Tag: verkiezingen

Met Donald Trump in het Witte Huis, heeft de schaduwregering, die de VS al tientallen jaren bestuurt: het grote bedrijfsleven, onder aanvoering van het militair-industrieel complex en de oliemaffia, met steun van de geheime diensten, openlijk en ‘legaal’* de macht in handen gekregen. Waarbij opgemerkt moet worden, dat de situatie voor de geheime diensten onzeker is geworden. Al is de verwachting bij deskundigen, dat bijvoorbeeld de CIA Trump binnen de kortste keren in de zak zal hebben

Mocht u zich afvragen, of de VS in een bananenrepubliek is veranderd, stop maar, de VS gaat nu heel wat verder dan dat…… Onder Obama is de VS veranderd in een politiestaat, één van zijn laatste daden, was het tekenen van een wet, waarmee mensen, die verdacht worden van terrorisme, ‘oneindig’ kunnen worden vastgehouden, zonder vorm van proces………** Weet u nog wat Obama voorafgaand aan zijn eerste verkiezingsoverwinning durfde te zeggen over de ontvoerde gijzelaars in Guantanamo Bay en die ‘gevangenis’ zelf….??

Onder Trump zal een verdere fascistisering van de VS plaatsvinden, dit op de fundamenten die vooral door Obama (uiteraard ook door de voorgaande Bush regering) werden gelegd, betoogt Norman Polack in het volgende artikel (onder het artikel kan u klikken voor een vertaling, kost wel wat tijd):

USA:
Banana Republic? Far Worse

By
Norman Pollack

January
23, 2017 “Information
Clearing House”
– “Counterpunch”
– Before the Inauguration, one was guarded about using the term
“fascist” to describe America, as if slanderous and an
exaggeration. No longer. It is not entirely Trump’s doing; Obama
and his predecessors were creeping up to that point with each
intervention, confrontation, weakening of civil liberties, drone
attack, regime change—a whole catalogue of death, defiance,
destruction. But it is Trump who pulls America over the top, with the
willing agreement of millions of Americans, a self-conscious,
articulate mobocracy contemptuous of all who disagree with, yes, a
fascist agenda.

That
agenda is simple: capitalism and militarism merged, indivisible,
monolithic, holding America in a death grip. Squeezing, choking,
bullying: experience gained abroad, slowly taking effect at home.
Root out the dissident. Empty the social safety net, so that ordinary
people begin to think complicity, for fear of suffering hardship, a
fusion of surveillance and foreclosure or even penury and want of
basics. The Tale of Two Cities? No, two countries, with police-state
attributes riding roughshod over the people.

Through
all of this, Trump poses as the quintessential Nazi-like demagogue,
giving assurances to the people, celebrating their sovereignty, and
meanwhile already—his policies and personality an accurate
preview—turning the screws. Listen to his introduction in his
speech, unashamed playing up to The Folk, to ingratiate himself with
them, as, behind our backs, the Billionaires Club is busily writing
and presenting their wish list: the scrapping of every decent thing a
government, hostile in the first instance to the needs and
aspirations of working people and the poor, has done.

Cut
trillions from the Budget. Pour much of that back into armaments, the
remainder into reduced taxes for America’s wealthiest. Strip away
whatever is deemed superfluous for the realization of Fortress
America, a Behemoth with the obsession of “greatness,” aka,
unilateral global domination behind high protective walls. Only a
complete militarization of political culture and Nation carries
forward that logic: Hitler’s “Strength Through Joy,” a
not-distant cousin. Win the people over, give them bread and circuses
(chiefly rhetorical), crank up the machinery of patriotism, let the
people think it is really their country, when in reality…. (Just
look at the Cabinet appointments, and in the next few weeks and days,
the roll back with a hatchet, not a scalpel, of social legislation.)

Here,
the speech—dishonesty, flattery, a people’s presidency: “rebuild
our country and restore its promise for all of our people.” (The
trickle-down theory, with rouged cheeks.) The “orderly and peaceful
transfer of power,” heard ad nauseum on television, yet why not
peaceful and orderly, given the continuity, my emphasis here on
Obama, of bipartisan policy through administrations from at least
Kennedy forward? More rightwing jive: “we are transferring power
from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people.”
Again: “Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its
wealth.” A clever projection: demonize the source working
hand-in-glove with plutocracy, the selfsame plutocracy Trump
personifies, represents, and is determined to protect and enrich
further. He speaks of “struggling families all across our land,”
yet is about to gut the programs making their lives bearable. This is
like the Marquis de Sade politically: humiliate (the knife driven
deeper by pseudo-praise) the victims of America’s vast
differentiations in the distribution of wealth, power, and social
respect, and of course play up to those who have already evinced
fascist sympathies (we are probably approaching the population
half-way mark, including—shameful to say—a large number of
working people).

The
seeds of proto-fascism run deep, a contagion found in all classes, a
shared responsibility in degradation and national shame. This is not
the time to recite American history, present-day actions and
attitudes tell the story, Trump being a useful summary of past and
future. The USA “is your country…. [w]hat matters is…whether
our government is controlled by the people.” He captures the energy
and momentum of the mass-man phenomenon: “You [‘the forgotten men
and women’] came by the tens of millions to become part of an
historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen
before. At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction that a
nation exists to serve its citizens.” True, indeed, provided it is
understood that some citizens—e.g., Morgan, Chase; Goldman, Sachs;
Halliburton; Boeing, etc. etc.—are more equal than others. For
Trump to have come this far, and not be laughed/booed off the
platform, speaks volumes about where the nation is at: in a moral
sociopolitical void.

“A
righteous people and a righteous public,” collective self-flattery
again, leads to the theme of Solidarity, classic fascist rhetoric,
when he proclaims, “This American carnage [poverty, drugs, poor
education] stops right here and stops right now. We are one nation….
We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.” In other
words, Don’t rock the boat, don’t criticize, stand united against
the Outsider, whether within or without American society. No longer
shall we have “the very sad depletion of our military.” [The New
York Times here interpolates the surprising, for it, comment]: “The
Pentagon spends about $600 billion a year on the American military,
more than is spent on the next six largest world militaries combined.
Hardly a depleted force.”

There
is more, worthy of Brecht’s Arturo Ui, Mel Brooks’s The
Producers, or run-of-the-mill Hitlerian dialogue: “From this day
forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward,
it’s going to be only America first. America first.” Those of my
generation shudder at the phrase (even as a small child on the eve of
World War II), its crystal-clear Nazi overtones and associations
historically realized in practice, and now brought back to life. Then
into an American Paean: We will be self-sufficient. We will rebuild
America. “We will shine for everyone to follow.” The city on a
hill has never had a greater champion, oozing with ethnocentrism and
xenophobia, not to say, organized within an authoritarian framework.
The best he can do, and we can turn now from the speech, is: “We
must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly [in
both cases, not only massive surveillance, but also the Espionage Act
to be used against whistleblowers], but always pursue solidarity.”
Promises are meant to be fulfilled, or broken, but there is no
getting around the last thought, “the pursuit of solidarity,” no
fudging the fascist mindset.

My
title mentions the banana republic (Webster’s, “a small dependent
country; esp. one run despotically”), the last part square on the
mark, but this is more serious: concentrated power to antisocial,
antihuman ends, led by the unscrupulous and wealth- and power-hungry,
a matrix of nihilism given a touch of glamor. Trump is for real.
Militarism is for real, given special meaning and intensity by virtue
of being inscribed within a fortress-like structure and mentality.
Heaven help any who dare cross the United States of America.

Norman
Pollack Ph.D.
Harvard, Guggenheim Fellow, early writings on American Populism as a
radical movement, prof., activist.. His interests are social theory
and the structural analysis of capitalism and fascism. He can be
reached at pollackn@msu.edu.

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*  Als je een verkiezingswinst, gefinancierd met honderden miljoenen, gefundeerd op grove leugens, uitsluiting van velen en falende stemmachines, als een legale winst ziet……..

** Zie: ‘Obama’s Propaganda Gift to Trump‘

Klik voor meer berichten n.a.v. het voorgaande, op één van de labels, die u hieronder terug kan vinden.