Caleb Maupin
EDITED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
An informal chat with Caleb Maupin as your guide to the multitude of news, lies, distortions, rumors, idiocies, hypocrisies, and ideologies that shape our world.
Dispatch dateline: Live #185 Friday night, Jan 8, 2020
Commentary by Patrice Greanville
In this video Caleb Maupin denounces Trump's abject betrayal of his most dedicated followers, an act that firmly places him among the most dishonorable men in modern political history. Caleb spares no words to castigate the characteristically opportunistic and repugnantly unprincipled Trump who, barely 48 hours after inciting his followers to intimidate and possibly storm the Capitol, and watching the tide turn against him with possibly nefarious consequences, promptly did a 180 to disown the assault. Trump, as Caleb notes, is simply disgusting in his cynical and cowardly castigation of his own most dedicated followers, the true believers of the Trumpian right. Acting as if his own actions had had nothing to do with the events that shook the nation, Trump speaks of a "heinous attack on the US Capitol". Lest someone might still believe he and his acolytes had a hand in the ensuing riot, Trump declares with Olympian detachment that, "like all Americans I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem....The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American Democracy." Not content with that, he has the gall to admonish his hapless legions that, "[To]those who engaged in acts of violence and defiance...[you] do not represent our country." Talk about throwing your people under the bus.
Maupin reminds us that all captains are supposed to be the last to abandon a sinking ship. And that it was simply unthinkable for leaders like Stalin, Mao, Napoleon, George Washington, Gen. Qasem Soleimani (whom Trump ordered assassinated), and even Hitler to leave their followers in the lurch. In fact, Maupin notes, even a deranged prophet like Jim Jones, who ordered his entire congregation to commit suicide, had the valor to ask one of his aides to shoot him in the head to make sure he'd share their fate.
Was it 5D chess after all?
But here's the greatest irony of all, which confirms the alarming good luck of the US ruling class. For here we have a plutocracy besieged at home and abroad by a multitude of crises it cannot hope to resolve satisfactorily, starting with a widespread crisis of political legitimacy and representativeness, and a rapidly advancing ecological implosion, not to mention the rise of new powers capable of disputing its global supremacy, accidentally tripping on a subterfuge that could facilitate their survival.
At this point it's worth recaling that all these calamities were created by the elites' obstinate allegiance to incurably irrational predatory capitalism, which, devious rhetoric aside, continues to this day. The legitimacy /representational problem is serious, and they know it. Heck, even Americans, world famous for their political cluelessness are now ferociously alienated from their own media and political establishment (not yet from capitalism itself, though, as they have been heavily indoctrinated to believe it is "the American way"). These crises, of which the massive and incurable unemployment, caused by capitalism's periodic"overproduction", now aggravated by the digital revolution, constitute a perennial challenge to the elites' governance, can be overcome only through two paths: socialism or barbarism. (The latter by definition only a temporary fix).
Since genuine socialism is something the elites abhor, by definition, it is clear they long ago chose the iron heel, that is some form of oligarchic tyranny. In this context, it's useful to remember that we already inhabit a well entrenched (and camouflaged) oligarchy that functions as a de facto tyranny, albeit one that has yet to show its full sanguinary face.
The curious thing is that, quite probably, Trump's erratic and disgraceful tenure culminating with the clumsy attack on the Capitol, may have been a false flag gift to his sworn opponents, the older wing of the ruling class, the longer-term thinking "managerial" wing comprising the Democrats and the CIA, FBI, the oil industry, big tech, other components of finance capitalism, etc., precisely the people who just spent four years crippling the Trump regime, and in so many ways conducting a slow mo coup, a regime change op similar to the color revolutions the US regime is so good at exporting,
The bigges irony is that these sectors are now likely to benefit mightily from the reviled Trump's numerous character flaws and his quintessential narcissism and political illiteracy. For the fact is that they are apparently about to use this very event (in which they might have actually participated) to destroy the remaining shreds of US democracy. This means a far more stringent regimen of media censorship than we have seen so far, and the quick enactment of even more severe anti "domestic terrorism" laws. The notorious and Orwellian-named Patriot Act, which, incidentally, Biden helped to write, is now, as the citizens, media and politicians clamor for revenge against the "homegrown terrorists", sure to be beefed up.
In a land where ignorance, myth and confusion reign, such political dishonesty is inevitable. It's fitting therefore, that, contrary to what so many liberal establishmentarians thought ever since Trump first sat his rump in the Oval Office in 2017, at the end of the day he may have turned out to be the greatest and most perfect Manchurian candidate for their sordid long term plans. Indeed the "storming of the Capitol" on Jan 6, 2021, serving as a second "American Reichtag fire" (the first being 9/11), may have sealed the fate of an already comatose formal democracy. How else can we explain the curiously incompetent police and national guard deployments? Folks, it's probably time to fasten your seat belts.—PG
Caleb Maupin has worked as a journalist and political analyst for the last five years. He has reported from across the United States, as well as from Iran, the Gulf of Aden and Venezuela. He has been a featured speaker at many Universities, and at international conferences held in Tehran, Quito, and Brasilia. His writings have been translated and published in many languages including Farsi, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese. He is originally from Ohio. As a reporter with RT.com, Maupin's focus has been the United States. He has had many intense interactions with US State Department spokespeople including John Kirby, Mark Toner, and Heather Nauert confronting them about diverse issues like Syria, Russia, and the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons. Maupin was the primary US correspondent for RT’s international broadcasts during the 2016 Presidential elections. He reported from both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, and also directly from the riots in Oakland, California, during the aftermath of the vote. 
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