John Chuckman
COMMENT – A SOCIETY WITHOUT VALUES
I’m sure many would agree if I said Trump was a perfect
leader for a society without values.
Trump – as a kind of moral psychopath, a man absolutely
without values, vulgar and rude and demanding – was in many ways a fitting symbol
for contemporary America. He truly does represent the country, a large
part of its people and a great part of its activities and values, far more accurately
than any affectionate Uncle Sam figure or inspiring Statue of Liberty
But Trump is also very much a man with no taste or judgment.
While most of what he was doing abroad was what America’s power establishment
wanted done, he worked at it in an awkward and embarrassing fashion.
And he was spectacularly unsuccessful. Those two qualities,
being embarrassing and unsuccessful, are unnerving for a ruling establishment
which regards itself as exceptional, even “indispensable.” And that is why
there were efforts to undermine him from the start. Not because of his policy
goals, which are shared by the Republican and Democratic wings of America’s
national political establishment.
The only serious exception to that statement seems to me to
be his professed intention to pull American troops out of the Middle East. But
I’m not sure how sincere or dedicated Trump ever was about that idea. After
all, he was perhaps the most obsequious President ever to the interests of
Israel, including its many interests outside the rule of law. Only Lyndon
Johnson might give him competition for the title.
Why are American forces in the Middle East? Why did America
spend years and trillions of dollars blowing up sound societies, killing and
maiming millions, in its long series of Neocon Wars under Bush and Obama?
For Israel’s benefit. It was a gigantic “slum clearance”
project around Israel’s neighborhood, bulldozing societies who were
independent-minded about their interests. Only kings and tyrants friendly to
American interests – interests which always include its imperial colony in the
Middle East – were to be left standing. They are the kind of rulers with whom
Israel’s establishment has always been comfortable. They keep their people in
line with brutality, just as Israel does the Palestinians.
We still see poor people picking through the rubble in
Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria many years later.
Could Trump possibly have been so ignorant as to not
understand that? How did he even think he could significantly reduce American
occupation there? Except for token adjustments, he failed. His defenders say
that the Dark State, certainly including the Pentagon, misled him about what
they were doing while sabotaging his commands.
That may be, but if it was the case, how could Trump ever come
to believe in the first place that he would be able to make significant changes?
I just see the whole business, from start to finish, as further evidence of incompetence.
It is no different in nature than his pointless blundering in North Korea.
Israel is such an integral part of the American empire that the
Pentagon and CIA treat it almost as though they were dealing with Americans. Israel
can fairly be viewed as a special auxiliary member of America’s unelected Dark
State – that is, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the State Department. Given Trump’s
intimate connections with Israel and many of its key supporters in America, how
could he ever believe he could change America’s military posture in the Middle
East? He is so attuned to those interests that he almost started a major new
war by assassinating Iran’s national hero, General Soleimani, just to please
them.
Trump’s own political base, which seems never to have
deserted him, just ignores any assessment of him as embarrassing or
unsuccessful. That is why, despite the worst record on the planet in fighting
the coronavirus, Trump is able to wave his arms around up on a platform like a
tent-preacher and tell followers that his achievements saved countless lives. In
the political and journalistic chaos of today’s America, you can find support
for almost anything you care to believe. And there very much are cult-like
aspects to his following. A good number of them are desperate, credulous people,
and they will not relinquish their faith.
There is a Father Karamazov quality about Trump. If you
don’t like something ugly and embarrassing that he has done, wait a bit, and he
will do something even more outrageous and embarrassing just to show you.
Dostoevsky’s character is a very true-to-life type, fortunately not a common
one.
The crowd of Trump supporters just loves the routine, his giving
the finger to all those who regard themselves as somehow better or apart –
scientists, statesmen, academics, experts in anything, and foreigners. Trump’s
the man to bring their highfalutin ways back down to earth.
That division of attitudes in American society has always
been there. There has always been a widespread bias against intellectuals and
any behavior that might be regarded as “breeding.” It’s just that when things
were going comfortably for everyone at home, as in the 1950s, there was less
occasion for it to surface.
But things haven’t been going comfortably for a great many
Americans for a long time. Good jobs are not plentiful, lifetime employment
with a firm is almost unheard of now, the country’s many service jobs pay poorly
and have little prospect for advancement, job losses through an avalanche of mergers
and take-overs are common, debts incurred for some post-secondary education are
astronomical, and some of that education, from the country’s many predatory
educational businesses, has proved of little value in the job market.
In the 1950s, while many dreamed of becoming the first in
their family “to go to college,” there was not a lot of economic pressure for
most to do so. It was perfectly possible then to get a new job one day and, if
you didn’t like it for some reason, to find another almost the next day. And it
sometimes happened that a person of natural talent and ambition rose from the
mail room to the executive suite.
It really was like that. And if you got a job with a prestigious,
national firm, and you were at all ambitious, there would be lots of room in
the future for promotions or interesting new responsibilities. Even unskilled
workers, often including people who dropped out of high school, if they landed
the right industrial job, were set for life, and with many handsome benefits.
Steel workers, for example, after twenty years employment,
were entitled to thirteen weeks of paid holidays. I know because, as a student,
I was one of many who had a really good summer job replacing men who were on
holiday. That kind of benefit reflected the strength of labor unions then, but
even more, it reflected the strength of America’s position in world trade that
its companies could sustain such practices.
College education was desirable but not essential. People
graduated high school with good basic understanding because standards were high
and often with some well-developed skills from shop and serious practical
courses. Natural talent and ambition could go a long way.
But things haven’t been that way for a long time, and for
many reasons, they likely never will be again. The world is just a far more
competitive and complex place, and it is a far more crowded place. Young
Americans today often attend paid post-secondary education to obtain skills and
credibility that were once free in good public schools, and they amass large debts
doing it.
Universities and colleges have all got into the somewhat ruthless
business of education as consumption rather than intellectual investment, offering
courses and degrees in subjects which are more like entertainment than training
towards a career, and again those taking the courses amass huge debts.
Trump’s fraud on his credulous followers was his making them
believe he could change things to at least be a little bit the way they once
were, but that is an impossibility. Trump may not understand himself. Much of
his approach resembled his personal recommendations for treating the
coronavirus in their level of scientific understanding.
After all, this is a man whose entire career was built
around puffing-up himself and his projects, lying ceaselessly, bullying people,
suing people, avoiding taxes, accumulating great debt, and making some dark
alliances – all with just an immense amount of energy applied to them, He is a man,
even in his seventies, endowed with tireless energy. A human dynamo of bent
behavior.
He thought that he could have success in international
affairs, about which he knew virtually nothing, by applying the same practices.
But you cannot, not when you are dealing with other powerful
people, people of high intelligence, vast political experience, and with a
command over great resources. He lost his office early, before he could prove
to his followers that he could not do what he claimed he could. His so-called
strong economy only reflected huge tax cuts for the wealthy and lots
money-printing, neither of which can be sustained.
His followers are left still believing in him and thinking
he was “stabbed in the back.” And he is busy, like some burrowing animal
throwing back pawfuls of earth, throwing out suggestions and accusations every
which way. He has lots of resources with which to work. So, the country is
divided even more than it was when he started. It is a pretty ugly legacy.
Can Biden do much more? I don’t think so. Despite the
improved civility and tone, something I very much value, Biden faces the same
set of massive difficulties. The expectations of ordinary Americans,
expectations which cannot possibly be met, and the unrealistic demands of
American elites vis-à-vis the rest of the world.
And Biden is not a man of special talents, a slightly
above-average lifetime American politician. He is what Newt Gingrich used to
contemptuously call “a lifer” when he pushed for term limits in political
offices.
America’s elites are people who want to lead and rule others
when in many things today they cannot compete. They are people who depend on military
power to hold their place in the world, as we saw in a long series of horrible
wars from Vietnam to the rampage through the Middle East plus dozens of coups
and constant interference in the internal affairs of other states.
And they are people whose own society is a mess they have no
intention of correcting, despite making some nice sound-bites in that direction.
Their position reflects the underlying plutocratic structure of American
society, and they are not going to do anything to damage the very foundation of
their careers.
Besides, a sincere effort to correct America’s many desperate
social problems would require a great deal of close attention and huge amounts
of financing. Meanwhile, there’s the empire that needs looking after, and
that’s where America’s elites are attracted, with its lavish benefits and
opportunities.
Clearing up the country’s terrible economic inequality,
America’s greatest division and one which intensifies so many others, has
little more support among the Democratic part of the establishment than it does
among the Republican part.
And there’s no use pretending, Biden, in his own way,
different than Trump’s, has been a very corrupt man, profiting from many
opportunities over the years to enrich himself and his family, much like the
Clintons, who have become legendary in their capacity for such work. It is
interesting to note that not only was Kamala Harris taken under the wings of
important Hillary Clinton supporters a few years ago, but Hillary herself is
now being touted in the press as Biden’s likely choice for Ambassador to the
UN.
Money indeed makes the world go around in American politics.
Biden has also always been a good soldier in supporting ugly
projects, as with the whole Russophobia scheme, something much resented in
Russia, a country with which America should work harmoniously in avoiding wars
and combatting terror and making the world a better place but absolutely does
not. It refuses to do so, just as it refuses genuine cooperation with China. In
the minds of America’s elites, America must prevail, a dangerous and
unproductive concept.
I read that Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov,
a rather wry man, explained in an interview that Moscow has a low opinion of
the Democratic candidate after Russia was accused by his party of influencing
the US election in 2016, something they certainly did not do. Indeed, Biden’s
entire fifty-year political career offers little on which to pin many hopes.
Ryabkov said further, “We treat this as a change in weather outside the
window.”
It is quite disheartening to see many prominent old Neocons
– advocates for the use of American military power to get what the country
wants – joining the ranks of Biden’s likely appointees to important posts. They
are among the most malicious and destructive people the country has, kind of an
upper-class version of Trump’s heavily-armed, belly-over-the-belt boys who
intimidate politicians on statehouse steps. Only the Neocons intimidate and
destroy whole countries, and their weapon of choice is the Pentagon.
I’ve just read that one of Biden’s candidates for Secretary of
Defense, Michele Flournoy (Yes, a woman. Is that supposed to make the
unacceptable more acceptable? Equal-opportunity killing?), suggested recently a
much stronger American presence in the South China Sea, a force with the
ability to “sink all Chinese vessels within 72 hours.” What a promising idea
for peace and cooperation. It represents the same kind of thinking as one of Trump’s
militia plug uglies carrying a submachine gun and talking about what he’d do to
all the street protesters.
The South China Sea is about 8,000 miles by air from America’s
West Coast. Its waters are vital to China’s world trade, and China does nothing
to interfere with other nations’ peaceful use of them. A thoughtful person
might wonder why any American warships should be there, much less a fleet
capable of sinking every Chinese ship in 72 hours.
Such is the thinking of those at the top in America, even
without Trump.
America’s belligerence in the world is not going away, just
because Trump does. The belligerence will take a different tone and appearance,
but it will be belligerence. Because what America really represents in the
world today is a gang of rich and privileged people scraping and clawing for influence
and position. That is its central reality, and no mere change of President can
change it.
Slogans and speeches change nothing when the underlying
forces at work are entirely different to the themes. They are reduced to public-relations
statements and propaganda. No one echoed the words of high-blown principles
more than, say, Lyndon Johnson or the Clintons while in fact not honoring any
of them. Human rights and peace and democratic values reduced to hairspray and
pancake make-up before an interview.
Recall the War in Vietnam. It was about preserving an
artificially-created rump state, South Vietnam, hived off a former French
colony and ruled by a series of dictators. It was to serve as an American
pied-a-terre in Southeast Asia after France’s colonial withdrawal. Yet the
words “freedom’ and “democracy” were frequently heard from American politicians
and the press. Meaningless claptrap.
The ugly realities of America’s own society cannot possibly
be corrected without fundamental change in that society. It is just dishonest
to say otherwise. But you couldn’t find a more grotesquely revealing reason why
change is literally impossible than a glance at the membership of the American Senate
and the Supreme Court. Many of the faces and gestures and words resemble those
of the old Soviet Politburo, the last place on earth from which to expect any
change in its day.
In a period of just about eighty years, the United States
has gone from the great Franklin Roosevelt’s inspired statement of the Four
Freedoms to Mike Pompeo’s bragging about “lying, cheating, and stealing” as
American principles abroad. Imagine, the President discussing the murder of
someone, a national hero in Iran, while rolling along in a golf cart with his partner,
the oleaginous Senator Lindsey Graham.
That is contemporary American government. And if you can see
an ounce of principle in any of it, let me know because I certainly cannot.
NOTE
While I tend to focus on foreign affairs, Trump’s proposed
wall on the Mexican border powerfully speaks to his competence. It was a bad
idea for many reasons, but he insisted on making it a marquee campaign promise,
likely because it silently communicated to voters notions best not articulated,
as around xenophobia and dislike of migrants.
And Mexico was going to pay for it. Why should Mexico pay
for a wall the US wanted? That demand again communicated resentments without
openly stating them. Well, of course, Mexico didn’t pay for it, and the wall
itself never was built. Trump erected twelve miles of it. Twelve pointless
miles of wall in the middle of nowhere, making a section of desert resemble a
maximum-security prison.
