Following the US Defence Secretary’s objection to Trump’s threats to deploy US troops to quell the protests, 89 former defence staff, including four former defence secretaries, namely Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, Ash Carter and William Cohen, issued a statement published by the Washington Post in which they slammed Donald Trump, warned him that deploying the army to quell the protests would lead to undermining the trust between the masses and the army, and reminded him that the army had been established to fight America’s enemies and not its citizens. Although the statement expressed a high sense of responsibility and an aversion to undermining the military doctrine epitomising the centrality of the people in the philosophy of the democratic system, unlike the centrality of the ruler in tyrannical regimes, it does however reveal the depth of the rift within US society despite the fact that Donald Trump and his opponents act on the basis of protecting the ruling institutions guaranteeing the interests of the capitalist class in all its various orientations.
The state in a capitalist system attends to the interests of the capitalists; as for the rulers, Democrats or Republicans alike, they are but employees of the capitalists who bankroll their electoral campaigns. It is worth mentioning in this context how Bill Clinton Defended Chiquita Brands International Inc., which had backed his electoral campaign, and imposed on Europe a fine worth ten of millions of dollars. Moreover, US administrations tend to meet top executives to inform them that the administration is at their disposal. The top 1000 companies in the US are responsible for 60% of US GDP, and this reflects the importance and influence of companies in the decision-making mechanism of capitalist systems.
The Republicans, as it stands, might resort to getting rid of Donald Trump if successive setbacks keep haunting him in order to preserve their Senate majority and attempt to recapture the House of Representatives from the Democrats. They have been keeping silent over his maladministration and only defended him within the context of defending their party against of the Democrats, while adhering to their racist beliefs, which have been building up since the Newt Gingrich revolution within the Republican Party, whose thoughts were inherited by the Tea Party movement led by Sarah Palin.
It is clear that Donald Trump’s focus of attention is winning the votes of his evangelic electoral base that brought him to power and with which he has been flirting by supporting Israel unconditionally, being barefacedly hostile towards Muslims and boasting about humiliating their rulers, or by brandishing the bible. His disregard to other sections of American society led Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to say that the Republicans should win the votes of women and college graduates if they wanted to avoid a repeat of the blue wall they suffered in the midterm elections; “We got crushed in the suburbs,” he added. Washington Post’s conservative political columnist, George Will, for his part concluded that Trump should be removed.
Donald Trump is the man of the moment; according to some US observers, he has helped the Republican party win the presidential election and the Senate. He also succeeded in restructuring the judicial sector after the changes introduced by Obama who had appointed 329 federal judges including two justices to the Supreme Court of the United States, 55 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, and 268 judges to the United States district courts.
Trump set about restructuring the judicial sector within the context of jostling for influence in the judiciary and serving corporate interests and capitalists by appointing judges who were more sympathetic and accommodating of the Republican party’s viewpoint on the environment, consumer rights, commercial law and the like due to the significance of the judiciary in interpreting the intentions and purpose of the legislation produced by the legislative body, i.e. Congress and legal opinions expressed by the judicial system, as well as the executive orders decreed by the president, knowing that the judiciary is one of the influential authorities in the American system.
Some observers have concluded that neither Reagan nor George Bush and his son managed to accomplish the successes achieved by Trump and his clique. However, all this happened before the successive crises and the allegations of maladministration compelled him to overlook the partisan base, focus on his own popularity and personal electoral base and manipulate whatever stirred the emotions of the masses such as his naïve statement on George Floyd when spinning some positive economic forecasts he stated, “Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying, ‘this is a great thing that’s happening for our country’.”
Hence, the Republicans are facing a challenge that may compel them to sacrifice Trump if they fail to reverse the situation and turn the table on their opponents by concocting a host of foreign and domestic issues, which is a strategy often pursued by presidents and parties in US elections.
In a nutshell, the contest between the two parties and the divisions amidst the pressure groups and the deep state represented by the military-industrial conglomerate, financial lobbies, banks, oil firms and the media revolve around the interests of the capitalist class. The current protests are but an escalation aimed at venting the anger of the masses and will not have any impact on US foreign policy which has been achieving success in several weighty issues amidst domestic crises since the civil rights movements of the sixties and the Vietnam war that split US mainstream public opinion, which was considered a far more serious crisis than the one the US administration is facing currently. Despite his scathing attacks on his rivals and opponents, and his effrontery that embarrasses the Republicans, Trump is however admired among the conservatives due to the likeness between his style and their extremist right-wing streak. In his custodianship of the capitalists’ interests, he is compared to the clique of Bashar Assad, thugs of al-Sisi, mafia gangsters and brothel bouncers. His survival however, depends on his ability to avert a decline in his popularity; should he fail, the deep state would offer him as a sacrificial lamb to preserve their interests.
Copyright © LCIR 2020
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