John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY HUNTER DERENSIS IN ZEROHEDGE
“The Coming Bankruptcy Of The American Empire
“Better to bring the troops home on our terms than wait for a debt crisis to do it for us...”
Good statement of some elementary truths.
However, politics is not about truths or facts or laws or science.
And it is even less the case with the kind of greedy forces who drive America’s world empire.
The situation is ruinous, but then how many times in history have nations looked at potentially ruinous circumstances and ignored them? More times than not, I think.
Empire has always ultimately been a losing proposition, as many brilliant observers have noted, including Adam Smith and David Hume.
And the people who run and support and profit by empire have a different set of interests than the population in general has.
There is very much a fundamental dichotomy in America between the power establishment and the bulk of the nation’s population.
I think many ordinary Americans understand this truth but in some vague and undefined way. That is why they voted for Trump.
But it was a big mistake.
Trump is working extremely hard to ingratiate himself with the establishment, trying within the serious limits of his abilities, to deliver what they want and more, in return for his ability to run again and be heavily supported with campaign funds in 2020. We see this everywhere from conflict with Russia and China to what he does in the Mideast and his treatment of international organizations.
And I think the establishment is willing to go along with him so long as they get what they want.
In a very real sense, because of his fears of their attacking him, he has become an outsized cartoon version of their interests, the very opposite to what his followers believe. It is a very strange and unstable situation.
He keeps his followers happy now largely through rhetoric about migrants, refugees, and "invasions," but that too represents something unstable. It is talk which goes nowhere, except to some very dark places as we saw in the 1930s.
Readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwordsincomments.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/john-chuckman-comment-empire-corrupts-all-the-principles-of-economics-as-well-as-principles-of-ethics-and-good-government-there-is-nothing-good-to-say-about-empire-and-the-american-one-is-no-excep/
