As last year both crawled and flew by, my compassion for Donald J. Trump kept ramping up, so astonished was I by the thunderous level of vitriol continuous directed against a duly elected president. And then — what happened, when? — at some point I realized that the greater the push, the greater his push back. That this singular man actually utilizes adversity as food. Who else can say that? Who else could get in there and begin to pull the plug on the insidious corruption that has infected the body politic? It would take an ego of his size, one that dwarfed all others, to take the Deep State on.
(Unless of course, he’s part of the Deep State, “controlled opposition,” as we citizen journalists like to say. And of course, that still may be true! A diminishing part of me does remind the rest of me that the jury’s still out.)
This entire piece is well worth reading. Gives one author’s history, blow by blow, of the adversity, and how the outsized Trump not only survived it, but turned the tables.
Trump’s Greatest Achievement? Surviving His First Year as President
Excerpt:
Newly elected US Presidents can normally expect a honeymoon in the first six months following their election, with support for them tending to tail off towards the year’s end.
In Donald Trump’s case the pattern has been the reverse. Not only are his ratings improving but his position in Congress looks stronger now than it has ever been before.
Though talk of impeachment is still there, with the Republican Party in Congress now finally closing ranks behind him its prospect, even if the Democrats win control of Congress in the autumn, is starting to melt away.
In order to understand how this has happened the reasons for Donald Trump’s problems in his first year as President must first be explained.
Now you might read this one recent paragraph from Trump’s geopolitical counterpart, and I would assess him now, equal, President Putin:
Putin says KBG past prepared him for Presidency
Asked whether he had adjusted his behavior since becoming president, Putin said: “As strange as it sounds, no.”
“Yes, I’m in the limelight, but in my previous life [as KGB agent] I always tried to act as if I was constantly being watched,” he said. “It’s strange, but that’s how it worked out, perhaps because of my previous work.”
In other words, Putin acted as if he was in the limelight, even before he was. Kind of like myself as a kid, with the omnipresent Old Testament meanie God seeing all my behavior, so I’d better watch out, better be good.
2 thoughts on “As we head into 2018: Reflections on Trump and Putin”
Hi Ann,
Interesting that you posted this today, as I *just* posted this comment on an article at SOTT.net:
“Has anyone here at SOTT ever really looked at the history of the reserve currency?
Here’s an article with an interesting chart:
http://www.economicreason.com/usdollarcollapse/world-reserve-currencies-what-happened-during-previous-periods-of-transition/
What is happening now has happened with startling regularity for the last 600 YEARS. *EVERY* 70-100 years, there is strife and warfare while the nation that has enjoyed the fruits of its currency is slowly debased, then utterly gutted while a new country is built up both physically and morally to take on the role.
The SAME THING is happening now, with the debasement of the west and the rise of the east. Yet, this website seems to be completely clueless to the game of ‘good cop’/’bad cop/ being played out right now on the world scene.
YES the west is evil, and is being portrayed that way quite well by ALL media right now. YES the east is seemingly much better, and acting saner at the moment…but THAT IS THE PLAN.
Once the west is defeated, people will rejoice, and they will welcome the new system – but the new system will *still* be controlled by the SAME PEOPLE at the top. Just watch what happens with the BIS, IMF, BRICS, and FED. They may sacrifice a few of those institutions, but if the SAME PEOPLE populate the boards of the new ones, then all that has happened is ‘deck chairs on the Titanic’.
For those who read the C’s comments, remember when they said the STS forces want to create a world where they control us in 4D? What better way than to do it in such a way that we WELCOME it? But THEY will STILL be in control, even if they loosen our leashes a little bit.
So I ask, is this good enough?? OR do we want TRUE FREEDOM??”
Ever read a book by Gary Allen and Larry Abraham called “None Dare Call it Conspiracy”, written in 1971? It details a lot of what happened with the creation of the FED and how the bankers basically ran both sides of WWI and WWII. (BTW, that book sold over 5 million paperback copies, but NEVER made the best-seller list.)
The books of Antony Sutton reveal all of this as well, and links to his stuff are present on his Wikipedia page. He also did a lot of video interviews during the 80’s and 90’s that are still on You-Tube.
Anyway, thought you might be interested in knowing that there are always more rabbit holes to look in!!
Take care,
Anthony
The polity is a social organism is…fanciful. & definitely narrative-speak. The polity, a coercion, is comprised of more or less social individuals is…plain. Nair takes the hair off, narrative glues it back on. Beware wo\men in costumes, bearing storied bottles of snakeoil. That we-ebles are primary, & unquestioning of their primacy, is the biological root of the weedpatch that is polities, is plain.The racketeering tricycle that is “healthcare,” like all the other triangulations in polities, is about kill zones, as legitimized in the color of law book depository, the grassy knoll library & the 3rd–hand used\abused but mostly never disabused bookstore. . . or the Fahrenheit 451 burnpile.Lordosis, swaybacking in the winds of exhalation…the human dimension is not a dimension of sounds, sights residing in & projected forth from this scribblers mind. More narrative. More crypto coercion. Cuz father knows best. So ignore Rod serling’s observations.Met a woman recently. She lives, since mid-60’s, in a cabin at 11000’. Solo, since her husband died 20 years ago. Electricity is generated from runoff. Internet is satellite. No tv. Books everywhere. She’s on oxygen & often puffs a cig simultaneously. She drinks. She’s mid-70’s, smart, can say something interesting about anything. She shares company with a dog, she has visitors, but solitude, “isolation,” can be a beautiful thing, she’ll corroborate.Individuals vary. Polity pushers don’t care for variety; homogeneity, they insist. They are all about shelf-life by the drop…& getting the drop on whoever they can, but especially themselves.
Triangulations aren’t any percentage of the economy. The killzones murder – steal – percentages *of* the economy. Big difference between narrative &…plain.Recovering narrativeoholic? Like alcoholism, it’s for life, whether imbibing, from cut crystal ball snifters, or not. The reports of the end of the racket have been greatly exaggerated. And even tho handle, shaft, & net of taut strings are less complicated than an elephant, the blind wizzers from Hindustan still can’t get to the pachyderm in the room. Reality wants? Us? Telosophistry. Civilized society? http://www.oxymoronlist.com/College campi have long been Camp Granadas. Hello muddah, hello faddah. Rich Corinthian leather. A funny tune & a crappy car. Cordoba, Granada, don’t matter. Don’t care. (& even if I did, & asserted that “reality wants”…so what?)As for gnosis, Dick’s pink light: “The external information or gnosis, then, consists of disinhibiting instructions, with the core content actually intrinsic to us – that is, already there (first observed by Plato; viz: that learning is a form of remembering.) http://www.tekgnostics.com/PDK.HTM#.WX97lbh3duA Don’t take “us” too homogenizedly, Blade Runners. Contents vary, individual to individual. Nobody can remember what ain’t there to begin with. But that don’t stop narrative knit one purl(oin) two yarners. Are you experienced, or inhibited?
tfte