The Ridiculous, the Ugly, and the Remedy
I am not sure what AB Commenters and readers see on TV, in the news, or on the blogosphere. The news I am reading is surreal. I keep hoping we wakeup from this nightmare and things are normal again. Then too, what is normal?
One more event date to experience past January 6th, the inauguration. Will trump even attend, will he leave quietly, or will we still experience more raucous behavior?
Trump going golfing on inauguration day would be nice. He was never presidential material.
Fox News panelist defends Trump’s leaked call to Georgia secretary of state:
“He is a ‘man who fights”
As Reported by Media Matters for America, Media Matters Staff, January 3, 2021
From the January 3, 2020, edition of Fox News’ America’s News Headquarters
GAYLE TROTTER: The voters who wanted President Trump to have a second term voted for him because he’s a fighter. He’s a man who fights. And this is yet another example —
A.B. STODDARD: [LAUGHS]
TROTTER: — of where they are not going to — A.B. said this would be politically damaging and Jessica is giving advice to her political opponent. Well, President Trump doesn’t take advice from political opponents, and here is yet another example where he shows that he’s going to the mat for the over 70 million voters who entrusted him to fight back and this is yet another opportunity where he understands the radical leftist agenda that Joe Biden and his administration want to push —
STODDARD: [LAUGHS]
TROTTER: — particularly in the radical list of judges that they want to put on the bench who are politicians in robes and who don’t want to just fairly interpret the law but want to enact a liberal wish list into policy, through the courts.
And so, President Trump understands the stakes of this election and the Georgia election, while it’s a state election, has national implications and is the only way to stopgap the Biden administration from pushing through the radical agenda of D.C. Statehood, Puerto Rico statehood, court-packing, and abolishing the electoral college and I will tell you that President Trump’s supporters are glad that he is continuing the fight.
“Trump’s Authoritarian Moment is Here,”
The New Yorker, John Cassidy, January 4, 2021 The President’s attempt to strong-arm Georgia into “finding” ballots is a reminder that far too many Republicans are complicit in his efforts to overthrow the election.
“an American autocratic movement with Fascistic markers.” Steven Schmidt, campaign strategist – John McCain in 2008
“The bottom line is that the @GOP has become a threat to democracy. I spent decades helping elect members of the party and it’s painful to admit. Their actions are a clear and present danger and should be treated as such.” Stuart Stevens, advised Mitt Romney in 2008
Atrios at ESCHATON
My view for years (and it’s been years, including this past year, which was a decade) has been, that given the somewhat understandable reticence to go after The President directly, along with the murky concepts of legality surrounding the presidency, it was necessary to cause pain for everyone around him. If they put a legal shield around the cabinet, go below them, if they put a legal shield around that level, go below them. Make “doing bad things for Trump” like touching a hot stove. At the very least they’d face a massive legal bill and the knowledge that their president suddenly can’t remember even knowing them.
It’s too late for that, now. Gotta deter the next presidential lawbreaker by providing some consequences for this one.
I suppose we are back to the grand old days of the political machines, and yahoos punching each other out on the streets, ballot box stuffing, and so forth. It’s like, I don’t know, time for a new country to be born.
Hysteresis is nothing to get hysterical about. Trump had the right idea about the wrong person. Lock him up.
The media and pundits and Dems are saying nothing to worry about tomorrow. As I understand it, it is because the Dems have the house.
So…the question is: What would be happening tomorrow if the Republican had the house too?
That is the danger in this.
Hey Daniel:
“Nothing to worry about in 2016, and then 2020, and now Georgia. Another two years of McConnell. Yep, nothing to worry about. This is why Dems and us never get anywhere.
I’m not the only one recognizing the real concern here. Posted 3 hrs ago.
Atrios is always fun to read. THX.
If one considers the historical success rate of coup attempts then one might even hope that Donald Trump attempts his coup. The closer that day comes then the more of his supporters that will consider the consequences of a failed coup. Does anyone really think that Trump was elected king? Kings are not elected. They are born.
https://www.city.ac.uk/news/2019/september/elite-knowledge-networks-are-preventing-donald-trump-from-disrupting-the-liberal-world-order
‘Elite knowledge networks’ are preventing Donald Trump from disrupting the liberal world order
The US President’s rhetoric undermines allies’ confidence and can even appear to threaten the established world order. But new research by a City, University of London professor indicates that alliance-building ‘ultraimperialists’ on both sides of US politics and beyond are likely to ensure the status quo of American dominance is maintained, despite domestic and global challenges
First published Thursday, 26th September, 2019 • by Chris Lines (Senior Communications Officer)
Powerful economies continue to emerge in developing countries across the globe – not least in the ‘BRIC’ economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. This leads journalists and commentators to pose the question: is America’s leading role in world affairs under threat?
The political, economic and military predominance – or ‘hegemony’ – of the US over all other nations has been a constant in global politics for many decades.
But, as developing economies grow stronger and more eager for increased global influence and power, the 2016 election of the most unpredictable US President in history lends his country’s hegemony an air of volatility.
But while Donald Trump has raised eyebrows in befriending the leaders of Russia and North Korea, and raised temperatures with some of his incendiary comments about other nations, new research from City, University of London suggests that, despite turbulent rhetoric, not a lot will change.
Professor Inderjeet Parmar, Professor of International Politics in City’s Department of International Politics, is the author of a new paper for the Security Studies journal, assessing the powerful ‘elite knowledge networks’ that spread knowledge, influence and wealth on a global basis with the aim of preserving the liberal international order.
‘Elite knowledge networks’ refers to a system of flows – of people, money and ideas – between spaces that house critical masses of thinkers and activists: influential think tanks, leading universities, global media outlets and vastly wealthy corporate-philanthropic foundations.
Professor Parmar argues that liberal internationalist theory (which underpins the way the liberal international order of today’s global politics is understood) is flawed because it is class-based and elitist, with significant racial and colonial assumptions. And the networks play a significant role in the spread, and defence, of this theory.
“This is not socialisation,” says Professor Parmar, “but elite alliance-building and incorporation into the dominant model of order, fostering deep inequalities within emerging states.”
“It is really, in a word, ultraimperialism.”
He continues:
Professor Parmar’s research takes a two-strand approach to assessing these elite networks and the way they establish influence.
He looks at how, during the 1970s, the networks strategically co-opted and derailed or domesticated the demand for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) by postcolonial states – and, in particular, how they managed and channeled the rise of China.
The paper then addresses the ways in which foreign policy elite knowledge networks have mobilised to contain, channel or reverse the Trump administration’s ‘America First’ policies.
Professor Parmar argues that elite knowledge networks have deep roots in Western states and civil societies. Symbiotic with NATO, European unity and the special relationship between the US and the UK, such networks provide an ‘international umbrella’ that is rooted in the liberal international order. So entrenched are these networks, that their umbrella can even protect from the wishes and whims of a US President. Some of the many instances of elite knowledge network influence in the paper include:
The Trilateral Commission, a key organization conceived by David Rockefeller in the early 1970s, positioning itself at the heart of the American establishment’s coordinated campaign against the NIEO, along with think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation The World Bank undercutting efforts to create a NIEO by co-opting developing nations via loans.
The Ford Foundation’s special role in transforming and managing China as it was gradually incorporated into the US-led system, notably at the 1985 Bashan conference, one of the most significant turning points in the development of state-market relations in China. US foundations investing over $400 million since 2002 in civil society building programmes in China – state-linked organisations known as Government-Organised Non-Governmental Organisations (GONGOs)
The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) – a think tank under-represented in Trump circles – was the best-represented among signatories of a letter in August 2016 from 86 bipartisan former national security officials declaring Trump unfit for office. The CFR is “heavily interlocked” with other elite groupings, including the corporate media, e.g., several Washington Post board members are CFR members. The sheer number of senior Trump appointees from the world of international finance, especially from Goldman Sachs, mean that the likely policy effects will recalibrate international relationships rather than overturn the post-1945 order.
Despite Trump’s courting of Vladimir Putin, his appointees (including Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis and, more recently, Mike Pompeo and the now departed John Bolton) have condemned Russia, with official sanctions remaining in place.
Professor Parmar says:
The emergence, since publication of this article, of the ultra-right Charles Koch and liberal internationalist George Soros-funded Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft suggests that the underlying complaints of Trump about the liberal international order are being given serious consideration but will probably amount to a recalibration of US hegemonic strategies rather than their repudiation. Elite networks are managing US hegemony in turbulent times.
**********************************************************
[Global politics makes strange bedfellows. Mess with them and you can get F’d.]
How many more times?
Iran attack may be next in Trump’s farewell bag of tricks
December 31, 2020
No one thought President Donald Trump would leave quietly. But would he go so far as to start a military confrontation with Iran on his way out?
Recent military movements by the Pentagon in the Middle East (ostensibly to deter Iran from attacking American troops on the anniversary of the assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani), combined with Israeli media reports that Saudi Arabia and Israel are pressing Trump to bomb Iran before he leaves office, has fueled speculation that Trump may be planning his biggest — and likely most disastrous — stunt yet.
Trump has made more threats of war against Iran than any other country during his four years as President. As late as last month, he ordered the military to prepare options against Iranian nuclear facilities. Though the New York Times reported that Trump’s aides derailed those plans, U.S. troop movements in the past few weeks may suggest otherwise.
Since October, the Pentagon has deployed 2,000 additional troops as well as an extra squadron of fighter planes to Saudi Arabia. It has also sent B-52 bombers on missions in the Persian Gulf three times, kept the USS Nimitz close to Iran, and announced that it is sending a Tomahawk-firing submarine just outside of Iranian waters. Moreover, Israel — whose officials have confirmed to several U.S. newspapers that it was behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh last month — has sent a nuclear-equipped submarine to the Persian Gulf…
Even if Trump wants to do something crazy on the way out the door, then he still probably wants to do something that he can realistically hope to walk away from in one piece.