.
Yep.
Rhetorically at least, I have never stopped resisting this. I think the time has never been more opportune for a larger explicitly anti-imperialist anti-MIC anti-war pro-peace media project to break out, if it can be started and can withstand the initial onslaught.
Eternal recurrence or pointless headbanging? A collection of my recent #Russiagate rants from Facebook comments.I'm always for investigating financial crimes because they are always present. Under neoliberalism, finance is synonymous with crime. Of course I'm pleased with the release of the tax returns. A xenophobic slant that looks only at "Russians," however, is a propaganda campaign designed of, for, and by the imperialists and DNC-Clinton. It leads not to Trump in prison but the political class supporting the bombing of Venezuela and Iraq.
Trump is a career criminal who announced he wished to escalate the destruction of rule of law, which no one has ever done more dramatically than the Bush regime, but which has been continuous in the postwar era and which the Clintons and Obama both helped massively to consolidate. This has driven large counter-movements to Trumpian fascism, but the #Russiagate "collusion stuff" has not been part of that. It has been the sabotage of the peoples' movements, the fake opposition. #Russiagate was not chosen as the official scandal of the Trump regime because it had anything to do with Trump, but because it served purposes for Clintons-DNC, imperialism, and xenophobic corporate media who aren't going to talk about systemic factors.
That Trump obstructs justice means he is doing the same thing he has been doing every morning when he brushes his teeth the last 50 years. Of course he does that, he has been the head of a criminal organization for decades. Of course he should go to prison and probably should have somewhere back in 1979, but here he is. How did that happen? It's the American capitalist system at work. Ignoring that means losing again.
Selective prosecutions for officially acceptable crimes against officially acceptable enemies, as determined by another war criminal and destroyer of rule-of-law (Mueller), are precisely what discredited #Russiagate and assisted this monster. Assisted. Start understanding that. Assisted. Your favored scandal cooked up by the corporate media and CIA-MI6 assisted Trump. Assisted.
Very nice that you think impeachment will have anything to do with the far more real crimes involving actual collusion with Saudi Arabia, UAE or Israel (or with the naked emoluments plunder that are the continuity running through Trump org, Trump campaign and Trump regime) but this ain't in the cards.
Want to fight Trump? Work for the real movements. The teachers, the immigrant movements, and antiwar are real resistance. GND and M4A are real politics that can build a real electoral defeat for Trump. As of now #Russiagate is the 2020 Trump reelection campaign and an attempt by demented imperialists (many of them IN Trump's government) to start World War III. #Russiagate ends not in Trump's conviction but in the imperialists of both parties standing shoulder to shoulder as the US commits new wars of aggression against Venezuela and Iran.
The capitalist ruling class is historically criminal and also necessarily criminal by the nature of what it takes to keep the system functioning. Most of them know damn well what they do. At the moment they are presiding over and pushing for the collapse of the biosphere's ability to support the human population, while many of them are also ramping up for the Last World War. We can quibble on how to define rich but there is no defense whatsoever for tolerating billionaires. I don't want to spit on them or assault them or guillotine them. Expropriation (leaving a generous few million in trust for each) followed by investigations on fraud and other crimes (especially complicity in the wars and undermining of democracy) would be a fine start. They can enjoy free public defenders, as that should be a human right for all.
Regarding claims that Trump's now released 1985-1994 tax returns document his "failures" as a businessman...Clearly he did not [fail]. Clearly he runs a criminal business, and if he is doing that for so many years, it is by definition a successful criminal enterprise. Thus the real story is the impunity granted to him by the supposed legal guardians of the capitalist system. Also by the corporate media such as NBC and CNN who crowned him for all those years as a business genius, although it was self-evident that he was a criminal. These are American capitalist values at work. This is your entire ruling class. Of course he gets away with it, because of class membership. They all get away with it. (Especially after the final round of corporate prosecutions back in 2002 - ever since then it's been impunity for all of the big business gangsters.) Trump is but the most flamboyant demonstration of the fact that criminals necessarily run the capitalist political economy. Adherence to capitalist law would result in decimation of the capitalist ruling class.
Why would anyone (tactically) oppose impeachment?Could be because impeachment constitutionally speaking is a bogus device that has never, ever, ever resulted in the removal from office of anyone (except maybe Nixon in anticipation of it, but maybe he should have waited to see). But in recent memory it has succeeded in backfiring and making the target even more popular. Could be because #Russiagate is already a proven dud that has done nothing but favors for the regime. The Bush regime ran an unforgivable war of aggression on false pretenses and the same D-crew who are stopping impeachment now also refused to do it then, when they had a better case than obstruction of justice. Objectively, Trump has yet to match the crimes of the Bush regime. (Of course, an impeachment would also have a better case now on emoluments, but who cares? No one if it's not about pumping up the xenophobic Russia panic, apparently.)
It's kind of extreme that the regime just attempted to launch a war of aggression to replace the democratically elected government of Venezuela with a death-squad government of the country's right-wing white oligarchs, and is now trying to launch a war of aggression on Iran, and liberals are still choosing instead to focus on this #Russiagate fantasy stuff that has blocked effective resistance to the Trumpian fascism for more than two years now. Never learn the lessons and never oppose the war crimes, I guess.
I don't know why anyone ever promoted the idea that incompetence and criminality don't go together. It sounds like propaganda to protect the rich and powerful. Systemic crime is not a matter of being a "mastermind" but of being in the right position. It may be true that bank robbers cannot afford to be incompetent, but it has usually worked well for bank owners. Incompetence is a great cover for criminality. The appearance of it is often a necessity. "Oh, you know, our government can't even run the DMV, why do you think they are overthrowing other governments?" There are honest-to-god genocides (like the wars of aggression in Vietnam and Iraq) that are still covered by the conventional wisdom as though they were cases of incompetence, rather than crimes.
Why would Trump obstruct justice if #Russiagate is a fake or mostly fake?The answer has been evident in his entire career. This is the long-reigning head of a relatively petty crime organization that spans the entire postwar era. He inherited the crime organization from his father. He has been laundering money in plain sight while promoting himself relentlessly in press and on television for literally 50 years. Nothing he has done was ever not a scam. He has made a career of showing his contempt for you and everyone else. And all that has ever happened to him is that he has received total impunity from the authorities at every turn, and that he was celebrated (until 2015 and beyond) by all the major corporate media as the preeminent symbol of success and the good life in America. Why should he change now? His primetime show, which ran for 14 seasons, is premised on the idea that his moods are diktats from God, that he is a kind of business god, that whatever he pronounceth is total wisdom (because he is rich), that anyone who questions him is a fool and should be fired, that all the people of the world who are not rich like him are losers and not worth shit. Why is it such a mystery that he will always act as though he has that total impunity? When did he learn anything different? Why is it a mystery that he remains the same compulsive, dictatorial personality who goes into unhinged rages whenever anyone questions him? Why is reflexive obstruction of justice a mystery, when it has been part of his business plan for his entire adult life and he has never been punished, only rewarded for it?
Meanwhile, thousands of well-informed, well-educated liberals who do participate in the power system but apparently do not understand how power actually works would have easily signed some naive pledge about how Saint Mueller of the WMD is the most wonderful, trustworthy, beautiful honest man in all history, who would deliver Trump's head to them on a pike. Contrary to all evidence from St. Mueller's life as a careerist and liar. Why did they believe that shit? That is what you should be asking. How did they manage to let their beloved republic's fate hinge on the only fucking accusation against Trump (that he is a Russian or even old Soviet agent!) that is not self-evident?
If he can keep doing it, he is not a failure. He is executing a business plan. It runs in the family. They have been doing this since the 1940s and before. They have always variably portrayed their income and wealth so as to minimize taxation and maximize prestige. They have always gotten away with it. That means they are successful at it. Other rich people admire them for this, even if some of these other rich people also hate them at the same time for being too obvious about it. The other rich like to think they look like nobility, not like these assholes. But this is what the top 0.001% of this country are, systemically, necessarily: criminals. Even if they are good people, success at that level is necessarily the product of crime. Trump Org is a crime organization. It was always associated with the classical crime organizations of the NY/NJ area, such as the five families with whom they shared lawyers, including Roy Cohn. This organization was given impunity and rewarded continuously by the responsible authorities. Under Donald it became more of a money laundry than simply a crooked real estate empire. Entities such as these play a systemic role. That is why you see all these pictures from the old days of Trump with the Clintons, Trump with all the other major politicians, Trump with various other (ostensibly more reputable) rich monsters. This system is American. It is capitalist. It is functioning as it always has. Trump is not the first. There were Trumps among your "founding fathers," such as Robert Morris (the original military-industrial complex and the original Wall Street plunderer, rolled into one). Others in various eras stole on a far grander scale than Fred and Donald, and they are celebrated as heroic figures. Trump, too, has been celebrated, for decades. He has been given television platforms from which to portray himself as the preeminent symbol of the good life. This is the life all red-blooded American males are supposed to aspire to: gold-plated toilets, cheating the tax man, screwing the workers, having disposable trophy wives, abusing their lackeys and yes-men, etc. That's what NBC was telling us. How many of these American oligarchs have ever been punished for such behavior? Even the few who ever served time get to come back and play "philanthropist," like Michael Milken. Trump would still be seen in the popular mind and among most of the middlebrow punditry as a great man, if he had not run for president. He is an exemplary success in the capitalist, the American ideology. That is what those account books show: not his "failure" but rather, the true nature of your American political economy. If they were born in the right place at the right time, the worst, most ruthless, most venal, least cultured, dumbest, most transactional, and most worthless, thieving, macho monsters become your ruling class. This is your country. That is the global system, at present. That is the planetary beast burning the basis of life itself. This is what you must fight, if you are serious: not only the one exemplary product who sticks his name on other people's money, not only the one billionaire who embodies the "bad billionaire," but the system of private ownership of capital for profit, the economy for and by the rich. The system necessarily produces such people. It puts them in charge of your lives. Often it allows them to murder the weakest in plain sight for your edification and entertainment.