Has US politics begun to sound to you like a South Front report on the war in Syria? [NOTE] Not sure what your party stands for anymore, or who is behind the IP poster child of the month? Not sure who is about to stab you in the back? Well, that means the Empire of Chaos's US operation is going according to plan.

Donald Trump is merely the American franchise of the Empire of Chaos's (EoC) assault on any government or national grouping that stands in the way of the total domination of the planet by the 1%. Even the minimal sham of a democracy that the US has after 16 years of post-911 neocon subversion and 10 years of neoliberal austerity is no longer tolerable to the EoC.

Readers of C99p are familiar with the EoC and its hybrid war tactics in regions from Ukraine through the Middle East and on to Africa and the Philippines. We know that the goal is to destabilize and destroy target countries, leaving them in anarchy, often splintered into warring subregions, so that the multinational corps and financiers can loot them.

We know just how convoluted Team Chaos, with its seemingly unlimited budget, can get when it encounters resistance. Case in point, the secular state of Syria which has, backed by Iran and Russia, repelled a Takfiri/Sunni EoC assault. Rather than accept defeat, TC has doubled down by occupying Syrian Kurdistan in violation of international law. We know that the Kurds are just the latest fraudulent front group that the US has used in its fake war on terror; we know that the US/KSA/Israel simultaneously continues to fund, advise, and supply various Sunni groups whose names change weekly.

Once you recognize that, to the globalized neoliberal and neocon elites, even the US is merely a source of funds and guns to be manipulated from above, then the analogy to Syria is not as far out as it might first sound. To the elites, the US is just another corrupt banana republic that Wall St has by the balls; and Trump is just another comprador flunky whom they hired because they think he will be effective (well, at least more effective than the Clinton Crime Family) in doing their bidding. After a year, Trump now understands that, as long as he goes along with the neocon warmongers, the elites really do have his back, and that they welcome the chaos he is creating. So, Trump is beginning to enjoy his job.

Donald Trump doesn't know about any of this history and couldn't care less...What he does know, however, is the arts of enforced chaos, deliberate disorder, saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time with intent, and jabbing a constant thumb in the eye of the country because he didn't get invited to the right parties back when he was a philandering skinflint landlord who didn't pay his bills...He does not care. He just delights in the mayhem, and of course, the attention.

It's hard to maintain a society when all we talk about is the latest confused nonsense coughed up by the commander-in-chief. When that nonsense blinds us to the fact that Trump and his crew are stealing the furniture right out from under us on a daily basis, it becomes worthy of profound concern.

People seem to think this administration is flailing under the weight of its own inadequacies, but the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation believes Trump is doing a bang-up job, thank you very much. According to its director of congressional and executive branch relations, Trump has accomplished 64 percent of the 334 agenda items he came into office with, a list that covers a broad spectrum of immigration, tax reform, foreign policy, health care and deregulation issues. That's faster than Reagan, Heritage says. When the Heritage Foundation says you've gone above and beyond Saint Ronnie, it means the wealthy are well pleased...

It goes on and on like this until, for many, a collective throwing-up-of-the-hands takes place, often on a daily basis, because exhaustion and exasperation are now our resting state.

- William Rivers Pitt, Master Troll: Why Trump Deliberately Disrupts the Gun Debate

That's the gist of the essay, the remainder is a bunch of examples of how domestic politics mirrors the situation in Syria.

------

The US used to be a middle class, secular democracy with strong civil liberties. Since 1980, it has been ruthlessly targeted by economic and religious fundamentalists - and lately, re-energized white supremacists. Its infrastructure is in ruins. The majority of the population is poor, can't come up with $500 in an emergency. And the citizenry is at each others' throats over various media-inflamed, tribalistic wedge issues.

The GOP are like the various strains of Sunni fundamentalists - crazy fanatics who want to enforce economic and religious fundamentalism at the point of a gun or an eviction notice.

The Corpo-Democrat-promoted IP groups and the McResistance are like the various allies-of-convenience that the US sponsors in the name of protecting Syria from "terrorists". They really aren't here to save the Republic from the GOP, they are just here to hijack any real opposition and divert it into unproductive bickering. The same way that all the US sponsored "moderate rebels" were ineffective, while the Russians could clean up the whole mess in six months with 50 planes and some advisors.

So, just as in Syria, the elites are funding both sides of the fighting in order to keep the chaos growing until the victim country just gives up. The bad news is that America doesn't even have a patriotic leader like Assad (yeah he's an autocrat, but he is a patriot and a secularist). Bernie Sanders could have been that leader, but he either was made an offer he couldn't refuse; or he just plain sold out.

As in Syria, we have the same "poster children of the month" for dramatizing the "good guys" of the McResistance. The McR shines the spotlight on them when it suits their purposes, invoking some domestic version of the bogus "right to protect". When the "month" is up, so is the "protection". Here's a list of the best poster children.

1. BLM

Where today are the BLM and Antifa movements? Well, they served the purpose of smearing Bernie Sanders and ratcheting up the fear to drive people away from genuine left solutions and towards the McResistance. Like religious minorities such as the Zaidi, who were being persecuted by ISIS, these groups got publicity when it fit the narrative. The minute they were no longer useful, they vanished from the media; and the cops went back to murdering blacks and beating up pipeline protestors with impunity.

2. Transgendered

Another poster child, whose "month" may have expired, is the IP hysteria about transgendered children. It began the minute the Gay Rights movement won and the EoC was deprived of that polarizing wedge issue. The unbelievably tiny minoirty of actual transgendered children was used as a litmus test to break up the opposition to the corporatized Democratic leadership while energizing the fundamentalist crazies - and most of the working class who have no time for such snowflake nonsense. A twofer: weaken the left and strengthen the right and keep using sex to divide and conquer the 99%.

3. MeToo

America then moved on to the MeToo movement, whose tactics would appall liberals if the conservatives applied it to them. MeToo is straight out of the hybrid war/Alinsky playbook. It has hijacked and weaponized a legitimate grievance, grabbed the spotlight, added to the chaos, and solved nothing. (Although it did paralyze the Democrats long enough for the obscene Trump tax bill to pass.) Legitimate feminists will be dealing with the backlash to this extra-legal campaign, that is little more than corporate media-enabled scapegoating, for decades. Our democracy will be further degenerated by the legitimation of media scapegoating, anonymous denuncations, and un-appealable administrative punishments, in lieu of actually passing laws that might address the problem.

4. School shootings

It looks like the next "moderate rebel" issue is going to be mass school shootings. (TPTB would never tolerate a genuine issue like economics or the military budget get discussed in the media.) Like feminism, this is a genuine problem. But, like MeToo, TPTB are busy creating a divisive non-solution. Trump simultaneously wants to arm teachers and ban guns. As Mr. Pitt observed, the man (and the media that thrive on his provocations) is maximizing chaos. Now he is overtly pissing off the GOP base, gun owners and 2nd ammendment fanatics - not to mention free traders with his tariffs. It remains to be seen if the NRA folds like the Fundamentalist churches and goes to kiss the Orange Pope's ring. Stay tuned for more chaos.

Meanwhile, the McResistance wets its pants at the thought of standing up to the NRA - even though a majority of the increasingly fringe membership of the NRA is in favor of banning assault weapons. IIRC, even Obama's CDC was pressured to shutdown research on gun violence as an epidemic disease. The McR/Corpo-Dems will let the fight be between Trump and the NRA, guaranteeing that nothing useful will come of yet another opportunity to stop the mayhem.

The non-poster children: the invisible funders

On the right, we don't hear about the Tea Party anymore, they have been re-branded as MAGA, the American Branch of Al Qaida. New conservative splinter groups constantly appear, funded by one or another right wing billionaire. We always hear the agenda of such groups, but we never hear about their funders - people like the Koch Brothers. The McR has the same shtick about the American right as the US has about Syria: We deplore ISIS, but we never mention their Saudi/UAE funders.

On the so-called left, the corporate media and the McResistance crowd are happy to parade the victim of the week, but they will never talk about the globalist billionaires who fund the American version of these "moderate rebels" - folks like George Soros and Haim Saban.

The permanent enemy: Russian "meddling"

The American media seem to be the playing the role of the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights in their made up lies about Russian meddling in American politics. The SOHR consists of literally one guy in Coventry, UK, and is an EU-funded propaganda outlet that publicizes the fraudulent White Helmets. (One of his sources was the infamous "Curveball".) But, the corporate media never tell the truth about SOHR. They give it the same credibility as the Wall St. Journal. Russian "meddling"is the exact same propaganda operation - lies sourced from bogus intelligence operatives and vouched for by TPTB to further the goals of EoC.

IN CLOSING

I'm with OPOL. Its all bullshit. We are not a democracy anymore. The manipulation never stops. No one is on the side of the 99%. As long as the conversation is owned by Trump and the McResistance, we will be treated to endless Kabuki from the useless, "fake news"-censoring corporate media, until the Republic simply gets completely privatized and/or "the beast" gets starved.

----

NOTE:

Some snips from South Front reports:

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda)...Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has attacked positions of the so-called Syrian Liberation Front (SLF), a coalition of Ahrar al-Sham and Nour al-Din al-Zenki...

Meanwhile, seven al-Qaeda-linked groups operating in Idlib announced a merger into a new force entitled Horas al-Din. The groups involved in effort are Jaysh al-Malahem, Jaysh al-Badiyah, Jaysh al-Sahel, Saraya al-Sahel, Saryat Kabul Jun al- Sharia and Jund al-Aqsa. The newly appeared moderate opposition group will reportedly be headed by Abu Humam al-Shami, a former general commander of HTS.

In Afrin, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have captured the villages of Sinnarah and Anqalah from the Kurdish YPG. In turn, the YPG attacked Turkish forces near the villages of Raco and Jaro.

Is that clear?