John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“Trump's State of the Union: Good Content, Bad Optics”
"As for Trump himself, I think Trump was, and still is, sincere."
Sincere? Sincere about what?
It is actually troubling that anyone sees sincerity in this man of rash statements, contradictory acts, consistent name-calling, little genuine understanding, and who makes war while talking peace.
Truly a regrettable performance here by an author regarded as a critic of Washington's establishment.
The speech was one long string of American clichés and braggadocio, starting with his historically ignorant words about D-Day. While those relatively few 60 thousand American troops waded ashore with another 15 thousand dropped from the air, literally millions were engaged in total war on the Eastern Front, as they had been for almost three years. Total war America has never known and can’t even imagine.
And I think, given the state of American attitudes about, and relationships with, Russia, Trump only served the interests of Russophobia with his words.
His stuff about the Holocaust survivor was out-of-place and self-serving and, likely quite inaccurate in its details. But what is a Holocaust anecdote even doing in a speech about the State of the (American) Union? The man who started the practice of such speeches, George Washington, warned the nation against “foreign entanglements” in his Farewell Address. Well, Israel has been the great foreign entanglement of all time, draining the nation of resources and privileges and committing it to battles better avoided.
Why self-serving? Because Trump, as no president of recent years, has served Israel's interests almost as though he were a hired hand. Much of what he's done has been shabby and illegal, to say nothing of its ethics. He has literally lined the pockets of his 2020 political campaign at the expense of millions of other people.
He has quietly supported a long list of illegal and violent Israeli behaviors while, out of the other side of his mouth, he goes on and on attacking and threatening a sincere man like Maduro in Venezuela, just as he never stops attacking a law-abiding member of the international community Israel happens to hate, Iran.
Israel's often-violent new settlements in West Bank. Israel's ugly activities in East Jerusalem. Israel’s public slaughters at the border with Gaza. Israel’s constant bombardment of a country with which it is not at war, Syria. Right down to the intense efforts of Israel's lobby to curtail the rights of American citizens with national anti-free speech legislation.
And, just as his speech pandered to narrow Israeli interests, it pandered to America’s establishment, “the swamp” he so railed against it in the past, although one could easily argue that the stuff for Israel is part and parcel now of the American establishment.
Yes, Mr. President, the same Israel whose interests are at the very center of the wars in the Middle East you once decried when asking for people’s votes. The wars that have killed a couple of million people, made many millions into refugees, cost a couple of trillion dollars, and which have not abated in the least with two years of your attention.
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Response to another comment:
Well said.
"This shit" is indeed "confusing," and the author has revealed some very big gaps in his grasp of events.
Not worth reading, except to understand the confused thinking of even critical Americans.
