Trump is famous for speaking his mind, and that includes contradicting himself. Who knows what will come out of his mouth next? That’s part of the unpredictable persona that charms his followers, because he doesn’t seem to play by the rules.
So question: Has Trump contradicted himself in matters of gravest importance, those which no other candidate is actually discussing, much less dealing with? Overweening American Militarism: the giant, rampaging elephant in the global room. If Trump IS consistent in what appear to be unusual, wise, and common-sense views on American foreign policy, then we need to know. For it totally changes both the stakes and the score card for this election.
And if he isn’t consistent, if he doesn’t mean what he says here either, well then, IF the election comes off as scheduled, then no matter who wins, likely we are all, including the planet, truly fucked. See Noam Chomsky:
Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, Tick… Tick… Tick…
Yet just imagine: if the U.S. were to actually bow down to the reality of a multipolar world, if the U.S. were to actually redefine itself as an equal among equals, then “America” would not be “great again,” it would be truly great, for the very first time.
Spiritual wealth trumps material greed.
Thank You, Mr Trump: Part Two
June 14, 2016
by Robert Gore
zerohedge
Excerpt:
If Trump is elected and he’s able to implement policies implied by some of his criticisms of US foreign and military policies, his visage may get chiseled into Mount Rushmore. Back in December 2014, the only criticisms the anointed candidates had about those policies were that the US had not intervened enough, and where it had intervened, it had not dropped enough bombs or killed enough people. The operative word was “tougher”: everybody, including Clinton, was going to be tougher than the current inhabitant of the White House.
Then, crazy Donald reminded us that he had been against the 2003 Iraq war, didn’t see why the US had to be in Syria, didn’t see why our allies couldn’t pick up more of the tab for their own defense, and that he would negotiate, maybe do some deals, with the leader of the country with the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal. He hasn’t likened that leader to Hitler or equated his own manhood with killing terrorists, drone strikes, or ordering other people’s children into war.
Trump understands that you can do quite well in business with nowhere near 100 percent market share, and trying to attain such dominance is often ruinous. He has questioned whether the US can or should maintain unipolar dominance, the geopolitical equivalent of 100 percent market share. Even during its supposed heyday at the end of World War II and through the Cold War, US power was not absolute. The acquisition of nuclear weapons by the USSR, China, and lesser powers, the US’s string of inconclusive or losing military engagements since World War II, and the rebuilding of European and Asian economies devastated by that war chipped away at US dominance. The government refused to recognize it then, and still doesn’t.
It’s hard enough to maintain a confederated empire when its leader has clear military, economic, and financial superiority. When it doesn’t, the effort is dangerously delusional. For the government – deep in hock and unable to realize its objectives in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, and Ukraine, among others – to even contemplate confrontation and conflict with China and Russia would be farcical if the potential consequences weren’t so deadly.
The US sends its warships into the South China Sea, the Baltic and Black Seas, essentially Russian lakes; pushes NATO, which lost its raison d’être when the Soviet Union collapsed, to Russia’s western border; foments revolution in Ukraine, Napoleon and Hitlers’ welcome mat to Russia, and decries Russian and Chinese aggression. Russia and China are nuclear powers, and even if the US had a nuclear first strike capability to wipe them both out, which it probably does not, the ensuing fallout and nuclear winter would make the global warming we’re all supposed to be worrying about irrelevant. If the US does not have first strike capability, or Russia and China, singly or jointly, launched the first strike against the US, the nuclear devastation would wipe out US cities and infrastructure, rendering vast regions, perhaps the entire country, uninhabitable.
It is commonplace to ascribe the darkest motivations to your enemies, and credit yourself with the best of intentions, but based on their respective actions—not conjectures and hypotheticals about designs to rule the world—Russia and China seek control of their spheres of influence consistent with notions of multipolarity, while the US seeks unipolarity and Russian and Chinese submission. All indications are that Russia and China will not submit. Nor will the US back away from unipolarity. Certainly Hillary Clinton will not.
The US government’s misbegotten drive for unipolarity is the most important issue Trump has raised. Humanity’s survival may be at stake. Call it the military-intelligence-industrial-media-complex, the powers that be, or the Deep State, if Trump follows through on his rhetoric he will be fighting the most lucrative and powerful cabal on the planet, a far greater threat to American liberties and lives than that which President Eisenhower warned of in 1961. Simply raising the issues he has accounts for the lion’s share of the fang-baring hostility towards him, especially from members of his own party. If his only accomplishment is to splinter the cabal “into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds,” as President Kennedy reportedly wanted to do with the CIA after the Bay of Pigs disaster, Trump will have earned his place on Mount Rushmore.
