Not Without Incident: Questioning Big Brother's Platitudes

The prosecution, or in more fitting terms, the persecution, of Trump is obvious and he has already started using it as fodder for his 2024 campaign. One of his most powerful messages is once again resonant, that the establishment and the permanent regime are not after him, they are after those who would dare vote for him, and he is in the way. His opposition is again making the mistake of going so far in their resistance to him, that they give him legitimacy in his attacks on the corporate media and the establishment. World leaders elsewhere have spoken out against the indictment of Trump, like the presidents of El Salvador and Mexico. Such persecution is the behavior of the countries we in the West criticize and claim to be a complete contrast of. It is, in the words of Trump in his immediate response to his indictment, the actions of a third world country.

“This very prospect—the likelihood of any departure from the Washington rules reducing the privileges that Washington has long enjoyed—helps explain the tenacity of those intent on preserving the status quo. If change is to come, it must come from the people. Yet unless Americans finally awaken to the fact that they’ve been had, Washington will continue to have its way.”[i]– Andrew J. Bacevich

“If not a man of the people in his billions, he is in his bluster and boorishness, his impulsive, opinionated, uninformed, and insulting style, his indifference to facts, to evidence, even to consistency. These qualities constitute his lack of qualifications for the presidency, but are what made him Everyman – they were not irrelevant but crucial to his appeal.”[ii]– Wendy Brown

“No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence,”[iii] – Nancy Pelosi

George McGovern. Denis Kucinich. Ralph Nader. Bernie Sanders. Tulsi Gabbard. Edward Snowden. Julian Assange. Daniel Hale. Daniel Ellsberg. Chelsea Manning. John Kiriakou. Marianne Williamson. Ron Paul. Pat Buchanan. Donald Trump. All insurgent candidates or whistleblowers. All crossed the establishment. All paid or are paying the price for doing so, and the cost is immense not only for the individuals themselves, but for those who support them or who benefit from what they revealed.

Trump is the latest target of the Washington establishment, the shadow government, the deep state, the permanent regime, or in his words, the swamp. Although he went along with their agenda for the most part, his uncouth nature and habit of blurting out what is meant to remain secret, like the US troops in Syria have secured the oil, or that there is such thing as a deep state or military-industrial complex, make him an embarrassment.[iv] For this reason, he must be barred from holding the presidency again.

Trump failed in draining the swamp, but he certainly illuminated its depths and depravity. Trump is a rogue actor. He cannot be controlled by his advisers or the guardians of the permanent regime. Trump is not a target for reasons given by outlets like Politico or by thinktanks like the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), who lament his blatant disregard for human rights and multilateral institutions. These same outlets turn a blind eye to human rights violations everyday by the Biden administration and the permanent regime, who they are not only more friendly with, but with whom they have a shared ideology, Western/American exceptionalism.

The permanent regime sanctions extrajudicial killings by drone and bombings in multiple countries, like Somalia and Pakistan. They justify the construction of more and more military bases to deter China and Russia. They exploit inflated threats from China to justify expanding the already bloated security state even more, recently working to ban Tik Tok and to give the state unilateral authority to ban any app deemed a national security threat. They facilitate insurgencies and coups all over the globe still, most recently in Venezuela and Syria. They impose a sanctions regime that strangles ‘rogue states’ into complying with the West, like North Korea and Iran, and they are currently occupying a third of Syria, specifically where oil reserves are located, and this oil is being pilfered by the US.[v] The Biden administration is hardening the already harsh stance towards China begun under the Trump administration. The explicit goal of the US now is to ensure that China is kept lagging technologically and militarily, while the US encircles them with military bases and armadas.

Trump continued much of the US foreign policy put into place by the permanent regime, however, he differed in his style and inability to keep secret what must be kept secret so as not to undermine the legitimacy of the permanent regime. He rendered them uncredible and that is why he must be taken out, as he is a poor manager of empire. He did not respect the sanctity of the imperial presidency, nor its guardian institutions, like the CIA and the FBI. They in turn did not respect him, and they worked overtime to sabotage his presidency. His advisers and officials in the Pentagon and State Department subverted his, and by extension the American people’s, will, and troops were kept in Syria despite his policy to withdraw them, relations with Russia were worsened due to the toxicity of the Russiagate hoax and Trump’s desperate efforts to prove he was not an agent of the Kremlin, and at the end of his presidency, Mark Milley, a top military official, bypassed Trump, the elected leader, and called his Chinese counterpart to tell him that Trump was mentally deteriorated, and that he would ensure that no rash attack was carried out.[vi]

From his first day in office, Trump’s mental fitness was called into question. Bandy X Lee et. al. wrote a book arguing that Trump was a dangerous figure to have in The White House, and one essay calls for a commission to investigate his mental state.[vii] These efforts are driven not by an interest in preserving human rights or the rule of law. They are driven by anger and revenge for what Trump did when he was elected. What he did was take the presidency from its rightful owners, the permanent regime, and one of its main proponents and enablers, Hillary Clinton, was robbed of her birthright. Trump then proceeded to debase and arson the sacred office of president.

Many of those in favor of Trump being indicted and convicted mock the main arguments against it, like that it will set a precedent for the indictment of former presidents and government officials. What these people will evoke is the rule of law. Jon Stewart did this in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, in which he responded to Zakaria arguing that his indictment could make him a martyr by saying that the rule of law “should always take into account someone’s popularity.”, and he later said that “we either have the rule of law or we have no rule of law,”[viii] I’d venture to guess that Stewart is unserious about his claims to desire that the powerful be held accountable, as any crimes that Trump is guilty of, other politicians like the Clintons, the Bidens, and the Bush’s are guilty of as well, to an even larger degree, and there is no rush to indict them. Prosecuting Trump is not about justice of the rule of law. It is about erasing dissent from the US regime. Trump is being made into an example, just as Nader and Sanders were.

The rule of law has never mattered in the US, or the world. Just like international law is flimsy at best and is exploited and abused at worst, law in the US is a political weapon wielded by the establishment to target dissenters, whether its alleged communists during the McCarthy era, or antiwar protestors during the Vietnam War. What took Nixon down was Watergate, not his myriad other crimes and atrocities which were much worse in scale, like his overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, which Henry Kissinger is party to and should be prosecuted for as well, or his continued bombing of Northern Vietnam after he said they ceased the operation, and the campaign extended into Cambodia and Loas, which arguably destabilized the region and allowed for the rise of the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot in Cambodia, that led to senseless slaughter and horrors. Just as Watergate is the least of Nixon’s crimes, this hush money payment to Stormy Daniels is the least of Trump’s crimes. He is not being prosecuted for acts like trying to facilitate the overthrow of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, the duly elected leader, or ripping up the Iran Nuclear Deal and choking Iran with sanctions, or for ramping up the already accelerated drone program even further. This is because these were less acts by Trump and more acts by the permanent regime. Many in his cabinet were its representatives, like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.

The crimes of Trump are miniscule when compared to the crimes of Bush and Cheney, who instituted a torture regime to cover up their lies told to push the US into invading Iraq as well as the invasion and subsequent occupation, or the crimes of Obama, who prosecuted whistle-blowers at record rates and had a kill list of targets for drone strikes, or the crimes of the Clintons, who together exploded the prison population in the US by astronomical amounts via the 1994 Crime Bill, and who also implemented policies that led to the crash of 2007-8, like the ridding of the Glass Steagall Act in 1998.[ix]

If the rule of law and justice were at the forefront of the prosecution of Trump, then it would be justified, but they are not. This is a political persecution being carried out at the behest of the permanent regime in Washington, who are terrified of the possibility of Trump winning back the presidency. They will do anything to ensure he does not. In the words of former FBI agent Peter Strzok, in response to Lisa Page, who worked with Robert Mueller’s staff, on whether Trump could ever become president: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”[x]

Trump’s Real Crime, Debasing the Imperial Presidency

“But look abroad. Trump threatened the entire system of US global hegemony. He threatened it for different reasons and in different ways than might grassroots, socialist, anti-imperialists, but he threatened US empire nonetheless.”[xi]– Christian Parenti

The travesty and chaos of Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1998 marked for some scholars the end of the imperial presidency, a once vaunted position, imbued with obscene powers in war making and secrecy, and under Clinton it was tainted by a bombastic sex scandal. Clinton left office in 2001 extremely popular despite this impeachment and the media chaos that surrounded it. Like Watergate is the least of Nixon’s crimes, the Monica Lewinsky scandal and Clinton’s lying under oath is the least of his crimes. Arthur M. Schlesinger is one scholar who speculated that the age of the imperial presidency was over, and yet, after the first term of the Bush presidency, its imperial status was revitalized.[xii] In a 2004 introduction to his book on the imperial presidency, published in 1973 and largely a discussion of the immense war powers waged by the Nixon administration in relation to the Vietnam War, Schlesinger writes that “Once again, international crisis has resurrected the Imperial Presidency.”[xiii] The international crisis that he refers to is 9/11 and the global war on terror that continues to this day. Schlesinger remained hopeful that the imperial presidency would be scaled back and once again restrained by the guardrails built into the constitution, and he writes “So the Imperial Presidency redux is likely to continue messing things up, as we are doing so successfully in Iraq, the needless war. Then democracy’s singular virtue—its capacity for self-correction—will one day swing into action.”[xiv] The capacity for self-correction is stifled by internet censorship and a foreign policy community that is isolated from the people. Thinkers move from thinktanks to administrations, and they also speak on news panels and conferences on US foreign policy.

The capacity for self-correction may swing into action at a domestic level, but the power of the permanent regime in overseeing a destructive foreign policy is upheld by nameless, faceless people who are unelected and unaccountable to the American people. The singular democratic virtue Schlesinger refers to is at this point so corroded that relationship between citizen and the state, led by the imperial presidency, who functions as puppets for the permanent regime, is distorted and is more akin to a feudal relationship. I wish I could share in Schlesinger’s optimism, but he was writing in 2004, amid the catastrophic invasion of Iraq and the ongoing war in Afghanistan, and the torture regime put in place to cover up for the lies told to get into Iraq was yet to be uncovered. Obama, through plunging the US into more wars and giving the executive obscene spying powers and authority to order extrajudicial killings, consolidated the imperial presidency. Trump continued this as well. If anything, he reveled in the devotion some people had for the president. Even people who hate Trump partly despised him for how he debased the office of president, as for them it was a position to be revered and it was the most powerful position in the world. However, as I explained earlier, those with ultimate authority in US foreign policy are the permanent regime, which consists of the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and private defense contractors as well as defense companies, who fund thinktanks and government officials to keep wars going. The immorality of such a system far outweighs the immorality of Trump, which is itself monstrous. Thus, the immorality of people like Obama, Biden, the Clintons, and Bush, who not only championed the actions of the permanent regime but expanded its power and the power of the imperial presidency, is far greater than that of Trump.

Those who regard Trump with disgust and nausea, especially people who justify US empire and all its folly and atrocities, are the most intolerable. This extends to the country, as to act as if before Trump was elected, the US behaved morally in its foreign policy is tragically comical. His dumping out of the Human Rights Council and the Paris Climate Accords were met with shock and horror, and yet, since when did the US care about human rights, or climate change? Obama may have signed the Paris Climate Accord, but he also opened the Arctic for oil drilling twice.[xv]

Under Trump a desire to go back to the grand old days of Obama and even Bush was commonplace among media pundits and politicians who were part of the so-called resistance against Trump. This reveals that many see America, and the West, as innocent pre-Trump, and other populist movements, as if it wasn’t for this pesky populism, we would be morally upright international actors. This makes not only the people who justify US empire before Trump as benevolent intolerable, but the nation, as embodied in Biden’s 2020 campaign where he argued that he was fighting for the soul of America, not for renewal or restoration of those harmed by globalization domestically and by war making abroad, but for an attempted renewal of the status quo, empire, intolerable. As Reinold Niebuhr points out, “Nations, as individuals, who are completely innocent in their own esteem, are insufferable in their human contacts.”[xvi] That America under the Biden administration is insufferable is proven in Africa, Latin America, and now the Middle East turning away from the US in favor of China and Russia.[xvii] In response to attacks that the US has spent decades meddling in the affairs of these regions, America’s only concern seems to be countering Russia and China. Still, the US and the West believes it is an innocent and totally benign actor.

The crusade against Trump, who in their minds represents an evil akin to Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, is righteous and that they are totally innocent- this is a pure falsity. As Chris Hedges notes, the Trump problem, for the ruling class, is the same as the Nixon problem when he was impeached for the Watergate scandal, and he writes, “As was the case with Nixon, the most serious charges Trump may face involve his attack on the foundations of the two-party duopoly, especially undermining the peaceable transfer of power from one branch of the duopoly to the other.”[xviii] He later notes that his much bigger crimes were carried out in the name of the US led liberal world order, thus these are beyond prosecution and are not even considered crimes, as the imperial presidency requires unconstitutional and criminal powers to operate and to justify the actions of the permanent regime it serves as a front for.[xix]

It is true that for a long time, especially since Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon, that the president has become a monarchical position, where they are above the law and granted privileges that no other citizen has, like access to secret service agents. Indicting Trump could set a precedent for other former president and officials to be prosecuted. Despite mockery from Stewart, this precedent is not justice being carried out against elites, it is a persecution of a former and potentially future president who exposed the machinations of the permanent regime. This same persecutory force that is trying to erase Trump from American politics is trying to extradite and imprison Assange, it drove Snowden into exile, and if we are not careful, a populist figure who goes against the permanent regime in anyway, whether its ending endless wars or getting money out of politics, will be taken out in the same way. They did it to Nader and Sanders already. In the words of Malcom X, “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”[xx]

Conclusion

“This might, however, be a futile enterprise. Tolstoy said that all families are unhappy but each of them is unhappy in its own way. The same thing might be said of the end of empires. All empires end, but each exits in its own distinct unhappy fashion.”[xxi]– Walden Bello

The indictment of Trump by Alvin Bragg in New York is intended to erase a political insurgency which poses a threat to the permanent regime in Washington. This regime is populated by both Democrats and Republicans and is defined by the ideology of neoliberal globalism.

The indictment is also the first step in removing an embarrassment to US empire. Such a flimsy case would not be brought against anyone but Trump. His indictment, while the likes of Bush, Cheney, Obama, and the Clinton’s walk free and are celebrated is shameful. These individuals, who are guilty of far more criminality and atrocities, are celebrated in society and are given prestigious positions. Hillary Clinton is teaching a course on foreign policy decision making at Columbia University.[xxii] Obama is doing a speaking tour and he’ll be coming here to Australia to give a speech on leadership.[xxiii] These people are still taken seriously and are admired by large swathes of the public worldwide.

In the wake of Trump, Bush and others who were once reviled have had their images rehabilitated. There is a desire to return to the days of bipartisanship and camaraderie in Washington. There is endless talk of how American politics will recover in the ‘post-Trump era’. Is there such a thing? Will there ever be a post-Trump era? Was there ever a Trump era? As Andrew Bacevich argues, there is no age of Trump, and he is not the problem in American politics nor is he to have any lasting impact on US policy, domestic and foreign. Although he wrote this in 2017, the crux of his argument, that Trump is not the prime mover in the issues plaguing the US, still stands. Bacevich writes that “Melodramatic references to an “Age of Trump” that suddenly commenced in November 2016 obscure this reality. Simply put, our collective fixation on the person and foibles of Trump the individual causes us to overlook what is actually going on. And what is actually going on is something that Donald Trump hasn’t, won’t, and can’t affect.”[xxiv] Still, we continue to overlook what is going on, and it is to our detriment.

The notion that there is a definable Trump era, or a period in American history that is defined by Trump, is inaccurate. His presidency is a fact of our own collective making. It is reflective of a refusal to engage with the broken system that allowed for his rise to power. The same system or permanent regime that was exposed by his election and his time in office is lashing out not just at Trump, but at his supporters and anyone who would dare challenge the establishment. Trump is a symptom of much larger issues. His indictment has implications that go far beyond his predicament. It is election interference in the 2024 election at the highest order. Beyond the next presidential election, it is a campaign to ensure that further political insurgencies are silenced and made to comply with the two-party duopoly. If anything, this era is more accurately the era of political insurgency, as there are similar movements across the West, like in Britain in the form of Brexit, Italy in the form of Meloni, and Hungary in the form of Orban. It is far from over.

In the US, Trump is still the primary political insurgent. The threat that he poses to the permanent regime is still so alarming that they will do anything to prevent his reelection. Before people who despise Trump cheer this move by Bragg, they should consider how his persecution hinders any anti-establishment ideas or goals they may have or are actively fighting to implement.

The prosecution, or in more fitting terms, the persecution, of Trump is obvious and he has already started using it as fodder for his 2024 campaign. One of his most powerful messages is once again resonant, that the establishment and the permanent regime are not after him, they are after those who would dare vote for him, and he is in the way. His opposition is again making the mistake of going so far in their resistance to him, that they give him legitimacy in his attacks on the corporate media and the establishment. World leaders elsewhere have spoken out against the indictment of Trump, like the presidents of El Salvador and Mexico. Such persecution is the behavior of the countries we in the West criticize and claim to be a complete contrast of. It is, in the words of Trump in his immediate response to his indictment, the actions of a third world country.

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[i] Bacevich, Andrew J. Twilight of the American Century. University of Notre Dame Pess, 2018.

[ii] Brown, Wendy. “Apocalyptic Populism.” http://www.eurozine.com, August 30, 2017. https://www.eurozine.com/apocalyptic-populism/.

[iii] Christenson, Josh. “Ex-FBI Head James Comey Calls Trump Indictment ‘a Good Day.’” The New York Post, March 31, 2023. https://nypost.com/2023/03/31/ex-fbi-head-james-comey-calls-trump-indictment-a-good-day/.

[iv] Finnegan, Conor. “‘We’re Keeping the Oil’ in Syria, Trump Says, but It’s Considered a War Crime.” ABC News, October 29, 2019. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/keeping-oil-syria-trump-considered-war-crime/story?id=66589757#:~:text=%22We.

[v] Tuccille, J. D. “The RESTRICT Act Would Restrict a Lot More than TikTok.” Reason.com, March 31, 2023. https://reason.com/2023/03/31/the-restrict-act-would-restrict-a-lot-more-than-tiktok/., and IANS. “US Forces Steal 92 Tankers of Oil, Wheat from Syria to Iraq – et EnergyWorld.” ETEnergyworld.com, October 18, 2022. https://energy.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/oil-and-gas/us-forces-steal-92-tankers-of-oil-wheat-from-syria-to-iraq/94929199#:~:text=The%20Syrian%20Oil%20Ministry%20said.

[vi] Seligman, Lara. “How the Iran Hawks Botched Trump’s Syria Withdrawal.” Foreign Policy, October 30, 2019. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/30/iran-hawks-botched-trump-syria-policy-james-jeffrey-turkey/., and Wilkie, Christina. “Top General Milley Reassured China, Others in Secret Calls as Trump Pushed Election Lies, Spokesman Says.” CNBC, September 15, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/15/milley-held-secret-calls-with-china-others-as-trump-pushed-election-lies.html.

[vii] Lee, Bandy X. The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President: Updated and Expanded with New Essays. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, an Imprint of St. Martin’s Press, 2019.

[viii] Getahun, Hannah. “Jon Stewart Sarcastically Says ‘What’s Happened to Our Country’ after Being Asked about a Potential Trump Indictment: ‘It’s as Though You Can’t Even Commit Financial Fraud Anymore.’” Business Insider, March 27, 2023. https://www.businessinsider.com/jon-stewart-potential-trump-indictment-fareed-zakaria-2023-3.

[ix] Currier, Cora. “The Kill Chain: The Lethal Bureaucracy behind Obama’s Drone War.” The Intercept, October 15, 2015. https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-kill-chain/., Human Rights Watch. “Getting Away with Torture | the Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees.” Human Rights Watch, August 31, 2017. https://www.hrw.org/report/2011/07/12/getting-away-torture/bush-administration-and-mistreatment-detainees., Ofer, Udi. “How the 1994 Crime Bill Fed the Mass Incarceration Crisis.” American Civil Liberties Union, June 4, 2019. https://www.aclu.org/news/smart-justice/how-1994-crime-bill-fed-mass-incarceration-crisis., and Turbeville, Wallace C. “Owning the Consequences: Clinton and the Repeal of Glass-Steagall.” Demos, September 11, 2015. https://www.demos.org/blog/owning-consequences-clinton-and-repeal-glass-steagall.

[x] Higgins, Tucker. “FBI Agent’s Text Disclosed by Justice Watchdog: ‘We’ll Stop’ Trump from Becoming President.” CNBC, June 14, 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/14/fbi-agents-text-reportedly-disclosed-by-justice-watchdog-well-stop-trump-from-becoming-president.html.

[xi] Parenti, Christian. “Trump against Empire: Is That Why They Hate Him?” The Grayzone, February 16, 2023. https://thegrayzone.com/2023/02/15/trump-empire-they-hated-him/.

[xii] Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Imperial Presidency. 1973. Reprint, Mariner Books, 2004.

[xiii] Schlesinger. The Imperial Presidency.

[xiv] Schlesinger. The Imperial Presidency.

[xv] Liptak, Kevin. “Obama Administration Approves Arctic Drilling | CNN Politics.” CNN, May 11, 2015. https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/11/politics/obama-approves-arctic-drilling/index.html.

[xvi] Niebuhr, Reinhold. The Irony of American History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

[xvii] Republic World. “US ‘Killed Our Leaders’ and Now Teaching Us about Democracy: Zambian Opposition Leader.” Republic World, April 1, 2023. https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/africa/us-killed-our-leaders-and-now-teaching-us-about-democracy-zambian-opposition-leader-articleshow.html.

[xviii] Hedges, Chris. “The Donald Trump Problem.” scheerpost.com, March 27, 2023. https://scheerpost.com/2023/03/26/chris-hedges-the-donald-trump-problem/.

[xix] Hedges. “The Donald Trump Problem.”

[xx] X, Malcolm, and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. 1965. Reprint, New York: Ballantine Books, 2015. https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/malcom-x.pdf.

[xxi] Bello, Walden. “Bin Laden and Trump: Two Bookends to America’s Imperial Decline – FPIF.” Foreign Policy In Focus, January 12, 2022. https://fpif.org/bin-laden-and-trump-two-bookends-to-americas-imperial-decline/.

[xxii] Roberts, Georgett, and Isabel Keane. “Hillary Clinton Promo for Columbia Univ Foreign Policy Course Scorned Online.” The New York Post, March 23, 2023. https://nypost.com/2023/03/23/hillary-clinton-promo-for-columbia-univ-foreign-policy-course-scorned-online/.

[xxiii] Vidler, Adam, and Mikala Theocharous. “Major Payday for Obama for Australian Speaking Gigs.” http://www.9news.com.au, March 28, 2023. https://www.9news.com.au/national/barack-obama-michelle-obama-sydney-speaking-tour-begins/5ad10ab0-74e8-4c7f-8874-719da99fd386.

[xxiv] Bacevich. Twilight of the American Century.

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