{"id":145081,"date":"2019-10-14T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=145081"},"modified":"2019-10-11T09:19:09","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T08:19:09","slug":"why-trump-is-facing-impeachment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/10\/why-trump-is-facing-impeachment\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Trump Is Facing Impeachment"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump\/status\/1181905659568283648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >October 9, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><em>10 Oct 2019 &#8211; <\/em>Granted Trump may arguably be more corrupt than <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.interfax.com.ua\/news\/press-conference\/617936-amp.html\" >Biden<\/a>. But that\u2019s <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2019\/10\/09\/joe-hunter-biden-family-money\/\" >splitting hairs<\/a> over which crook is more crooked. Bullying vassal states and \u201cdoing well by doing good\u201d are indicators of finesse in Washington. Inside the beltway, corruption is not a liability for holding high political office, but a requirement. The key to membership in the power elite club is carrying water for the imperial state, and most club members must go through an elaborate vetting process to prove that they are reliable. Some such as Trump slip through.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>sine qua non<\/em> for membership in this exclusive club is to prove you\u2019ll take a hit for the empire. When the results of the 2000 US presidential election were inconclusive, Al Gore took a fall rather than risk instability at the top: \u201c(for) the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession.\u201d There are higher callings than merely winning the presidency for good servants of the empire.<\/p>\n<p>But would Trump have been so compliant? Maybe not. So, impeachment is in order to either chasten him to faithful obedience or get rid of him.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Not Thoroughly Vetted President<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The presidential primaries are an audition process to see who can best serve the ruling class while conning the public. If the presidential \u201cdebates\u201d demonstrate anything, it is that all the contestants are aspiring reality TV stars. Trump was different only in that he had previous experience.<\/p>\n<p>Whenever one of the contestants shows vacillation on empire, they get slapped on the side of the head. Gabbard got summarily dismissed from the debates for her failure of faith in wars of imperial aggression as the highest expression of humanitarianism. Sanders had to grovel, calling the democratically elected president of Venezuela a \u201cvicious tyrant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And to qualify for the debates, a contestant must first prove that they are a \u201cserious candidate.\u201d In a \u201cdemocracy\u201d where bribing politicians is considered \u201cfree speech\u201d and where corporations are afforded the constitutional rights of \u201cpersons,\u201d the single overriding measure of seriousness is raising bundles of money from the rich. Of course, the rich did not become rich without expecting a return on their investments. Warren\u2019s surge, as it was dutifully reported in the press, came when some of the big money began to shift from Biden to her.<\/p>\n<p>Trump on the other hand had his own billionaire\u2019s booty to back him, plus a little help from his wealthy cohorts. As billionaire Ross Perot proved in 1992, if you are filthy rich, you can independently run for president. And, in his case, throw the election from Bush the Elder to Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n<p>To win a presidential election, however, you need more than deep pockets\u2026you need a little help from your friends in getting a major party backing. Why a major party ballot line is so useful has constitutional antecedents.<\/p>\n<p>The revolution of 1776, the last revolution that the US elites liked that was not rigged by the CIA, gave us the Articles of Confederation as the ruling document for the new sovereign. By 1787 the US elites of the time, Hamilton and supporting cast, were chaffing under what they characterized as the \u201cexcesses of democracy.\u201d A new constitution was drafted and approved with \u201cchecks and balances.\u201d What needed to be checked and balanced? Democracy, the direct rule of the people, was what was checked in the new document, while slavery was reaffirmed under the highest law of the land.<\/p>\n<p>The new constitution gave us the Electoral College, whereby presidents are selected by \u201celectors\u201d rather than trusting the direct vote of the people and states can vote as a block. This allowed Trump to triumph even when his opponent received some 3 million more votes. Oddly, his Democratic Party opponents have since focused on alleged Russian interference through Facebook ads rather than the need to make the US Constitution an instrument for expression of the popular will.<\/p>\n<p>But we are getting ahead of the story, because Trump still had to become the frontrunner in a crowded Republican field before he could even take on the other party of capital. Here he had help from friends in unexpected quarters. The Republican establishment hated him, but Clinton and the so-called liberal media became Trump boosters. The corporate media gave the flamboyant Trump a bully platform because it was good for ratings.<\/p>\n<p>Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, as revealed in their leaked emails published by Wikileaks, pulled for Trump because they thought him an easier opponent than, say, the mainstream Republican heir-apparent Jeb Bush. There was precious little difference between the positions of Jeb and Hillary, though the popular images projected by the two major parties superficially diverged. The core of both parties greatly overlap, while the right fringe of the Republicans and the left fringe of the Democrats provide the contrasting colors but not the contending policy directions.<\/p>\n<p>The 2016 electoral contest was a spectacle of insurgencies. Initially, there was Sanders. That he was somehow considered an \u201coutsider\u201d is a symptom of just how terminally ingrown the US polity has become. How could someone who served years in the US Senate and caucused with the Democrats be an outsider? Sanders ran on two premises: supporting the Democratic Party and raising suppressed issues such as income inequality. He succeeded in the first and failed in the second.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile after 40 years of neoliberalism, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.epi.org\/publication\/ceo-compensation-2018\/\" >CEO compensation<\/a> has grown 940%\u00a0 as compared to 12% for typical employees in the US.<\/p>\n<p>Trump in his way also pandered to the genuinely deteriorating condition of US workers. Both the Trump and the Sanders anti-establishment insurgencies, however, were contained within the two-party system and thus were structurally destined not to come to fruition. The establishment won\u2019t come down by joining them.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unfaithful Servant of Imperialism<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Defying even the Las Vegas bookies\u2019 predictions, Trump became the 45<sup>th<\/sup> President of the US. He had kvetched about the plight of US workers and made some noise about ending unending wars, but was he for real? After all, Obama had promised to get out of Gitmo and NAFTA, but ended up doing neither. Obama, the former critic of Bush\u2019s Iraq war, continued Bush\u2019s wars and started a handful of his own.<\/p>\n<p>Upon occupying the Oval Office, Trump not unexpectedly threw the working class under the bus with his tax cut for the rich and similar actions, which must have won him some brownie points from the owning class. But to date he has failed to start a new war. The last US president with a similar failing was the one-term Jimmy Carter. And now Trump is showing insufficient enthusiasm for continuing the war in Syria and possibly even a closet aversion to starting World War III with nuclear-armed Russia. These may be impeachable offenses in the estimation of parts of the ruling class.<\/p>\n<p>David R. Sanger, writing in the October 7 <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/10\/07\/world\/middleeast\/trump-syria-turkey.html\" ><em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>, represents \u201cliberal\u201d establishment views in support of US imperialism: \u201cMr. Trump\u2019s sudden abandonment of the Kurds was another example of the independent, parallel foreign policy he has run from the White House, which has largely abandoned the elaborate systems created since President\u00a0Harry Truman\u2019s day to think ahead about the potential costs and benefits of presidential decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There you have it. Trump is accused of having an \u201cindependent\u201d foreign policy, emanating out of his office of all places, even though he is the elected President of the US and the one charged with executing foreign policy.<\/p>\n<p>Who is Trump \u201cindependent\u201d from? It\u2019s not the US citizenry according to the <em>Times<\/em>. As the article points out: \u201cMr. Trump sensed that many Americans share his view \u2013 and polls show he is right\u2026 Mr. Trump has correctly read the American people who, after Iraq and Afghanistan, also have a deep distaste for forever wars.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So, who might Trump have betrayed? According to the article, it\u2019s \u201ccircumventing the American generals and diplomats who sing the praises of maintaining the traditional American forward presence around the world.\u201d This is whom his alleged crime of independence is against. They fear Trump could \u201cabandon\u201d the post-war imperial consensus.<\/p>\n<p>Note that the <em>Times, <\/em>as reflective of current ruling class ideology, no longer bothers to justify the dictates of the world\u2019s sole hegemon as a crusade against the current evil, be it communism or terrorism. Simply, the imperial state must be supported. Hence, Trump\u2019s view that \u201cacting as the world\u2019s policeman was too expensive\u201d or his tweet, \u201ctime for us to get out,\u201d have become grounds for impeachment.<\/p>\n<p>The article favorably cites Republican majority leader Senator Mitch McConnell, who called on Trump \u201cto exercise American leadership\u201d by capitulating to the dictates of the imperial state, while contrasting it to that glory day<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cnot even three months after his inauguration, [when] he ordered the first military strike of his presidency.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/10\/07\/world\/middleeast\/trump-syria-turkey.html\" ><em>Times<\/em><\/a> article continues<em>: <\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cThat system is badly broken today. Mr. Trump is so suspicious of the professional staff \u2013 many drawn from the State Department and the C.I.A. \u2013 and so dismissive of the \u2018deep state\u2019 foreign policy establishment, that he usually announces decisions first, and forces the staff to deal with them later.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThat system,\u201d cited above, is the post-WWII permanent state. Trump is chastised in the <em>Times<\/em> for being \u201cso dismissive of the \u2018deep state\u2019 foreign policy establishment.\u201d Trump instead, according to the article, has the temerity to make his own decisions and then he expects the agencies of government to follow his instructions. For some, having the elected representative formulate policy and the unelected state apparatus follow it would be democratic. But not so for the cheerleaders of US imperialism.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Dark Knight Rises<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s habitual corruption and bullying has now been outed by a whistleblower. Unlike Ellsberg, Manning, and Snowden, who sought to correct US imperial policy, this whistleblower comes from the very gatekeeper of imperialism, the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2019\/10\/04\/impeachment-brought-to-you-by-the-cia\/\" >CIA<\/a>. According to his lawyers, there is not a lone whistleblower but a whole cabal of well-placed spooks in the secret US security apparatus. The deep state (I would prefer the term \u201cpermanent\u201d state) is more than a conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n<p>The impeachment imbroglio is bigger than Trump. That the outing of Trump was done by a current employee of a US agency shrouded in secrecy, who is unaccountable and unknown, should be a subject of enormous concern for all small-d democrats and not just anti-imperialists. The CIA has the means and mission to overthrow regimes, and now ours may be one of them, however undesirable the current president may be.<\/p>\n<p>We, the people, should take no solace that Trump, in his careening about, may stumble in the direction of anti-imperialism. Trump is just as much an imperialist as the rest. Only he is not as reliably consistent and that is what has gotten leading segments of the ruling class into a hissy fit. The ruling class is not always unified on policy. Here we are witness to an intra-class struggle. But we needn\u2019t take sides, because the ruling class is always unified in serving their class interests, which are not ours.<\/p>\n<p>A policy conflict, some have speculated, is raging within the ruling class between Trump\u2019s \u201cisolationist\u201d and a more \u201cglobalist\u201d imperialism. Rest assured the ruling class has <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/monthlyreview.org\/product\/wall-streets-think-tank\/\" >institutions<\/a> to adjudicate these disputes such as the Council on Foreign Relations. For the neocons and the \u201cliberal\u201d right-to-protect \u201chumanitarian imperialists,\u201d Trump\u2019s lurches in the direction of non-intervention and rapprochement are only venial sins. The mortal sin would be if the erratic Trump fails to listen to what the <em>Times<\/em> delicately calls the \u201cprofessionals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A corollary fear is if the \u201cpopulist\u201d (note how the ruling class thinks of this is a pejorative) Trump listens to the people\u2019s desire for peace. Unlike the first fear, the latter is unwarranted. That is, unwarranted unless and until the people rebuild an independent peace movement to check the rising tide of US militarism.<\/p>\n<p><em>________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Roger-Harris-e1549438478629.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-127604\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Roger-Harris-e1549438478629.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"94\" \/><\/a><\/em><em>Roger Harris<\/em> <em>is a <\/em><em>member of the <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/\" >TRANSCEND Network<\/a> <em>and the<\/em><em> immediate past president of the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/taskforceamericas.org\/\" >Task Force on the Americas<\/a>, a 33-year-old human rights organization in solidarity with the social justice movements of Latin America and the Caribbean. He is active with the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/afgj.org\/focus-areas\/venezuela-solidarity-campaign\/campaign-to-end-us-and-canada-sanctions-against-venezuela\" >Campaign to End US-Canadian Sanctions against Venezuela<\/a> and <\/em><em>is on the state central committee of the <\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.peaceandfreedom.org\/home\/\" ><em>Peace and Freedom Party<\/em><\/a><em>, the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are higher callings than merely winning the presidency for good servants of the empire. But would Trump have been so compliant? Maybe not. So, impeachment is in order to either chasten him to faithful obedience or get rid of him.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":127604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[109,287,249,70],"class_list":["post-145081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}