/ world today news/ I read on the Facebook page of “Epicenter” a curious comment by Ognyan Minchev about the constitutional crisis in the US foreign policy, which I wrote about a few days ago.
It says that Russian strategists, led astray by the theories of the bearded Eurasian philosopher Dugin and the tradition of strong and indivisible tsarist power, could not understand the complexity of the American separation of powers and the possibilities of resistance against potential would-be dictators. Therefore, they naively counted that if they arrogantly interfered in the American elections and put their man in the White House, he would be able to turn things in their favor:
“The attempt by the Russian special services to interfere in the US presidential election to ensure the victory of ‘our man’ once again demonstrates the deep cognitive obfuscation in official Russian visions of the world and the West in particular.”
But the vibrant American politics refuted them:
“Faced with a systemic challenge to the functioning of the federal state, representatives of the two major parties in the institutions put aside their dramatic differences and nearly all areas of national and international politics and rallied behind the sanctions law with a near 100 percent majority.”
What can I disagree with?
First of all,
“the attempt of the Russian special services to interfere in the elections” in the USA is not a proven fact,
despite the six or seven — I’ve run out of them — investigations into the matter that ended without success and the ongoing work of independent counsel and former FBI chief Robert Mahler, who has also subpoenaed two grand juries (panels of jurors) in Washington and state Virginia. And this investigation will end with inconclusive conclusions.
The “Russian connection” is a product of elitist groupthinkmythological groupthink. Propaganda fiction by Hillary’s staff, trumpeted by the deep state and the corporate media and made the paranoia of the day, aimed at deflecting attention from and the causes of the embarrassing and, many say, disastrous Democratic loss in the presidential election in November are obvious.
Many intelligent Americans, my until recently fellow party members and like-minded people, are also captive to this paranoia because it is forced upon them by the media and because they see in it only a convenient angle of attack against what they hate for other reasons (racism, misogyny, Obamacare, environmentalism, stupidity , puffery) Trump, and Russia has no real meaning for them. I have no doubt that one day, after the current mental blackout has passed, all reasonably sane Americans will see how things stand.
I’m not familiar with the Russian foreign policy kitchen, but from what I understand it lacks the paranoid witch-hunt elements that characterize American thinking about the “Russian connection.”
Secondly, Minchev’s optimism about the resistance of the American political system to dictatorship is overexposed. On the contrary,
America has never been free from the fear of tyranny.
The Declaration of Independence, the Second Amendment, the entire early history of the country is permeated with it, there is a constant struggle with the specter of tyranny, for a real separation of powers, an effective system of checks and balances.
In the 1930s, the Great Depression, there was a real sense that things were going to turn to dictatorship at any moment – there were influential populist politicians such as Louisiana Governor Huey Long, colorfully described by R. Penn Warren in “All the King’s Army” (All the King’s Men). In Philip Roth’s historical fiction novel The Plot Against America (The Plot Against America, 2004), the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, an admirer of the Führer, won the election fairly against F.D. Roosevelt in 1940 and began mass repressions against the Jews. The great industrialist Henry Ford kept a picture of Hitler above his desk.
In the past, America had the chance to be governed in times of war by moderate presidents like J. Washington and F.D. Roosevelt, who could at will become unopposed dictators for life. Lyndon Johnson sought unlimited powers to advance the progressive agenda of protecting the disenfranchised—black civil rights, desegregation—often violently and against the will of both parties, the Great Society with Social Security and Medicare. As a pensioner, Johnson dreamed of becoming a “dictator of the world” to give every poor family a cottage – on the condition that he also gave them birth control pills. Nixon and the Bush-Cheney regime openly and brazenly – and Reagan more perfidiously – sought dictatorial power to serve a reactionary agenda in defense of the privileged.
In The Decline and Fall of the American Republic (The Decline and Fall of the American Republic, 2010) Bruce Ackerman wrote that the modern presidential institution suffers from “structural (not cyclical) extremism” and that Obama’s moderation should not mislead anyone—the next insurgent president may not be so “constitutionally restrained.” The presidency itself grows with “imperial” functions, becomes an “imperial presidency”.
In recent years, the situation has become even more “volatile” with the explosion of populism and the growing popular contempt for elites. For the majority of citizens, all politicians are corrupt, money buys democracy. Disapproval of Congress is at a record high – 80%, under Obama the Republicans blocked the work of the government with impunity, the Supreme Court is politicized and divided, foreign policy is disoriented, swinging from failure to failure, America’s place in the world is shaky. This seems to lead inexorably to a populist tyranny to clear the Augean stables – the Washington swamp. Trump’s eventual victory in the eyes of millions carried the real danger of an unsystematic dictatorship. It was also expected that if Trump lost, he would not recognize the election results and would launch a populist uprising with pitchforks and axes against the elites.
But the opposite happened! Trump won – by the way, it is now increasingly heard that he also took the popular vote, but there were serious election violations to his detriment – but Hillary’s staff, with the support of the Obama administration, did not recognize the election results. Not Trump, but Hillary, with the help of Obama, the deep state, and the corporate media controlled by the services, launched a full-scale
an unconstitutional coup against the legally elected president.
The struggle for supremacy between the executive branch and Congress has always been fierce, especially since the 1960s. Until last summer, however, it was believed that the mechanism of the establishment of the dictatorship would be precisely the excessive empowerment of the president. But Trump’s victory surprised us here too! Instead of a president-dictator – he appeared to us
revolutionary convention: parliament-dictator
Congress also joined in the anti-constitutional coup against the President! It just took a little longer for all the politicians in both houses to be properly processed and blackmailed by the neocon lobby and deep state services and the unifying specter of the “Russian connection” was imprinted on their minds.
With the near-unanimous vote on the sanctions bill, the war between Congress and Trump over who should lead foreign policy ended in a landslide victory for the former — in violation of the constitution.
For Ognyan Minchev, the lesson from what happened is that Russia was “severely beaten on the face”, and what consequences it would have, “remains to be seen”.
In the real world, the first consequence of what happened was that Russia would expel nearly a thousand employees from the US diplomatic missions in Russia, which according to people familiar here, would completely deprive the US of the ability to carry out any covert operations there, especially related to cultivation of Russian liberal opposition.
The second consequence was a serious and long-term aggravation of US relations with the EU.
Congress could not properly assess these and other effects of its actions because it is incompetent, corrupt and under various lobbying influences, it does not have the necessary informational and organizational resources to formulate and conduct foreign policy. I.e. at the revolutionary convention, a sharp deterioration in the already poor and chaotic management of US foreign policy is expected.
I have already said that doubts are also circulating that Putin made his decision to expel the officials at the request of Trump, who since the beginning of his term has pursued a course of turning the State Department upside down.
There are actually several parallel wars being fought in US foreign policy.
If Congress’s war with the President ends in victory, the President’s war against the bureaucracy in Foggy Bottom (the neighborhood along the Potomac River that is the headquarters of the State Department) rages on.
I recommend the post How the Trump Administration Broke the State Department (How the Trump Administration Broke the Department of State) in the magazine “Foreign Policies” from July 31, which summarizes a wealth of information from a journalistic investigation of the editorial office among diplomats and other interesting information from internal sources.
According to its authors, the morale of DD employees had never fallen so low before. Personnel experts were completely isolated, did not plan policy and budget, did not make decisions, did not even do the minimum to get already allocated money from Congress and the Pentagon. The bureaucratic process was completely blocked. The real work was being done in parallel (or rather not being done) by Tillerson’s political “praetorian” cabinet, which was tripled in size compared to the previous one, and also by the White House and the Pentagon.
The Secretary of State himself was unreachable to staff diplomats and apparently did not understand or appreciate the nature of their work. He planned mass purges of diplomats, hired an external private consulting company – this is how layoffs are done in corporations. This company sent the diplomats a questionnaire with amateur questions about what could be cut in their work. Half of the diplomats did not answer. The process of recruiting capable young personnel from the leading universities was liquidated. The budget, which is set by the White House, is proposed to be cut by up to 31%. We have already read about the actual liquidation of USAID and its related democracy export activities.
All the senior diplomatic positions vacated by Obama’s people were vacant, including ambassadors in important places – for example in the Middle East, and new regional deputy ministers for Europe and Eurasia, the Middle East, Asia and Africa have not been confirmed. At the moment, there is no ambassador in Moscow, as well as a Russian ambassador in Washington, due to the fault of Congress. Foreign ambassadors in Washington could not contact anyone in DD, their acquaintances were gone, their calls remained unanswered. It was said that to get something done, you had to call the president’s son-in-law or daughter-in-law directly to the White House.
A third parallel war has also been going on for some time between Trump’s people and Rex Tillerson,
who was expected to resign shortly. Accustomed until recently to the freedom and glamor of being CEO of Exxon Mobil, he could never come to terms with his subordinate, dependent and often humiliating position in Foggy Bottom – characterized by our experienced Bulgarian officials as a position of “is someone telling you?” Besides, Trump didn’t like him anymore and apparently avoided him.
As with the late Obama, now even more so
America is foreign policy “non-negotiable”
– a Russian term that is also Bulgarian. Elementary controllability of foreign policy processes is lacking. It is not about “democracy”, of which, of course, there is no mention, but about basic technical manageability and reliability.
This position is understood by all competent governments in the world, including in Western Europe, Israel and Saudi Arabia. It should already be understood in Sofia as well. Both from the government, and from the right-wing writing and speaking colleagues, and from the left.
This situation has a deadly negative effect on the image and role of America as a world hegemon and actually marks the end of its hegemony. It already happened in the fall of 2015, but it takes more time to spread the word that we live in a post-American world.
#deep #cognitive #blackout #Bulgarian #world #USA
