A Coup of Hypocrisy & Lies

A Coup of Hypocrisy & Lies

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

- George F. Will, Trump is no longer the worst person in government

By JM Hamilton (5-13-2018)

Who knew the GOP could stack it so high?  

Then again, the Party of Trump gave up any pretense of ethics & morality a long time ago; and per columnist George Will, at the Post, the Grand Old Party has turned into the Party of Lackeys (arguably, for the billionaire/multinational set).

Just when we thought the swamp couldn't grow more fetid, comes news from the same Washington Post that Trump has lied, or spread misinformation, 3,001 times in the first 466 days of his Presidency.  

Perhaps a record? 

As with all things Trump, excess is best... so why not take falsehood & fabrication to whole new level.  Trump said during his campaign he loved the uneducated and now we know why.  If your base consists of those with little interest in learning, or keeping up on world events (or sadly, don't have the means or time), than there is no one to discern truth from lies.  

And so, the exploited continue to be abused and misled.

Now we know why the GOP has zero appreciation for teachers, higher education, and want to turn science out of government. 

Lies - from elected leaders - are horrible things.  Deception destroys the credibility of our democratic government and society, and makes a perfidious hash out of the rule of law.  Then again, perhaps Trump is little more than the vanguard of America's fate: A dystopian future where the swamp grows beyond DC's borders and spreads from sea to shining sea.

One thing is for certain, if the Trump Administration is the equivalent to an EPA Superfund site, than education, the fourth estate, and sunlight are the cure.  If some European countries can afford to freely offer a college education to their citizens, than surely the richest nation on the planet can do same.

If an avalanche of lies is detrimental to the country, equally repugnant is the shear hypocrisy with which the minions of the billionaire class parrot the same old defeated & tired arguments, over and over again.  All too often the charlatans fail to recognize the moral failing, or allegations, they cite as applying to others, also applies equally - if not more so - to them and their party.  

Let's examine some examples:

The Communists are coming, the Communists are coming!  No Ed.  They're already here, and they put you and your lobbying firm on retainer.  Ed Rogers, (chairman of the lobbying and communications firm BGR Group, which he founded with former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour), Mr. Swamp, recently wrote a column lamenting the leftward turn of the Democratic Party, and specifically cites Senator Sanders plan to guarantee a job for every American.  Mr. Rogers says he's worried about creeping socialism and, gasp, communism; but then fails to recognize that the biggest swine at the government trough are the very clients he - and assorted K Street lobbyist - all too often represent.  And who fosters and redistributes government largess to the kleptocracy - well both political parties do actually - but the GOP has turned communism, for the elite, into an art form.  

Nobody redistributes wealth from the middle class & the poor to the wealthy, like the GOP.  Fiscal, monetary, judiciary, and trade policy capture.... the GOP - and their oligarch overlords - own the practice, and have weaponized same.

Trump is going win a Nobel for bringing peace to the Korean peninsula, while unleashing Armageddon in the Middle East by tearing up the Iran deal?  Think again.  If we are honest w/ ourselves, we have to give Trump some credit where credit is due.  And one area where Trump may, ultimately, deserve some credit - the verdict is still out - is on foreign policy.  North Korea appears to be making overture after overture towards peace, perhaps in response to Trump's unstable/tough guy shtick (then again, perhaps under orders from China, at a time Sino-US trade negotiations are heating up).  Historically, North Korea has, in no few instances, turned to extortion... often brandishing instability & nukes, in return for payments from the US to quiet down and behave.  

And there's a whole history of N. Korean leaders going Soprano on US administrations, so don't release the doves just yet.  

Simultaneously, our highly transactional POTUS has torn up the Iran deal - a deal that both Israeli and US generals (by the dozens) acknowledge is good for Middle East stability, if not the world. However, the deal is not so good for principal GOP constituents & stakeholders, namely the usual suspects:  Big Oil, OPEC, the Saudi Terror regime (all of which want Iranian oil offline and out of world markets, so they can cash in); the military industrial complex (which is always looking for the next war in the Middle East, to goose quarterly profits); and Trump's Evangelical base (some of whom are literally praying for Armageddon in the Middle East, because they believe it will bring about the second coming).

How does one square the hubris and hypocrisy surrounding the tearing up of a functioning Iran deal, which has forestalled the additional production of nukes in the Middle East (purely to appease & profit the aforementioned GOP donors), with the idea that Trump is suddenly going to turn into the Prince of Peace, when dealing w/ a rogue totalitarian - North Korean - regime?  The country above the 38^th parallel is one of the nastiest, and most oppressive, on the planet, that has time and time again exhibited pathological and sociopathic tendencies in extremis.

Evangelicals... quick to anger, quick to judge others (slow to understand), unless the sinner resides in the White House and can stack the Supreme Court, so an Evangelical theocracy - complete w/ puritanical law - can be established w/in the United States.  Wait.  Who am I kidding, the US - thanks to fundamentalist Christians - has been living under Sharia law since the nation's founding.  The hypocrisy surrounding Evangelical church leadership is a sore point for many Americans.  Here's a group of Protestants that take tremendous pride in their devoutness to Christian scripture and feigned piety.  However, instead of embracing Christ's story of redemption and salvation, they are quick to go Old Testament - that is to say, fire & brimstone - on anybody outside, or within, the church that steps out of line, even in the slightest of degrees.

In short, per Evangelicals, almost everyone is going to hell but them.

So how can any of these folks support a President, who lies as if it’s an involuntary bodily function, like breathing?  

And that's the just the tip of the iceberg or Stormy.  To be sure, there are many Evangelicals, who wouldn't be caught dead voting for Trump.  But there are far too many, particularly among church leadership, who are completely in bed w/ this president.  This Faustian alliance is, likely, to cost them dearly in terms of the loss of credibility, and demonstrates that even Evangelicals can adopt a Machiavellian strategy (POTUS Trump) to achieve their ends (a stacked Supreme Court filled w/ right-wing ideologues).

In all fairness, both US political parties have been captured by the wealthy, so that - as I have often argued, at least on economic & foreign policy matters - we essentially live in a one party state.  Both political parties have made promises, backpedaled, lied, and engaged in hypocrisy.  

To such an extent that some have argued the US has been taken over in a silent coup.

The people clearly are not in charge of their own government.  Caught in a deluge of cover-ups, talking points, hypocrisy & lies.... we are led to believe that there is a choice between the two political parties.  The choice, however, has already been made for Americans, before they even arrive at the voting booth.  The country has moved so far right, that former President Bush (HW) voted for Hillary Clinton in the last election.  

And thanks to Clintonian policies of the 90s, continued mostly under POTUS Obama, the Democratic Party has moved in lockstep  ----  on mass incarceration, law & order politics, an adventurist foreign policy, defense spending, the police/surveillance state, and the billionaire/multinational capture of the government & tax law ---- w/ the GOP.

The progressives give many hope.  And thanks to a younger generation - and proof from the oligarchy, and Wall Street banks, that redistributive policies work exceptionally well (particularly for the uber wealthy) - JMH believes the Democratic Party has the potential to bring the pendulum back to the center: economically, geopolitically, morally, and socially.  That is to say, produce a mixed economy that embraces some forms of socialism, for the people instead of the elite, while breaking up cartels and monopolies to reinvigorate all that is best in capitalism.

If a mix of capitalism & socialism works exceeding well in Canada and Northern Europe, than surely the US can master same.

(If the Dems fail to reform and take advantage of a blue wave this November, it’s almost a certainty that the nation’s women & youth will reach out for an alternative or form a new party.)

But for that to happen, this country needs to recognize that the antidote for the GOP’s campaign of nescience is education, and engage in extensive investigative coverage of a government that is opaque and completely captured by a coup of hypocrisy & lies.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2018

Macron Fails to Look in the Mirror

Macron Fails to Look in the Mirror

“I do not want to belong to a generation of sleepwalkers. I do not want to belong to a generation that will have forgotten its own past or that will refuse to see the torments of its own present,” he said. “I want to belong to a generation that has decided firmly to defend its democracy.”

-Leaders worldwide are falling for a ‘deadly illusion’ – Washington Post

By J.M. Hamilton (4-28-2018)

French President Emmanuel Macron – former investment banker - visited the United States this week, and gave a speech before Congress (the speech was both elegant & entertaining).  He recently gave a very similar speech before the European Parliament, in which he railed against the decline of democracy, free trade, and multilateralism (And perhaps a little more circumspect or less overt, many European leaders have lamented the decline of the US empire and rising talk of US disengagement w/ the world).

As reported in the Washington Post: 

(Macron) declared that Europe is being torn by the rise of “national selfishness and negativity”and a growing “fascination with the illiberal.” 

And he’s right.  To some degree centrist parties have had it handed to them in Germany, Italy, and yes, even France (where Macron road an angry wave that eviscerated France’s two centrist parties).  In the US voters in 2016 turned to POTUS Trump, and Senator Sanders, and rejected establishment candidates but for one.  (That Trump has reversed himself - on many populist issues - and has adopted the US Chamber’s, and Biz Roundtable’s, agenda is another story.)

Where Macron, and centrist parties, fail is in naming the reasons why citizens throughout the West are rejecting: free trade; establishment political parties; neoliberalism; and w/in the U.S., our global empire.  Nor does Macron offer solutions to the rise of nationalism, and voters turning to far right political parties, and in no few instances embracing Green Party and socialist politicians (who certainly have better ideas & solutions, than the discord, division, & hatred offered up by the fascists, and the status quo afforded by establishment political parties).

Mr. Macron is dead wrong.  We are not sleepwalking away from democracy, we know full well why democracy and neoliberalism are failing.  And the answers are simple… indeed, right before Mr. Macron’s nose, if he only cared enough to look or provide a honest appraisal.  Then again, when Mr. Macron refers to democracy, perhaps he’s referring to the current rigged system, where politicians are owned and respond almost exclusively to the billionaire class.

The bottom line is centrist parties - along w/ democracy, itself - have been captured throughout the West by an unscrupulous billionaire class, and owned politicians, in turn, have failed the people.

Economically, corporations and multinationals have been allowed to consolidate so that Western economies are dominated by oligopoly and utilities.  These utilities - w/ the help of “democratic” government - have crushed labor, wages have stagnated, and far too many people live a precarious day-to-day existence.

Likewise, few Americans have any vested interest in our global empire, aimless wars w/out end, and failed nation building.  Moreover, one cannot pick up a paper - or examine the news flow - w/out reading how yet another defense contractor is shafting the American taxpayer again, w/ cost over runs, fraud, and weapons systems that don’t work. 

In the US, the plutocracy has voted themselves tremendous welfare, in the form of tax relief, while sticking the tab to future generations and an ever-shrinking middle class.

No wonder voters throughout the West have had it with neoliberalism, which is shorthand for socialism for plutocrats: bank bailouts; crony government; free trade agreements negotiated behind closed doors that lead to the offshoring of labor and tax avoidance; capture of fiscal, monetary, & trade policies; and the monopoly – rip off - economy.

Guess what Jupiter?  Until Western leaders take that honest self-assessment and act to make our economies - and governments - work for the people, desperate citizens will reach further left & right (beyond owned centrist parties), reject multilateralism, and seek to close open borders at a time jobs have become scarce and the living experience for far too many in the West has become hopeless.  As for Macron’s dream of greater pan-European control by the EU, the people no longer trust their own national governments.  They certainly aren’t going to want to report into - or cede greater authority to - a government in Brussels.  An EU government that is greatly removed from the accountability of the common citizen.

Western leaders - and governments - aren't falling for a deadly illusion.  They're falling over barrels of money and billionaires.

Multinationals are said to prize stability… great for operating margins and hitting analyst expectations.  

It should come as no surprise then, that Western citizens also pine for stability; that is to say, a steady paycheck that pays a living wage, and the absurd notion - particularly w/in the US - that they not go bankrupt from medical expense.  But democratic governments - coopted and owned by the wealthy, along w/ globalization & technology run amok - are proving anything but stable for the 99%. 

Which means the world the 1% have created - for themselves - is unstable for the kleptocracy.

In fact, democracy, free trade/globalization, the foreign policy establishment - that applies the US military as a one size fits all solution to every global problem – may have sewn the seeds of their own destruction, because it only works for the few.  Crony democracy is no substitute for democratic institutions and political parties that look out for the people.  Cheap goods dumped on US shores - brought to you by globalization and monopolies - aren’t worth a nickel to citizens, who don’t possess jobs, or who possess jobs that fail to pay a living wage. 

As for war w/out end, in case Mr. Macron failed to notice, the US is bankrupt.  America can no longer pick up the foreign policy/national security tab for Europe.  It is worth noting, US involvement in the Middle East has created a refugee crisis that Europe will be dealing w/ for decades to come.

Within the US, there’s a lesson for the Democratic Party.  To wit, keep pandering to banksters, the tech giants in Silicon Valley, and the military industrial complex, and the blue wave you’re likely to ride in November may break early and recede.  Leaving failed GOP-Lite economic policies exposed, gasping for oxygen, and stranded on the beach.  It’s not enough for Dems to be liberal on social issues.  They are going to need to find ways to make the economy, & government, work for the people again, and that likely means upsetting some members of the oligarchy/donor class.  

Quelle horreur!

As for the malaise Macron correctly identifies but then fails to address, thank you establishment political parties.  Thank you kleptocrats that own and operate decaying democracies throughout the West.  

You broke it… now its time to own it, and fix it. 

If you think authoritarian or totalitarian regimes are the way to go…look at what they do to billionaires in Saudi Arabia.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2018