What we see in these battles between the Trumps and the Cheneys is a culture war—or, more accurately, a class war—over the aesthetics and rhetoric of the GOP. It’s not about ideology or policy; it’s about who will get pandered to most.
It’s not wrong to say that Trump thinks Cheney is “bad for our country” because she doesn’t release aggressively moronic public statements like this.
The GOP’s “civil war” has little to nothing to do with actual policy or vision. On all critical matters, the camps are aligned. Trump’s “populism” never actually went beyond promoting Americans’ God-given right to industrial-strength toilet flushing and scalding hot showers.
Some might say that the Trumps kicking out the Cheneys means that the “neocons” are out of power, and we’re headed to a new, “America First” era of peace. This is wrong. Trump brought us closer to a full-fledged war in the Middle East than we’ve been in a decade.
We’re experiencing a long-term decline in the American empire and its capacity to engage in overseas wars (and not just drones strikes). The public has little appetite for war—or to glorify Bush’s wars of the past. Trump, to his credit, grasped this in 2016.
Trump is more flamboyantly Zionists than the neocons, who, perhaps solely for the sake of status, were somewhat restrained, at least rhetorically.
The idea that Biden, Cheney, Trump or any of them are fundamentally different in foreign policy is flatly wrong. Geopolitics is a “bi-partisan” affair and paradigms stretch across administrations. People who claim that Trump is the “antiwar” candidate are deluded or mendacious.
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Clearly, the American Left is headed in the same as the direction as most of the world—Israel is viewed as illegitimate. Whether that will amount to whining about Palestinians on Twitter, and vaguely demanding a two-state solution, or actual policy, remains to be seen.
The only non-Jewish community on Earth that is “all in” with Israel is White Christians in the South and Midwest—who are, in fact, more Zionists than the Jews. And, for the time being, the leaders of the Democratic Party are staunchly Zionist.
This presentation reminds me a lot of "Zeitgeist" viral video from 10-15 years ago. It offers a "gnostic" and "Manichaean" outlook. It gets some things right, which makes it even more insidious. The whole appeal is "awakening"—and thus redeeming the fallen world.
The key qualities to it are
+ a sinful, fallen world
+ absolute evil at the top levels of the political order
+ good, Christian patriots, who are victims and make up the resistance
+ revelation (in this case of hypocrisy and crimes)
=> redemption
America has never really been a nation-state. It’s essence is as a *frontier*. FJ Turner really got that right. The frontier, in this sense, is open, endless space, and specifically not a border separating hostile peoples.
From its inception up until 1924, America never had a real *immigration* policy. It had a naturalization policy, and was still open to most all comers. Between 1924-1965, America was, sort of, a nation, with mass assimilation to WASP norms. But that’s the exception not the rule.
After 1939, America’s imperial demands were so great that to even think of it as a nation-state—like, say, Finland—totally obscures its dynamic and logic.
I don't remember if I spoke about this at length on a podcast ... but, after thinking through things, I'm generally of the opinion that the Odal rune that appeared at CPAC was *intentional*. But that only raises more questions.
I don't think that whoever was behind this meant for the CPAC audience to recognize it and endorse it. Obviously, if CPAC flew a Swastika banner, its audience—the majority of whom are Christian-Zionist and obsessive about the Holocaust—would shriek back in horror.
But if a symbol is meant to resonate on the unconscious, then why this symbol? It wouldn't be known by many, if not most, attendees, and Nazi Paganism isn't the image conservative seek to project. In their minds, they were the ones who *defeated* the Nazis.
It's revealing that in the right-wing and Greenwaldian revisionism of #Jan6, the focus is entirely on the mishandling of the event by Capitol Police (fair enough) and the misreporting involving Sicknick (which resulted from reports from the CP, along with typical liberal bias).
The focus is off Trump himself—but also off the financial infrastructure that made the #Jan6 possible: the hundreds of millions that flew into Trump/GOP coffers *after* the election had been lost, and the untold millions that went to the grift-squad.
Not to be cruel to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers...but they aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer. The idea that they came up with the #Jan6 scheme on their own is absurd. They were "going with the flow" of the MAGA movement—and clearly indidvuals go rich off the fiasco.
The real issue is whether they will arrest those who organized and profited off the fiasco. reuters.com/article/us-usa…
I feel that most of the people arrested thus far are “innocent,” in the sense that they had no idea what the hell they were getting into, and were deluded and manipulated. (That doesn’t mean that they’re not guilty of some crimes).
I also fear that the Justice Department wants to focus on arresting various “Oath Keepers” and “extremists,” who fit the description above.