Caitlin Johnstone on the Trump Problem
For an entire decade now American consciousness has been plagued by the delusion that fighting the power has something to do with Donald Trump. Democrats act like they’re being brave revolutionaries by standing against him. Republicans act like they’re being brave revolutionaries by supporting him.
In reality the fight against real power has almost nothing to do with Donald Trump. It’s got very little to do with opposing him, since the US president is just a figurehead and if it wasn’t Trump standing in that position it’d be some other ideologically identical empire goon. And it’s certainly got nothing to do with supporting him, since he’s completely unified with establishment power structures.
Progressives view Trump as a Hitlerian dictator who plans to end democracy in America, while rightists view him as a heroic populist who is leading a charge to dismantle the Deep State. In reality Trump’s record has established beyond a doubt that he is nothing other than a standard shitty Republican president. As far as his material policy decisions and governance are concerned he is not extraordinary, and he is not special. His few superficial differences from his predecessors are eclipsed by his similarities with them, which dwarf the differences by orders of magnitude. The only reason Trump is regarded as an aberration rather than a continuation of US status quo politics is because both sides of the imaginary partisan divide keep fueling that delusion with baseless emotion-driven narratives. Emphasis added to note relevance to posts on this board.
The network of plutocrats and empire managers who really run America have been in power since long before Trump, and could easily run things today without Trump, and will continue to run things after Trump. For the previous four years the United States had a president who was an actual dementia patient, and it made no difference to the functioning of the empire. Trump is the same. Anyone could be sitting in that figurehead position, and the tyranny and abuses of the US empire would continue uninterrupted.
To meaningfully oppose real power is not to take some special stance toward Donald Trump, or any other individual empire manager for that matter. The abuses of the empire aren’t the product of any one individual, but rather the inevitable fruits of the systems and practices that the empire is premised upon. Capitalism. Imperialism. Hegemonic control. Plutocracy. Militarism. Ecocide. Exploitation. Extraction. Authoritarianism. Propaganda.
Fighting the power means taking your stand against these things. You know this is true because while the powerful permit and encourage the partisan feuding for and against Donald Trump, they have violent conniptions whenever a robust movement against imperial war agendas or capitalist oligarchy emerges anywhere in the world. One need only look at how aggressively the FBI targeted antiwar activists, communists and black civil rights groups with COINTELPRO operations to stomp out any movement toward justice and equality in the United States, and contrast this with how freely opposition and support for Donald Trump is allowed to flourish in mainstream discourse, to see what real opposition looks like.
If you want to fight the power, take your stand against the empire itself. Help discredit its propaganda machine in the eyes of the public, so that people will stop consenting to its abuses. Help oppose its war agendas, so that its abuses will become harder to inflict upon the world. Help open people’s eyes to the injustices that are baked into capitalism, so people can see that a better world is possible. Help spread awareness of the way the empire really operates, so people can stop throwing their energy into the delusion that fighting real power has something to do with Donald Trump.
Contrary to the hissy fit in progress by the Democrats and their Big Media supporters, and also contrary to the sensible sounding voices who point to the Bobby Junior and Tulsi appointments while suggesting that there could well be pluses as well as minuses in Trump Term 2, I agree with Caitlin that Trump is more of the same old same old. And the way that GOP Senators sneered at both appointees before eventually voting to confirm their appointments demonstrates how full of shit they all are as they "vote" how the Donor Class tells them to.
Comments
This pretty much spells it out
The democrats have shown the lines they will not cross, no matter what they say. The only thing I can quibble with is The Trump Show. The news cycle will be dominated by what Trump says, and what praise his followers sing to him, what his critics say, hour after hour, day by day, for the next 4 years. It will cease being "the news". That's the only thing different. Other than that it's right on.
Exactly!
That is why I like my new nickname for Trump -- Donald J. Blowhard. The loudmouth prick that is the "border czar," Tom Homan, is the perfect avatar of Trumpism -- macho bluster on toast. It is really easy to get your panties into a bunch over his threats to put mayors and governors in jail if they get in his and Trump's way. Right. That will happen right after our army occupies Greenland to rename it Trumpsicle.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
From the myopic viewpoint of our individual lives
we can reasonably assume our hope for enduring meaningful change of our body politic will be nothing more than “lather - rinse - repeat”, ad nauseam. Those who still maintain a shred or two of hope perhaps seen our election cycles through the eyes of Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day. Fortunately, reason is not the only tool in our human skill set.
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave depicts a multi level confinement of our human potential through shadows and puppet masters, chains and darkness. Most of those in the cave believe the shadows on the walls are real and watch their repetitive movements. Those who recognize shadow patterns, and can ‘predict’ what happens next are seen by other prisoners as ‘wise’ and come to love their situation and their illusionary shadows. Plato posits this as our human condition, but then continues to describe a protagonist who, through an extraordinary effort, manages to free himself.
Was Plato just an ancient bullshit artist, or was he on to something? Does “hope” only come in one flavor? Has there only been one iteration of human civilization, in all the millions of years hominids have lived on this planet? If not, where does our present civilization stand in the “evolutionary” ranking? How far into the future does our so called prescience penetrate?
Earth shaking is not just a figure of speech.
“The story around the world gives a silent testimony:
— The Beresovka mammoth, frozen in mud, with buttercups in his mouth…..”
The Adam and Eve Story, Chan Thomas 1963
A classic line from the Culture Industry essay:
"Real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies."
So, yes, they're all captivated by Trump because he's not shy about appearing in front of cameras.
And indeed it is true that "If you want to fight the power, take your stand against the empire itself." The main confusion, however, is about fighting the power. Most importantly: to fight the power, you actually have to fight the power. Fighting the power by pretending to fight the power does not work.
"The Democratic Party has been focused too much on pleasing people who matter too little in this society." -- Chris Cuomo