“The Kurds fought with us, but were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so. They have been fighting Turkey for decades. I held off this fight for almost 3 years, but it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home.”If he really wanted to wreak revenge on the Democratic Party/CIA Partnership which is seeking his ouster, he would go far beyond embracing all the insanity ascribed to him and begin to attack his enemies from the left. He might go into full bonkers mode and even start talking up Medicare For All. He'd advance from channeling Tulsi to channeling Bernie Sanders.
Not that he would really mean it, of course. His idea of single payer health care would be probably be Medicare For All Whites Who Are Rich Enough To Pay For It. He rarely means anything he says, anyway. Even his Syria troop withdrawal is, at the moment, just the latest in a long series of whimsical threats and diversionary tactics to get the neocons and the liberal hawks riled up as he simply adjusts the territory and the bombing. But channeling Tulsi in his tweets no doubt appeals to his base in those areas of the country which have seen a disproportionate number of their sons and daughters killed and maimed in the forever wars, and whose voters therefore picked Trump over the hawkish Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The Syria troop withdrawal is also a way for Trump to deflect attention from his impeachment and Ukraine-gate woes, to give his opponents a new reason to hate him while also gaining him some support from what is still left of the peace movement - which, incidentally, rightly criticizes Barack Obama's own role in creating ISIS by arming Syrian terrorist groups. As reported by AntiWar.Com:
The Syrian Civil War is one of the worst tragedies of the 21st century. Over 500,000 people have been killed. The Obama administration knowingly armed Al Qaeda affiliated opposition groups at the beginning of the war. A declassified document from the Department of Defense dated August 12th 2012 said, "The Salafist, The Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI (al-Qaeda in Iraq) are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria." The document also said, "AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media."
Continuing the war in Syria has become a bipartisan effort. Any politicians who make efforts to end our involvement in the war come under enormous criticism. Congresswoman and 2020 presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard took a trip to Syria in 2017 and had an unexpected meeting with Assad. Now whenever faced by liberals who don’t like her, Gabbard gets called an "Assad Apologist" no matter what the issue is. Even after the most recent debates when Gabbard went after Senator Kamala Harris over her record as a prosecutor, Harris responded in an interview after and said, "I think that this coming from someone who has been an apologist for an individual, Assad…I can only take what she says and her opinion so seriously."There is no way, meanwhile, fake peacenick or not, that Trump would ever reverse his xenophobic immigration policies. As a matter of fact, his fascistic administration has just issued a new directive requiring all immigrants to either have private health coverage or prove their independent financial wherewithal to pay for their care out-of-pocket. I guess that lets out the Kurds, whom Trump is leaving high and dry at the Syria-Turkey border, from ever entering the US as refugees.
Still, if Trump could only begin to nudge his autocratic mindset just a wee bit more in the Huey Long direction instead of simply doubling and tripling down on the tyrannical regression, his approval ratings might just start to pick back up.
Because seeing as how his bowing to elite pressure and intensifying economic sanctions against his alleged puppet-master in Russia and then even scrapping the Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear arms accord did not in the least placate the Cold War 2.0 warriors who want to see him gone, what more does Trump have to lose at this point?
Many Trump voters already support Medicare For All. These are among the same voters who have been successfully indoctrinated by the ruling elites into scapegoating immigrants as the enemies who are stealing all those jobs. As much as they claim to hate "socialism" and Big Government, Trump voters live in the reality-based world in which you can still go bankrupt even if you're insured. You can still lose your health care if your job disappears or if your employer decides he can no longer afford to pay the premiums. Regardless of political ideology, people in ever greater numbers are struggling to pay the bills.
So if he wasn't such a very stable moron, Trump would move to the left, at least rhetorically. It certainly worked to his advantage during the GOP primaries, when everybody applauded his hilariously insulting take-downs of anointed front-runner Jeb Bush, forced to defend his brother George's illegal invasion and occupation and destruction of Iraq.
The liberal interventionists now raising such a ruckus over his latest threat to end a war are the very same elites who, while giving Trump even more Pentagon funding than he asked for, vow to defend the predatory Affordable Care Act to the death. Think of their anguish if Trump starts gaslighting them and opposing the ACA by calling for its replacement with a true single payer system akin to the coverage enjoyed by service members and veterans and Congress. The centrists would themselves go nuts if forced to futilely do battle against such a multi-pronged daily onslaught of craziness. It would be a real hoot to watch as the US Imperium collapses around the whole sorry lot of them, in any case.
So who knows? If any more of his GOP cohort start throwing him under the bus regarding Ukraine-gate and his Syria policy, Trump could always spitefully quit the party in a huff and become an Independent, if not the registered Democrat that he was for most of his life.
There may come a point where Trump has nothing left to lose.
Now that Trump is so embattled from all sides, perhaps now would be a good time for Bernie Sanders to renew the "M4A" challenge he issued to the president two years ago:
“Ideally, where we should be going is to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all people as a right,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “That’s why I’m going to introduce a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program.”
Sanders said he would reach out to President Donald Trump and urge him to back this and other effective measures to improve health-care coverage, starting with pending legislation of limiting drug prices.
“President Trump, come on board,” Sanders said on CNN. “Let’s work together. Let’s end the absurdity of Americans paying by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.”
Support for such a “socialist” intervention seems to be growing. The Pew Research Center found in January that 60% of Americans surveyed believe the government should be responsible for ensuring health coverage for all.That was two years ago. Support for single payer across the political spectrum is now at least 70 percent, despite the best propaganda efforts of the corporate-sponsored news media and the health insurance lobby. They emphasize the tax increase bogeyman without informing the audience that any increased taxes for M4A would still be about half what people are now paying in premiums and deductibles.
In other words, say as a hypothetical that you currently pay $20,000 (including the premium, a high annual deductible and co-pays) for a private insurance policy. That expenditure would stop. You might end up paying $10,000 in additional taxes depending upon your bracket and deductions, but that still leaves you in possession of the $10,000 previously sucked up by Blue Cross or United Health. This extra ten grand will not only make your life better, it will help the economy at large. No more shopping around on an online insurance marketplace every single year. No more worries about your employer dropping your coverage.
The powers-that-be don't particularly want your lives to be better. That would be an insult to capitalism itself, whose ultimate aim is to sicken all but the very rich.
Unstable and malignant system that it is, capitalism will eventually kill even the oligarchs, some of whom seem to think they can escape to Outer Space one day to save themselves.
Trump is certainly not the only moron in the mix.
3 comments:
You must admit there is more openness in government since Trump took over. Shady characters from the NSA, State Department and WH are being outed daily. As for the CIA, they are everywhere. They usually prefer to act in the dark but those days are over, thanks to spies, snitches and whistleblowers gone feral against each and all.
Trump set an example with his appointments to cabinet posts. Those new bosses make clear where his and their sympathies lie, at least for the moment, based on his twitter-du-jour. Obama's appointments did as much damage, or more, but the NY Times never thought to peek behind the curtain.
The spy on spy game is all over the front page now. What more do you want for openness? What the MSM still tries to hide, the Lefty blog rolls are happy to reveal. No one can keep up; the pit of secrecy and corruption is bottomless, the web's points of light are infinite.
It’s clear by now that Trump and the Republican Party are not a good fit. Sad, sad, but it's an opening reformers should exploit. Accept that Trump is not an organizer or a party man. That's all to the good. As his staff keeps finding out, he intends to go it alone and in all directions. Forget platforms; Trump operates more as a whimsical autocrat demanding personal fealty. Under his rule the good, the bad and the ugly will remain off balance.
And yet, we need parties so that the voters, those simpletons, can vote under the illusion that they count. In that case, Trump would probably be more comfortable in a party he establishes in his own likeness. Let’s call it The Trump Party (TTP) until he decides on a better name. For a mascot, no elephant or donkey. How about a cougar (no pussy that) pacing over block letters of Trump’s name in gold for banners and lapel pins.
Instead of “Heil Trump!” let the party greeting be a long cougar growl. Go ahead growl; you’ll find it assertive but relaxing. No brown shirts; just long, wide, unicolor ties (can be wrapped around the waist if you’re a woman or a male who lacks a dress shirt) will do to separate the cougars from the elephants and donkeys.
The reason why the Greens never rose in the polls was because they couldn't make up their minds about the all-important mascot. They did narrow it down to turtle, frog, bee and sunflower but were unable to decide. Whimps.
Yesterday, following Karen’s previous post, Mark reviewed the ups and downs of the Whigs. If Bernie asks Trump real nice to join M4A and Trump’s instincts tell him to go for it, more of us might cross over to the Republicans, just as Henry Moon Pie suggests, but for other reasons. And, if Trump picks Tulsi as his next V-P, that act alone would shake loose a landslide of party switches.
The lesson I gather from the Whig history is that every once in a while the US needs a big reshuffle of class interests into new or reconstituted parties. Are we about to witness another big shake out of the big parties? Let the exchange of unhappy, hopeful and irrelevant voters begin.
GRRRRRRROOOOOOOOWWWWWLLLL!
"If he really wanted to wreak revenge on the Democratic Party/CIA Partnership which is seeking his ouster, he would go far beyond embracing all the insanity ascribed to him and begin to attack his enemies from the left."
It would not be difficult to get to the left of the Democratic Party establishment, and its establishment supporters like the NYT.
The Democrats desperately need the Republicans to be far out in the right wing fringe, as cover for the Democratic Party's own betrayal of its own base. So far, they've had that, despite Trump's campaign talk sometimes to the contrary. But that talk is why Trump was the candidate, and not any of the stage full of right wing loons.
Somebody, not Trump, for one of the parties is going to win it all by offering the reality. Maybe not this time, but it is coming. Voters do respond, even when Trump says it. The opportunity is so obvious it must terrify the donor-driven politics of both parties.
Tonight the NYT sides with John Bolton. It is titled, "John Bolton Tried to Unseat a Dictator. He Failed."
That is in favor of regime change in Venezuela.
We were just saying about the Democrats being pretty right wing themselves.
Post a Comment