The dominant part of the US capitalist ruling class that has enjoyed hegemony since at least the 1930s is still lost in the exuberance of the 1990s and 2000s, and the assumed victory of “liberal capitalist democracy” over all comers. It, and its fully indoctrinated courtiers, simply cannot envisage any form of compromise either at home or abroad. Their only answer to the challenges that they face is escalation and propagandist slurs. Their liberal bourgeois “progressive” project must not be derailed, and must be defended at any cost. The barbarians at the gates must be defeated and taught a lesson about deference to their liberal capitalist betters.
The Trump Show Trials
This week we have witnessed one of the greatest show trials, as ex-President Trump was found guilty of utterly vague and legally questionable charges that had been sexed up from a misdemeanour to felony, brought by a politically-motivated District Attorney in a court overseen by an utter disgrace of a Judge, where the majority of the testimony was from an inveterate liar destroyed on the stand by the defence. Then there is the utter ridiculousness of the judge’s 55-page highly complex jury instructions that the jury were not allowed to have a printed copy of, with the jury provided with three different theories of Trump’s guilt that they could pick from; with the jury members not having to agree on which theory they individually chose! Then we can add the extremely Democrat-leaning nature of the New York jury pool, and the judge’s Democrat consultant daughter (no conflict of interest here!). Even the CNN senior legal analyst could not stomach the legal shenanigans. I do not like Trump and his politics, and I consider him to be just as corrupt as his political opponents, but that does not change the fact that this was such as obvious political show trial. The judge continued with his legal shenanigans by setting the sentencing hearing for four days before the Republican convention; so obviously directly interfering in the presidential election.
Such show trials display the US as a “banana republic” at home and abroad, and threaten the widespread use of the law as a weapon by an increasingly autocratic government; even on members of the US capitalist elite. The bias in the law’s usage by the Biden administration is very evident as the Clinton’s sit with no similar charges for their bribing of Paula Jones (who was alleging rape not a consensual affair) in the very same way that Trump paid off Stormy Daniels; with a significantly larger sum of money involved.
The ruling will of course be rapidly appealed to higher courts and there are numerous areas of reversible error that can be the basis of such an appeal, which will all delay sentencing probably well beyond the November election. It will be the same with the other cases, such as the one where the D.A. was found to be having an affair with the prosecutor or the official documents case where the prosecutor’s office has been found to be manipulating evidence. Instead of tarnishing Trump to the point where he would be unelectable the miscalculating and hubristic liberal capitalist elite has instead ended up trashing the reputation of the US justice system both at home and abroad, and made a political martyr out of Trump; with the latter’s poll numbers increasing with the number of show trials started against him. The fever dream psychotic nature of the US liberal elite was on display as Robert De Niro lost his mind in front of the court house as an official representative of the Biden campaign:
To say that De Niro’s words were pure projection is an under statement. As Gramsci so well detailed, when capitalist ruling class cultural hegemony loses its power to control the populace the liberal mask is quickly ripped off to reveal the underlying fascist authoritarianism. The post-Occupy Wall Street liberal ruling class attempt to divide and conquer through divisive identity politics is not hacking it any more as more of the populace reawakens to the reality of US class power and foreign policies.
Just as with the Democratic President Wilson as he dragged the US populace into an unwanted war, it is the liberal progressive bourgeoisie that is implementing a fully authoritarian state; following on from the great work of the Obama administration. What will be their next escalation be as Trump’s poll numbers continue to increase, and the gap between Trump and Biden starts to become a chasm?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brings a much more sane and balanced take that sees the utterly anti-democratic nature of these show trials, and that much of the US populace will see them for exactly what they are. With the only result being an increase in Trump’s popularity and a further tarnishing of the image of the Democratic Party, the US legal system and the US in general.
Ukraine
To add to the tarnishing of the US reputation at home and abroad is the dogged refusal of the US dominant elite to give up on their failed Ukraine project, with its new arms and money package and now the authorizing of the Ukraine regime to attack areas deep within Russia with US weaponry. As President Putin has very clearly stated, such attacks will be deemed to make military groupings within Europe and the US legitimate targets; the way to a possible WW3 is being opened as the US elite refuse to compromise in any way. At the same time, the European vassal elites are also pushing the envelope with plans for official (as against sheep-dipped) boots on the ground, and the usage of supplied weapons (e.g. F16 fighter-bombers and cruise missiles) to hit targets deep within mainland Russia.
Again and again the West had the chance to put this conflict to bed with Minsk 1 (2014) and Minsk 2 (2015) that would have created a Canada-type federal structure with the Donbass able to have a Quebec-like status. Very much the same was on the table in April 2022 and was to all intents agreed to by the Ukrainian leadership before it was scotched by the Western elites. This follows the same pattern of the Yugoslavian conflict of the 1990s, where a Bosnian independence referendum had been defeated, and all three religious groups in Bosnia agreed to a lasting peace; until the US Ambassador intervened to destroy any possibility of such a peace. As detailed by the Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia at the time.
But this is not the unipolar moment of the 1990s, and the US cannot simply impose its will as it did then. And 2024 Russia is not 1990s Yugoslavia; it will not be defeated and broken up into smaller chunks to be pillaged by the Western elites. As the daily tallies of Ukrainian losses by the Russian military show, the Ukrainian army is increasingly being bled white and its artillery and mobile armoured vehicles destroyed. Personnel losses (killed, irretrievably wounded, MIA, AWOL, taken prisoner) are now in the range of 60,000 to 75,000 per month, while new military recruitment kidnapping efforts flounder in their attempts to replace those losses; with replacements hardly trained if at all. With perhaps 250,000 front line troops at best, these Ukrainian loss rates are utterly unsustainable. It is now obvious that the opening of a new front north of Kharkov by the Russians served as a honey trap to suck in some of the best brigades in the Ukrainian army where they can be destroyed by Russian artillery, drones and airforce; while at the same time being kept from defending other parts of the front. Another such new front is rumoured to be planned north of the latest one, perhaps a new honey trap that the Ukrainian must defend against but in doing so will only weaken more the rest of the front and increase their own already disastrous personnel and equipment loss rates.
The reaction has been desperate Ukrainian attempts at public relations attacks on Crimea using large numbers of their limited stock of advanced missiles and sea drones; with little real impact upon Russia’s war machine while allowing Russia to study how to defeat such weapons. Already the US GPS guided bombs and HIMARS missiles have been utterly defeated by Russian jamming. In addition, there are the increasingly shrill shrieks from some of the European vassals threatening official boots on the ground and direct attacks upon Russian territory; for now Putin’s stern warning seems to have cooled their ardour. The perceived “invincibility” of the Western militaries has already been heavily undermined by the ongoing defeat, together with the failure of one Western weapons system after another. Even the US media now airs complaints about the hallowed Abrams tank, here and here. Like so many Western weapon systems, it has been shown to be a hyper-expensive maintenance-hog only fit for fighting lesser-than opponents in conflict environments that no longer exist. If F16s are ever given to the Ukrainian regime, the ease with which these aged planes will be blown out of the sky and destroyed on the clean runways that they require will only add to the increasingly dim view of the US (and Western in general) military.
Instead of thinking carefully and de-escalating, the US vassal of all vassals, the UK ruling class, is now floating trial balloons of mass conscription during the current election campaign. Given the utter disgust of so many British citizens for the ruling and political classes, together with the empty cupboard that is the nation’s finances after 14 years of Conservative implemented austerity-looting, one could mistake such trial balloons as a sequel to Monty Python’s Upper Class Twit Of The Year. The two major political leaders would certainly make excellent competitors.
Boris Johnson would be even better, recently seen entertaining Azov Nazis in the Houses of Parliament; following on from the Canadian Parliament’s standing ovation of a WW2 Nazi. With BoJo invoking a Churchill who lead the country in the defeat of Hitler and his Nazis!
With Ukrainian military personnel losses rapidly accelerating past one million, it is fulfilling its role of fighting Russia to the last able Ukrainian; even with the population doing everything they can not to be press ganged and dragged to the front line. The eventual loss of Ukraine will be a huge loss to the West only because it is the West that has doubled down again and again on its proxy-war with Russia. And it may keep doubling down if Andrew Radin of the RAND Corporation has his way, as expressed in his gung-ho article How to win in Ukraine: pour it on, and don’t worry about escalation, where he states:
Russia cannot indefinitely sustain disproportionate losses in men and materiel. Removing constraints on U.S. assistance will enable Ukraine to attrit Russian forces and overcome its superior numbers, especially at a time when renewed Russian attacks are putting pressure on Ukraine. The United States and its allies should take advantage of Russia’s necessary restraint against NATO, and do more to help Ukraine defeat Russia. The Biden administration was understandably careful early in the war. There is now room for a far more intensive U.S. role.
Seems that he wasn’t listening to Putin’s latest words on the subject, just as his professors and senior think tank colleagues did not take proper heed of Putin’s speech of 2007 at the Munich Security Conference where he so eloquently and presciently stated the future issues if the West did not change course.
Radin’s reasoning is of a man stuck in the 1990s and 2000s, rather than one understanding the realities of the mid 2020s. He received his PhD from MIT in 2012, so spent his formative years in school and university during the Clinton and Bush presidencies and Obama’s first term; soaking up US supremacy. It may take many decades for the US policy-making bodies and their ruling class pay masters to rid themselves of the delusions of those two decades; perhaps only through retirement and death. They have certainly shown no predilection to learn from their mistakes.
Thankfully, the people of the nation of Georgia woke up to what was being planned for them and elected a government that is not a Western vassal. With the recently passed foreign-funded NGO disclosure law, passed over the veto of the traitorous president, Georgia is now reinstating its own sovereignty and doing what is best for Georgians. At the same time, the Armenian population is pushing back against the Western puppet leader of that nation.
In addition, the US population is increasingly against providing more aid for Ukraine while much of that populace becomes increasingly destitute and there is no money for basic services, infrastructure maintenance and defending the US southern border.
Gaza
Unlike in Britain, in the US the displays of absolute unflinching support for a foreign fascist regime are reserved for the Zionist regime of Occupied Palestine. It has become increasingly hard to understand whether US politicians consider themselves to be serving the national interest of the US or that of Israel. The former seems to be increasingly thrown to the wind as politicians from across the spectrum froth at the mouth with a rabid Zionist commitment to the genocide of the Palestinian population. The Speaker of the House displayed his Zionist rabies infection at the recent Israeli Independence Day event at the Israeli Embassy; or was it just the pieces of Zionist silver at work?
Of course when it comes to utterly psychotic foaming at the mouth Zionism its hard to outdo US Senator Lindsay Graham, here speaking at the David Kempinksi Institute in his true constituency of Tel Aviv, Israel. A “confirmed bachelor”, Graham displays many of the openly homophobic and pathetically obsequious power-serving traits as J. Edgar Hoover. Now its obvious to see who is the boss in the picture below, and who is the desperately pathetic servile tool.
And Joe Biden, after celebrating the Trump show trial short-term success, details his plans for Israeli “security” and the creation of a vassal leadership in Gaza to replace their true representatives of Hamas, while the remaining Gazan population is allowed to exist in the wasteland created by the Zionist regime. Even this is of course is just some smokescreen of BS that Biden knows fully well will not be accepted by the Zionist regime, but some fig leaf is needed to cover the genocidal nature of the US administration.
Another fig leaf was the US$320 million Gaza “relief” pier which has been destroyed by heavy seas and served as a great display of US military engineering ability. You think that they would have learnt something since D-Day in 1944! It will now be quietly memory-holed by the Western media, as have been so many Western atrocities and failures. The frothing at the mouth has now driven US politicians to directly threaten the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court as they designate the Zionist regime as genocidal and the latter issues arrest warrants for the Zionist regime leaders.
Soon to be adjudicated are the cases against the Western nations that directly support and facilitate (and in reality partake in) the Gaza genocide. This is par for the course for the US as it previously threatened the ICC if it dared to investigate the Western atrocities in Afghanistan.
Just as the show trails against Trump have shown that the US administration is utterly lawless at home, the ICC and ICJ cases have shown that it is utterly lawless at the international level. Both a large section of the US population, and nations around the world, have taken note. The liberal mask has been ripped off to show a US capitalist elite driven purely by greed and power, without any ethical base. The US “soft power” so well cultivated in the post-WW2 period, and re-energized in the 1990s unipolar era, has been torn asunder; a self-inflicted gaping wound.
This destruction of the positive image of the US, and the West, greatly aids nationalist politicians in overcoming the long tentacles of the US and Western political interference complex. As noted above, Georgia is now removing those tentacles from its domestic politics. Thailand is also showing signs of such removal as it moves toward BRICS membership. Perhaps it will soon be able to pass the foreign-funded NGO and media law that was defeated in the nation a couple of years ago?
It will become more and more difficult for Western vassal leaders and opinion formers to sell the West to their populations given the US, and West’s, ongoing self-destruction of its own image. In many ways, China and Russia can simply be “not as bad as the West” to gain alliances across the world. That they actually offer a positive, win-win, developmental option for the Rest of the World is the real reason that the West is so adamant in attempting to either destroy or contain them.
The overreach will continue, with the result that US capitalist ruling class power will continue to unravel at the home and abroad. As it will for its many vassal ruling classes across the world.
well written take down roger... thanks...
What I like about Roger Boyd's writings is that it shows bigger picture and connecting vast different issues.