Aside from enforcing existing US immigration law and introducing a tariff and trade reset with 100 countries, Trump 2.0 is largely Biden with a functional spinal cord, Obama with a third term, a self-confessed McKinley for the 21st Century. Despite the particular lack of respect granted the 9th and 10th Amendments, as the center dissolves and weakens, those two are our walkaway cards, served by the First and Second Amendments, but not subservient to them. Walk we will, joining other Americans in a massive ongoing movement of decentralization of place, economy, and thinking that echoes earlier migrations from Europe to North America. Now we travel away from urban and Washingtonian command and control towards a million Walden Ponds.
The impoverished, the risk takers, the independent thinkers, the entrepreneurs and the sincerely religious packed up from the Old World and set sail for a new one they hoped would be more to their liking – including a Republic that from its very gestation was uncertain about its fundamental and limited role in American society. In 1830, John Adams wondered if the unusual vagueness of the so-called “common defense and general welfare” clause in the Constitution was undefined because of an innocent “inattention to the phraseology” or something far more sinister. He goes on to write, defining the fundamental cause and effect of the war between the states yet to come:
…without an equal watchfulness over the great landmarks between the General Government and the particular Governments, the danger is certainly not less, of either a gradual relaxation of the band which holds the latter together, leading to an entire separation, or of a gradual assumption of their powers by the former, leading to a consolidation of all the Governments into a single one [italics added].
Decentralizing forces opposing the totalitarian might be only philosophical, or somewhat political, or simply the second law of thermodynamics as applied to human energy. In fact, they are all three.
Persistent totalitarian tendencies, and an irrational and immoral lack of give and take in state relations, tends to collapse empires – philosophically, politically, and physically. The question is, does NEWTRUMP acknowledge this reality, or does it embrace anti-reality? Does NEWTRUMP understand “how stuff works” or does it seek creative ahistoricism towards some as yet mysterious new state of affairs?
Five months in, NEWTRUMP sits astride a deep state that remains viciously predictable, solely survival-oriented, and closer than ever to its natural and probably violent end. Trump inherited the deep state’s war against Russia, and those conducted for the Israeli state, and so far NEWTRUMP has delivered none of the promised peace. Henry Kissinger, bless his heart, published his last book entitled “Leadership” and he bemoaned two things – first, the ability of people outside of the state to access information formerly controlled by the state, and secondly, that “Forgetfulness is sometimes the glue for societies that would not otherwise adhere.” We the people, and our trite, banal governments are no longer allowed the luxury of forgetfulness.
NEWTRUMP faces unusual foreign policy challenges. I should clarify – the challenges are not unusual, but NEWTRUMP’s options in dealing with them are more limited. For example, on June 8th, 1967, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was faced with the question of protecting the crew and vessel of the United States Navy attacked in international waters, and prosecuting to the full extent of the law the unprovoked attackers of that vessel. This is the story of the USS Liberty, a ship and crew we remembered for 58th year last weekend. LBJ, a devoted vassal of Israel, called back the initial launch of US Navy rescue ships and fighter aircraft, in hope of giving Israel time to eliminate the witnesses. When that failed, LBJ ordered a coverup of the attack on the USS Liberty, endorsed an official whitewashing of the perps, and gagged all surviving members of the crew from speaking about the attack. Back in the 1960s, US presidents could make up stories about events overseas, as this same administration did with the Gulf of Tonkin “attack.” They could likewise create coverups of actual attacks that didn’t fit the administration’s narrative, as the administration did with the Israeli attempt to sink the USS Liberty and murder every man on board on June 8th, 1967.
What a different 58 years can make! US “ally” Ukraine recently attacked a part of the Russian nuclear triad while these long range bombers were parked on runways, in compliance with the US-Russia New START treaty for the purpose of daily counting and verification. Russia correctly assesses that the UK, possibly other NATO operatives, and even members of the US CIA or special forces had advance knowledge of this attack on Russia’s nuclear triad. It follows, Russia must understand that NATO and the US willingly participated in – or failed to prevent – a violation of a bilateral Nuclear Treaty, an act of war by the US and its allies.
Instead of ordering a coverup, NEWTRUMP is left in stunned silence, trying to get out of his culpability pickle of having presided over 1) a devious Deep State acting independently to launch an expanded, perhaps nuclear, war, or 2) overseeing a staff and state bureaucracy so utterly incompetent in the field of nuclear weapons and treaties and intelligence that they themselves didn’t know, or innocently failed to tell the President in advance, or 3) all of the above.
The Spider’s Web op was an act of terror not just against Russia, but against the United States, Ukraine’s biggest “benefactor” since long before 2014, providing over $300 billion in arms and aid since 2021, the country paying the salaries of Ukraine’s civil servants for years. Oh that LBJ were in office in 1967 to shut down speculation, to lie on stage to protect his allies, unchecked and unquestioned by facts and witnesses. Forgetfulness is, as Kissinger noted, increasingly impossible, and so is ignorance.
The lies of state today are easily exposed, and we understand these lying states do not wish to pursue peace. This explains Ukraine’s situation, and our own, as illustrated by Washington’s Logan and Hatch Act violating Senators. But unlike two generations ago, we see this reality as it happens. Who was watching as the US wildly pushed to expand NATO eastward and southward, and promised NATO membership to Ukraine, while denying and demurring as to exactly when and how? Who was watching as the US for over 50 years promised the world a two-state solution while privately swearing to the Israeli regime it would never happen? What “Ambassador” Huckabee says now is not a change of policy, but a public confession of a continued US policy that supports and pays for every Israeli-desired war, a public confession of US full faith and guarantee of Israel’s every move to deny Palestinians human rights, property rights, and political power, food, healthcare, and life itself.
It is the United States and its dependent allies who deny human rights, and are willing to destroy a country to the last Palestinian, and steal the land that remains. It is the US and her dependent allies who demand that Ukraine fighting Russia “to the last Ukrainian” is “the best money we ever spent.”
A main difference between these two conflicts can be found in the objectives of the state. Israel used a security breach of their own making on October 7th 2023 to invade Gaza and expand control over the West Bank, continuing a decades long agenda of forcibly remove all Palestinians from land Israel desires. Planned genocide, with 19th century colonial overtones of racism and arrogance, supporting territorial expansion was, and remains, the objective, one that the US government supports and funds without complaint.
On the other hand, the Russian response to US and NATO deceit regarding the Minsk treaties of 2014 and 2015 was predictable, but slow to launch, in effect, not a long-planned development, or part of a long-held vision. Once launched, Russia’s purpose and rationale were publicly and repeatedly explained as protecting Russian people, their culture and economy along the eastern border, who had been assaulted and attacked by Kiev in willful violation of signed treaties for over five years. Ukraine had existed as a peaceful, if politically compromised, Slavic neighbor and economic partner for two generations, prior to 2021. Strangely enough, if the United States had to pick a side based on our “City on a Hill” value system, we would be supporting Yemen and Russia, rather than Tel Aviv and Kiev.
When US allies adopt total war, practice genocide and abandon Christian principles that command the pursuit of peace, while ostensible US opponents show proportionality, restraint and Christian ethics, we may wonder what NEWTRUMP is delivering, and what we may expect from the current occupant of the White House, or his similarly compromised backup character.
Why we fight remains a legitimate question, but how we have fought in Ukraine and in Palestine has already produced a frightening new and energetic contempt for the US government at home and abroad, a multigenerational contempt legitimized by an ugly and shameful reality. Our Orwellian government – depersonalized, disconnected from truth, oblivious to reality, obsessed with endless war and state murder – prevails for now, full steam ahead on the last century’s compromised tracks.
