From Chris Hedges’ excellent article:
“The deep state armed ‘moderate’ rebels in Syria in an effort to topple President Bashar Assad, but when it realized it could not control the jihadists—to whom it had provide some $500 million in weapons and assistance—the deep state began to bomb them and arm Kurdish rebels to fight them. These Kurds would later be betrayed by Trump. The ‘war on terror’ spread like a plague from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya to Yemen, which after five years of war is suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. The financial cost for this misery and death is between $5 trillion and $8 trillion. The human cost runs into hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, shattered cities, towns and infrastructure and millions of refugees.
“Trump committed political heresy when he dared to point out the folly of unchecked militarism. He will pay for it. The deep state intends to replace him with someone—perhaps Mike Pence, as morally and intellectually vacuous as Trump—who will do what he or she is told. This is the role of America’s executive: Personify and humanize the empire. Do so with pomp and dignity. Barack Obama—who speciously reinterpreted the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force to give the executive the right to assassinate anyone abroad, even a U.S. citizen, deemed to be a terrorist—excelled at the game.”
* * *
However worthy Donald Trump may be of our unreserved disapprobation, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges is correct when he writes that the Orange One “committed political heresy when he dared to point out the folly of unchecked militarism” and simply won’t follow orders.
(He’s a “baaaad fascist,” as I’ve written before.)
Hedges is also correct when he writes that Barack Obama positively “excelled” at putting a palatable, civilized façade over the true face of our neo-fascist empire, smoothing the way for the neocons after Bush/Cheney had totaled and discredited their despicable agenda — only for Obama, under no public pressure whatsoever, to rescue that genocidal agenda and put WWIII back on track.
Which begs the question…
Would we rather have a personally revolting, dangerously unpredictable lunatic in the White House, a human train-wreck whose blundering vileness has ironically impeded the neo-fascist project (which is why the CIA and deep state are moving his impeachment forward)…
OR would we prefer an urbane, eloquent, careerist Democrat or Republican in the White House, a polished water-carrier for neo-fascism, like “Poppy” Bush, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama — someone who bolsters and expands America’s fascist tendencies while making them mostly invisible (if not in the many war zones our leaders have created, at least in “polite”/Good German circles, here at home)?
Whatever our personal feelings about the candidates’ respective personality issues, should we actually prefer such fascism-advancing establishmentarians to Donald Trump, an admittedly putrescent scumbag who nonetheless inadvertently impedes fascism by his very repugnance and venality?
This puzzle is so extraordinarily difficult to solve that many good liberals have simply given up and decided to reflexively champion the modern Democratic establishment, even though it exemplifies the traditional Republican agenda: neo-fascist, warmongering, election-rigging/voter-purging, journalist-hunting, society-surveilling…
Trump-era liberals, still reeling from Sec. Clinton’s loss to a reality-TV star, venerate George W. Bush, the deep state, our propagandistic intelligence agencies/media, genocidal generals (McRaven, Petraeus, McChrystal, Mattis), and serial torturers like John Brennan, James Clapper, Michael Hayden, etc.
It’s a tragedy — for those individuals, personally, but far more so, for the nation.
(At this point, Trump Derangement Syndrome has birthed a second Cold War, moved the Democratic Party to the GOP’s right, and taken a wrecking ball to what was left of journalistic integrity… save for a few heroes on the margins: Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Katie Halper, Rania Khalek, Eva Bartlett, Robert Parry, Max Blumenthal, and Aaron Mate, whose Russiagate-skeptical reporting earned him the prestigious “Izzy” award, so named for legendary American journalist, I.F. “Izzy” Stone.)
Personally, I don’t have to solve this conundrum, as I find myself incapable of voting for either the repugnant, unintentional fascism-retarder/discredit-er (the Bush/Trump type) or the smooth-talking establishmentarian who puts fascism on steroids and effaces the left (neoliberal Democrats, Clintons, Obama, etc.).
As my history of activism makes clear, I’d rather have a bona fide, anti-war progressive — like Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, or Tulsi Gabbard — in the White House, but the undemocratic oligarchy that’s usurped our republic will never allow that to come to pass… no matter how many Americans attempt to vote such a person into the Oval Office.
After 20+ years of faithfully voting for Democrats, their latest strategic moves — outflanking Trump and the overtly bigoted GOP to the right while embracing the agenda of modern Nazis (the neocons, responsible for millions of deaths since 9/11 alone) — have made it impossible for me to determine which option is truly the “lesser” of two unmitigated evils.
(How many devils can dance on the head of a pin…?)
But I’m done letting fear and personal disgust for Republicans like Trump determine my vote. I’m done voting for transparently evil/corrupt politicians. Period.
However hopeless their candidacies might be in our highly undemocratic state — with its far-right political-media establishment and broken/rigged elections — from now on I’m only voting for the candidates that give me hope, however slight, for a non-fascist future.
BERNIE/TULSI 2020!
Sorry, Clintons. Sorry, Mr. Biden. Sorry, you blood-soaked, neo-McCarthyite tools of the deep state. But you will never again get my vote (the last time I so erred was my 2008 vote for Barack Obama, before he demonstrated himself to be one of American fascism’s all-time proponents… maybe I should’ve seen it coming).