Dems Ignore Trump’s Nuclear Recklessness With Russia, Because Of Course They Fucking Do
Political commentary throughout 2016 was filled with scary sound bytes by partisan opponents of the Republican party warning how dangerous and horrifying it would be if Donald Trump ever gained access to the nuclear codes. Here's a March 2016 column from USA Today titled "Trump's nuclear views are terrifying". Here's another March 2016 article from CNN titled "President Trump: A 6-year-old with nuclear weapons?" Here's an August 2016 article from the Chicago Tribune titled "The terrifying prospect of Donald Trump with nuclear weapons". Here's an October 2016 article from Business Insider about how former nuclear launch officers had said Trump can't be trusted with the launch codes. Here's a November 2016 Bloomberg article titled "Two Words to End All Consideration of Voting for Trump: Nuclear Holocaust".
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. Over and over and over again I encountered Democrats on social media in 2016 telling me I needed to support Hillary Clinton because Trump was going to get everyone nuked in a fit of stupid impulsiveness if elected, their fears stoked by partisan media reporting like the above day after day. Everyone lost their minds over Joe Scarborough's claim on MSNBC that he knew someone who'd heard candidate Trump asking a foreign policy expert why nuclear weapons can't be used, a claim Scarborough never substantiated. Trump's political opponents made very, very sure that the American people were afraid that they and their loved ones would die in a nuclear holocaust if he was elected.
Isn't it surprising, then, that these people are all completely ignoring this administration's insane, world-threatening nuclear escalations against Russia?
Of course it fucking isn't.
A couple of great articles have come out recently about the Trump administration's Nuclear Posture Review and other omnicidal cold war escalations with the only other nuclear superpower on the planet. The first is Anti-Media's "How Donald Trump’s Policies Have Brought Us to the Brink of World War 3", and the second is titled "Normalizing Nukes, Pentagon-Style" by Rejan Menon and Tom Engelhart for Antiwar.com. Both provide good insight into the dangers inherent in further blurring the lines between when nuclear weapons use is and is not acceptable, and the completely illogical rationale for doing so. I think it's wonderful that both of these essays have been written, and I think it's very telling that such insightful takes on this issue of unparalleled importance are relegated to small alternative media outlets.
How aware would you say the average rank-and-file Democrat is that Trump has controversial views on immigration? How about the fact that he said "shit hole countries"? Or the fact that that he says offensive things on Twitter? I think it's fair to say that due to the frenetic coverage these issues receive from Democrat-allied mainstream media, a very large percentage of registered Democrats are aware of them.
How about the fact that this administration is imperiling the life of every organism on earth with needless escalations against a nuclear superpower? How often do you see 2018 Joe Scarborough talking about that on MSNBC?
Nuclear holocaust is the worst thing that can possibly happen. There are many, many things to hate and criticize the current president for, but the fact that he has overseen steady escalations which increase the likelihood of nuclear holocaust is far and away the most urgently worthy of condemnation. If you were going to attack this president on one thing, this would be it. But Trump's ostensible political opponents ignore it, because they ignore all despicable acts of warmongering.
And because Russia.
Democrats have been collaborating with Republicans to inflate the already staggering US military budget and exacerbate the new cold war, as well as expand Trump's Orwellian spying powers and expand his unconstitutional war powers. Propaganda has been used to keep rank-and-file Democrats fixated on the more cosmetically awful aspects of this administration, as well as entirely fictional aspects like the baseless Russiagate conspiracy theories, while hiding its most horrific aspects from the spotlight. Fear Russia, fear Trump's tweets, but pay no attention to the steadily mounting nuclear tensions behind the curtain.
The US-centralized empire is making an omnicidal gamble with its Russiagate vanity project as it attempts to maneuver Russia off the world stage to prevent the rise of any rival superpowers, already having killed Russians in Syria, expanded NATO, kept troops along Russia's border, established a permanent military presence in Syria with the goal of effecting regime change, forced Russian outlets to register as foreign agents, and allowed the sale of arms to Ukraine. Hot proxy conflicts and increasingly unclear lines could lead at any time to an inflammation in Syria, Ukraine or elsewhere which leads to a nuclear warhead being set off in the chaos and confusion, setting mutually assured destruction into motion and killing everything.
But sure, let's talk about Trump's fucking tweets instead.
The Democratic party does not resist Trump. Not in any meaningful way. If the most dangerous things about this administration are to be resisted, real resistance is going to have to come from ordinary human beings standing up and demanding change, and the Democratic party exists to prevent that from happening. The Democratic party exists to co-opt grassroots movements and divert their energy back towards the machine.
It is not Democrats versus Republicans. It is humanity versus the machine. Redraw the battle lines and fight the real war.
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As Caity has already pointed out in a previous article, this new cold war with Russia is just as much about China as it is about anything else. Since the end of WWII, the USA has been THE superpower of the world, and since the fall of the USSR, it's been the ONLY superpower. Russia, as it is now, cannot fight us with regular military power and everyone knows it. Their military budget is less than what we INCREASED ours by. The only area where than CAN match us in power is with nukes. I dunno about anyone else but I don't wanna see what would happen if the cold war suddenly turned into a hot war.
This is all about global hegemony and the USA maintaining it's empire. They don't run the world like they used to. China is on the path towards becoming the dominant economic force in the world. TPTB in the USA see the Eurasia market becoming the central focus of the world and they can't stand the idea of not having the world run through and by the USA.
Since the USA can't control the world economically the way they used to, now they do it through sheer military might. Problem is, this is not the sort of solution that can last long term. Also since the end of WWII, far right wing economic policies have taken back every gain for the people made in the New Deal and we are quickly headed towards another Great Depression level economic crash.
What we're facing here is an aging empire on the verge of economic collapse and the loss of their role as the world leader in everything but they still have the strongest military ever created and are nuclear saber rattling with the only other nuclear superpower in the world because they believe that it will somehow maintain their empire. I really, really hope that I'm wrong about this, but I don't see the USA giving up it's empire without blowing up the world first. If they can't have it, nobody will. History tells us that when empires fall, it's an ugly affair.
To say we are royally fucked is the understatement of all time.
Yup. I've seen the flip in FP from Obama 2014 to 2018 as a flip of Deep State power. Anti-China spooks were in during the Obama years, so we woo Russia. 2016 the anti-Russian spooks took charge, so we pressure Russia.
But I really don't get how pressuring Russia damages the Russia / China relationship. I don't get it, like at all.
Yes, "the pivot to Asia" started during the Obama years. The president has changed but deep state foreign policy has not. Trump is just as much a puppet of the MIC as Obama was.
Caity's article about China and Russiagate can be read here: https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagate-isnt-about-trump-and-it-isn-t-even-ultimately-about-russia-3d9021ba3d8c
I keep waiting for this to sink in to the minds of the Russia conspiracy theorists... it's not
Their dirty little secret, is that they are both on the same side geo-politically.
Don't let that get in the way of a good story though.
If your are talking about Russia and the US I agree. The ME is a mess, full of factions of people who hate each others guts literally. It's taken a long time for both sides to comprehend you can't build democracies where democracies aren't welcome so basically the best you can do is babysit both sides so they don't genocide one another.
The "machine" is really a ratchet. The Republicans are the front swing of the ratchet, moving the kleptocratic agenda forward. The Democrats are the back swing of the ratchet. Looks like they are pushing back against the Republicans, but in reality they are just setting them up for the next push forward.
There is no ideological difference between the two parties. They are playing a clever game of musical chairs, and are playing tricks with people's emotions and a war on their minds. They are all one big happy family of elitist ideologues, who only care about your vote at election time. Of course your vote counts for nothing, as they just do what they please.
it is crazy to me how democrats seem to take turns voting against common sense things, or in favor of terrible things like the bloated military budget. like one of them says 'i'll vote no on canadian drug imports if you say yes to the military budget so i don't have to...' i don't know, maybe that is silly, and they all just like bombs. love your writing.
Excellent, excellent, excellent!
I am not the first on this platform to question the existence of nuclear weapons, but I am surprised there are not more.
This guy is insane. How much longer are we going to allow a madman to hold us hostage?? What do those of us who survive, if any of us do, tell our children if this madman actually launches a nuke and devastates the globe??
This is absolutely insane and it has to come to an end.
@caitlinjohnstone
I guess under your logic they are all just sitting around waiting for that magic moment of Armageddon, none of them want to see the fruits of their off springs off springs they'd just prefer to be blown to smithereens.
The US Establishment will only accept fealty. And something tells me that the Russians don't do fealty.
You must accept corporate sponsored public policy in your country by our rules. If you don't you're a terrorist or a Russian satellite and are to be sanctioned or bombed (probably both if you have oil) by ourselves or our NATO or Saudi allies.
So there is really no potential solution to this. It's a Long War that all but promises to end in Nuclear bombs being dropped.
Thinking about it, you know what the cold war was missing? A Global Terrorist movement. Man, if we would have had that wild card, we would have won the Cold War for real.
And, I'll tell you, @caitlinjohnstone, the American people are buying this. They think the hacking is kind of bullshit, but the war stuff and meddling in democracy is deadly serious.
Russian Aggression is a given. To suggest anything but Russian Aggression facing America is to be unreasonable and out of line. It's pretty scary.
The slope looks and feels pretty slippery.
Peace~