NEW YORK – It’s been a treat watching the arrogant, Masters of the Universe Republicans wring their hands and ululate over the terror that is Donald Trump.
Most of my serious Republican friends don’t know what to do: they yearn to be close to power, but fear backing Trump will make them pariahs at their local golf club. So they are still hiding in the closet.
‘I am Shiva, destroyer of worlds!’ That’s Trump’s message to America’s oligarchs. And scared they should be because of even a modest Trump revolution would threatens their corrupt, stultified political system and their wallets.
As a former conservative Republican who has watched his lifelong party become a vehicle for special interests and religious fundamentalists, I say ‘blow it to smithereens.’ Build a new party that represents America’s 99%, not the gilded 1%.
I’m sick of reading the New York Times sneer at ‘uneducated white male workers who support Trump.’ What about all the welfare recipients who are the core of Hilary Clinton’s supporters?
Trump is an American Mussolini who vows to make the trains run on time. But at a deeper level, he threatens three of the nation’s most sacred cows: 1. imperial war-making, the American Empire, and the military industrial complex; 2. the vast power of Wall Street and its shameful tax breaks; 3. the Israel lobby and its undue influence over US foreign policy.
No wonder his candidacy has produced so much fierce opposition and cries of anguish. Trump is remarkably brave, or incredibly foolish, to gore all these sacred cows at the same time.
Still, Trump is answering a deep current in American politics, dating from the Founding Fathers, that wants to avoid foreign entanglements and wars. Foes call this isolationism. In the Trump view, the US has drained its resources and mental energy waging wars abroad that have brought it no benefit at all except a rickety empire.
In 2015, US warplanes dropped 23,144 heavy bombs on six Muslim nations. US forces are now fighting in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and West Africa. Do we really wonder why so many furious Muslims want revenge against the west? Trump has yet to understand this.
But Trump is right when he says no more foreign wars. Equally important, it’s time to begin dismantling the US Empire which is precisely what invites attacks we call ‘terrorism.’
Today, NATO does not defend the US or Europe. It is a control mechanism that keeps Europe under American strategic domination. It should have been ditched when the Soviet Union collapsed. Instead, we see the Washington neocons who control the Obama administration’s policy planning to send a full US armored brigade to Russia’s western border, and intensifying air and naval patrols there. Madness, and likely stepping stones to a new war.
Candidate Trump advocates grown-up dialogue and cooperation with Russia and an end to Hillary Clintons’ crass war-mongering and hate Putin campaign.
Trump’s call for ‘even-handed’ US policy in the Mideast was greeted with fury and horror by Israel’s partisans who are now asking Washington for $4.2 billion in annual military aid.
But Trump’s daring effort to forge peace in the Mideast has run head-on into the mighty US Israel lobby which helped orchestrate a ferocious anti-Trump media campaign.
Now, it appears Trump has met his match. Pro-Israel billionaire Sheldon Adelson has just made peace with Trump and announced he will support the Republican candidate. This sends an important message out to Israel’s supporters to lay off the Donald. In return, Trump just announced he actually favors more Israeli settlements on the Occupied West Bank.
Meanwhile, the slighted Republican establishment is still sulking and won’t endorse Trump – yet. Its leaders are right when the say Trump must change his speech regarding Mexicans and Muslims. But they don’t really care about either.
