The Hidden Logic Behind U.S. Foreign Moves

Alex Krainer’s arguments in support of Trump continue to fascinate me. They go against what seems to be the consensus of world opinion, as well as that of his interlocutor Nima Alkhorshid and almost all the analysts that we post here, except Susan Kokinda and the Prometheans, which is that Trump is behaving like a fascist and a dictator who rules by decree in the service of oligarchs and thinks than no kind of law, whether national or international, applies to him. I would say that this opinion about Trump is held not just by Marxists everywhere, of whom I am one, but by geopolitical analysts that are definitely not Marxists, like Chas Freeman and John Mearsheimer. Anti-Zionists, of whom I am also one, such as Max Blumenthal, are especially hard on Trump, saying that the Israel Lobby and its Zionist billionaires have Trump completely in their power. That seems to be obvious to everyone, and increasingly to the American people, especially younger ones. And yet, Alex presents some subtle arguments that interpret these facts differently rather than denying denying them. I think a debate between Krainer and Blumenthal would be a classic for the the ages. They would agree on at least one basic truth about the economy of Western countries, namely, that it is controlled by private banks. The big financiers who own them are the economic ruling class, and they are interested only in making themselves financially richer, not in producing real physical wealth for the benefit of the population. They buy all the politicians and the mass media to promote their economic policies. I would say that the very essence of socialism is the nationalization of banks and the use of the banking system to produce real wealth rather than make a ruling class financially wealthy. That was also the most important economic reform made by Alexander Hamilton and his followers in the American revolution, which is why I call it the first socialist revolution. This ruling class is an international gang that controls the economy and the political system of many countries. I think Alex and Max would agree about this. Alex often calls this ruling class “the Undead British Empire (UBE). The Prometheans just call it the :”British Empire”. I would say that Zionist billionaires have been an important part of it, but not all. Imperialism is thousands of years old, but it was certainly manifested in the British Empire and the British East India Company for three hundred years or so, but since the end of WW2 it has metastasized into today’s Western Empire that uses the United States for its military objectives. The City of London may still be the largest private financial institution in the world, and it does control vast amounts of opaque, unregulated capital located in offshore banks in the Caribbean and elsewhere.

I think Alex and Max and the Prometheans would pretty much agree with the Marxists on all this. Where they disagree is in the interpretation of Trump’s behavior. Alex says that Trump is purposely saying things that evoke outrage in people in order to distract his enemies from what he is really doing. Alex thinks this is deliberate, and says that If you want to understand what he is really doing, you can’t let yourself get outraged. The Empire is indeed collapsing, and the Trump administration is only accelerating the process. The question Alex asks is whether Trump’s apparently mad words and actions are meant to cause it or are a last desperate attempt to prevent it. My Marxist comrades all believe the latter, but they would also say that their Marxist theory does not depend on what is subjectively going on in Trump’s mind. Marxist theory is based on the scientific analysis of real, objectively verifiable economic facts and processes. Trump may have the best of intentions. He may really think himself to be a good and kind person. It just doesn’t matter. What he is doing is objectively serving the economic interest of the ruling class of which he has always been a part. But Alex asks whether this is really true about Trump. Yes, he was born and raised a member of the ruling class, but perhaps he could be like Marx’s chief collaborator Friedrich Engels, who also came from the ruling class and was rich enough to finance his and Marx’s activities as well as make rich intellectual contributions to Marxist theory. That comparison sounds pretty ridiculous, because Trump is surely no intellectual. It is a good question whether he has ever read a single book from cover to cover, including the Bible (actually neither have I) or any other serious book on any subject. His “Art of the Deal” was ghostwritten. He is a great showman and publicist with a real knack for manipulating the media. That is his mentality. That’s how he got to be where he is today. This quality should be very useful to the ruling class, but for some reason they really opposed his involvement in national politics beginning in 2015 when he became the a Republican candidate for President. It wasn’t just the pathetic Democrat imperial lackeys like Obama and the establishment Republicans like the Bushes who wanted to get rid of him, it was the ruling class itself, headed by British and US intelligence. That is the story of “Russiagate”. The question is why they did this instead of supporting him. The answer given by both Marxists and non-Marxists seems to be that they were worried that they could not control him, that he was some kind of loose cannon. Now that, I would agree does seem to be the case. But that answer does not answer the next question, which is, why was that? Why were they so worried about him that they went to the lengths they did to try to stop him by smearing him as a Putin puppet? What was it that made him so hard to control? The answer could possibly be that his career as a showman and publicist had put him too much in contact with the common man and woman that he actually had some sympathy for them. It might also be that during his career he had done business in Russia like sponsoring the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. He was talking about building a Trump Tower in Moscow. He probably said somewhere that he liked doing business there. The vehemently anti-Russian British did not like such friendly ideas about Russia. They much preferred their old reliable puppets Biden and Harris, and they also figured that they could really screw up any possibility of good relations between the US and Russia this way. It looks to me like they have been right on both counts. They can’t control Trump, and that is proved by the fact that now that Trump is in his second term, the British are still trying to get rid of him. So maybe Alex is right. We can’t know what is in Trump’s mind, and he is not an intellectual who is against the British for ideological reasons, but is plausible that Trump really does hate the British and their puppets in the US for emotional reasons for what they did to him and does not intend to go along with their plans. It is not clear whether Trump himself has any plans, but if they do, they involve him personally being the hegemon, not taking orders from someone else. His own plans, if any, are based on geopolitical and historical ignorance, which is why they make no sense and the whole world but other than confirmed Trump cultists are laughing at him. Those ideological supporters like the Prometheans seem to think that Trump may not be an intellectual, but they are the intellectuals that are guiding Trump and some of his entourage like Roger Stone. This could possibly even be true to some extent. I can’t prove otherwise. We will all have to do what everybody must do at all times, now and forever in the future, and that is to keep your eyes open, and pay attention, because if you don’t, no matter how much of an intellectual you are, whether Marxist or any other, you are stuck in your past and can’t learn anything new.