Who knew Donald Trump would become the president of the leading
democracy in the world, achieving show of hands of majority of Americans? With
his racist, bullying, male chauvinist, egotistical, misogynistic, anti-Moslem
remarks, He had such a ghastly presentation of himself in his campaign leading
to the election that makes one wonder how he could win majority of the votes.
How anyone seeing through him could have voted for him? How could the secret
service not protect our electoral system against Russian hacking?
These are some of the media reports or statements made by individuals
after the US presidential election of 2016. In fact, except the adjectives describing
Donald Trump, every single statement made above is incorrect! Even the title of
this article is incorrect! People who have followed the history, those who were
close to Trump as a candidate, and anyone who had followed economic structure
and political climate of the US for at least the last thirty years, would have
expected Trump defeating Clinton. Therefore, it was not shocking to many
people, especially those who voted for him. As far as America being a leading
democracy, it depends on one’s definition of “democracy”. If a society is
democratic when elected officials are voted into offices by citizen’s candid
and untarnished votes, near half of voting age Americans did not vote at all!
Even, majority of those who voted did not vote for Donald Trump. Those who
voted for him did not resent all the remarks he made against minorities and
immigrants and certain racial and religious factions. In fact, he was speaking
what some already had in mind. Even if those who voted for him differed with
his outlandish remarks, they preferred his blunt, frank and what seemed to be
sincere comments, against other candidates’ “politically speaking” and refined
speeches Clinton, a seasoned politician, could deliver. They were tired of all
the wars created by previous administrations in the Middle East and Africa,
lack of jobs, service oriented economy, collapse of infra-structure, widening
economic disparity, and lies they had heard from either party candidates repeatedly.
On the other hand, the losing party and those who could not foresee Trump’s
victory in that election, and the invisible government had to invent the most
ridiculous explanation, such as Russian hacking, in a hope to oust him. They
will of course work on trying to impeach Trump until the last day he is in the
office, making him acquiesce to the Hidden Government’s demands. This has
worked so far, as the president is leaning backward and accepting all their
conditions, contradictory to his campaign promises. WikiLeaks founder, who
distributed the damning documents against Democratic Party, claims that those
documents were not hacked but leaked. Besides, long before the distribution of those
documents, everyone knew that Bernie Sanders was thrusted out of the race by
the Party, and this knowledge would not create an incentive to vote for Trump.
The same Party had done this many times in the past and in different fashions,
the most famous one was selection of Truman over Henry Wallace seventy years
before, that resulted the first and the only nuclear attack on another nation.
Not having the decency to apologize for his campaign promises that he would
stop all the wars initiated or assisted by the US government, Trump is
expanding the war in Syria by sending troops, disturbing China Sea, having more
and active presence in South Yemen, and confronting North Korea, endangering
the world to a nuclear show down with Russia and China. He is doing more than he
has been expected in order to please the Invisible State. Furthermore, he
introduces a budget that even hard liner Republicans cannot stomach it.
One of the ways to keep the power in the hands of the already
powerful, where Western democracy is prevailing, remains restricting voters to
those who would vote for the power to be. Voter suppression is one way of doing
it. According to the polls, out of 251 million voting age population of the US,
only 55% voted. It is notable that 13% of those who have reached their voting
age cannot vote due to redistricting, prison conviction, state’s prohibitions
such as ID requirements, and of course fraud. From 326 million people in the US,
only 42% voted. One of the effective ways of keeping voters limited to those
selected few is by passing laws that keeps minorities and subjugated from
voting process, such as retrieval of the right to vote from prisoners, and at
the same time enacting laws that would sentence people for minor offenses.
Keeping poor people and minorities from voting can also be accomplished by
privatizing health, education, and occupation. Religion plays an important
factor as well, by keeping people backward and passive and convincing those who
lack financial means that it is the will of God, and that they will be rewarded
in another world. For the rest who do comply with the requirements of the deep
state, there is government’s control of the media in brainwashing. Segregating
the society into religious, racial, ethnic, or social divisions and provoking
them against each other, can obtain the same result. These approaches work for
both major parties advancing the Deep State.
However, what led to Trump’s victory is also a natural and predictable
consequence of capitalism. With booms and busts of every seven years or so,
that is supposed to be controlled by Federal Reserve’s moving prime rate up or
down, which has never worked, instability of the economy persists and the bust
lasts longer each time, due to other factors in addition. These factors include
trend of businesses towards monopoly, geographical movement of businesses to
areas of cheap labor, government regulations increasingly empowering businesses,
and many more protectionist policies. A divided society is created out of this
unleashed and uncontrolled power by private investors whose eyes are on the
bottom line, not people’s welfare. When political power is replaced by economic
power; when arm forces’ duty is not to protect the mainland but force its way
into finding new raw material resources, cheap labor, and new markets for
business; when laws regulating business are dismissed; when organizations
created for people’s welfare and security are either abandoned or privatized, private
industry’s power eventually grasp political system at the very top, in order to
monopolize pristine public wealth, such as air, ocean, mountain, and even outer
space! It requires a person of wealth with nationalistic and at the same time
segregating ideas and dictatorial tendency to occupy the highest office. This
has been predicted as one of the final stages of capitalism. However, there are
other historical factors.
Winning the war against the Brits, US government began its own
colonization of other nations wherever it could. It became possible by a
pretense of assisting colonized nations in their demands of independence, and replacing
colonizing state after they were defeated. Through this strategy, the US could
colonize Cuba and Philippines, and extend its grip later into Porto Rico and
Hawaii. This imperialistic attitude has shaped the US policy to grow into the
largest and the most feared military power in the world. Creating coup
d'etats in other countries and installing puppet regimes who would seek
American interest, led to outright attack on sovereign nations such as Afghanistan,
Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Later, it became clear that having an ally who could
fight US wars, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia in attacking Palestine, Bahrain,
and South Yemen, would be more beneficial. This is followed by the government’s
exceptionalism, which has been broadcasted repeatedly, and has been
demonstrated by the above actions, the has created this illusion for American
people that they are exceptional as well.
Of course, this exceptionalism only applies to WASPs (White
Anglo-Saxon Protestants), as any other race and ethnic group such as Native
Americans, African Americans, Catholics or Jews (to certain extent), Latino
Americans, Middle Easterners, and other minority groups are not the beneficiary
of this exceptionalism. Removing Native Americans have been the policy from the
time this land was taken over. Many treaties have been signed with Native
Americans regarding their rights to some land, and later dismissed by the US
government, the latest one is being fought in South Dakota today. Slaving
African Americans has been performed in many ways, and it is still ongoing
through a policy explained by Michelle Alexander in her book “The New Jim
Crow”. As the government destroys country after country in the Middle East to
benefit large Western companies involved in mine trading, more refugees pour
from those countries. Therefore, a ban on refugees becomes necessary.
Interestingly enough, Trump has banned residents of seven countries travelling
to the US (Iran, Iraq, Sudan Somalia, Syria, Libya, Yemen), all of which have
been through an upheaval by the US direct or indirect actions. We should
remember that it all started with Obama in December 2015 issuing a directory
called “HR158” banning the same people from entering the US if they were dual
citizens, except US visa holders. Although Obama did not mention all seven countries
by name, but the statement indicated such countries. Of course, Obama mediated
all necessary to further policies of the Deep State. Obama who was hoped after
his election to relieve some of the burdens of minorities turned in fact an
ally of the rich and powerful, and an impediment to the efforts of progressives,
mostly African Americans. He granted 212 pardons, none of them yo those
imprisoned for political reasons, such as African American Mumia Abu Jamal, or
Native American Leonard Peltier, or Porto Rican Oscar Lopez Rivera. In the
story of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, Uncle Tom is granted a better position than other
slaves, because he is trustworthy, as long as he serves White masters.
Why does each nation need a government? About 20 million people
work for the US Federal government and about 19.5 million people work for state
and local governments. This adds up to short of forty million people. Our taxes
are used to support these forty million government workers in order for them to
provide services for the rest of us. The most essential services citizens need
are security, health, shelter and employment. Security from outside invaders
and against other citizens is the responsibility of the arm forces and the
police. Living in a country with military budget close to the rest of the world’s
military budgets combined, we do not have to worry about outside invaders. But
any other country has to be worried! People in the US are more afraid of the
police than feeling secure around them. Rich people have their own security
guards, gated communities, and security systems. Businesses are protected by
the police. All others are in and out of jail! We have private prison system
whose benefit is for the growth of jail population. Next item is healthcare. We
have never had healthcare for all, which is desired not only by majority of people,
but by healthcare professionals as well. As far as the housing is concerned, not
only the government creates homelessness through lack of affordable housing, it
demolishes shelters of those who live on public land (which is not really
public but property of the government) by erecting tents or other means. The
government always claims that work is created and unemployment is down, which
in realty the person who works part-time for minimum wage and cannot even pay
for his or her own food, is considered employed. Job insecurity and unemployment
or under-employment is rampant. As a result, we are paying taxes for essential
services that we do not receive. Our tax dollars, and ever increasing
government borrowed money turns into a missile to kill the poor in Africa and
Middle East, as long as they don’t submit to Big Brother.
A graph from the Congressional Budget Office shows that 10% of the people
owned 51 trillion dollars as of 2013, and 1% of people owned only one trillion
dollars in the same year. The gap is widening every year. Investigating through
the pages of history, we see the same dividing financial gap between the
minority in power and the rest of the nation, before the demise of older
powerful imperialist states. They also became more and more militaristic, using
their military might against other nations, in pursue of controlling the world.
At the same time, when people showed any sign of discontent for being
subjugated, they were brutally silenced. At its height, British colonies
extended to about 14 million square miles, or almost a quarter of the land mass
of the world. They owned territories in every known continent. It was said that
the sun never set on British Empire, as the sun had shined on at least one of
its colonies at any given time. British government owned the largest navy in
the world, and used it continually in expanding the empire. Internally, people
lived in two opposite worlds; the world of haves and the world of have nots.
Confiscating farmers’ lands and advocating laws victimizing poor people
resulted in many uprisings, all of which were brutally crushed. At the same
time, colonies revolted for independence, which were defeated at first with the
aid of military. Eventually, some territories were finally able to get out of
British rule. When India, the jewel of the crown, became independent, the
empire reached an end to its greatness. Two wars at the beginning of the
twentieth century drained England’s military might. The final nail to the
imperialist’s coffin was a conference at the end of the Second World War called
United Nations Monetary and Financial conference, also known as the Bretton
Woods Conference, led by the United States, which established IBRD and IMF, and
declared US as the world’s number one economic power, replacing England. Spanish
Empire is recognized as the largest imperial power during the 16th
and the 17th century, and the phrase “the sun never sets in the
empire” was coined for the first time for Spanish Empire. Spain had the leading
maritime in the world at its height. They occupied about five million square
miles of land which accounted for less than ten percent of the world’s land
area. This was a very large portion of the known land mass. However, internal
conflict and war with other nations forced Spaniards to loose most of their
territories to other countries. Achaemenid Empire ruled over the largest land
area of the time by extending its protected area from almost the whole of the
Middle East, to Europe and Africa. The dynasty started declining through
continuous wars with other world powers, and finally it was defeated by
Alexander of Macedonia. At one point, this Iranians dynasty owned about 4% land
area of the world. The decline of Ottoman Empire, the next largest land owner
for a long period of time, was more gradual, as it lost its power during
centuries, and finally it was divided by World War One allies. Roman Empire who
occupied more than three percent of the world’s land, declined from within
rapidly. It was divided into pieces as each part claimed independent. There
have been so many other great empires in history, from Mongols who occupied 16%
of the world land to Russians with 15% to French with 2%. However, they all had
similar destinations, rising up to be an invincible power in the world, and
rapidly declining to a small state, as all the ones mentioned above are at this
point of the history.
Trump’s presidency is the symbol of diminishing American hegemony.
All the signs of decline of other aforementioned powers are evident with the
largest military and economic power today. Imperialism has a thirst for wars,
as it gets fed through chaos. However, perpetual war has proven to be the end
of other empires of the world. Segregation, nationalism, racism, wealth
disparity, neglect of infrastructure, and low tolerance for opposition and
alienated rulers from the public are other signs of declining of an empire. We
are witnessing these signs in the US today.
