Saturn on the Beltway

Dispatches from Deena Stryker

Living in various European countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain for half my adult life, I observed governments rise and fall with disconcerting rapidity, while the US cruised smoothly along, seemingly immune to such frivolous behavior. As a ‘beacon of democracy’, founded on the principle of the separation of powers between the executive, the legislative and the judiciary, America was assured of smooth transitions, as it looked down upon the chaos other governments seemed unable to avoid.

American voters should have smelled a rat when they realized that the Bushes and Clintons had become dynasties, yet they did not see this as a threat, so convinced were they of enjoying a fail-safe system. But to make sure that system endured, in 2010 the Supreme ruled that corporations were people, and thus could spend unlimited amounts of money to promote candidates who would support them. By the time the public caught on to the results, they were powerless, reduced to crying in the wilderness that we needed to ‘take back’ our county. In 2016, they thought a wealthy real estate developer would perform that miracle, since he claimed his presidential campaign had no need of outside financing. But Donald Trump was scarcely  ensconced in the White House (and at Mar a Lago) when it was revealed that although he may not have needed it, he had received financing from people determined to dismantle the state, as reported by Jane Mayer in the April 2nd New Yorker and as I reported here: (https://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/04/02/trumps-right-and-the-alt-and-new-rights/).

The United States was still viewed as the best country in the world when Bill Clinton was being tried by his peers for sexual misconduct, but the French people I saw every day couldn’t stop laughing: while remaining married to his wife, their recently deceased President Francois Mitterand had had a daughter by his mistress, who wrote a well-publicized book when she turned eighteen.

The incredibly complex legalities built up around Clinton’s impeachment was nothing compared to the investigations of President Trump and his advisors. In 2016, America’s problem is not presidential capers, but the return of the wicked witch. Now during the early sixties, not long after the end of McCarthyism in the US, the Cuban revolutionary government tried and convicted a student belonging to a centrist group that had worked with the Fidelistas to defeat Batista, for denouncing to the police two of Fidel’s young activists. At the end of the proceedings, which highlighted fundamental differences between the government and its former ally in struggle, a gigantic poster in Havana in sight of the presidential reviewing stand showed Fidel warning that ‘the revolution’ must not devour its children.

Donald Trump had barely been elected when voices were heard in Washington claiming that Vladimir Putin had helped him win the election by hacking the Democratic Committee’s emails. After the President’s swearing in, the matter blossomed into a full-fledged witch hunt, with one after another of his allies and collaborators accused of talking on the phone with the Russian ambassador, or accepting an invitation from Vladimir Putin to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Russia’s international television channel, RT (disparagingly, yet increasingly desperately labelled by US officials as ‘Putin’s bullhorn’). Although many political figures and journalists have quietly appeared on RT, to do so is now to be formally suspected of fraternizing with the enemy. No other country that I know of takes matters as far as the US. During all the years I lived in Europe, I never heard of politicians being investigated in this manner.

Even when a country that is merely being set up as the next enemy — referred to in official circles as an ‘adversary’ — Americans are aware that they need to avoid appearing too chummy with its representatives. At the same time, few people realize that America’s obsession about ‘colluding with the enemy’ harks back to revolutionary days when it was enshrined in legislation unknown in other democracies.

The four Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by Congress and signed into law by President John Adams in 1798. Besides making it harder for an immigrant to become a citizen, in those early days, when one would have thought the vast country would want all the able bodies it could get, they allowed the president to imprison and deport non-citizens who were considered dangerous (Alien Friends Act of 1798) or who were from a hostile nation (Alien Enemy Act of 1798). As for the Sedition Act of 1798, it criminalized making false statements that were critical of the federal government. These acts eventually led to the hysteria of the McCarthy era, and the creation of the House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), that wrecked the lives of several thousand Americans accused of being Communists.

Following Mao Tse Tung’s victory over Chinese Nationalists, the US began fighting communist guerrillas in Korea, giving rise to the ’domino theory’, the idea that the we had imperatively to halt the spread of communism from one country to another. Reduced to ‘dominos’, countries were considered to have ‘fallen’ to the Communists (much the way young women who had lost their virginity were said to have ‘fallen’). McCarthy’s famous question was ‘Who ‘lost’ China?, and his ghost still roams Capitol Hill, keeping old reflexes alive. The mere suspicion that Trump ‘operatives’ — to use a newly coined unlovely word — had conversations with Russians before they or the President were actually sworn in, in defiance of another colonial law against simple citizens conducting diplomacy with foreign countries, set off an unstoppable chain of events.

Although both Russia and China have evolved into two versions of ‘state capitalism’ — or more or less democratic socialism — the US powers that be and its press still refer to them as potential enemies, using the suggestive term ‘adversaries’.  While a sly commentator recently accidentally on purpose referred to Russia as ‘the Soviet Union uh, the former Soviet Union’, candidate Trump made no mystery of his desire to pursue a cooperative relationship with the Russians, while admitting that by revealing this program he would limit his chances of winning the presidency. During the campaign, Hillary refrained from attacking him on that point, however as soon as Trump entered the White House his outlandish statements about issues big and small set off America’s historical reflex against ‘the Other’ — any nation or person that is ‘different’ or refuses to recognize its moral and political right to dominate the world.

While the more courageous journalists have noted sotto voce that it is normal for future rulers to consult with representatives of other nations in order to smooth their transition to power, when it emerged that the National Security advisor Mike Flynn had talked on the phone to the Russian Ambassador on several occasions, legislators immediately accused him of having  reassured the Russians that the new president would lift sanctions. As for part-time campaign manager and lobbyist Paul Manafort, his crime was to have sold his services to the former Ukrainian president, who was a Russian ally! (The US took care of the matter by organizing a coup against that president, sending Ukraine into a death spiral in which real, dedicated fascists who still honor Hitler patrol the streets and threaten to take over. (They recently held a conference and released a Manifesto outlining their vision for the country.)

Speaking of Hitler, while white nationalist Steve Bannon’s unexpected seat on the National Security Council provoked only a few rumblings, the discovery that other advisors appeared friendly to Russia set off full-fledged investigations by Congress, with talk of the need for a special commission such as the one that investigated 9/11! Suspicions about his devotion to the President forced the chairman of the House Investigating Committee, Devon Nunez, to recuse himself from that specific investigation, while the newly appointed Attorney General, the elderly former Senator Jeff Sessions was forced into the same posture for his conversations with the Russian Ambassador before the election.

While in other countries only a humongous financial scandal would trigger a judicial investigation into a politicians’ activities, the minute the US political system appears to hit a bump, the first reflex of Congress is to investigate, and its standing investigative committees are rarely idle. Apparently, the country’s birth via rebellion against a ‘foreign power’ forever scarred the psyche of its lawmakers: as did Saturn upon learning that one of his sons would usurp him, they are quick to devour their own.

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