Aaron Blake ‘Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway introduces the world to “alternative facts”’ The Sydney Morning Herald, 23.01.17
‘Trumpism’, though most obviously in the US, is emblematic of the crisis in all capitalist nations. With a shameless shedding of ethics, free-wheeling dishonesty, the projection of ‘us’ under siege by ‘them’ and a concomitant aggressive nationalism, it is clear evidence of capitalism going deeper into crisis and of an increasingly dangerous capitalist class.
Trump didn’t become President simply as a result of the hallowed US ‘democratic’ process. He has been ‘in the eye’ of the dominant class for decades and has been repeatedly asked in the media over those decades if he would run for President.
As it states in a photomontage from 1932 by John Heartfield showing Hitler having money (and power) put into his hand by a much bigger, suited and faceless figure standing behind him (it could have been that of Henry Ford who funded him) as he gives the Nazi salute – ‘Millions stand behind me!’
John Heartfield, ‘The Meaning of the Hitler Salute: Little man asks for big gifts. Motto: Millions Stand Behind Me!’ Allgemeine Illustrierte Zeitung, 16.10.32
Particularly, it is neither a matter of “the peoples’ will” nor even chance that the person who has the antipathetic, hypocritical views on China Trump does is now the President.
He has been chosen by the most powerful sections of the class that controls the US ‘democracy’ and protected by them through the long process of the election for President to eventually occupy that position and represent their interests above all.
German diplomats award Henry Ford, centre, their nation’s highest decoration for foreigners, the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, July 1938
In so doing, he is already beginning to put before the American people the question they will have to answer – barbarism or socialism?
materialism, mysticism and art 
In contrast to The Sydney Morning Herald rave and many others praising Obama and trashing Trump, there are others who are seeing things more balanced: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/17/the-issue-is-not-trump-it-is-us/, http://www.globalresearch.ca/heres-how-the-trump-presidency-will-play-out/5570021. Obama took the US well on the way to fascism and WWIII. It is not clear that Trump would be worse. Oh, yes, the environment and social programs, but check out Obama’s record. I was a Bernie supporter all the way, but concluded and still do that Clinton is poison and would have been Obama3 only worse. Can Trump be worse? I doubt it. I actually thought Trump’s speech wasn’t bad. That’s just the way it is, so live with it. Blessings to all from the Disunited States, Don
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Hi Don,
I included the link to the Herald because I was acknowledging the source of an idea I built my post on. Thanks for the links, particularly to Pilger’s article which I have posted.
I agree entirely with his criticisms of Obama (and, by implication, of the depth of Australia’s shameless toadying to him and to his government – I remember the hen-fight to get on the ‘meet-‘n-greet list’ when the Clintons came to Australia and how they were written about in the media) but I disagree with Pilger’s conclusion – that the problem is ‘us‘.
Just as the problem is not Trump – it is capitalism and the domination of societies by exploitative minorities that have no compunction about causing injury and death to the citizens of those societies for profit and for the maintenance of their domination.
The history of the relations between those ‘all-American’ companies Ford and GM and the Nazis and afterwards is exemplary.
While policies are instituted by individuals, it is done on behalf of interests. Are there interests more powerful than any other in capitalist nations? I believe there are – those of the capitalist class.
Is that class (in all capitalist nations) again confronted by a global crisis? I believe clearly so.
At the same time, China is rapidly rising to the position currently occupied by the US, of global domination.
In my view, Trump’s election signals that the US capitalist class is in the process of adjusting its policies at home with (just as Hitler did in Germany) major spending on infrastructure (a big worry to many Republicans) and a major increase in military spending (again as Hitler did) particularly in their preparations to confront China.
Trump asked ‘Wouldn’t it be a good thing if we got along with Russia?’ Absolutely. It’s a necessity. But is there anything more to it? I think so – the US capitalist class wants to (as the point was touched on in one of the articles you sent me) pull Russia away from China.
The climb-down of the US in Syria was the start of this policy of improving relations with Russia. Other steps will soon follow.
And I have no doubt that whatever the details of the developing confrontation of China by the US capitalist class, the latter will lose.
Just as the time for global domination had come for the British, then the US, so it is China’s now. The Chinese know it.
And as Engels wrote in 1894, that very competition and confrontation with China will force the US, irrespective of who the President is or the composition of the Congress, to become socialist.
One of the most wonderful truths of dialectical materialism is that matter (objective reality) precedes consciousness.
Best wishes,
Phil
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