Presidential Catastrophe

The United States of America is on the verge of World War III in three different theaters. Its social economy and infrastructure are in tatters. It’s actively engaged in genocidal ethnic cleansing—killing tens if not hundreds of thousands of mainly children and women and spitting on every precept of humanitarian and international law—on behalf of an atavistic settler-colonial project. It is more than ever despised and less than ever feared in a world escaping its control. And in this catastrophic conjuncture, our political and media culture throws up two of the most ridiculous and incompetent figures imaginable to vie for the role of leading us into the abyss.

Our electoral system is insultingly anti-democratic. Built around donor control, a pastiche of opaque voting and tabulating systems including black-box proprietary electronic machines that allow (and therefore make inevitable) undetectable fraud, and, topping it all off, the Electoral College, it is designed to evade the popular will and enable fraud. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are the two most perfectly clownish figures to lead this election circus, which is guaranteed, on purpose, to end up in a fight over the result.

As far as I’m concerned, as I’ve argued before, the proper response to this is an organized public political boycott. A smart left political movement would lead the fight, uniting all dissident factions, to make the electoral system transparent, honest, fair, and democratic as a condition of participating in it. No voting in a rigged system. The ruling class doesn’t care too much about which duopoly clown emcees the circus; the majority of the people not voting, not giving legitimacy to the system, is what the ruling class fears the most.

But no one seems interested in exiting the Big Top, so let’s bring in the clowns.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better, more radical, exposition of who runs the country than this gem:

Take note of which Trump comments provoke controversy, and which don't. Trump said this week that he "gave" the Golan Heights to Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, his top funders, who came to the White House "almost more than anybody." Not a peep about this brazen admission of graft pic.twitter.com/MaJLFnH7oi

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 22, 2024

https://x.com/mtracey/status/1837886438903357920

Just as I promised I recognized Israel's eternal capital and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem, Jerusalem became the capital. I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. You know, Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House, probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there, and they were always after... And as soon as I'd give them something, always for Israel, as soon as I'd give them something, they'd want something else. I said, give me a couple of weeks, will you please?

But I gave them the Golan Heights, and they never even asked for it. You know, for 72 years, they've been trying to do the Golan Heights, right? And even Sheldon didn't have the nerve. But I said: You know what? I said to David Friedman, give me a quick lesson, like five minutes or less. on the Golan Heights. And he did. And I said: Let's do it. We got it done in about 15 minutes, right?

Yup. Even more radical than his notorious answer as a candidate at the Republican debate in 2015:

Q: You’ve also supported a host of other liberal policies, you’ve also donated to several Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton included, Nancy Pelosi. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business related favors. And you said recently, quote, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.

TRUMP: You better believe it... I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.

Q: So what did you get from Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi?

TRUMP: I’ll tell you what. With Hillary Clinton, I said, be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why? She had no choice! Because I gave.

Trump—the purported anti-Swamp candidate—is telling us that, as president, he had his biggest donors at the White House “almost more than anybody outside of people that work there,” always after something, “always for Israel,” and he was eager to give them anything they wanted, contravening decades of fundamental U.S. foreign policy and international law to do so. In fact, he was so eager to please, he gave them a contravention of longstanding national policy and international law “they never even asked for”—recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. That was an issue of national policy and international law about which, he tells us, he was entirely ignorant, and was content to radically overturn after a lesson of “five minutes or less” from an uber Zionist.

Donald Trump is telling us that the President of the United States is, and he as POTUS was, a figurehead who, in return for their money, takes orders from his donors like a servant, and uses the apparatus of the United States government and his position as overseer of a global empire to literally “give” those donors parts of other countries. Because “when they give, you do whatever the hell they want you to do.” He is telling us that, as a politician and President, he became exactly the kind of swamp creature he criticized his opponents for being in 2015. Donald Trump 2024 is confirming for us, and bragging about how well he embodies it: “that’s a broken system.” You better believe it.

Can you say “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”?

I dare any MAGA disciple to deny that s/he would renounce as a traitorous swamp creature any Democrat s/he heard bragging about how they let “George and Alex” Soros (rather than “Miriam and Sheldon” Adelson), as his/her most frequent guests, run around and run the White House, ordering up changes that overturn longstanding national policy and international law—and then try to deny that Trump is exactly the same kind of creature.

I’m sure any MAGA disciple will say: “But Biden/Kamala/the Democrats do the same thing! They’re just not as obvious about it.” And they are right. And that’s the point, the entire point, of the duopoly choice. And the reason, the principal reason, for the dominant faction of the ruling class’s antipathy to Trump. The Democrats obscure and gloss over their obsequious fealty to the ruling class with kinder, gentler, “progressive” rhetoric and insistent claims to champion the “middle class” (“working class” is so twentieth-century). Trump, who’s captured the Republican Party, keeps saying what’s supposed to be the quiet part out loud. Trump is comfortable bragging about his mega-donors running around the White House because he considers himself one of, born into, their club, so what’s wrong with that? The Democrats take a quieter, more humble posture when being invited to manage their master’s domain.

I know there are many people, including longtime Democrats, who are so rightfully angry about the incompetence, failure, and betrayal of Biden-Harris and the Democrats, that they’re considering voting for Trump, just to shake things up. One of my readers succinctly captured the reason for Trump’s appeal beyond his MAGA base: “The fact remains that there is something in Trump that the deep state thinks it cannot control.” That appeal was only enhanced by the two assassination attempts.

There’s no denying the Deep State distrusts him, and for good reason: No one, including Donald Trump, knows what he will do or say next. He's got no firm political ideology, just stubs of ideas, a few of which are not bad. But he doesn't have the intellectual capacity or political facility for executing them. And he has a ton of bad ideas. Sometimes both at the same time—like ordering an attack on Iran and calling it off at the last minute. Narcissism and confusion mask insecurity. Precisely contrary to how he wants to be seen, Trump is actually a weak, insecure political actor, susceptible to being pushed around—especially by those he perceives as rich friends or tough guys, and who know how to handle his narcissism and need. And they tend to come from the Deep State creatures (capitalist moguls, military/intelligence operatives, and neocon warmongers) he surrounds himself with. They, and the donors, will get him to do whatever the hell they want.

OK, maybe nine out of ten times. As Keaton Weiss has said, betting on Trump is like playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in the gun. But the idea that Trump will be different this time, in any programmatic sense—that he’s going embrace and fight for someone else’s program of free speech or Making America Healthy Again versus his stated program of making America, and Israel, “powerful” again—is wishful thinking as futile as the idea that someone’s going to push Kamala left. Please, did you forget he already was president for four years? Did anything fundamentally change? Do you think he’s not the same guy who prosecuted Julian Assange and assassinated Qasem Soleimani?

"The ruling class doesn’t care too much about which duopoly clown emcees the circus; the majority of the people not voting, not giving legitimacy to the system, is what the ruling class fears the most..."

Trump is an ignorant, arrogant, narcissistic scion of the ruling class, who brags about being all of those things in ways that often embarrass, and can undermine support for, the capitalist dictatorship and the U.S. empire. He tells us he’s going to “Make Israel Great Again” (‘cause he, too, thinks that’s the job of the U.S. president), blow Iran to smithereens, intimidate Russia and China into submission, make American women stop thinking about abortion rights, and, yes, “close the internet.” He thinks he should be president because he is who he is, and he’ll talk his way out of it if he makes his arrogance too manifest.

Of course, The Democrats, now led by Harris, are supercilious, hypocritical defenders of the ruling class, American imperialism, and Zionism, who adopt whatever rhetorical strategies might fool disaffected constituencies into thinking they’re something else. People are fed up with their game, and no one believes anything they say.

Kamala has been the darling of the Democratic donor elite since she was anointed at a 2017 meeting in the Hamptons “with Hillary Clinton’s biggest backers,” where, “already said to be the Democrats’ top fund-raiser,” she “expand[ed] her influence and ambitions” and was “talked about as a 2020 presidential hopeful.” Unfortunately, she didn’t get any votes from actual people and, after her blistering attack on Joe Biden—Don’t worry, ”It was a debate!”—dropped out of the race before the Iowa caucus. Don’t worry, the donor cabal got her on the ticket in 2020 and got her as the presidential nominee this year—no votes needed.

Kamala tells us nothing much about what she will do because she has no idea. Her vacuity and opportunism are on display with her word-salad responses to specific questions that leave even Oprah wide-eyed and her bizarre attempt to pretend she’s a newcomer who hasn’t been part of the Biden administration for the last three-and-a-half years. Kamala thinks she should be president because she’s not Trump and has proved herself a compliant minion of the donors. She might get herself into the presidency by talking as little as possible and allowing wishful thinkers to project what they’re looking for onto her.

Here's my free, million-dollars’ worth of campaign advice that will ensure victory to the one of these clowns who most heeds it: “Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”

And my slogan for this year’s presidential election, which is the same as I had in 2008: “I’m not voting for Kamala or her donor.”

https://x.com/caitoz/status/1840848048232284279

As I write, homes and caskets and people are floating around North Carolina and Tennessee, Israel is continuing to kill and maim hundreds of people per week in Gaza and is bombing and invading Lebanon, Iran has just sent a salvo of hundreds of ballistic missiles into Israel, the U.S. has sent 40,000 troops into an undeclared war, and we are waiting to see how the disasters unfold from here. Both of these ignorant American-imperialist and rabidly Zionist clown candidates are trying to keep the growing number of Americans, who are rightfully angry because they are getting nothing from American capitalism and imperialism, safely enclosed in the duopoly corral, where they can be blown to smithereens in WWIII or ground down as their infrastructure and social economy are drained away by profit-seeking vampires. Blackstone is now buying up mobile home parks, to suck more money-blood out of struggling people living in the very last bastion of affordable housing. But don’t worry, Israel and Ukraine got $8 billion each. To the cheers of Donald and Kamala.

In the midst of all this consequential chaos, we have no idea who’s actually running the country. The fact that the president is a figurehead for the ruling class and the deep state apparatus has never been more apparent, nor more blithely accepted. Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan had to hide their enfeeblement. Now the whole world knows Joe has checked out, and it’s a big yawn. The president is a zero.

Still, there have been some presidents who were smart. Or at least competent. Or at least articulate. Or at least persuasive. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Obama, even early Reagan to an extent. These two are none of that. In a context where intelligent statesmanship has never been more necessary, it will be worse than zero.

One of these clowns will become president of the United States. To think either of them is an anti-establishment, anti-war, free-speech candidate who will save democracy, or drain the swamp, or avert the disasters we face is to be inflicted with either Trump Derangement Syndrome or its mirror image, MAGA Personality Cult.

Believe what the presidents of the United States have told you about themselves and this country. With either of them, as the man said: "Nothing would fundamentally change." This country will still be, as the other man said, an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.” And, as the other other man said, most recently and succinctly, they will both do “whatever the hell their donors want them to do.”

We are fucked. The demise of America is, I fear, irreversible at this point. Whoever becomes president, it will be a catastrophe—for us and for the world.

_______________________________________

JIM KAVANAGH (THE POLEMICIST)

Dateline: AUG 28, 2024

Oops. I didn’t see that one coming.

So, let’s talk about RFK Jr.’s decision to help Donald Trump win the presidential election.

Because, to be clear, Bobby is not just—excuse me, not even dropping out of the race. He could have done that, correctly denouncing the Democratic party’s anti-democratic legal and electoral tactics that made it impossible for his campaign to compete within the party or as a third party, and, indeed, denouncing the whole duopoly-enforced structure of American electoral politics that makes it impossible for any non-duopoly candidate to succeed. If he were really interested in building the possibility of a progressive third party, he could have stuck with his very recent critique of how “President Biden[/Harris], President Trump offer no solutions” and ended his campaign without transferring allegiance to either of the duopoly parties or candidates. He could have approached Jill Stein—as he apparently did both Kamala and Trump—and tried to negotiate agreements on highlighting issues that were important to him in return for urging his supporters to vote for her.

Instead, he is re-positioning himself and his campaign as supporting elements of the campaign of one of the extant duopoly parties—the Trump-Republican Party campaign. He will take himself off the ballot in battleground states, in order not to “likely hand the election to the Democrats,” and he’ll stay on the ballot in “safe” red or blue states where it won’t make any difference. This mirrors the “safe states” strategy of previous “left” third-party candidates, and it defines him as an auxiliary Republican, just as it defined those candidates as auxiliary Democrats. Whether he or they want to admit it, it’s an abdication of any effective third-party building, and a capitulation to one of the two duopoly parties and to duopoly politics tout court.

So, why is RFK Jr. doing this? Why is he abandoning a third-party building effort and any pretense of duopoly non-partisanship, and instead—in an astounding turn for a Kennedy—dedicating himself to the defeat of Kamala and the Democrats, and the victory of Trump and the Republicans? Here’s his campaign-suspending address, with his three reasons highlighted:

I’m 70 years old. I have maybe a decade to be effective. I cannot imagine that a President Harris will allow me or anyone else to solve these problems. After eight years of President Harris, any opportunity for me to fix the problem will be out of my reach forever. President Trump has told me he wants this as his legacy. I’m choosing to believe that this time, he will follow through. His son, his biggest donors, and closest friends also support this objective.

By staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election to the Democrats with whom I disagree on the existential issues of censorship, war, and chronic disease.

I want everyone to know that I am only suspending my campaign, not terminating it. My name will still be on the ballot in most states. If you live in a blue state, you can vote for me without harming or helping President Trump or Vice President Harris. In red states — the same applies. I encourage you to do so. And if enough of you vote for me and neither of the major party candidates win 270 electoral votes, I could still end up in the White House in a contingent election.

But in about ten battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I will remove my name and urge voters not to vote for me.

Three great causes drove me to enter this race in the first place. These are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party, and then as an Independent, and now throw my support to President Trump.

The cause of free speech.

The war in Ukraine.

The war on our children.

For the sake of argument, let’s interpret RFK Jr.’s action in the most positive way. Let’s stipulate that these are all important—even “existential”—issues (and I think they all are). Let’s stipulate that Kennedy has said good things and done good work on all of them. Let’s even stipulate that he’s sincere in his belief that Donald Trump is going to do something “existentially” more positive about these things than would Kamala Harris. Then let’s note what is one of the saddest sentences I’ve heard spoken by an American politician (and that’s saying something): “I’m choosing to believe that this time, he will follow through.” RFK Jr. does seem to be wishful thinking about his “decade to be effective.”

Let’s then consider his three reasons, leaving aside for the moment the uncited and paramount issue of the ongoing USrael Zionist colonial genocide—a live-streamed holocaust that I and so many others consider a deal-breaker, but about which there is no Democrat-Republican or Kennedy-Trump difference.

Free Speech/Censorship

I agree that “the cause of free speech” is an “existential” political issue, and RFK Jr. has certainly taken good positions on it, including giving strong support to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. But what is the position of the candidate and party with which he is now allying?

Donald Trump’s position is that “We’re going to keep foreign, Christian-hating communists, Marxists and socialists out of America,” and there needs to be “a new law” for “the ones that are already here, that grew up here.” He preaches to his fundamentalist Christian audiences that: “Together, we’re warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, the atheists, globalists, and the Marxists,” and “pledge[s]” to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country."

In RFK Jr.’s recently stated terms, “it’s a very narrow Overton window” that Trump wants to enforce in America.

What about the global war on free speech that is intensifying with arrests of Richard Medhurst in England, C.J. Hopkins in Germany, and Pavel Durov in France. Is Donald Trump, “his son, his biggest donors, and closest friends,” going to wage the fight against the restriction of free speech on the internet? Is the Trump Republican administration (perhaps with junior member RFK Jr. taking the lead) going to exert the tremendous pressure that is necessary, and could come from the president of the United States, to stop the worldwide assault on freedom of expression through the internet?

It’s a rhetorical question. Here’s Trump, who initiated the prosecution of Julian Assange, urging “closing that Internet up in some way,” and mocking the “foolish people” who say: “Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech!”

“And we have kids that are watching the Internet and they want to be masterminds. And then you wonder why we do we lose all these kids? They go over there. They're young. They're impressionable. They go off and they want to join ISIS. We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet. And we have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them. Maybe, in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say : ‘Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech!’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We've gotta maybe do something with the Internet, because they are recruiting by the thousands.”

If RFK Jr. doesn’t understand that the Trump Republican camp considers him one of the “foolish people,” he’s proving that he is.

And let’s not forget that a—perhaps the—main reason for censorship on the internet and in political and media spaces in general, in the U.S. and throughout the Western world, is to protect the Zionist project. The establishment doesn't like critiques of capitalism, but that’s been going on forever and they are not afraid of them yet. They really don’t like critiques of imperialism, which have also been manageable but arenow having uncomfortable effects in the context of waning imperial power—especially regarding the Ukraine conflict. But critiques of imperialism alone are not dangerous enough to provoke the omni-partisan US/Euro political establishment to blatantly jettison supposedly foundational free-speech and free-expression policies that have been so useful precisely for maintaining support of capitalism and imperialism.

The present critique of Zionism, however, which has been made possible by the wide and instant availability of historical information and political analyses on the internet that previously had been carefully kept under wraps by media gatekeepers, is extremely dangerous. As I pointed out in a previous essay, to my delighted (and the establishment’s dismayed) surprise, during the months of Israel’s horrific slaughter in Gaza, the availability of critical information and analysis has given rise to a recognition that Zionism is colonialism and thus to a determined and growing anti-Zionist movement in the United States. This is a real threat to the Zionist project. I don’t think there has ever been a quicker, more surprising, or more consequential change of attitude on such a fundamental subject, and the thoroughly Zionist American political establishment cannot abide it.

So, one of the main objectives of the current national and worldwide campaign of censorship is to protect the Zionist project by reasserting control over information and analysis—on the internet and throughout society—that might foster anti-Zionist thought in America and Europe.

Thus, Donald Trump, in 2019, issued an executive order applying Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to “anti-Semitic” acts, using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of “anti-Semitism” that includes “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” This order, which threatens campuses that allow anti-Zionist protest with loss of federal funding, “generat[ed] concern that it will stifle free speech by those who oppose Israel's policy toward the Palestinians,” because, as the moderately critical Jewish group J-Street said, it "appears designed less to combat anti-Semitism than to have a chilling effect on free speech and to crack down on campus critics of Israel.”

Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, standing next to Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, declared the peaceful BDS movement, a “cancer that…we're committed to combating,” and said the U.S. “plan[s] to identify and withdraw the department's funding and support from organizations linked to the movement.” Amnesty International USA “forcefully objected” to that policy as: “following Israeli government's approach in using false and politically motivated accusations of antisemitism to harm peaceful activists, including human rights defenders.”

Now, Trump is vowing to his donors: “If you get me re-elected, we’re going to set that [pro-Palestine] movement back 25 or 30 years …any student that protests, I throw them out of the country.”

Not only Trump, but the bulk of the Republican party have joined their Democratic colleagues in Congress in passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would enshrine the IHRA “anti-Semitism” definition in law, and is proposing legislation to create campus "antisemitism monitors" who can initiate the revocation of funding for colleges that allow speech and protest tainted with that definition.

Glenn Greenwald has been especially trenchant about Republicans who, having postured as free-speech advocates, complaining about liberals and Democrats censoring conservative speech, are now “sound[ing] exactly like the left liberals who they've been heaping scorn on” when it comes to Israel and Zionism,” and how they conveniently ignore that “the most common and frequent targets of censorship, both on campus and generally, in the United States have long been Israel critics,” including “professors who have lost tenure [and] gotten fired because of it.”

Add those to the numerous proposed federal, and actual (38) state, bipartisan anti-BDS laws punishing citizens and organizations that boycott Israel, and you’ve got an idea of the “existential” difference between the Trump/Republican and Harris/Democrat parties on “free speech.”

RFK Jr. is going to have at least as hard a time fighting for “free speech” while supporting Trump and the Republicans as he would with Harris and the Democrats. It’s only because he shares with Trump the bipartisan “Israeli Exception” to the free speech (and every other) principle, that he cannot see how hollow his candidate and party choice on this issue actually is. He’s going to have a very hard time convincing anyone who doesn’t share that exception that supporting Trump does anything to defend free speech.

It befuddles me that anyone thinks Donald Trump is going to end forever wars.

Regarding Ukraine, Trump has made various noises, centered on cost—the Europeans should pay more to support Ukraine—and, of course, on the strength of his own personality, with which he will force both sides to stop fighting within 24 hours of his election. ‘Cause, you know, all it takes is a tough guy to intimidate Putin: “If we had a real president, a president that knew — that was respected by Putin ... he would have never invaded Ukraine.”

Pundits and interlocutors and associates of Trump have also chimed in with various speculations about “Trump’s” plan for ending the Ukraine war. The most specific version comes from Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, who were chiefs of staff in Trump's National Security Council. Their plan is to tell Ukraine it will not get any more U.S. weapons if it doesn’t enter peace talks, tell Russia that if it doesn’t enter peace talks Ukraine will get more support, and impose a ceasefire on current battle lines during the peace talks. This is a delusional Plan B that’s been floated around for over a year, which anyone who understands what’s happening in the war knows Russia will never accept. It’s a plan Kellogg and Fleitz “presented” to Trump, and to which he “responded favorably,” though they are "not claiming he agreed with it.”

Campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt gave the most accurate statement about “Trump’s” Ukraine plan: “Any speculation about President Trump’s plan is coming from unnamed and uninformed sources who have no idea what is going on or what will happen.” No one, including Donald Trump, has any idea what “his” plan is for ending the Ukraine war.

In fact, though it is the case that some Republicans and RFK Jr. have expressed reluctance about continuing the expensive Ukraine war, with the latter framing that within a more general “antiwar” attitude, no one in the U.S. political establishment wants to recognize that there is no “plan” for ending it that does not involve the accepting the decisive defeat of the Zelensky regime, NATO, and the U.S., and/or going to war with Russia.

Here's RFK Jr.’s plan to end the Ukraine war, based on “our mission to help the brave Ukrainians defend their sovereignty”:

We will offer to withdraw our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russia's borders. Russia will withdraw its troops from Ukraine and guarantee its freedom and independence. UN peacekeepers will guarantee peace to the Russian-speaking eastern regions.

Too little, too late. Might have been worthwhile before 2022. The bit about withdrawal of troops and missiles from Russia’s borders is especially nice, if it were part of an overall reconfiguration of the security relationship between NATO and Russia that accepts a much greater drawdown of NATO forces. But the “UN peacekeepers” guaranteeing the “eastern regions” ~~implies~~ means those regions stay within Ukraine. Nor is there any mention of whether Ukraine’s “freedom, independence and sovereignty” allows it to join NATO. It’s Minsk III+, another frozen conflict scenario. It’s not gonna happen. The “eastern regions”—Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson—are now part of Russia, and Trump, Harris, or any American president is going have to accept that and the decisive Russian victory/US-NATO defeat it represents, or fight Russia in a war to reverse it, in the face of enormous pressure that’s going to come from both parties and from the Euro-American establishment to do the latter.

I doubt that Trump, Harris, or RFK Jr. (anymore than his cold-warrior father or uncle would have) will accept the defeat and retreat of the American imperial project that the impending Russian victory in Ukraine represents. And none of them have a “plan” to avoid it.

In other words, regarding the Ukraine war, RFK Jr.’s choice of candidate and party does not make much of, let alone an “existential,” difference.

Regarding “forever wars” more generally, RFK Jr. would do well to remember the series of aggressions that gave rise to that expression, including the (continuing) invasion and occupation of Iraq, the murder of its leader and destruction of the Libyan state, the most prosperous in Africa, the (continuing) attack on and occupation of Syria, etc.

The “forever war” program that the US has been carrying out since at least 2003 was revealed by Wesley Clark in 2007 to involve “taking out” seven countries in five years “starting with Iraq and Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan … and finishing off with Iran.” The purpose of that program was, as I’ve said in a previous article, to “remov[e]—by co-option, regime change, or chaotogenic sectarian warfare and state destruction—any strong central governments that have provided political, diplomatic, financial, material, and military support for the Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonialism. Iran is the last of those, has been growing in strength and influence, and is therefore the next mandatory target.”

Donald Trump knows, and in his embarrassingly forthright way that so discomfits liberals, says the censored part out loud:

https://twitter.com/Partisangirl/status/1800860461417877747

“Because the fact is we don’t have to be in the Middle East other than we want to protect Israel. We’ve been very good to Israel. But other than that, we don’t have to be in the Middle East. We don’t need, you know there was a time we needed desperately or we don’t need that anymore. We have more than they do. Isn’t that nice?”

Anyone who is committed to guaranteeing the Zionist project is committed to forever war.

Anyone who, like RFK Jr., demands “unwavering, resolute, and practical action” to support the Zionist colonial project, who renounces the JCPOA and decrees that Israel must but Iran must not have nuclear weapons, and pledges to “provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself.. throughout this operation [the Gaza genocide] and beyond,” is someone who is supporting Israel’s constant aggressions against its neighbors Syria and Lebanon, and will support the attack on Iran that is the next and most dangerous “forever war” on the agenda. It’s a war that is Israel’s solution to the existential problem the Zionist project confronts in Gaza—a war Israel is determined, and has been planning since the Trump administration, to get us into.

To ensure the security of Israel and, indeed, the Iranian people, Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. This is non-negotiable. It will require constant vigilance and stringent verification.

The JCPOA is based on outdated assumptions and conditions, and is not…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 16, 2023

To ensure the security of Israel and, indeed, the Iranian people, Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. This is non-negotiable. It will require constant vigilance and stringent verification.

The JCPOA is based on outdated assumptions and conditions, and is not appropriate to our time. But I will set my sights on real peace in the Mideast, including between Israel and Iran.

When I am President, we will set a new standard for international behavior. The US bears historical culpability for much of the tension in the region, which is partly the result of our regrettable history of regime change operations, coups, and support for despotic regimes in Iran and elsewhere.

So, with respect to the issue of “forever wars,” RFK Jr. has made no “existential” choice between Trump and Harris; he has lined up with both of them completely on the most urgent “forever war” case—the savage war of Zionist colonialism, the most horrible crime against humanity in recent history; and, in the Ukraine case, he has established a rhetorical, but not clearly substantial difference from whatever delusional “plan” either Trump or Harris has. It could hardly be otherwise. Like the two of them, and despite any appearances, RFK Jr. is a Zionist and is not an anti-imperialist.

The War on Our Children/Chronic Disease

This is the really distinctive, signature RFK Jr. issue. There is no major political figure who has touched this issue; he has embraced it. It formed the bulk of his campaign suspension speech. I agree with him that this is, as he presents it, an existentially important issue. I agree that the corporate capture of health and food agencies, as well as academic and medical institutions, has produced a vast apparatus of practices—from vaccine programs to unhealthy processed food distribution that produces and profits from sickness, starting with children, and is literally killing us. It has also produced a constantly reinforced, nearly impenetrable epistemological mindset in which it hides behind an appropriated and inverted notion of “science.”

[Disclosure: I have had friendly correspondence with RFK Jr. regarding my 2021 articleopposing vaccine mandates that he read and praised.]

I also think RFK Jr. has done admirable and courageous work on this issue. It is likely, per his statement, that this is the issue he thinks he can do something really effective about in “maybe a decade.” He knows there are other people who can and will do effective work on his other “existential” issues. He is confident that he’s the one who has, and can, make some serious headway on this one.

Kamala and the Dems did not want to hear from him about this. If Trump offers him that last serious opportunity to do something important, why not take it?

Here's the thing, though: Donald Trump, who developed the horrid mRNA gene therapy “vaccines” at Warp Speed, and is still proud of it, does not give one fig about this issue of children’s health and chronic disease as RFK Jr. sees it. Anymore than Trump, who prosecuted Julian Assange and wants to “close the internet in some way” is really concerned about free speech.

RFK Jr. is, kind of desperately, looking to find a reason to believe. I don’t know what, if any, deal he made with Trump, whose “philosophy of leadership could not be further apart,” and who is notorious for using and discarding people. If he did not get some firm commitment for something like HHS Secretary, then RFK Jr. can expect to be discarded the moment Trump gets the votes he wants and the pushback that will surely come from his pharma-invested donors or, you know, Bill Gates, who told Trump to turn his back on RFK Jr. in 2016, and whom Trump is now going to consult about closing the internet.

Let’s consider the best case, that Trump actually gives RFK Jr. HHS (and doesn’t abolish it), a perch from which he might be able, and will try, to radically reform the corporate-captured agencies. Trump and RFK JR. will then come under tremendous pressure from those pharma-captured donors, and all the pharmaceutical companies, and all the pharma-captured bureaucrats who’ve been counting on those cushy deferred-bribe jobs at those companies, and all the pharma-captured and funded establishment politicians and media who despise both of them and despise and understand nothing about RFk Jr.’s project.

To carry out the radical reform RFK Jr. seeks would require having strategic political depth for the project—broad public support and loyal support from a president who himself understands and is committed to the project, speaks up forcefully on its behalf and stands up to its detractors, and is willing to mobilize people and resources to support it. I am not describing Donald Trump, who is pushed around by his ruling-class cronies and tough-guy militarists, who get from him what they want—the Donald Trump who was going to withdraw American troops from Syria.

To the point, I’ll let Whitney Webb ask a few questions:

Given all the hype about the RFK Jr. team up with Trump, and what it means for healthcare, I have some questions.

Many funders of Trump, such as Joe Lonsdale and Elon Musk as well as JD Vance himself, have major investments in biotechnology, gene therapies and companies deeply…
— Whitney Webb (@_whitneywebb) August 27, 2024

Given all the hype about the RFK Jr. team up with Trump, and what it means for healthcare, I have some questions.

Many funders of Trump, such as Joe Lonsdale and Elon Musk as well as JD Vance himself, have major investments in biotechnology, gene therapies and companies deeply invested in mRNA and DNA vaccine technology. Trump stands by Operation Warp Speed, which produced mRNA vaccines of dubious efficacy and safety, some of which were made with the help of companies tied to Lonsdale's VC, among others.

Will RFK JR. be opposing the use of these technologies as he seeks to tackle the chronic disease epidemic in the US in a future Trump administration? Will he allow the "health" DARPA, ARPA-H, to continue to operate? Will he allow the Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale co-founded Palantir to continue to collect and analyze Americans' health data (and genetic data) with no meaningful oversight into how they use that data and if they share it w other government agencies they contract for like the CIA?

I agree that there is a major healthcare crisis in the US, but identifying the problem is one thing - will these experimental technologies be used or promoted as part of the solution? I think it's important to know and it seems like not many are asking these types of questions.

Maybe things will be different this time. Maybe it’s worth it for RFK Jr. to give it the old college try. I would be happy to be wrong, but I think Trump, if he doesn’t jettison RFK Jr. before his inauguration, will fold under the attacks on any RFK Jr. project, which is not his, his son’s, his biggest donors’, and his closest friends’ first, or second, or fifth priority. RFK Jr. will go the way of erstwhile Trump favorite, Anthony Scaramucci.

So, I’m betting RFK Jr.’s decision to support Trump as an ally for the War on Our Children/Chronic Disease project is a naïve gamble that won’t take a decade to wash out. He would have done better sticking with “President Biden[/Harris], President Trump offer no solutions,” and continuing to build a politically independent movement for health reform—an issue that has been gaining momentum since the Covid debacle—rather than allying with one of the parties whose failure to solve anything will end up tainting him and his project.

Don’t misunderstand. I am not horrified by RFK Jr.’s traitorous apostasy to the Democrats, about whom I could not care less. I am more surprised, but no more disappointed, by RFK Jr.’s embrace of the Trump campaign than I would have been by his embrace of Kamala’s. I consider the American electoral system an insult to me as the citizen of an ostensible democracy. I have not the slightest interest in figuring out which of the two deal-breaking genocidal duopoly candidates is the lesser evil. But those who do should realize that RFK Jr. is not the only longtime Democrat who will find that to be Donald Trump.

RFK Jr. has just done the lesser-evil thing that so many are calling for. He has made the same kind of lesser-evil choice one might make as an abortion-rights supporter who was offered a chance to work for that issue in one of two genocidal campaigns and administrations—if genocide is not a total deal-breaker for you. If you want to vote for Hitler versus Himmler (and that’s the kind of choice we’re faced with—unless, for some reason, you find the Palestinian holocaust you’re watching live-streamed less disturbing than the one you read about) because Hitler has a better position on reproductive rights or whatever, go right ahead. But accept that that’s what you’re doing and do it with the requisite great humility. No one for whom genocide is not a deal-breaker because of their (more?) important issue is in a position to judge anyone else who makes the same kind of choice for theirs.

Whatever he or his detractors might say, I find RFK Jr.’s lesser-evil choice neither terribly transgressive nor existentially important. It demonstrates, rather, that he’s an ordinary establishment political actor whose roots in American political and socio-economic establishment are as deep as can be, and who acts on the ordinary establishment assumptions about imperialism, Zionism, and the duopoly. He was never threatening to revolutionize the American polity, only to reform aspects of it.

He’s just taken one of the lesser-evil paths that keep us in those woods.

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