Tag Archives: Donald Trump

Paul Craig Roberts is willing to give Trump a chance. From Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

Liberals, progressives, and the left-wing (to the extent that one still exists) are aligning with the corrupt oligarchy against president-elect Trump and the American people.

They are busy at work trying to generate hysteria over Trump’s “authoritarian personality and followers.” In other words, the message is: here come the fascists.

Liberals and progressives wailed and whined about “an all white male cabinet,” only to be made fools by Trump’s appointment of a black male and two women, one a minority and one a Trump critic.

The oligarchs are organizing their liberal progressive front groups to disrupt Trump’s inauguration in an effort to continue the attempt to delegitimize Trump the way the paid Maidan protesters were used in Kiev to delegitimize the elected Ukrainian government.

To the extent any of the Trump protesters are sincere and not merely paid tools of oligarchs, such as George Soros, military and financial interests, and global capitalists, they should consider that false claims and unjustified criticism can cause Trump and his supporters to close their ears to all criticism and make it easier for neoconservatives to influence Trump by offering support.

At this point we don’t know what a Trump government is going to do. If he sells out the people, he won’t be reelected. If he is defeated by the oligarchy, the people will become more radical.

We do not know how Washington insiders appointed to the government will behave inside a Trump presidency. Unless they are ideologues like the neoconservatives or agents of powerful interests, insiders survive by going along with the current. If the current changes under Trump, so will the insiders.

To continue reading: Trump the Great

Donald Trump is showing a lot of “flexibility” as he stakes out his policy positions and fills his administration. We’re still waiting for even an iota of flexibility from the other side. From Raúl Ilargi Meijer at automatic earth.com:

Ever since the November 8 election, it’s been hard to write anything that makes actual sense, as evidenced by just about everything I’ve read in the past two weeks, little of which was particularly elevating, because just like before the vote, and just like in pre- and post-Brexit Britain, all there is left in the US are deeply dug-in heels.

Everything and everyone is standing still; dug-in heels do that for you. Problem is, of course, that standing still doesn’t get you anywhere. You’re going to have to move or you’ll be left behind. Somehow it’s wonderfully ironic that Donald Trump is the only main character in this play who’s moving, and he does so in more ways than one. It’s like he’s going head first against the latest braindead internet craze, mannequin. If he does it on purpose, I commend him for it.

Sure, one might say Obama has moved a little too, suggesting that a smooth transition of power is paramount, talking a whole different book from what he said about the Donald before November 8. But then Obama doesn’t have many other options. His job requires him to do it, and say it. Over the past few months, the impression has crept upon me that Obama is a mannequin, though not still and silent, but one machine-trained to say the perfect thing at the perfect moment. And then still lost.

As predicted pre-election by the precious few willing to ponder a view that’s not entirely partisan or one-sided, Trump now rolls back his most extreme views, and is not afraid to revisit climate change, or a potential Hillary investigation, nor does he shy away from denouncing the most outrageous right wing movements and viewpoints among his voters and supporters.

To continue reading: Trump Moves as America Stands Still

Many of those who are viscerally and deeply offended by Trump’s victory are going to be like nails on a chalk board for the entirety of his term. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

After a week managing the transition, vice president-elect Mike Pence took his family out to the Broadway musical “Hamilton.”

As Pence entered the theater, a wave of boos swept over the audience. And at the play’s end, the Aaron Burr character, speaking for the cast and the producers, read a statement directed at Pence:

“(W)e are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values.”

In March, the casting call that went out for actors for roles in this musical celebration of “American values” read:

“Seeking NON-WHITE men and women.”

The arrogance, the assumed posture of moral superiority, the conceit of our cultural elite, on exhibit on that stage Friday night, is what Americans regurgitated when they voted for Donald Trump.

Yet the conduct of the “Hamilton” cast puts us on notice. The left neither accepts its defeat nor the legitimacy of Trump’s triumph.

His presidency promises to be embattled from Day One.

Already, two anti-Trump demonstrations are being ginned up in D.C., the first on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, by ANSWER, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. A second, scheduled for Jan. 21, is a pro-Hillary “Million Woman March.”

While the pope this weekend deplored a “virus of polarization,” even inside the church, on issues of nationality, race and religious beliefs, that, unfortunately, is America’s reality. In a new Gallup poll, 77 percent of Americans perceived their country as “Greatly Divided on the Most Important Values,” with 7 in 8 Democrats concurring.

On the campuses, anti-Trump protests have not ceased and the “crying rooms” remain open. Since Nov. 8, mobs have blocked streets and highways across America in a way that, had the Tea Party people done it, would have brought calls for the 82nd Airborne.

In liberal Portland, rioters trashed downtown and battled cops.

Mayors Rahm Emanuel of Chicago and Bill de Blasio of New York have declared their cities to be “sanctuary cities,” pledging noncooperation with U.S. authorities seeking to deport those who broke into our country and remain here illegally.

Says D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, “I have asserted firmly that we are a sanctuary city.” According to The Washington Post, after the meeting where this declaration had been extracted from Bowser, an activist blurted, “We’re facing a fascist maniac.”

Such declarations of defiance of law have a venerable history in America. In 1956, 19 Democratic Senators from the 11 states of the Old Confederacy, in a “Southern Manifesto,” rejected the Supreme Court’s Brown decision ordering desegregation of the public schools.

Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus, Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett and Alabama Gov. George Wallace all resisted court orders to integrate. U.S. marshals and troops, ordered in by Ike and JFK, insured the court orders were carried out.

To see Rahm and de Blasio in effect invoking John C. Calhoun’s doctrine of interposition and nullification is a beautiful thing to behold.

To continue reading: A Besieged Trump Presidency Ahead