Donald Trump could be the first person to ever win a triple Nobel Prize. Trump's doppelganger, Boris Johnson, already noted that Trump was in line for a Nobel Peace Prize if instead of withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, he was able to enhance it, and secure a wider peace in the Middle East. In a similar vein, Manuel Macron, proclaimed that Trump could get the Nobel prize if he brought about the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Never one to miss when someone is heaping praise and adulation upon him, Trump himself proclaimed that "people are saying I should win the Nobel Prize".
Of course, he even the Trumpish dolt Bojo was not being serious in saying that Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. Politicians have realised that Trump has the mentality of a toddler, and that if you want to influence him, the way to do it is to offer him sweeties, and tell him how good he is. Bojo realised that Britain has no influence in the world, and will have much less still after it leaves the EU, and so rather than wasting time with an actual meeting with Trump, he went over to the US to appear on Trump's favourite TV shows to heap praise on him, and offer him goodies if he were to be a good little Donald, and not pull out of the Iran deal.
The comments from Macron and others were of the same nature, with Macron even taking the piss out of Trump, by then actually shredding the whole Trumpist world view, such as it is, in his actual public comments, even as Trump was standing next to him, but doing so in language that he undoubtedly thought the ignorant Trump would not understand, or even bother to listen to having Macron's previous words of adulation still ringing in his ears.
Of course, on Iran, the invitations of Bojo, Macron and others to remain in the deal were not enough to persuade Trump, given that he was already so committed by his previous statements, and the need to retain what remains of his base, ahead of the US mid-term elections. Besides, Trump is also tied into a series of other commitments, with other Bonapartist leaders and regimes that require him to build, and continue the drumbeat of war against Iran. Trump is reliant on his alliance with the Bonapartist regime of Netanyahu in Israel, and the house of Saud in Saudi Arabia.
But, Trump still had the prospect of his Nobel Peace prize for getting North Korea to get rid of its nukes. However, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, there was never any prospect of that happening. Trump's empty ultimatism over the last year has simply allowed North Korea to get on with its programme of building the nukes it required, and the missiles it required to deliver them. There was never any chance that the US was going to launch a pre-emptive strike against North Korea, other than by accident, and Kim as a far more astute politician than Trump, knew that to be the case. Kim and the South Korean leaders both effectively played Trump with the same tools used by Bojo and Macron. They know that Trump is a child like narcissist of extremely low intelligence, who doesn't realise when people are actually taking the piss out of him, with their ridiculous adulation, that simply reflects back on him his own infantile use of superlatives for each and every occasion.
South Korea, which was actually the driving force for a rapprochement with the North, not Trump, has good reason for trying to achieve some kind of deal. Kim, as I pointed out, was never going to get rid of their nukes, especially having seen what happened in Iraq, Libya, and how the US had just reneged on the Iran deal. Kim saw a meeting with Trump as the opportunity to get Us troops off the Korean peninsula perhaps in return for halting any further nuclear or missile tests (which it had completed anyway), and perhaps for reducing the size of its conventional army, which now having the protection of nukes, against US attack, it could afford to do, and would have good economic reasons for doing.
When Vice-President Pence simply reinforced that by agreeing with John Bolton that what the US actually wanted was some kind of Libyan solution in North Korea, it was fairly obvious what the North Korean reaction would be! The whole Trump apparatus gives the appearance of a Barnum and Bailey circus, but without the actual organisation that goes behind such an operation. It stumbles from one fiasco to another. Trump could still be the first ever winner of a triple Nobel Prize. If they introduce prizes for Idiocy, Incompetence and Bigotry, then Trump is a shoe-in, for all three.
It makes you wonder why the US ruling class, and more specifically its Executive Committee in the permanent state apparatus has continued to tolerate the situation. In part, it comes down to the Bonapartist tendencies inherent in the US Presidential system. The President has semi-dictatorial powers, especially where their political opponents are divided, and so weak. In the US, the President heads up the Executive, and appoints the rest of the Executive, whose functionaries operate as an equivalent of a mixture of what in Britain would be a Minister, and their top Civil Servant. That means that where these political appointees are reflective of the President themselves, any opposition to the policies they adopt, from the permanent state, has to come from its subordinate layers.
So, having idiotic Presidents, in the US, is nothing new. Reagan was a dolt, and his economic policies were described by George Bush I, as Voodoo Economics, which led the US from being the world's largest credit nation into being the world's largest debtor nation, having terbled the US budget deficit, massively inflated its trade deficit, and which led to the 1987 Stock Market Crash. But, Reagan was able to push forward with these idiotic economic policies, because he was able to appoint others to positions in his economic team who promoted such idiocy. Trump has appointed some of the same people like Larry Kudlow to his own team of economic necromancers.
George Bush II, engaged in the Iraq War, with almost an equal level of ignorance about geography, let alone global politics, as Trump. He saw the Iraq War as a personal vanity project, and it was opposed by the US permanent state, who recognised that such a war was against long-term US interests. And, they were right. The greatest beneficiaries of the Iraq War, have been Iran, on the one hand, which was able to extend its strategic reach into Iraq, in support of its Shia allies, and thence into Syria, and on the other hand, the Sunni jihadists of Al Qaeda, and its offshoots, including ISIS. The gains of the latter from the Iraq War, together with the support given to them from the Saudis, who have used them as mercenaries to fight proxy wars against its regional opponents in Iran, Syria, Yemen etc. was also the basis for Iran to intervene in this assorted conflicts, and thereby to extend its own reach.
But Trump seems to be a qualitatively different level of moron. He seems to have been able to continue, however, because behind him stand more intelligent, better organised right-wing forces driving the US further down the road of Bonapartism. In that they mirror the path trod in Turkey and elsewhere, all of whose regimes are tied together by a similar right-wing, nationalist and populist ideology of National Bolshevism. It operates via a series of personal alliances that are visible on the surface such as the ties between Trump and Netanyahu, and the Saudi Royals, the connections to people like Farage, who is the face of that wing of right-wing nationalism operating in the Tory Party, along with people like Le Pen, Wilders, Orban and so on, and of course, Putin.
All of them operate via a series of empty vessels, like the conmen who operate the shell game, reliant on continually distracting attention from one thing to another, as the impotence of their snake oil is exposed in one instance after another. They rely on focussing attention on some external threat, in order to distract attention from the fact that the real source of the problem is with the actual political-economy they themselves espouse.
For example, Netanyahu is reliant on focussing attention on a supposed danger from surrounding Arab states, and from an impotent resistance from Palestinians with rocks, whilst the fact is that it is a heavily armed, and nuclear armed Israel that has occupied Arab lands, continues to occupy and extend settlements in the West Bank, imposes a humanitarian crisis on Gaza, via its blockade, and so on. It thereby justifies the Bonapartist regime in Israel, which depends upon keeping the state in a militarised condition, undermines normal class politics, because its foundation is that same authoritarian nationalism that was promoted by the Zionists from the beginning. It means that any real opposition to that Zionist agenda is squashed in Israel itself, and where it is opposed outside Israel, including as we have seen recently in Britain, by Jews themselves, it is labelled anti-Semitism!
In Britain, the problems of poor jobs, a failing NHS and social care system, and so on is similarly blamed on immigrants, foreigners and the EU, whereas the real reason that the NHS needs £350 million a week extra, is not that that money is going to the EU, but that Tory governments going back to Thatcher, have repeatedly underfunded it, have focussed spending on large vanity projects rather than primary care, so that vast amounts is siphoned off to large construction companies, pharmaceutical companies, and a bloated bureaucracy. Similarly, the problems in social care, housing and so on, are not the fault of immigrants or the EU, but of the austerity measures introduced by conservative governments again going back to Thatcher.
The relations between all of these different right-wing, nationalist groups operates like a series of corrupt business people whose real tax affairs, and financial manipulation is hidden from view by operating via a succession of interlinked, and secretive shell companies, one hidden inside another like a Russian doll. The various companies that comprised the operations of Cambridge Analytica, which itself was a progeny of these same forces, is merely emblematic of the way they operate at a global level.
Trump himself is emblematic of that too. He tells us that he is a brilliant businessman, and master of the Art of the Deal, a claim that is as ridiculous as his belief that people really thought he deserved a Nobel peace prize. The fact is that like nearly every rich person alive today, he inherited his money. His businesses then went bankrupt four times! Questions still surround where the money came from for his current businesses, and as with the financing and support for various right-wing nationalist forces across the globe, attention has focussed on the role of Russia. The Mueller investigation may throw some light on that, and in the process some right wing nationalist UK politicians might start to feel a little hot around the collar too. Its perhaps why Trump and his right-wing supporters have been so keen to try to shit down that investigation.
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