Thursday, November 19, 2015

Trump up?

After Paris, Trump became more popular. Mainstream pundits are befuddled, but they ought not be. This paragraph tells us much...
“Trump makes up for his shortcomings with his force of personality,” said one Republican strategist in New Hampshire who did not want to be identified but is not working for any of Trump’s presidential rivals. “I don’t think that, on the global stage, you beat [Russian President Vladimir] Putin by offering up your own Putin, in terms of macho charisma. It’s far more involved than that.”
"Beat Putin"...?

My god. What nonsense. Why the hell should anyone be thinking in terms of beating Putin at this stage of the game? Putin is not our enemy.

Putin did not attack innocents in Paris. ISIS did. Putin has been bombing the hell out of ISIS, while we have have spent more than year merely pretending to be against ISIS.

It's 2003 all over again: After a terror strike, the neocons think that they can transform our righteous anger into a war fever -- with America blundering into battle against someone who had no link to the terror event.

The thing is, a trick of that sort is harder to pull off the second time. In spite of a massive propaganda campaign, millions of Americans know that we are being hornswoggled. I wish I could say that a majority of America can see the truth, but most Americans are too busy thinking about the new Star Wars movie to pay attention to events in the Middle East. Nevertheless, a large number of people do understand that we are being lied to, just as we were lied to in the run up to the Iraq invasion.

Trump, like it or not, is the only candidate (Republican or Democrat) telling the truth -- hence, his bump in popularity after Paris. When he applauded Putin for attacking ISIS, did you hear a massive cry of outrage? No, you did not. Trump's logic was and is unassailable.

The enemy is not in Moscow or Damascus or Tehran. The enemy is ISIS. Russia, Iran, the Kurds, and (of course) the legitimate government of Syria are the ones who are doing actual battle against ISIS. If we want to defeat that foe, we have to befriend (at least temporarily) the enemies of our enemy.

If Syria were the only issue, I'd vote for Trump over Hillary. And you have no idea how difficult it is for me to say those words, because I have always disliked that vulgar plutocrat.

Update: On the other hand...ewwww.

7 comments:

James said...

Empire only persists through the cunning use of a divide and conquer strategy, wherein local, national, and international constituencies are artificially divided along emotionally-driven fault lines in order that they can never coalesce to develop an understanding of who their true enemy is: the ruling class.

Putin and the Russian Federation are currently waging a war against the shadow armies of the empire and as such they both need to be vilified accordingly lest the domestic populations of the United States and Europe become aware of the duplicity and malevolence inherent to their political leaders.

The empire is currently in a bind because people are becoming aware of the fact that although we've been claiming ISIS is the true threat, we're also refusing to partner with the Russians to annihilate said threat. People - even some of the more stubborn - are wondering if the "war of terror" is just an elaborate psy-ops campaign designed to separate them from their money and freedoms.

Putin is playing chess while the empire is playing checkers at this point.

James said...

It appears that Moon of Alabama is under some sort of attack right now.

joseph said...

How many Syrian refugees are in Russia?

S Brennan said...

Dunno Joseph, but they are busy with over a million refugees from the Ukraine...courtesy of US policy to overthrow elected governments with a] Terrorists, b] Not-so Neo-Nazis.

James said...

Current score is as follows:

small-j joseph - 0
S Brennan -1

Anonymous said...

Joseph, please remember that Trump and Putin share an affinity because they're both neo-fascists.

Putin is maybe the only world leader Trump praises. Trump's bond with Putin is analogous to Berlusconi's well-known friendship with Putin. All three are postmodern autocrats [that's the term I'm gonna use until I can come up w a better one].

Like you, I scorn the demonization of Putin. But it's not because Putin is better than he's portrayed. He may actually be worse, as becomes evident when you start picking apart his association with men like Dugin. It's because the demonization is hypocritical, unsophisticated and so obviously in service of a vast ulterior agenda as diabolical as any emanating from the Kremlin. In the final analysis, Russia and America closely resemble each other - ever more closely all the time.

I urge you not to succumb to the sports fan's reflex of picking sides.

-DF

S Brennan said...

Fascist? Go get yourself a dictionary.

With all that has been done by the last two presidents to bring about a police state...and all you do is is throw garbage at a populist, who for all his silly proposed laws, which have no chance of being enacted, Trump is the only guy with a ME policy that is NOT from the neocon* template, not completely insane, hence Putin's support.

BTW, I do not consider Putin's actions to be anything more than reasonable self-defense of country and assets. However, people who believe as you do WILL turn Russian into a dangerous foe, by shoving Russia into the awaiting arms of China. If anybody is an enemy of the United States, it's the people who have supported Clinton/Bush's/Obama's naked aggression toward the Russians.

I wish all these armchair warriors would study a world map and study some history, because their profound ignorance of both is killing this country.

*The nation's true fascist organinzation