Without Fed-delivered wealth and power-center demographics, DC’s parasitic government and by extension, its police force, could not function as successfully as it does. Zoologists are correct about the host-parasite relationship, and Trump critics are correct in reporting the DC crime has actually been down, not up.
Yet, Trump is true to form. Reacting as a statist leader (and real estate developer) to a crime committed against a person he knows personally, Trump deployed the National Guard to assist with cleaning up the town. Congress, the deep state, and possibly the courts will go along with this use of, and show of, force not because it is necessary or constitutional, but because it is good for them politically and materially, and because it sets one more useful precedent for federal power. It’s truly a win-win for them.
“Bill Balls” Coristine lived up to his nickname on August 3rd. Trump, however, has long shown his proclivity to use of the state’s military/law enforcement activities in a variety of domestic roles – mainly under the wholly contrived Department of Homeland Security, now almost 25 years old. In this way, if not in others, Trump is an echo of Bill Clinton – happy to lie, cheat and steal in order to present the state as all-powerful against people it expects to stand down, shut up, comply and kneel. The abuse of law, and murder of men, women and children, and the government coverup afterwards in Waco is well documented in the 1997 documentary “Rules of Engagement.” Yet even today, we see concentrated and renewed efforts by state-friendly media to justify all state actions, to bless state crime, to condemn the victims who “caused it to happen.”
Trump is oriented to increasing and utilizing federal force, both military and economic, to protect Americans – their lives, their conditions, their economy. Rather than a philosopher who thinks about how things should be – is man to be self-governed? should the state be limited? is war immoral? –Trump is a technician who assesses the “problem” with the “unit” and seeks to repair or replace it. Dave Chappelle was dead on.
Like Bill Clinton, and Hillary as Secretary of State under Obama, Trump seeks to leverage power and threats of power, to seek or enforce what the state calls “peace.” As with the Clintons, peace is just a condition from which to profit, and if the peace is not profitable, then perhaps a regime change or a bombing or a trade war will serve just as well.
Trump is far more sincere and patriotic than either of the Clintons, which makes him a more attractive candidate, and his fix-it mentality has made him a minor threat to those actually moving and shaking the increasingly brittle US empire. There is no cure for a dying empire, of course, except that it recedes and washes away, and how that happens depends far less on the capitol rulers themselves than on the people who were once ruled by that capitol. The kids are going to be all right.
I wonder if we – by practicing Washington-ology much as our wise men practiced Kreminology during the Soviet era – can see something explainable, and better yet, predictable by studying the Trump regime?
It occurs to me that Trump’s instinctive desires to protect Washingtonians from crime, Americans from open border criminality, Ukraine’s people from Russian onslaught, and a very stupid Israeli government destroying itself by picking fights it cannot win (the “ending” of the 12 day war courtesy of little more than Trump saying so) – are refreshing. Trump’s psychology leans to the protective, and it is probably why neither of his ex-wives have a bad thing to say about him. It’s why he received across-the-spectrum support of a country where health, welfare, purchasing power, and community have all declined since the bad 1970s. People who feel unprotected and vulnerable want a protector, a leader, a savior – and Trump is the ultimate republicrat, willing to functionally deploy more “state” to provide a fix to our broken appliance of late-stage empire.
Unable to elect the libertarian leaders they all fundamentally want, Americans elected a guy who believed in defending the weak, even as he has made his entire business and political career by identifying and destroying his competitors, honing in on their weaknesses, and taking no prisoners.
So what does this mean for the biggest travesty on the planet right now, the US funded and assisted Israeli destruction of Gaza (already completed) and the ongoing murder and starvation of the 1.6 million or so remaining Gazans that the IDF has herded into concentration camps? Israel’s permanent answer to criticism of its decades of apartheid strategy is largely meaningless statement that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” Lately we are seeing Netanyahu promoting a two-tiered message: that Israel will militarily expand to create an even larger apartheid state, and “it’s not a genocide ‘cause if we wanted to genocide the Gazans, we would have done it in one day.”
Both messages are criminally aspirational, and both are operationally false. After two decades, the Netanyahu regime is on its last legs, and his successors have none of Bibi’s gangsta charm and familiarity with America that keeps the mother’s milk of USG billions flowing and Israel-friendly policies rolling.
Trump has “solved” six conflicts in six months – and with the August 15th summit in Anchorage, he may be able to claim seven. Yet, the cream of the crop remains unsolved, desperate, broken and criminally energized.
The responsibility to defend both values and country is Constitutional, and while Trump may have no idea what’s in the Constitution, he does know his oath, and it meshes well with his personality of defender. Trump seeks the international stage, and international plaudits, and while he often condemns the UN, it remains a stage he covets, an organization he would like to fully control.
There is a way forward for Trump to get that Peace Prize, to move through a settlement of the Ukraine war and deal directly with number 8, the Gaza genocide, now in its end stages, but with 1.5 million surviving Gazans and 2.4 million targeted Palestinians in the West Bank. The number of surviving Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories would populate a Palestinian state similar in population to Mongolia, Georgia or Croatia. Most UN member states already recognize a Palestinian state, and most agree that Israel blatantly refuses to protect the populations it occupies.
Twenty years ago, the UN established the Right to Protect, aimed specifically at genocides and forced starvations. Idealistic, not realistic, but R2P could provide a toehold for Trump – seeking peace and a legacy – to do what I think he really wants to do – and that is to limit his own, and the American government’s, vulnerability to Zionist money and Zionist blackmail.
Israel’s army is not designed to do much defending, as we saw during Day 3 through Day 12 of the artfully idiotic “12 Day War.” It is poorly trained, and as a people’s army, ill-suited for the Zionist vision of continual expansion and genocide. Its strengths tend to terrorism, in a justified nod to the original Zionist military units. Israel, for all its lies, bluster, murder and theft can be viewed as a wounded baby seal, and Trump as a dead-eyed shark.
Unconstrained by history, tradition, philosophy or the Constitution – Trump may independently and intuitively perceive two primary weaknesses that Israeli voters already know: 1) its government allowed October 7th to happen in order to expedite the elimination of Palestinians and grabbing their land while its American sponsor was still bought and paid for, and 2) that this war is destroying Israel’s morale, military, and economic power in a way that looks to be permanent.
The Dave Chappelle video linked above includes a comment by statist historian Victor David Hanson, regarding a past Trump quid pro quo. Many of us believe that if Washington stops starting and funding other people’s wars, we will see peace, liberty and prosperity grow. Mr Trump, if you can reconcile your natural urge to defend and to protect, you’ll not only get a big prize, you will have earned it.
