America’s weakness strengthens Trump (AN ARTICLE IN THE SMH, 24/02/2024)

[GUS — IN CAPS: REMIND ME: WHY IS AMERICA WEAK? IS IT BECAUSE THE PRESENT PRESIDENT IS SENILE? IS IT BECAUSE THE PENTAGON IS RUNNING THE SHOW AND OTHER COUNTRIES OUTSIDE THE WESTERN WORLD HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THE PENTAGON SHENANIGANS?

IS IT BECAUSE THE INDUSTRIAL MILITARY COMPLEX IS GEARED TOWARDS MAKING PROFITS WITH MORE COMPLEX WEAPONS THAT ARE FRAGILE AND DEMAND MORE CASH ALL THE TIME — MEANING MORE PROFITS?

IS IT BECAUSE THE AMERICAN POLITICS ARE WORSE THAN THEY LOOK?

Nick Bryant

Long before Donald Trump was indicted on 91 felony charges or fined more than $US350 million for fraud, his admiration for autocrats and tyrants should have disqualified him from ever holding high office.

[GUS: THE FINE FOR FRAUD IS OUTRAGEOUSLY IGNORING THE FACTS THAT THERE WAS NO CRIME AND NO-ONE LOST ANY MONEY IN A PRACTICE WHICH IS COMMON IN REAL ESTATE AND USED-CAR TRADE: MAKE A DEAL ON THE VALUE OF STUFF. BANKS WERE HAPPY TO MAKE MONEY ON THE DEALS. MANY OF THE OTHER FELONIES REFER TO THE SAME FELONIES FOR WHICH JOE BIDEN GOT EXEMPTED FOR BEING SWEET AND SENILE…]

Trump has never tried to conceal his man-crush on Vladimir Putin or his esteem for the Russian president’s murderous regime. [THE RUSSIAN “REGIME” IS FAR LESS MURDEROUS THAN THE AMERICAN REGIME! — AND TRUMP HAS NOT MURDERED ANYONE YET AS FAR AS WE KNOW. FURTHERMORE PUTIN IS BLAMED FOR THIS OR THAT MURDER WITH NEVER A SINGLE PROOF, EXCEPT CONVENIENT (FABRICATED) CONJECTURES BY THE CIA FOR THE WESTERN MEDIA. THE LATEST INFERENCE IS THAT PUTIN KILLED SAINT NAVALNY. a) PUTIN DID NOT KILL NAVALNY AND b) NAVALNY WAS A WHITE SUPREMACIST NAZY WORKING FOR MI6 AND THE CIA]

Towards the homicidal North Korean leader Kim Jong-un – a leader he once mocked as ‘‘Little Rocket Man’’ – he quickly came to display something nearing paternal pride [BRYANT SHOUD HAVE WATCHED MICHAEL PALIN’S DOCO ON NORTH KOREA]. He also enjoys a convivial personal relationship with Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, even after the murder in 2018 of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a gruesome killing that the CIA concluded the crown prince had approved [GUESS WHAT: JOE BIDEN TRIED TO DO THE SAME CONVIVIAL PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP BUT FAILED BECAUSE JOE LIES AND LACKS ANY DIPLOMATIC SKILLS].

Yet a prime reason why so many Trump supporters are prepared to countenance his veneration of foreign despots is because they themselves are happy to consent to an American strongman [SURE: JOE IS PITIFULLY LEADING A COUNTRY INTO OBLIVION AND SOMEONE HAS TO LIMIT THE DAMAGE].

Trump’s four years in the White House provided regular glimpses into what an American autocracy would look like, from demanding the creation along the Mexican border of a moat stocked with alligators and venomous snakes to telling senior aides that ‘‘scumbags’’ in the press should not just be imprisoned but executed [EXACTLY THE SOMETHING THAT JOE BIDEN HAS DONE TO THE SOCIAL MEDIA JOURNALISTS]. A president who believed that power should flow through the tip of his Sharpie pen also had a penchant for authoritarian flourishes, such as orchestrating military tattoos on July 4 that featured tanks, armoured personnel carriers and a B-2 stealth bomber, and which culminated in a speech delivered from the most majestic pulpit that Washington has to offer: the steps of the Lincoln Memorial [JOE BIDEN KEEPS SALUTING THE MILITARY, PUTIN NEVER DOES].

In their seminal 2018 book How Democracies Die, the Harvard academics Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt developed four behavioural warning signs to help identify an authoritarian. First, when a politician rejects the democratic rules of the game [JOE BIDEN DID THE SAID  THING WITH SUPPORT FROM WHINING HILLARY CLINTON AND BARAK OBAMA] Second, when he ‘‘denies the legitimacy of opponents’’. [JOE BIDEN’S SENILITY DOES APPLY AS A LEGITIMATE CONCERN]. Third, when he ‘‘tolerates or encourages violence’’ [JOE IS ENCOURAGING ISRAEL TO KILL AS MANY PALESTINIANS, BY HIS CONFUSED UTTERING WHILE SENDING MORE BOMBS TO KILL. AS WELL, JOE’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS OTHER WORLD LEADERS IS APPALLING]. And fourth, when he ‘‘indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media’’ [THIS IS EXACTLY WHY CONSORTIUM NEWS IS TAKING JOE’S ADMINISTRATION TO COURT]. Even before he had incited the attack on the US Capitol, Trump had ticked all four boxes. Still, more than 74 million Americans voted for him in 2020 [I BELIEVE MORE PEOPLE WILL VOTE FOR HIM THIS TIME, IF THE SPECIAL SERVICES HAVE NOT TOPPED HIM BEFORE THIS]…

This should have come as little surprise. For decades, polls have suggested that many Americans prefer the smack of strong leadership, even at the cost of jettisoning democratic norms [THERE IS NO DEMOCRACY IN THE USA, JUST A FACADE OF THE CAPPER, WHILE IT IS RUN BY THE UNI-PARTY OF THE ELITES VIA THE PENTAGON]. Back in the mid-1990s, for example, one in 16 Americans thought that a military dictatorship would be a ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘very good’’ thing. By 2014, two years before Trump’s shock victory over Hillary Clinton, that figure had leapt to one in six. [THE ILLUSION THAT THE WHITE HOUSE RUNS THE COUNTRY IS STRONG BUT (REPEAT) AMERICA IS RUN BY THE PENTAGON AND THER “ELITES”…

The commonplace has it that Trump was a president like no other, especially when it came to trashing so many norms. None of his predecessors incited supporters to storm the US Capitol in a bid to overturn the result of a presidential election [TRUMP DID NOT INCITE VIOLENCE]. However, the country’s 45th president tapped into a centuries-old tradition of iron-fist US heads of states. [TRUMP WAS ANNOYING THE “ESTABLISHMENT” BY REFUSING TO INDULGE IN LITTLE WARS — SOMETHING THAT OBAMA AND JOE BIDEN DID VERY WELL: THE LIST OF WARS IS LONG]

President Andrew Jackson, who served between 1829 and 1837, is the most obvious example. Dubbed ‘‘King Andrew I’’, this brutal former general rode roughshod over Congress and has been likened by historians to an ‘‘American Caesar’’. John Adams, the country’s second president, tried to ban the opposition, while Thomas Jefferson also subverted the spirit and letter of the constitution. The boldest move of his presidency was also the most legally dubious: the Louisiana Purchase – agreed with Napoleon – which almost doubled the size of the United States, was not just a land grab but a power grab. [THERE IS MORE TO SAY ABOUT THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE, INCLUDING THAT NAPOLEON NEEDED MONEY… The record of British and French finance during the Napoleonic wars presents the striking picture of financially strong nations abandoning the gold standard, borrowing heavily, and generating inflation, while a financially weaker country followed more "orthodox" policies. NAPOLEON WANTED TO INVADE EUROPE AND RUSSIA…. WHERE DID I SEE THIS RECENTLY: JOE BEGGING CONGRESS TO APPROVE 60 BILLION TO A NAZI PROXY CALLED YUCKRAINE? A DEFICIT LARGER THAN THE GDP?

In the early 20th century, Woodrow Wilson, that supposed paragon of progressive virtue, bordered on the despotic when faced with the twin threats of imperial Germany and the Bolshevik revolution.

Even the saintly Abraham Lincoln was prepared to break the constitution in order to save the union. As the American Civil War raged, ‘‘Honest Abe’’ ripped up the First Amendment by censoring the press and arbitrarily imprisoned thousands of political opponents, some for merely singing Confederate songs.

In the 1930s, with totalitarianism rampant in Europe, Franklin D. Roosevelt was frequently assailed for being an American dictator, and for violating the unwritten convention set by George Washington that presidents should serve no more than two terms. Yet voters re-elected him three times.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who suggested her husband be a ‘‘benevolent dictator’’, noticed that the line from his 1933 inaugural address that drew the loudest cheers was his call for a strong presidency that would test the bounds of the constitution.

Just as Americans have lionised muscular presidents, they have rejected those perceived as weak. After Watergate, Jimmy Carter dispensed with many of the trappings of Richard Nixon’s imperial presidency, such as the playing of Hail To The Chief when he entered the room. Yet after complaints he had dispensed with too much pomp – former president Gerald Ford complained in 1980 ‘‘we have not an imperial presidency, but an imperilled presidency’’ – he brought back the trumpeters.

Nor it is insignificant that men with a martial background and bearing have often ended up as commander-in-chief. Beginning with Washington, this military rollcall includes Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower and lesser-known presidents, such as William Henry Harrison and Franklin Pierce. History has also looked favourably on presidential rule-breakers. When Nixon, the only president to resign from office, died in 1994, his funeral was attended by all five living presidents – a posthumous reaffirmation of the legal pardon granted by Gerald Ford. In the post-Watergate rehabilitation of Nixon, we find an augur of the post-January 6 exoneration of Trump. [REMEMBER DWIGHT EISENHOWER WARNED US ABOUT THE INDUSTRIAL MILITARY COMPLEX GRAB FOR POWER — WHICH TRUMP HAS TRIED TO STOP]

It is a mistake to think that the disgraced tycoon’s enduring popularity flies in the face of US history. Quite the contrary. The fact that he could make a triumphant return to the White House offers yet more proof of the abiding appeal of authoritarian style leadership in American politics. [IN MANY WAYS, THE PEOPLE RUNNING THE TELEPROMPTER FOR JOE’S MISSING BRAINS ARE THE EQUIVALENT OF AUTHORITARIAN LEADERSHIP UNDER INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE PENTAGON.

Nick Bryant is a former BBC

Washington correspondent. FOR LINK GO TO THE SMH.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.................