2008 – I made 41 numbered proposals, most of which were not implemented.
2012 – I pared down policy recommendations to a more sharp and forceful 17.
2016 – dealt largely with Obama’s failed trade policies.
2020 – Noted the centrality of climate change and our passage from democracy to oligarchy.
In 2024 the US is facing the collapse of its status as the world’s unitary superpower just as the reach of its empire has extended further than any other in human history. It now faces a presidential election, in which the US public will be the loser no matter the outcome, between an incumbent president and a former president. Both are old, unpopular and mostly incoherent in their speech. They performed in what was billed as the first of two presidential debates, in which Biden set the rules and the dates. Neither of these presumed advantages helped him. The shutting down of the opponent’s microphone while one candidate was speaking kept Trump from interrupting in the manner of an adolescent brat, as he had appeared in their debates four years earlier.
The consensus of pundits and insiders across the political spectrum was that Biden performed very badly, exposing his diminished mental state, while Trump was more vigorous and self-confident, the same bold liar and braggart that we’d come to know during his first term. The type of damage that either man could inflict on the country over the next term can be predicted on what each has already done over his four years.
Another clue to the future lies in the contrast between the cabinets they’ve appointed in the first go around. Trump’s picks had the air of the division of spoils that a top Mafia boss might dole out. All were picked to downgrade or destroy the agency they were picked to run.
Louis De Joy, a commercial delivery service executive, was made Postmaster General to run the US Postal Service into the ground and he has succeeded rather well. The fact that he still holds that job can be seen as one of Biden’s domestic failings.
Mitch McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao, whose family runs a Chinese shipping company, was appointed Secretary of Transportation.
Betsy De Vos, the sister of Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater USA, the serially renamed private military contractor, which sought to replace citizen soldiers with mercenaries, was brought in to destroy or at least diminish the public school system and replace public schools with private schools run for profit.
The post of Attorney General went to Jeff Sessions, an Alabama law and order advocate. He was ousted when he failed to support some of Trump’s more egregious floutings of the law.
Rick Perry, an ex-Senator from Texas who had spoken of abolishing the Energy Department, was put in charge of the Department of Energy.
Nikki Haley, the rather non-diplomatic ex-Governor of South Carolina, was named Ambassador to the UN to stir up anti-US sentiment there.
Scott Pruitt, a lawyer with close ties to the fossil fuel industry, was named Head of the Environmental Protection Agency to take the bite out of its rules and regulations.
Mike Pompeo, a Kansas Representative with a military background and a Cold War mentality, was named Director of the CIA despite, or perhaps because, of his intention to pursue information on Russian interference in US elections. While in office he shocked colleagues by suggesting the kidnapping and/or murder of Julian Assange. He was subsequently made Secretary of State.
Tom Price from Georgia, a leading opponent of the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obama Care) was put in charge of Health and Human Services.
Carl Icahn, a billionaire corporate raider, was made special advisor to eliminate business regulations.
Rex Tillerson, the retired Chairman of ExxonMobil was made Secretary of State.
Steven Mnuchin, another billionaire with a shady history of off-shore tax havens for himself, was named Secretary of the Treasury.
The post of Secretary of Defense was assigned to retired General James Mattis, affectionately nicknamed Mad Dog Mattis.
Montana’s Ryan Zinke, a former Navy Seal, was appointed Secretary of the Interior to oversee public land development, coal, oil and gas exploration, and policies affecting solar and wind generated power.
Sonny Perdue, ex-Governor of Georgia where his family was a major player in industrial agriculture, was made Secretary of Agriculture.
Wilber Ross, a pluri-billionaire and new Secretary of Commerce, said the US must free itself from bad trade agreements, while not addressing the question of bad for whom. His task may have been grounded in the idea that they were not bad enough to benefit him.
Steve Bannon, media executive currently serving a four month prison sentence for contempt of Congress after defying a subpoena relating to his role in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, was named Chief Strategist. He currently holds no government post and may not in a future Trump Administration, even though he is popular with the MAGA people, since he is radically more anti-government than Trump. He is an efficient agent for his goals, more than most on this list whose ideological goals tend to take a back seat to dreams of personal enrichment, much like Donald Trump himself, who may not have any ideological goals at all.
The list goes on and on, but it consistently elevated people seeking to eliminate the functions of government, especially oversight and regulations established to protect the country from a lawless reign of oligarchs, and the list doesn’t get any better with those I’ve omitted. It looks like a WANTED list posted on a post office wall. Many of these people were fired for not being bad enough and others just quit, notably Rex Tillerson, because working with such a bunch of imbeciles, especially Trump, was just too much for him to bear.
Joe Biden was crowned the 2020 Democratic candidate by the Neo-Con establishment, including the DNC, the Neo-Con media, nominally affiliated oligarchs and their various foundations, and perhaps most of all, by AIPAC, the Israeli interests group which after all these years of controlling US foreign policy, is still not registered under FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. His elevation to the candidacy and his successful dethroning of Trump brought sighs of relief and hopes for a breath of fresh air after the gang of thugs cited had stunk up official Washington with levels of nepotism and corruption that made the Harding Administration look like it had been run by Snow White.
On the domestic front, Biden’s appointees attracted little negative attention and coped reasonably well with the many unusual problems brought on by the pandemic, the huge deficit created by the massive Trump tax cuts, and the out of control military budget approved by an unusually bi-partisan Congress.
It was only when reading down to the Biden appointments in the State Department and some of the vast departments of Defense and Homeland Security that I was enveloped in a dark cloud of gloom.
The State Department was straight out of PNAC, that stealth cabal of Neo-Con-Lib crusaders organized in the 90’s to empower the USA as the world’ s solitary superpower to rule the world, under a regime of a rules-based order with rules made by the US and enforced by its powerful international economic institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, and by its vast military establishment, backed up by NATO countries and others willing to commit to vassal status.
It was the wet dream of all previous world conquerors/saviors from Genghis Khan and the Roman Caesars to Napoleon, Stalin and Hitler who, with absolute power, could unify and improve the civilization with their ideas and policies.
The State Department was to be run by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, assisted by the ever-present coup maker Victoria Nuland, wife of Robert Kagan, co-founder of PNAC, with Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor. While none of them had the luxury of excusing their lame, out-of-touch and absurd statements on the impairment that comes with age, as their boss could, they have continued the barrage of such pronouncements, although sometimes the administration relies on John Kirby, a man who appears to be immune to shame or embarrassment.
Despite the shocking success of the Neo-Cons in reducing both the EU and the UK to vassal status, in the Biden years they may have bitten off more than they can chew. They got the war with Russia that they wanted, using Ukrainians as cannon fodder, and to the delight of Lindsey Graham and others of his ilk, killing off a lot of Russians. Overconfidence has played a big part in the debacle but as deindustrialization has spread through the western world and NATO is running out of ammunition for a long war, Russia, originally incredulous at the US belligerence, has upped its military production in response and is now involved in organizing the larger and poorer nations of the world into trade agreements not using the dollar. As the administration had barely gotten started with its proxy war in Europe, it started planning the coming war with China, which despite its remarkable economic and industrial success, had made no military moves outside its own confines.
All of that would have marked the Biden Administration as a catastrophic failure but Israel has now put the cherry on the cake. US imperialism has been shrugged off by most of the American public as a non-issue, as well as by its vassal states, but now that the US Government is funding, supplying and coordinating a highly visible genocide carried out by the Israeli government, just how long can this go on? The bi-partisan US Congress has voted overwhelmingly to support the genocide. There may have been a few dissenting comments, but the funding continues unabated.
The UK and the EU continue to follow the US position. The French Vichy Government deported more than 72,000 Jews to their death during WWII. That has been a source of embarrassment in France ever since. The EU is now supporting the elimination of more than 2,200,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
How can the US Congress continue to act like the enabling German Parliament of the 1940’s? Jamaal Bowman, a black progressive incumbent Congressman from the Bronx, had the temerity to publicly criticize Israel for its policy of oppression and to speak out against our involvement in the genocide. AIPAC spent $15 million to defeat him in the most expensive Democratic primary ever and they succeeded in having him lose to an Israeli loyalist.
That’s the situation in July folks. Three years ago I predicted that neither Trump nor Biden would be standing for election in 2024. My predictions are sometimes influenced by wishful thinking, and here, my wishes are shared by the majority of the American public. While this prediction may now seem doomed, hope is the last to die. Trump may be in prison by November. While hard-core MAGA people will vote for him anyway, a number of traditional Republicans, unless they are more afraid of what Biden and his tone-deaf minions might wreak, would be happy to see Trump off the ticket. I suspect that the backlash against a convicted felon might prevent his election, especially against anyone but Biden. Most Democratic pundits and politicians are distraught about Biden’s collapsing chances and agonizing over how to effect his replacement without looking bad.
In August the Democratic National Convention will convene in Chicago, where in 1964 there was another controversial convention with significant violence and police brutality. While we all hope that the violence will not get out of hand, I do wish that literally millions of people will be in the streets of Chicago to protest the on-going war-mongering, war profiteering and genocide by the current administration, and to demand an open convention to select a rational and decent candidate.
Demonstrators can practice up in Washington DC on July 24th when Bibi Netanyahu will speak to the joint Houses of Congress. At his last pre-election speech to Congress in 2020, he received a large number of standing ovations and some of the more perverse GOP leaders have pledged that his earlier record will be broken.
Good luck America!
***
Many good writers now contribute to Substack. I too write on Substack and welcome future subscribers.
For those of you who lean toward supporting Trump, I recommend that you read the work of:
Robert Reich- objective and rational critic of Trump
Jim Hightower- a lighter touch but on target
Thom Hartmann- a highly partisan but accurate critic of Trump.
Michael Moore- a rare democratic Democrat
For those of you who drink the Neo-Con Kool-Aid and support the Biden Administration as a lesser evil, please read:
Professor John Mearsheimer - a realist point of view
Professor Jeffrey Sachs -
Scott Ritter - from a military perspective
Caitlin Johnson - a conscience for those in need of one
Joe Brumoli (Euro Yankee)
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