{"id":86,"date":"2018-07-11T06:47:54","date_gmt":"2018-07-11T06:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/?post_type=article&p=86"},"modified":"2018-07-11T06:47:54","modified_gmt":"2018-07-11T06:47:54","slug":"noam-chomsky-on-fascism-showmanship-and-democrats-hypocrisy-in-the-trump-era","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"http:\/\/populareducation.in\/loksamvad\/article\/noam-chomsky-on-fascism-showmanship-and-democrats-hypocrisy-in-the-trump-era\/","title":{"rendered":"Noam Chomsky on Fascism, Showmanship and Democrats\u2019 Hypocrisy in the Trump Era"},"content":{"rendered":"The Global<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAfter 18 months of Trump in the White House, American politics finds itself at a crossroads. The United States has moved unmistakably toward a novel form of fascism that serves corporate interests and the military, while promoting at the same time a highly reactionary social agenda infused with religious and crude nationalistic overtones, all with an uncanny touch of political showmanship. In this exclusive Truthout interview, world-renowned linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky analyzes some of the latest developments in Trumpland and their consequences for democracy and world order.<\/em>\r\n\r\nC.J. Polychroniou: <\/strong>Noam, I want to start by asking for your reading of what took place at the Singapore summit, and the way this event was covered in the US media.\r\n\r\nNoam Chomsky:<\/strong> It\u2019s reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn\u2019t bark. What was important was what didn\u2019t happen. Unlike his predecessors, Trump did not undermine the prospects for moving forward. Specifically, he did not disrupt the process initiated by the two Koreas in their historic April 27 [Panmunjom] Declaration, in which they \u201caffirmed the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord\u201d (repeat: on their own accord), and for the first time presented a detailed program as to how to proceed. It is to Trump\u2019s credit that he did not undermine these efforts, and in fact made a move toward facilitating them by cancelling the US-South Korean war games, which, as he correctly said, are \u201cvery provocative.\u201d We would certainly not tolerate anything of the sort on our borders \u2013 or anywhere on the planet \u2013 even if they were not run by a superpower which not long before had utterly devastated our country with the flimsiest of pretexts after the war was effectively over, glorying in the major war crimes it had committed, like bombing major dams, after there was nothing else to bomb.\r\n\r\nBeyond the achievement of letting matters proceed, which was not slight, no \u201cdiplomatic skills\u201d were involved in Trump\u2019s triumph.\r\n\r\nThe coverage has been quite instructive, in part because of the efforts of the Democrats to outflank Trump from the right. Beyond that, the coverage across the spectrum illustrates quite well two distinct kinds of deceit: lying and not telling relevant truths. Each merits comment.\r\n\r\nTrump is famous for the former, and his echo chamber is as well. Liberal commentators exult in totting up and refuting Trump\u2019s innumerable lies and distortions, much to his satisfaction since it provides the opportunity for him to fire up his loyal \u2014 by now almost worshipful \u2014 base with more evidence of how the hated \u201cEstablishment\u201d is using every possible underhanded means to prevent their heroic leader from working tirelessly to defend them from a host of enemies.\r\n\r\nA canny politician, Trump surely understands well that the base on which he relies, by now almost the entire Republican Party, has drifted to a surreal world, in part under his influence. Take the major Trump-Ryan legislative achievement, the tax scam \u2014 \u201cThe US Donor Relief Act of 2017,\u201d as Joseph Stiglitz termed it. It had two transparent aims: to enrich the very wealthy and the corporate sector while slamming everyone else, and to create a huge deficit. The latter achievement \u2014 as the main architect of the scam Paul Ryan helpfully explained \u2014 provides the opportunity to realize the cherished goal of reducing benefits that serve the general population, already very weak by comparative standards, but still an unacceptable infringement on the prerogatives of the 1%. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the law will add $1 trillion to deficits over the next decade. Virtually every economist generally agrees. But not 80 percent of Republican voters, of whom half believe that the deficit will be reduced by the gift their leader has lavished upon them.\r\n\r\nOr consider something vastly more significant, attitudes toward global warming (apologies for the obscenity: climate change), which poses a severe threat to organized human life, and not in the distant future.\r\n\r\nHalf of Republicans believe that what is plainly happening is not happening, bolstered by virtually the entire leadership of the Party, as the Republican Primary debates graphically revealed. Of the half who concede that the real world exists, barely half think that humans play a role in the process.\r\n\r\nSuch destructive responses tend to break through the surface during periods of distress and fear, very widespread feelings today, for good reason: A generation of neoliberal policies has sharply concentrated wealth and power while leaving the rest to stagnate or decline, often joining the growing precariat. In the US, the richest country in history with unparalleled advantages, over 40 percent of the population don\u2019t earn enough to afford a monthly budget that includes housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cell phone. And this is happening in what\u2019s called a \u201cbooming economy.\u201d\r\n\r\nProductivity has risen through the neoliberal period, even if not as much as before, but wages have stagnated or declined as wealth is funneled to a few bulging pockets. Distress is so severe that among white middle-aged Americans, mortality is actually increasing, something unheard of in functioning societies apart from war or pestilence. There are similar phenomena in Europe under the \u201cbusiness first\u201d (\u201cneoliberal\u201d\/\u201dausterity\u201d) assault.\r\n\r\nReturning to forms of deceit, one technique is simply lying, honed to a high art by the Maestro. Another technique is not telling parts of the \u201cwhole story\u201d that matter.\r\n\r\nTo illustrate, consider the analysis of \u201cTrump\u2019s claims about the North Korea deal\u201d by the expert and highly competent fact-checker of The Washington Post, Glenn Kessler. His article originally ran under the title of \u201cNot the Whole Story,\u201d with the title presented in extra-large letters to emphasize the ignominy. Kessler\u2019s acid (and accurate) critique of Trump\u2019s distortions and inventions opens by declaring (again correctly) that \u201cNorth Korea has a long history of making agreements and then not living up to its obligations,\u201d citing the most crucial case, the September 2005 US-North Korea agreement (under six-power auspices), in which, in the official wording, \u201cThe DPRK [North Korea] committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs and returning, at an early date, to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] safeguards.\u201d\r\n\r\nAs Kessler points out, the North Koreans did not live up to these promises, and in fact, soon returned to producing nuclear weapons. Obviously, they can\u2019t be trusted.\r\n\r\nBut this is \u201cNot the Whole Story.\u201d There is a rather significant omission: Before the ink was dry on the agreement, the US undermined it. To repeat the unwanted facts from our earlier discussion of the matter, \u201cthe Bush administration broke the agreement. It renewed the threat of force, froze North Korean funds in foreign banks and disbanded the consortium that was to provide North Korea with a light-water reactor. Bruce Cumings, the leading US Korea scholar, writes that \u2018the sanctions were specifically designed to destroy the September pledges [and] to head off an accommodation between Washington and Pyongyang\u2019.\u201d The whole story is well-known to scholarship, but somehow doesn\u2019t reach the public domain.\r\n\r\nKessler is a fine and careful journalist. His evasion of \u201cthe whole story\u201d appears to be close to exceptionless in the media. Every article on the matter by The New York Times security and foreign policy experts is the same, as far as I\u2019ve seen. The practice is so uniform that it is almost unfair to pick out examples. To choose only one, again from a fine journalist, Washington Post specialist on Korea Anna Fifield writes that North Korea \u201csigned a denuclearization agreement\u201d in 2005, but didn\u2019t stick to the agreement (omitting the fact that this was a response to Washington\u2019s breaking the agreement). \u201cSo perhaps the wisest course of action,\u201d she continues, \u201cwould be to bet that it won\u2019t abide by this one, either.\u201d And to complete the picture with a banned phrase, \u201cSo perhaps the wisest course of action would be to bet that [Washington] won\u2019t abide by this one, either.\u201d\r\n\r\nThere are endless laments about the deceitfulness and unreliability of the North Koreans; many are cited in Gareth Porter\u2019s review of media coverage. But it would be hard to find a word about the rest of the story. This is only one case.\r\n\r\nI don\u2019t incidentally suggest that the deceit is conscious. Much more likely, it\u2019s just the enormous power of conformity to convention, to what Gramsci called hegemonic \u201ccommon sense.\u201d Some ideas are not even rejected; they are unthinkable. Like the idea that US aggression is aggression; it can only be \u201ca mistake,\u201d \u201ca tragic error,\u201d \u201ca strategic blunder.\u201d I also don\u2019t want to suggest this is \u201cAmerican exceptionalism.\u201d It\u2019s hard to find an exception to the practice in the history of imperialism.\r\n\r\nSo far, at least, Trump has kept from disrupting the agreement of the two Koreas. Of course, all of this is accompanied by boasts about his amazing deal-making abilities, and the brilliance of his skillful tactics of threatening \u201cfire and fury\u201d in order to bring the dictator to the negotiating table. There are many accolades by others across the spectrum for this triumph \u2014 which is about on a par with the standard claims that Obama\u2019s harsh sanctions forced Iran to capitulate by signing the joint agreement on nuclear weapons, claims effectively refuted by Trita Parsi (Losing an Enemy). Whatever the factual basis, such claims are necessary to justify harsh measures against official enemies and to reinforce the general principle that what we do is right (with occasional tragic errors).\r\n\r\nIn the present case too, there is good evidence that the truth is almost the opposite of the standard claims, and that the harsh US stance has impeded progress toward peaceful settlement. There have been many opportunities in addition to the 2005 agreement. In 2013, in a meeting with senior US diplomats, North Korean officials outlined steps toward denuclearization. One of those who attended the meeting, former US official and Stimson Center Senior Fellow Joel Wit reports that, \u201cNot surprisingly, for the North Koreans, the key to denuclearization was that the United States had to end its \u2018hostile policy\u2019.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhile the US maintains its threatening stance, the North Korean leadership \u2014 \u201cnot surprisingly\u201d \u2014 has sought \u201cto develop a nuclear arsenal as a shield to deter the US while they moved to develop the economy.\u201d The North Korean government, in June 2013, \u201cissued an important new pronouncement that it was open to negotiations on denuclearization,\u201d Wit writes, adding that, \u201cThe Obama administration dismissed it at the time as propaganda.\u201d He adds further that \u201cthe North Koreans have given a great deal of thought to denuclearization and almost certainly have a concrete plan of action for the upcoming [Singapore] summit, whether the White House does or not.\u201d In fact, at the 2013 meetings, \u201cthe North Korean officials actually laid out a concrete plan to achieve denuclearization,\u201d Wit reports.\r\n\r\nNot the only case. China\u2019s \u201cdouble freeze\u201d proposal, supported by Russia, Germany and others, has been on the table for years, rejected by Washington \u2014 until the Singapore summit.\r\n\r\nTrump\u2019s diplomacy, such as it is, has been subjected to withering attack, especially by liberal opinion: How could the US president agree to meet on friendly terms with a brutal dictator? How could he fail to demand that North Korea end its human rights violations, which are indeed horrendous?\r\n\r\nWillingness to look at \u201cthe whole story\u201d suggests some other questions, of course unasked \u2014 in fact, unthinkable: How could Kim agree to meet on friendly terms with the head of the state that world opinion overwhelmingly regards as the greatest threat to peace? How could North Korea fail to demand that the US end its human rights violations, also horrendous? Has North Korea done anything remotely like invading Iraq, the worst crime of this century? Or destroying Libya? Has it been condemned by the ICJ [International Court of Justice] for international terrorism (\u201cunlawful use of force\u201d)? And a lot more that is easy enough to reel off.\r\n\r\nIt made perfect sense for North Korea not to bring up US crimes as a condition for moving forward. The proper goal of the meeting was to expedite the efforts of the two Koreas to pursue the directions outlined in their April 27 Declaration. And the argument cuts both ways.\r\n\r\nInterestingly enough, while Trump seeks to appease his political doppelg\u00e4nger in Pyongyang, he has succeeded in alienating most of the US\u2019s major Western allies, including Canada, France and Germany. Is this the consequence of his alleged foreign policy doctrine \u201cWe are America, bitch\u201d?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThere are extensive efforts to try to discern some coherent doctrine that guides Trump\u2019s behavior, but I suspect it\u2019s a fool\u2019s errand. A very good predictor of Trump policy is [his fixation on] \u2026 reversing anything associated with the despised \u201cKenyan Muslim\u201d he replaced: in foreign policy, tearing up the successful Iran deal and accepting the long-standing possibilities for addressing the serious North Korea crisis (proclaiming to have created an astonishing breakthrough). Much the same is true of other actions that look like random shots when the driving forces are ignored.\r\n\r\nAll of this has to be done while satisfying the usual Republican constituencies: primarily the business world and the rich. For Trump, that also means unleashing the more brutal wing of the Republican Party so that they can dedicate themselves even beyond the norm to the interest of private wealth and corporate power. Here the technique is to capture the media with attention-grabbing antics, which can be solemnly exposed while the game goes on \u2014 so far, quite effectively.\r\n\r\nThen comes the task of controlling the so-called \u201cpopulist\u201d base: the angry, frightened, disillusioned white population, primarily males. Since there is no way for Trumpism to deal with their economic concerns, which are actually being exacerbated by current policy-formation, it\u2019s necessary to posture heroically as \u201cstanding up\u201d for them against \u201cmalevolent forces\u201d and to cater to the anti-social impulses that tend to surface when people are left to face difficult circumstances alone, without institutions and organizations to support them in their struggles. That\u2019s also being done effectively for the time being.\r\n\r\nThe \u201cWe are America, bitch\u201d posture appeals to chauvinistic instincts and the white supremacy that is a deeply rooted feature of American culture and is now exacerbated by concern that whites might even become a minority. The posture can also delude working people into believing that their tough-guy protector will bring back the world they\u2019ve lost. Such propaganda exercises cannot, of course, target those actually responsible for the plight of the victims of neoliberal globalization. On the contrary, attention has to be diverted away from corporate managers who largely shape state policy while establishing complex global supply chains to maximize profit at the expense of working people. More appropriate targets are desperate people fleeing horrors for which we are largely responsible: \u201cforeigners\u201d who have been \u201crobbing us\u201d with the connivance of \u201ctreacherous liberals\u201d and other assorted devils that can be conjured up in periods of social breakdown.\r\n\r\nAllies, friends, who cares? There is no need for policies that are \u201ccoherent\u201d in any traditional sense. Consequences don\u2019t matter as long as the primary goals are met.\r\n\r\nAfter months of harsh rhetoric against China\u2019s trade practices, Trump has decided to impose tariffs of $50 billion on Chinese imports, prompting Beijing, subsequently, to declare that the US has embarked on a trade war and to announce in turn that it will retaliate with similar measures against US imports. First, isn\u2019t it true that China is merely practicing today the same sort of mercantilist policies that the US and Great Britain practiced in the past on their way to global ascendancy? Second, is the targeting of tariffs expected to have any impact either on China\u2019s economy or on the size of the US trade deficit? And lastly, if a new era of protectionism is about to take off, what could the consequences of such development be for the reign of global neoliberalism?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nSeveral questions arise. First, what is Trump\u2019s motive? If it were concern about China\u2019s economic management and trade policies, he wouldn\u2019t be going out of his way to alienate allies with tariffs and insults but would be joining with them to confront China on the issues of concern. If, however, the driving force is what I discussed earlier, then targeting both China and allies with abuse and tariffs has a certain logic: It may play well in the rust belt, contributing to the delusion that our hero is fighting to ensure jobs for working people \u2014 though it\u2019s a tricky strategy, because it harms other parts of his loyal base, mainly farmers, and also, though more subtly, because it imposes a new tax on consumption, which is what tariffs amount to.\r\n\r\nAs for China\u2019s economic policies, yes, they are similar to those that have been used by developed societies generally, beginning with Britain and then its former North American colony. Similar, but more limited. China lacks the means available to its predecessors. Britain stole superior technology from India, the Low Countries, Ireland, and by force and severe protectionism, undermined the Indian economy, then the world\u2019s most advanced along with China. The US, under the Hamiltonian system, resorted to high tariffs to bar superior British goods, and also took British technology in ways barred by the current US-initiated global trading system. Economic historian Paul Bairoch describes the US as \u201cthe mother country and bastion of protectionism\u201d into the 1920s, well after it had become far and away the richest country in the world.\r\n\r\nThe general practice is called \u201ckicking away the ladder\u201d by economic historians: first use the practices to develop, then bar others from following.\r\n\r\nEarlier, Britain\u2019s economic development relied on large-scale piracy, now considered by its former practitioner to be the most heinous of crimes. Keynes wrote that the booty of English pirates, like the famed and admired Sir Francis Drake, \u201cmay fairly be considered the fountain and origin of British foreign investments.\u201d Piracy was also a standard practice in the American colonies. Both British and US economies also relied crucially on the most hideous system of slavery in human history. Cotton was the oil of the industrial revolution, providing the basis for manufacturing, finance, commerce, retail. Such practices are not available to China.\r\n\r\nLike Britain before it, the US called for \u201cfree trade\u201d when it recognized that the playing field was tilted properly in its direction. After World War II, when the US had incomparable power, it promoted the \u201cliberal world order\u201d that has been an enormous boon to the US corporate system, which now owns about half of the global economy, an astonishing policy success.\r\n\r\nAgain, following the British model, the US hedged its commitment to \u201cfree trade\u201d for the benefit of domestic private power. The British-dominated \u201cfree trade\u201d system kept India as a largely closed protectorate. The US-dominated system imposes an extreme patent system (\u201cintellectual property\u201d) that provides virtual monopoly power to major US industries. The US government also provides huge subsidies to energy industries, agribusiness and financial institutions. While the US complains about Chinese industrial policy, the modern high-tech industry has relied crucially on research and development in the publicly subsidized sector of the economy, to such an extent that the economy might fairly be regarded as a system of public subsidy, private profit. And there are many other devices to subsidize industry. Procurement, for example, has been shown to be a significant device. In fact, the enormous military system alone, through procurement, provides a huge state subsidy to industry. These comments only skim the surface.\r\n\r\nBritain abandoned laissez-faire when it could no longer cope with Japanese competition, part of the background for World War II in the Pacific. Some in the US are having similar qualms today, concerns that Trump is cynically exploiting. But not the powerful corporate sector that relies crucially on the US-designed global economic order.\r\n\r\nThe corporate sector relies so extensively on the global economy it has designed that it is sure to use its enormous power to try to head off a major trade war. The Trump tariffs and the retaliation might escalate, but it\u2019s likely that the threat will be contained. Trump is quite right, however, in proclaiming that the US would \u201cwin\u201d a limited trade war, given the scale of the US economy, the huge domestic market and unique advantages in other respects. The \u201cWe are America, bitch\u201d doctrine is a powerful weapon of intimidation.\r\n\r\nThe Trump administration is moving full speed ahead with its intent on cracking down on unauthorized entries to the country by separating immigrant children from their parents. More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents during the last seven weeks, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions sought recently to justify Trump\u2019s immigration policy by citing a verse from the Bible. What can one say about an advanced Western society in which religion continues to crowd out reason in shaping public policy and public attitudes? And didn\u2019t the Nazis, although they were no believers, also use Christianity to justify their immoral and criminal acts?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThe immigration policy, always grotesque, has descended to levels so revolting that even many of those who foster and exploit xenophobia are running for cover \u2014 like Trump, who is desperately trying to blame it on the Democrats, and like the First Lady, who is appealing to \u201cboth sides of the aisle\u201d to come together to stop the obscenity. We should, however, not overlook the fact that Europe is crawling through much the same gutters.\r\n\r\nOne can quote scripture for almost any purpose one likes. Sessions doubtless knows that \u201call the law\u201d hangs on two commandments: loving God and \u201cThou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.\u201d But that is not the appropriate thought for the occasion.\r\n\r\nIt is true, however, that the US is unique among developed societies in the role of religion in social life, ever since the Puritans landed.\r\n\r\nRecently, Trump stated that he had the absolute right to pardon himself (after he had already said that he could shoot someone on New York\u2019s 5th Avenue and not lose any support), while his lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said the president could even commit murder in the Oval Office and still not be prosecuted for it. Your thoughts?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nAfter praising Kim [Jong Un] effusively as a strong leader who \u201cspeaks and his people sit up at attention,\u201d Trump added: \u201cI want my people to do the same.\u201d When the predictable reaction followed, he said he was kidding. Maybe. I hope we don\u2019t have an opportunity to find out.\r\n\r\nWhile it is clear that the country is well on its way to becoming a pariah nation, the Democrats continue to focus their attention primarily on Trump\u2019s alleged collusion with Russia and unethical behavior, all the while trying to outflank the president on the jingoist front, adopting new restrictions for the 2020 elections so they can keep away the likes of Bernie Sanders, and of course, playing masterfully the fundraising game that works in a plutocracy. With all this in mind, how would you describe the nature of contemporary US politics?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nMuch as in Europe, the centrist political institutions in the United States, which have long been in the driver\u2019s seat, are in decline. The reasons are not obscure. People who have endured the rigors of the neoliberal assault \u2014 austerity in the recent European version \u2014 recognize that the institutions are working for others, not for them. In the US, people do not have to read academic political science to know that a large majority, those who are not near the top of the income scale, are effectively disenfranchised, in that their own representatives pay little attention to their views, hearkening rather to the voices of the rich, the donor class. In Europe, anyone can see that basic decisions are made by the unelected Troika, in Brussels, with the northern banks peering over their shoulders.\r\n\r\nIn the US, respect for Congress has long been hovering in single digits. In recent Republican primaries, when candidates emerged from the base, the Establishment was able to beat them down and obtain their own candidate. In 2016, that failed for the first time. True, it\u2019s not far from the norm for a billionaire with enormous media support and almost $1 billion in campaign funding to win an election, but Trump was hardly the choice of the Republican elites. The most spectacular result of the election was not the Trump phenomenon. Rather, it was the remarkable success of Bernie Sanders, breaking sharply with US political history. With no support from big business or the media, Sanders might well have won the Democratic nomination had it not been for the machinations of Obama-Clinton party managers. Similar processes are apparent in recent European elections.\r\n\r\nLike it or not, Trump is doing quite well. He has the support of 83 percent of Republicans, which is without precedent apart from rare moments. Whatever their feelings may be, Republicans dare not cross him openly. His general support in the low 40s is not far from the norm, about the same as Obama\u2019s going into his first midterm. He is lavishing gifts on the business world and the wealthy, the authentic constituency of the Republicans (with the Democrat leadership not far behind). He has thrown enough crumbs to keep the Evangelicals happy and has struck the right chords for racist\/white supremacy elements. And he has, so far, managed to convince coal miners and steel workers that he is one of them. In fact, his support among union members has increased to 51 percent.\r\n\r\nIt is hardly in doubt that Trump cares almost nothing about the fate of the country or the world. What matters is me. That\u2019s clear enough from his attitude toward global warming. He is perfectly well aware of the dire threat \u2014 to his properties. His application for a seawall to protect his Irish golf course is based explicitly on the threat of global warming. But pursuit of power impels him to lead the race to destruction, quite happily, as is evident from his performances. The same holds of other serious, if lesser, threats, among them the threat that the country may be isolated, despised, declining \u2014 with dues to pay after it\u2019s no longer his concern.\r\n\r\nThe Democrats are now torn between a popular base that is largely social democratic and a New Democrat leadership that panders to the donor class. Under Obama, the party was reduced to shambles at the local and state level, a particularly serious matter because the 2020 elections will determine redistricting, offering opportunities for gerrymandering even beyond today\u2019s scandalous situation.\r\n\r\nThe bankruptcy of the Democrat elite is well-illustrated by the obsession with alleged Russian meddling with our sacred elections. Whatever it might amount to \u2014 apparently very little \u2014 it cannot begin to compare with the \u201cmeddling\u201d of campaign funding, which largely determines electoral outcomes, as extensive research has shown, particularly the careful work of Thomas Ferguson, which he and his colleagues have now extended to the 2016 elections. As Ferguson points out, when Republican elites realized that it was going to be Trump or Clinton, they responded with a huge wave of last-minute money that not only led to Clinton\u2019s late October decline but also had the same effect on Democratic candidates for Senate, \u201cvirtually in lock step.\u201d It is \u201coutlandish,\u201d Ferguson observes, that former FBI Director James Comey or the Russians \u201ccould be responsible for both collapses\u201d in the final stage of the campaign: \u201cFor the first time in the entire history of the United States, the partisan outcome of Senate races coincided perfectly with the results of every state\u2019s presidential balloting.\u201d The outcome conforms very well to Ferguson\u2019s well-supported \u201cInvestment theory of party competition.\u201d\r\n\r\nBut facts and logic matter little. The Democrats are bent on revenge for their 2016 failure, having run such a rotten campaign that what looked like a \u201csure thing\u201d collapsed. Evidently, Trump\u2019s severe assault against the common good is a lesser matter, at least to the party elite.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s sometimes been noted that the US not only regularly meddles in foreign elections, including Russian ones, but also proceeds to subvert and sometimes overthrow governments it doesn\u2019t like. Horrifying consequences abound, to the present, from Central America to the Middle East. Guatemala has been a horror story since a US-backed coup overthrew its elected reformist government in 1954. Gaza, declining in misery, may become unlivable by 2020, the UN predicts, not by acts of God. In 2006, Palestinians committed a grave crime: They ran the first free election in the Arab world, and made the \u201cwrong\u201d choice, handing power to Hamas. Israel reacted by escalating violence and a brutal siege. The US reverted to standard operating procedure and prepared a military coup, pre-empted by Hamas. In punishment for this new crime, US-Israeli torture of Gaza sharply increased, not only with strangulation but also regular murderous and destructive US-backed Israeli invasions, on pretexts that quickly collapse on examination. Elections that come out the wrong way plainly cannot be tolerated under our policy of \u201cdemocracy promotion.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn recent European elections, there has been much concern about possible Russian meddling. That was particularly true of the 2017 German elections, when the far-right party Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) did surprisingly well, winning 94 seats in the Bundestag, the first time it had won seats. One can easily imagine the reaction had Russian meddling been detected behind these frightening results. It turns out that there was indeed foreign meddling, but not from Russia. AfD hired a Texas media firm (Harris Media) known for support of right-wing nationalist candidates (Trump, Le Pen, Netanyahu). The firm enlisted the cooperation of the Berlin office of Facebook, which provided it with detailed information about potential voters for use in microtargeting those who might be receptive to AfD\u2019s message. It may have worked. The story seems to have been ignored, apart from the business press.\r\n\r\nIf the Democratic Party cannot overcome its deep internal problems and the slow expansion of the economy under Obama and Trump continues without disruption or disaster, the Republican wrecking ball may be swinging away at the foundations of a decent society, and at the prospects for survival, for a long time.\r\n\r\n(Courtesy: truthout.org)<\/strong>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Global After 18 months of Trump in the White House, American politics finds itself at a crossroads. 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