Chine et les Chinois savent que les vertus de leur capitalisme réside dans la solidarité des institutions avec sa main d’oeuvre et de la main d’oeuvre avec ses institutions.
Ça s’appelle le nationalisme économique, mais aussi nationalisme culturel.
Les oligarques de la finance se retrouvent donc encore une fois devant leurs propres contradictions: la finance n’est pas le capitalisme et c’est le capitalisme qui a assuré la sécurité et la prospérité de l’Occident depuis un millénaire d’industrialisation tout comme la sécurité et la prospérité de la Chine depuis un demi-siècle.
Ils s’en prennent donc avec virulence aux institutions qui assurent la cohérence et la cohésion de la société chinoise sans offrir d’autres alternatives que leur prédation usurpatrice de ressources aussi bien matérielles, humaines que politiques, technologiques et financières.
En fusionnant la finance au capitalisme, la rémunération du travail disparaît au profit de la rémunération du capital et la finance n’est plus productive mais spéculative.
C’est ce qui a été baptisé l’économie de casino.
Elle va donc s’investir ailleurs que dans l’humain quitte à le détruire où l’exterminer s’il la gêne.
C’est ce que les Patriotes américains ont compris et ils l’ont clairement exprimé en leur opposant ce qu’ils appellent l’épouvantail orange.
Trump et les Patriotes se sont donnés pour mission de rétablir un capitalisme indépendant de la finance et de remettre l’humain au coeur des préoccupations de la Nation.
Ils vont s’atteler à désarticuler les bras et les jambes de la finance jusqu’à ce qu’elle comprenne et accepte, bien sûr, qu’elle ne peut fructifier toute seule.
Seul le capitalisme industriel peut auto-générer ses bénéfices, les réinvestir dans sa prospérité et sa sécurité.
La finance peut accélérer et amplifier les processus mais l’histoire nous apprend que lorsqu’elle se substitue au capitalisme, c’est l’humain qui disparaît dans l’équation.
C’est à cette mathématique qu’appartiennent Biden et les Démocrates américains dont l’épouvantail mondialiste agité depuis 75 ans s’appelle “complexe militaro-industriel”.
Le calcul de Trump et des Patriots me semble à l’effet qu’il faut harmoniser, chacun sur son territoire, l’équilibre et l’harmonie entre le capitalisme et la finance.
L’exercice est aussi périlleux pour la Chine que pour les États-Unis: s’extraire des mêmes griffes, celles que Biden et les Démocrates voudraient bien refermer et sur l’un et sur l’autre.
Well said, Ms. Johnstone.
Trump, ultimately, is a goat (and not in the sense of that stupid acronym) – he’s the goat many of us wanted to kick the cart over as you mentioned, and to others, he is a literal scapegoat to blame for ritual evils within this country.
Everyone wants to pretend that Americans aren’t boorish narcissists; we all want to see ourselves as accepting and far from bigoted as well as critical in our thoughts rather than blindly obeying what we’re told to do – but nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, those that question authority’s motives are almost unilaterally diagnosed with the myriad of mental illnesses that can be used to completely destroy their name, and those who fail to be bigoted enough along the lines of what is expected with their communities (even if it seems like “harmless” humor) become pariahs, cast out of their flocks for supporting the “enemy”.
The problem has never been the president. In fact, all of this which disgusts you and the rest of us in the choir has never actually been a problem, per se – it is literally what this country is about, no matter how loudly and forcefully it denies it.
Ever since I read this yesterday, I have been thinking about it. Is Trump truly a “normal” President? In the ways Caitlin states, yes. But in some other ways, I really don’t think so. They have to do with who he is as a private person, but those characteristics have considerable impact on who he is as a public person. A few:
1. I practiced law for four decades. Lawyers are not known for a lack of at least public self love. But I have never been around anyone, lawyer, non-lawyer, crazed client, or ANYONE with as clear a case of narcissistic personality disorder as Trump. All that crap about not playing psychiatrist is just that-crap. If you see someone in a wheel chair with a prosthesis showing, you do not need a signed statement from his own orthopedic surgeon to correctly say to yourself, that fellow has lost a leg.
2. What other President lies about stuff that doesn’t matter to anyone but his inner narcissus? People called Nixon a “pathological liar.” Nonsense. He lied about stuff that mattered. This guy lies about everything ( completely forgetting about Russia, appropriately.)
3. What other President in the last 50 years has not given up his tax returns? ANY of them?
4. The incidents of massive personal corruption, too numerous to list, involving the straight-up use of taxpayer money directly to him, and his family, as opposed to the normal way ( money to Politician; politician passes/signs legislation/ person who gave gets more/ passes more to politician/repeat.) There is still PLENTY of this, but Trump is bypassing the middleman in ways never before thought to be doable.
5. As pathetic as Congress’ oversight of the executive branch has become, there is no president EVER who had the unmitigated gall to refuse to let anyone with any ties to the White House even testify, or to give up document no. 1. The total complicity of the Supreme Court in this is also without precedent.
7. His handling, if such it can be called, of the Covid19 epidemic is truly without parallel in US history. Declarations of complete power, no responsibility, it’s a Democrat hoax, no blue state bailouts; and the encouragement of deranged racist paramilitaries hearkens back to, at the worst and latest, Woodrow Wilson.
There is so much more. Yes, the entire Republican Party has gone right along. Yes, the Democrats are, as Chris Hedges has said so well, an inauthentic opposition party. Yes, the US is completely and thoroughly a rogue state, has been at least since it just told the World Court to go screw itself during the Reagan administration over the Nicaragua v. US case, and it has simply grown into what it is now. But Trump really isn’t normal.
Ms. Johnstone nails it again. Any confusing of the reality she describes here is designed to cover for the Dems’ active involvement in creating the unstable and deeply unjust world we inhabit and which paved the way for Trump. Denying this reality also provides deep cover for the Trump Derangement Syndrome that has been stoked into a frenzy the last 4 years and allows Dems to cling to the Russiagate scam that they went all-in on for so long, hoping as they did that it would bring this president down. Never mind the dirty tricks employed by ‘their side’ before and since Trump took office, they say. All’s fair in hate and war. That sentiment, too, is normal, despite their straining to describe these tactics as necessary for a uniquely dangerous time. Bullshit.
It’s hard to come out of denial. It’s hard to admit you are wrong. But until the Dems and their supporters face reality and admit to their part in electing Trump, we’ll get ever more terrible candidates out of them (and Repubs,) each one worse than the one before…just like we have now.
Ms. Johnstone is exactly right. Trump is normal. To claim to want to return to some different – fictional – normal is delusional.
Forget the blarney, endlessly pitched by MSM. Trump as politician is nothing but a frontman and a pitchman for the economic / social / political forces he represents via digital tweets and orchestrated video presentations. People seem to forget the Tangerine Terror’s association with promoting professional wrestling through the World Wrestling Entertainment franchise. Naomi Klein first brought this to public attention three years ago, and the MSM did pay passing attention to his background in utilizing this obscene hustle. I believe that Trump is a member in the WWE’s Hall of Fame. Face it, folks; Trump is merely a carnival barker turned politician, using all of the tools of smackdown talk, grade-school-level insult, guilt-by-association, carefully contrived rants, hyper-gibberish, innuendo, you-name-it. Trump is only the ultimate fulfillment of Madison Avenue contrived hype designed to warp human perceptions. And the Biden Democrats are no better…no substantive difference, merely a difference in style.
Johnstone always hits the nail on the head. Here’s another great article from her pen. Amazing, isn’t it, that she and other real reporters cannot get printed in the “papers of record.”
What confounds me is the voting public and how easily they are propagandized by the likes of the NYT, WaPo, mainstream television…..ABC, CBS, FOX, MSNBC, etc. We could have had Jill Stein for president. We could have had Bernie Sanders for president. We could have Tulsi Gabbard for president. In other words, we could have elected presidents who actually care about people and want to do the best for them instead of licking the boots of the MIC and big pharma and big corporations and Wall Street and big insurance companies.
The Democrats are exactly like the Republicans, they just pretend they are better. Both parties want the same things but just pretend as if they are opposites. Can anyone tell me why it’s impossible to elect a good person for president? Why is it that power, money and control always “wins?” I have decided to call it what it is: stupidity.
I’m not buying into the “American” bullshit anymore – overall, we are a reprehensible group of “humans” who could care less about anyone or anything else in this world. We are a selfish, stupid, gun-toting lot who will kill or mame for fun and profit. This country has absolutely NO morals, integrity or compassion and we deserve to be brought to our knees. We are the Dark Ages exemplified – we cheat, steal, rape and pillage with no thought for the future, our children, or our planet. Donald Trump, Joe Biden and all of the other stinking politicians in this godforsaken country are simply a mirror reflecting who we really are – stop and take a look sometime – you might see a little piece of yourself and be truly ashamed of what we have become…
Kaitlin, you have perhaps forgotten Dwight D Eisenhower’s “Peace Speech” in 1953 following the death of Stalin:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.[1][5]“
‘Trump is a very normal U.S. president”
I completely agree with your meaning, Ms Johnstone.
The only ways Trump is not normal are his foul words, name-calling, blundering, and manic gestures
America has been busy killing and torturing people, destroying homes, ignoring the rule of law for many decades.
Trump really hasn’t added much to that except the crude style of an ignorant gangster.
But many Americans believe otherwise. Or want to believe otherwise.
The truth is they are ashamed of Trump, but they are not ashamed of his ugly actions abroad because those are consistent with America’s past.
It really is a dumb game show, the coming election. Far dumber than usual.
If you know Biden’s record, you find the role of knight on a white horse just embarrassing miscasting.
This is a loyal party hack. He’s never done anything creative or even interesting. He supported all the killing and destruction, even though he lies about Iraq now. He supported all the internal crookedness in the party, as with Hillary Clinton.
He scoops up bags of campaign funds from the wealthy and makes them promises we’ll know nothing about.
He pushed for the hellish extrajudicial killing system Obama installed. He never objected to any of the harsh treatment of whistle blowers, including Assange and Manning, a category Obama was especially harsh on.
He stood by and watched as Libya and Syria and others were brutally attacked. He kept his smile as Israel shot and bombed Palestinians, killing several thousand people locked in a big refugee camp. The streets ran red with blood. I saw photos.
I never heard him complain about the Saudi Crown Prince or the bloody Generalissimo running Egypt.
He served as imperial proconsul for America’s paid-for coup in Ukraine. He smiled shaking hands with Nazi-like creatures such as the head of the Azov Battalion. And did dirty business with the corrupt and smarmy Poroshenko.
And he scooped up all the bribes he could gather for his family. Imagine someone in Ukraine wanting to pay his son fifty thousand dollars per month for doing nothing for years? Yet somehow that wasn’t a grotesque bribe?
A disgusting politician for sure, but he doesn’t sound like Trump. His not embarrassing, except when he introduces his wifeas his sistrer or forgets where he is, but I guess that kind of embarrassing is lovable.
Americans actually do not want to accept the ugly reality of their country in the world today. It is the world’s bully, and it is engaged full-time in state terror. Americans want a pleasant fantasy, and that’s just what they’ll get with Joe Biden.
And, of course, he may indeed be guilty of serious sexual assault. Why won’t he even do the simple act of taking a polygraph along with Ms. Reade? If what he claims is true is the case, the business would instantly be put behind him, but no, he does not do that.
This is, after all, a guy who used to always swim in the nude in front of female Secret Service agents who simply did want to be assigned to his protection.
Caitlin has nailed it again. To pretend the USA has ever been some sort of model we should follow is grotesque-it never has been and is just being shown more clearly by Trump’s vulgarity and outspoken prejudices.
Biden has no redeeming features except, like GWBush, is considered a “nice guy”(!)
My reply is for Pi0tr
I am not a political fan of Trump because I do know about his political policies, and have no intention of voting for him. I know almost nothing about his former life, as a business man, or anything else, nor do I want to. You have a rather black and white view of Trump, and I’m uncomfortable with that, and what I refuse to do is to get on the political bandwagon with people who turn him into a scapegoat. Today’s political agenda for many is to caste him out because of all his sins, and once again we will be pure and wonderful again. Isn’t that what this article was about?
No, Annie, that is NOT AT ALL “what this article was about”!! Please go back and — this time — read the ENTIRE article. Then apoligize to Catlin.
Is it just me or is the REAL game plan for Hillary to have another crack at the presidency? I mean, creepy uncle Joe is unwell, he has the personality of a wet lettuce, the drive of a slow moving slug, the guy may not live to take office even if he wins it. Then ta da … in will step VP Hillary.
You leave out one very important detail.
All the other “normal” Presidents have been Globalists, who submit to the International Bankers & Oligarchs (Rockefeller, Kissinger, Gates, etc.) dream of Global Government (a.k.a. “A New World Order”), based on the globalization of industry, workers wages, and a Global Cartel Industry structure that is intended erase the concept of National Sovereignty and shoe horn people like chattel into a World Control System.
Trump is the first U.S. President to speak out in opposition to Globalism, and the underlying policies behind it — such as these one-sided Trade deals that have gutted American Industry, and the madness of unenforced “Open Borders” policies, and he has put the focus back on bringing America back to having a self-sustaining Economy, emphasizing Local Industry and American supply chains (instead of Foreign dependency).
As both a businessman and then as President, Donald Trump was consistently adamant about bringing manufacturing jobs back to America. Past Presidents Obama/Bush/Clinton, etc., and the Democrats, had given up on American Manufacturing with their support for the crooked and disastrous Trade deals that had hemorrhaged American jobs like NAFTA, favored Trade status for China, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and President’s Obama own erroneous claim that Trump would need “a magic wand” in order to bring back American jobs.
But not so, with President Trump’s focus to revive American Manufacturing in this Country again, by tearing up the corrupt and disasterous Trade Deals including NAFTA, and the TPP.
Instead he put in place better Trade Deals to bring back American jobs, and to bring back American Manufacturing. This included working new Trade agreements with South Korea, Japan, the EU, Mexico-Canada (the new USMCA), India, and finally a new trade framework for China as well. The Establishment wanted Trump’s efforts to fail – but depsite little cooperation from Washington,
and a hostile Mainstream Media that just dismissed his efforts as inciting a “Trade War”, President Trump has mostly succeeded.
Trump also ended the despotic Obama-Clinton-McCain-Biden “Regime-Change” policy in Syria, and instead of arming and weaponizing ISIS — he defeated ISIS and left the Syrian government alone — thus preserving the possibility of peace and stability there. And he is the first U.S. President in 40 years to not start a major WAR during his term in Office.
So Trump represents a significant break from and firewall against the crooked Globalist “New World Order” agenda.
Everything you mention definitely raises questions, but you’re forgetting Wall Street. The great “global” recession, which wasted several trillions around the world, was orchestrated by Wall Street. And yet, after all this, who do the Democrats, the Republicans and The Donald all still suck up to? Whenever there’s an economic crisis, who does Trump call for advice? So I don’t see much of a difference between Trump, Obama, the Clintons or the Bush’s. Just a different Wall Street script.
Reluctantly, unwillingly, I cannot but agree with you.
FreeSociety – Much of your opinions about Trump’s successes are premature or misinformed.
Trump did not defeat ISIS. True, he did not exacerbate the situation by withdrawing support for so-called “moderate” rebels, but this just allowed the Russian-backed Syrian army to gain advantage of the ISIS strongholds.
The Trump Trade Wars are far from a success. It turns out Americans like paying cheaper prices for things like clothing and electronic devices. China can produce these items far cheaper than American-made products because they have a much lower standard of living than the US. Also, because China holds over a trillion dollars in US Treasuries, they have a political advantage in that they keep US interest rates low. Should they decide to sell off these Treasuries, US interest rates would soar, throwing the American economy into a recession.
We live in a globally-interconnected world. While Trump’s tariffs play well with his base in the short term, the long term outlook consists of higher consumer prices, further trade wars with other countries including US allies, threats of economic downturns, and most dangerously, “hot” wars between nuclear-armed countries.
Add to this his decisions to pull out of the Iranian nuclear accord (which was working), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Treaty on Open Skies, and his calling Global Warming a hoax, and you have a more complete picture of the disastrous policies set forth by this somewhat “normal” US president.
Concerning profound hatred of Trump, he is a repulsive individual in many, many ways. His many carriers, in business, entertainment, education (Trump University), concerned citizen campaigner (pet causes: no leniency for black accused, Obama being born somewhere else), philanthropy, everything sleazy or worse, like beauty contests where he could check contestants as they were changing or look up skirt.
Every foreign envoy or head of state has to use his hotel. Or his country club. There he organizes a missile bombardment to entertain his guest.
On the other hand, most people have a vision of a Golden Age and would wish to return to it. For a few generations of Republicans those are the times of Blessed Ronald who was borderline senile (debatable on which side of the border) but who had the heart in the right place and pulled the nation away from the malaise of his predecessor. Biden seems the closest match on the current political scene.
He’s bad, but not as bad as the two Bushes, eg. The two Bushes have caused the deaths of vast numbers of people. Trump has not done so, yet. Killing foreigners is worse than being rude to Americans.
For some reason this busted me up: “Because Trump is a Normal President.” But sadly it’s true. As wacky and callous as he is (and sometimes as he pretends to be), when it comes to US presidents, he’s no different then his predecessors (neocon killing and neoliberal stealing). The contrasts and comparisons in this informative report proves it. Globalization marches on.
Hallelujah, sister, tell it like it is.
CJ is finally expressing what is so painfully obvious to the rest of the world.
Next she should compare the German teutonic ubermensch mentality plus the military build-up pre-WW2 with US exceptionalism, its withdrawal from international treaties and trillion dollar “defence” spending of today. That is, to outsiders the US oligarchy is developing an increasingly Nazi-like demeanour that is downright frightening.
You could paraphrase this essay, however, by saying Biden appears less thuggish than Trump but all else is simply business as usual.
“This is like landing at the bottom of a well and wishing you could go back in time to a few moments earlier when you were merely falling down the well”
Well said.
I was born in 1948.
When I remember all the protests in the early 1970’s, I become kind of ashamed at just how much damage my generation has caused against the universe since then.
I think that Biden and anybody else my age should hang our heads in shame.
Look at the “Perfect” creation of Society.
And worse, the supreme court sanctioned it all
Another log in the fire that protestors are busier trying to prove that they’re noble enough to believe in something to themselves than actually change anything…
Thank you.
Elections are eating in a restaurant: no matter what you order it’s all prepared by the same cook and you pay afterwards.
“Biden 2020, for a return to normal. No, not a return to sanity, peace, prosperity, democracy and equanimity in America; America never had those things, so there’s no returning to them. We just mean we’ll return to making it easier for you not to think about that.”
Nails it. trumpster is in your face and demodogs do everything repugs do only hiding behind a curtain.
Let’s see, just off the top of my head, before Trump:
NAFTA
WTO
obliteration of AFDC
war on Iraq
war on Libya
war on Afghanistan
war on Yugo
proxy war on Syria
coup against Ukrainian admin ushering in neo-fascists
skyrocketing inequality
not a finger lifted toward Med4All
After Trump’s 2016 election:
Essentially much of the above, but he did NOT wage direct war on any nation-state, unlike Obama, Clinton and Bush.
Do you not count”sanctions” or constant threats as war? They are, and they kill, without “US lives” being taken.
I do count sanctions and constant threats of war. Sanctions like Clinton, Bush and Obama sicced on much of the independent Third World. And yes, sanctions Trump foists on brave independent nation-states.
Caitlin Johnstone gets it. The double-speak, the blankets given to Native Americans with smallpox included, the “free” person of “color” in a “white only” society, the “exceptionalism” of a post-literate society that considers religion a science and science mere propaganda. But our media masters are pushing Biden as the newest iteration of that “radical” FDR, and tearing down Tara Reade because maybe her credentials aren’t what she claimed they were, since one’s educational level has a lot to do with the probability of assault being true – not. And then the last act of double-speak: “we’re all in this together,” until we’re not in this together and never were.
A cousin of mine, educated, and well off, was a Republican all her voting life, and now she’s a Republican for Biden. All her Facebook friends are doing the same. Political articles are posted and comments pour in, and all agree Biden will return this country back to normal. She has always had a profound, and an abnormal hatred of Trump, and believed every conspiracy theory the democrats put out. She cares nothing about his policies, never opens them up for discussion, and former presidents and their despicable wars are described as “all countries do sneaky things.” What I think they really don’t like is his persona, like the fact he could be described as “orange man”, and his not very presidential tweets, and that he doesn’t speak the King’s English, all that stuff really bothers them. They want a president that will put a good face on America, to hide it’s violent, corrupt nature. I know Biden will not do that, because he belongs to a party who is so corrupt it will do anything to return to power. I have totally disowned them.
Concerning profound hatred of Trump, he is a repulsive individual in many, many ways. His many carriers, in business, entertainment, education (Trump University), concerned citizen campaigner (pet causes: no leniency for black accused, Obama being born somewhere else), philanthropy, everything sleazy or worse, like beauty contests where he could check contestants as they were changing or look up skirt.
Every foreign envoy or head of state has to use his hotel. Or his country club. There he organizes a missile bombardment to entertain his guest.
On the other hand, most people have a vision of a Golden Age and would wish to return to it. For a few generations of Republicans those are the times of Blessed Ronald who was borderline senile (debatable on which side of the border) but who had the heart in the right place and pulled the nation away from the malaise of his predecessor. Biden seems the closest match on the current political scence.
What used to be Liberal Republicans are now neo-liberal Democrats, like Bill Clinton, Obama, Biden. Tgey are still bad.