{"id":83162,"date":"2016-11-21T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2016-11-21T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=83162"},"modified":"2016-11-19T17:05:19","modified_gmt":"2016-11-19T17:05:19","slug":"welcome-to-the-brave-new-trumpoliticaltrumponomic-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/11\/welcome-to-the-brave-new-trumpoliticaltrumponomic-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Brave New (Trumpolitical\/Trumponomic) World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"trump\"<\/a><\/p>\n

17 Nov 2016 – <\/em>This does not mean that the Soros regime change racket and its multiple tentacles, in parallel to the Clinton machine-dominated DNC, will quit. Plan A \u2013 Maidan in the USA \u2013 is not exactly a winner among the masses. Thus Plan B \u2013 long-term harassment \u2013 was decided this past weekend at a summit in a Washington hotel.<\/p>\n

The endless snowflake whining \u2013 we lost the presidential election because of\u00a0\u00abrogue\u00bb FBI, WikiLeaks, the Russians<\/a>, etc. \u2013 was predictable. Yet among the corrupt-to-the-core DNC it seems like no apparatchik has ever read Guy Debord\u2019s\u00a0Society of the Spectacle<\/em>. Or is familiar with how showbiz \u2013 and talk radio \u2013 works.<\/p>\n

Paris is arguably the world capital of critical thinking. Perplexed Parisian intellectual circles at least have found out that the current pan-Western crisis is not only about economics, politics, finance, security and immigration; it\u2019s about \u00abpolitical discourse\u00bb itself.<\/p>\n

The easy chic caf\u00e9 diagnostic is that Trump\u2019s victory is the symptom of language distorting reality by playing to emotions. It\u2019s true that complex rational discourse does not deliver anymore. The masses don\u2019t read 3,000-word essays; this is for the elites and self-described \u00abexperts\u00bb. But they do respond to outrageous tweets. More than ever, perception is indeed reality.<\/p>\n

Thus the amalgam between Trump and the Front National (FN) in France, led by Marine Le Pen, also a master communicator capable of turning primary emotions into political reality. No wonder \u00abwhite supremacist\u00bb Breitbart News \u2013 Trump\u2019s informal Ministry of Information \u2013 will increase its exposure in France and support Le Pen.<\/p>\n

What the Paris debate gets right is that nationalist isolationism across the West \u2013 using amalgam and clever terminological shortcuts \u2013 has become a credible solution to \u00abcure\u00bb national identity. Thus the appeal of ditching the EU, among countless Europeans, as a credible alternative against unemployment, as well as a means of increasing security. It\u2019s a Trump Remixed syndrome; barbed wire (metaphorical and otherwise) as a possible choice for re-launching economic growth.<\/p>\n

With Trump\u2019s victory being analyzed as the defeat of political discourse, or the victory of the controversial word, what the Paris debate gets totally wrong is promoting lofty exhortations to \u00abreconcile oneself with complexity\u00bb as the only solution. The challenge is actually how to do nuance and complexity in only a few words at a time.<\/p>\n

Words, words, words<\/strong><\/p>\n

What sophisticated intellectual analyses don’t get is that Team Trump strategized a running reality show showcasing \u2013 what else \u2013 a brand. Dialogue was kept to a \u2013 tweet \u2013 minimum. Trump himself unveiled it; \u00abThese are just words\u00bb. The Clinton (cash) machine fell into the trap and took these words literally. These were in fact metaphors \u2013 understandable by a fourth grader and delivered by a \u00abman boy\u00bb impersonating a fourth grader,<\/p>\n

In his CBS interview this past Sunday, Trump admitted the obvious; he won because of the power of social networks, despite the Clinton cash machine spending \u00abmuch more money than I did\u00bb. Trump has over 28 million followers combined on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. This supposedly \u00abhidden minority\u00bb dribbled any poll modeling available. And outside the Beltway and Hollywood, they were everywhere.<\/p>\n

Trump perfected the art of simplified political discourse cutting off the middlemen \u2013 while reducing corporate\/mainstream media, in the process, to no more than a pathetic footnote. The New York Times \u2013 \u00aball the news that are irrelevant to print\u00bb? \u2013 has been a sorry show in itself, promising on the record to \u00abreport world news more accurately\u00bb.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that Trump, on the record, had not sent a warning; \u00abI\u2019m very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words\u00bb. And he knows how to get maximum effect out of minimum (word) investment. Mega-investor Peter Thiel totally got it, telling the National Press Club in Washington how \u00abthe media is always taking Trump literally\u00bb.<\/p>\n

Thiel stressed, shortly before the election, that \u00aba lot of voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally, so when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment, their question is not, \u2018Are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China?\u2019 or, you know, \u2018How exactly are you going to enforce these tests?\u2019 What they hear is we\u2019re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy\u00bb.<\/p>\n

So what if Trump was killing syntax via his loud and inarticulate outbursts? The meaning was always clear. The pile up of exploding rhetorical devices was always targeted at tapping into raw emotion. Thus the avalanche of \u00abus and them\u00bb; \u00abyuuuuge\u00bb superlatives (\u00abamazing\u00bb, \u00abtremendous potential\u00bb, \u00abwonderful\u00bb); all kinds of hyperbole; non-stop repetition; calculated stutter enhancing his trademark \u00abimprovised\u00bb delivery; and a sea of euphemisms (\u00abgrabbing women by the pussy?\u00bb Nah; just plain old \u00ablocker room talk\u00bb).<\/p>\n

Snowflakes meanwhile were endlessly re-comforted by their standard interpretation of Trump as a con artist invented by mass media who first excelled on reality TV and then turned politics into a circus. They did not see him capitalizing on his monster advertising dollars\/ratings pulling power; they did not see that the more (hated) corporate media attacked him, the better he looked for the \u00abinvisible minority\u00bb; and they did not see how the Trumpian brand of \u00abmagic realism\u00bb played all kinds of tricks with \u00abreality\u00bb.<\/p>\n

Social Darwinism run amok<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zygmunt Bauman, the foremost conceptualizer of liquid modernity \u2013 and a huge influence in my 2007 book\u00a0Globalistan\u00a0\u2013 correctly observed how Trump has offered a unique, once in a lifetime occasion for a condemnation, without appeal, of the whole political system.<\/p>\n

Bauman\u2019s on to something when he notes how traditional mechanisms such as the Montesquieu-style division of power between Executive, Legislative and Judiciary, as well as the Anglo-Saxon checks and balances, may be increasingly deprived of meaning to the benefit of an agglutination of power in authoritarian mode.<\/p>\n

Bauman perfectly understood how Trump married identity politics to economic angst \u2013 condensing all aspects of the existential angst consuming what\u2019s left of the working class and the middle class. Thus the success of the lightning fast solution \u2013 the expulsion of the ethnically diverse.<\/p>\n

The US electorate that bothered to vote \u2013 very important; 43 percent did not \u2013 may have bought, according to Bauman, a strongman not as poison but as antidote; a \u00abdoer\u00bb capable of deploying instantaneous solutions with immediate effects. If and how he will be able to deliver is another story.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s certain is that the seesaw across the West between conservatives and social democracy is not a see saw anymore. When in power, everyone was just reproducing slight variations of neoliberalism.<\/p>\n

Yet as we have now seen, liberalism has been dealt\u00a0a serious body blow<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 even as the so-called progressive Left has utterly failed to \u00absell\u00bb to the masses a serious, history-based critique of neoliberalism.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, civil war \u2013 national and global \u2013 is now raw, everywhere; social Darwinism run amok. We have an Atlanticist Wall \u2013 from Brexit to the Rio Grande \u2013 in the process of being erected against the Global South. We have the Declining White Man against minorities that in many cases have become majorities. We have Western elites pitted against \u00abIslam\u00bb \u2013 an absurdity, because the real enemy is Salafi-jihadism, a derivation of Wahhabism. And ultimately, we have The Ultimate Predator \u2013 Man \u2013 relentlessly decimating Nature.<\/p>\n

In a Gramsci sense, the old order has completely collapsed, but the new order has not yet been born. It might be a new order based on the BRICS \u2013 mostly Russia, India and China. The progressive Left must find the conceptual road map to be part of it \u2013 and influence it.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, we will be living among the myriad debris originated by the Trumpolitics IED. America invented the politically correct. Trump bombed politically correct. America is proud of corporate media. Trump bombed corporate media. These are already two important victories.<\/p>\n

Trump launched an IPO over the White House. Now he\u2019s the CEO. If \u2013 and that\u2019s a mighty if \u2013 he manages to run it like a sound business, that\u2019s bound to be a good deal not only for the US but to the whole planet.<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/p>\n

\"pepeescobar\"<\/a>Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian independent geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. He has been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9\/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of \u201cGlobalistan<\/a>\u201d (2007), \u201cRed Zone Blues<\/a>\u201d (2007), \u201cObama does Globalistan<\/a>\u201d (2009) and \u201cEmpire of Chaos<\/a>\u201d (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is \u201c2030<\/a>\u201c, also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 strategic-culture.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

17 Nov 2016 – We will be living among the myriad debris originated by the Trumpolitics IED. America invented the politically correct. Trump bombed politically correct. America is proud of corporate media. Trump bombed corporate media. These are already two important victories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83162","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=83162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}