When Rabbi Michael Lerner repeatedly recommends an article, I pay attention. I am also moved to share the Editor's note: Noam Chomsky at 89 is one of the great gifts to all of us who seek a world of peace and justice. Thanks to our media ally TomDispatch.com for sharing this with Tikkun magazine and the Network of Spiritual Progressives and our community of readers. – Rabbi Michael Lerner
The Trump Presidency
Or How to Further Enrich “The Masters of the Universe”
Or How to Further Enrich “The Masters of the Universe”
[This interview has been excerpted from Global Discontents:
Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy,
the new book by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian to be published this
December.]
David Barsamian: You have spoken about the difference
between Trump’s buffoonery, which gets endlessly covered by the media, and the
actual policies he is striving to enact, which receive less attention. Do you
think he has any coherent economic, political, or international policy goals?
What has Trump actually managed to accomplish in his first months in
office?
Noam Chomsky: There is a diversionary process under way, perhaps
just a natural result of the propensities of the figure at center stage and those
doing the work behind the curtains.
At one level, Trump’s antics ensure that attention is focused on
him, and it makes little difference how. Who even remembers the charge
that millions
of illegal immigrants voted for Clinton, depriving the
pathetic little man of his Grand Victory? Or the accusation that Obama
had wiretapped
Trump Tower? The claims themselves don’t really matter. It’s
enough that attention is diverted from what is happening in the background.
There, out of the spotlight, the most savage fringe of the Republican Party is
carefully advancing policies designed to enrich their true constituency: the
Constituency of private power and wealth, “the masters of mankind,” to borrow
Adam Smith’s phrase.
These policies will harm the irrelevant general population and
devastate future generations, but that’s of little concern to the Republicans.
They’ve been trying to push through similarly destructive legislation for
years. Paul Ryan, for example, has long been advertising his ideal of virtually
eliminating the federal government, apart from service to the Constituency —
though in the past he’s wrapped his proposals in spreadsheets so they would
look wonkish to commentators. Now, while attention is focused on Trump’s latest
mad doings, the Ryan gang and the executive branch are ramming through
legislation and orders that undermine workers’ rights, cripple consumer
protections, and severely harm rural communities. They seek to devastate health
programs, revoking the taxes that pay for them in order to further enrich their
Constituency, and to eviscerate the
Dodd-Frank Act, which imposed some much-needed constraints on the predatory
financial system that grew during the neoliberal period.
That’s just a sample of how the wrecking ball is being wielded
by the newly empowered Republican Party. Indeed, it is no longer a political
party in the traditional sense. Conservative political analysts Thomas Mann and
Norman Ornstein have described it more accurately as a “radical
insurgency,” one that has abandoned normal parliamentary
politics.
Much of this is being
carried out stealthily, in closed sessions, with as little public notice as
possible. Other Republican policies are more open, such as pulling out of the
Paris climate agreement, thereby isolating the U.S. as a pariah state that
refuses to participate in international efforts to confront looming
environmental disaster. Even worse, they are intent on maximizing the use of
fossil fuels, including the most dangerous; dismantling regulations; and
sharply cutting back on research and development of alternative energy sources,
which will soon be necessary for decent survival.
The reasons behind the policies are a mix. Some are simply
service to the Constituency. Others are of little concern to the “masters of
mankind” but are designed to hold on to segments of the voting bloc that the
Republicans have cobbled together, since Republican policies have shifted so
far to the right that their actual proposals would not attract voters. For
example, terminating support for family planning is not service to the
Constituency. Indeed, that group may mostly support family planning. But
terminating that support appeals to the evangelical Christian base — voters who
close their eyes to the fact that they are effectively advocating more unwanted
pregnancies and, therefore, increasing the frequency of resort to abortion,
under harmful and even lethal conditions.
Not all of the damage can be blamed on the con man who is
nominally in charge, on his outlandish appointments, or on the congressional
forces he has unleashed. Some of the most dangerous developments under Trump
trace back to Obama initiatives — initiatives passed, to be sure, under
pressure from the Republican Congress.
The most dangerous of these has barely been reported. A very
important study in the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, published in March 2017, reveals that the
Obama nuclear weapons modernization program has increased “the
overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of
roughly three — and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a
nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a
nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.” As the analysts
point out, this new capacity undermines the strategic stability on which human
survival depends. And the chilling record of near disaster and reckless
behavior of leaders in past years only shows how fragile our survival is. Now
this program is being carried forward under Trump. These developments, along
with the threat of environmental disaster, cast a dark shadow over everything
else — and are barely discussed, while attention is claimed by the performances
of the showman at center stage.
Whether Trump has any idea what he and his henchmen are up to is
not clear. Perhaps he is completely authentic: an ignorant, thin-skinned
megalomaniac whose only ideology is himself. But what is happening under the
rule of the extremist wing of the Republican organization is all too plain.
Please continue this interview here: http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/32205
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