The following is the third
excerpt from my recent interview with The American Herald Tribune. The
subject is the growing influence and power of Neocons in US government, and
the nature of the Trump regime and the constitutional and economic crisis to
which it is inevitably leading.
Mohsen
Abdelmoumen:
How to explain why the influence of neocons in the US
continues despite changes in presidents and administrations?
Jack
Rasmus:
The neocons represent a particular right wing radical social
and political base in America that has existed for some time. In fact, it’s
always been there, going back at least to McCarthyism in the early 1950s, and
even before. This is a radical ideological right, even pro- or proto-fascism
base in the US. It was checked by the great depression and world war II
temporarily but quickly arose again in the late 1940s with the advent of the
cold war and China’s successful war for independence. It formed around Barry
Goldwater in the 1960s. It arose again in the 1970s with Nixon.When Nixon was
thrown out, it reorganized and set forth a plan to take over the American
government and political institutions.It even developed position papers and
internal proposals how this takeover might be achieved. Ideologues like Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and others assumed positions of power in the Reagan
administration. Their movement took over the US House of Representatives in
1994 and vowed to create a dysfunctional government that would be blamed for
gridlock and give their more radical proposals a hearing as to how to break
the gridlock and govern again in their interests. We saw them reassert their
influence when Cheney was made vice president in 2000. He was actually a
co-president, and perhaps more, as George W. Bush, was the publicized
president but really a playboy figurehead. Cheney and his radical right ran
foreign policy, giving us Iraq and setting the entire Middle East afire in
its wake.This radical right is also behind the decline of democratic and
civil rights since 2000, using the 9-11 events as excuse to push their
anti-democratic agenda. The Koch brothers, the Adelman and Mercer families,
and scores of others are the moneybags in their ranks.They funded the
teaparty movement that has since entered the Republican party, terrorized the
party’s moderates and driven them out of office and the party itself. Without
them, their money, their grass roots organizations, their control now of
scores of states’ legislatures, their stacking of judgeships across the
country, the Trump phenomenon would not have been possible in 2016.
Ideologues like Steve Bannon, John Bolton, Navarro, Abrams, Miller and others
are now running the Trump administration and its domestic (immigration) and
foreign (trade fights, Israel, No. Korea, Venezuela, Iran) policies.
The point is they’ve always been there, a current in US
politics below the radar, but since 1994 aggressively asserting itself and
penetrating US institutions with increasing success—aided by media like Fox
News and their analogues in radio and on the internet.
Mohsen
Abdelmoumen:
Trump made promises of employment during his election campaign
and was elected on the slogan "America first" by the disadvantaged
classes, especially in rural areas. Isn't Donald Trump the president of the
rich in the United States? What is your assessment of Trump's governance?
Jack
Rasmus:
That assessment must first distinguish between governance in
the interest of whom? It’s been a disaster for working-class America. All
Trump’s promises of bringing jobs back is just a manipulation of concerns by
workers of massive job losses and wage stagnation due to offshoring of US
jobs and free trade. While Trump talks of bringing jobs back, he opens the
floodgates to skilled foreign engineers and workers taking more jobs based on
H1-B and L-1 visas, covered up by cuts to unskilled workers entering from
Central America.
Trump is a free trader, just a bilateral free trader not a
multilateral one. Trump’s trade offensive is about the US reasserting its
hegemony in global markets and trade for another decade as the global economy
weakens. It’s a phony trade war against US allies. Just look at the deals
made with South Korea, the exemptions given for steel and aluminum tariffs,
the go slow and go soft with Japan and Europe. Contrast that with the increasingly
aggressive attack on China trade relations—which is really about the US
trying to stop next generation technology development by China in AI, cyber
security, and 5G wireless. These are technologies that are also the military
technologies of the 2020s. The neocons and military industrial complex in the
US, along with the Pentagon and key pro-military chairpersons in Congress,
want to stop China’s tech development. It’s really a two country race in tech
now, with almost all the patents roughly equally issued by China and the US
and everyone else way behind. So the trade war has delivered nothing for the
working classes except rising prices now, and even for farmers who are the
losers (but they’re given direct subsidies to offset their losses, unlike working
families that have to bear the brunt of the tariff effects).
Look at the tax legislation of 2018 and the deregulation
actions of 2017 by Trump. Who benefited. Business got big cost cuts. The rest
of us got higher taxes to offset the $4 trillion actual Trump tax cuts for
business and investors and wealthy households.US multinational corps got $2
trillion of that $4 trillion. And households will have to pay $1.5 trillion
in more taxes, starting this year and accelerating by 2025. In deregulation,
we get the collapse of Obamacare and accelerating premiums, while the bankers
got financial regulations of 2008-10 repealed. As far as political
‘governance’ is concerned, what we’ve seen under Trump is widespread voter
suppression, gerrymandering by his ‘red states’ to help him get re-elected
next time, the approval of two conservative judges to the US Supreme court
engineered by Trump’s puppy, McConnell, in the Senate. Then there’s the now
emerging attacks on immigrants, including jailing their kids, and the attacks
on womens’ rights that was once considered unimaginable.
Politically Trump has been engineering a bona fide
constitutional crisis. He’s appeared to have gotten away with the Mueller
investigation which should have led to his impeachment but hasn’t. He
continually undermines US political institutions verbally. He clearly is
moving toward bypassing Congress and governing directly by ‘national
emergency’ declarations, refusing to allow executive branch employees to
testify to Congress despite subpoenas, ordering the launching of a new
McCarthyism by ordering his Justice dept. to start investigating opponents,
etc.—i.e. all of which were the basis of Nixon’s impeachment.
In short, Trump’s governance has been a disaster for
working-class America, immigrants of color, small farmers and even
manufacturing companies, but a boon to far right and white nationalists whom
he publicly supports. It’s been especially beneficial to wealthy households,
businesses and investors, moreover. And maybe that’s the most important
reason why the capitalists still tolerate him and let him remain in office.
If they really wanted to impeach and remove him from office they could find a
way. But he’s delivering for them financially and economically. He’s ‘good
for business’, in other words. But so was Hitler.
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dimanche 16 juin 2019
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