This
weekend, we cross the threshold marking the first fifth of President Trump’s
first hundred days in office. The Pink Hats and revolutionary purple
snowflakes, emboldened by the indefatigable corporate media, are already
showing signs of fatigue. After months of rioting and whining they’re about
ready for a nap, but that does nothing to assuage the legitimate doubts that
the administration has failed to put to rest. We have reached an inflection
point within the first hundred days when we have to finish sighing with relief at
the fact that we’ve made it this far and start asking the hard questions that persist
long after the hysteria of each successive fake news cycle.
As a
registered Independent who voted for Trump, I have values and priorities that
have not been traditionally met by the Republican Party or the Tea Party. My
deepest sympathies lay with the anti-WTO protestors at the 1999 ‘Battle of
Seattle’ and beyond. They used to be the corporate media’s favorite whipping
boy until Trump showed up. That is why pulling out of the TPP was unequivocally
a great thing, and we have to thank team Trump for setting back the Neoliberal
agenda by a few years at the very least. That was one of his first campaign
promises fulfilled, which in and of itself clearly terrified people in many
quarters, to have a politician actually fulfill a campaign promise. The other
feat that must be appreciated by us and by history at large is how Trump used
the independent media to win a democratic election fair and square in direct
opposition to the corporate media oligarchy. The president is roundly
criticized for using Twitter to communicate with the people directly, but it played
a part in one of the greatest electoral upsets in the modern age of mass media.
Giving
credit where credit is due, it is nevertheless time to assess where the
administration is taking the country as we collectively embark upon this
strange and wonderful ride. For all of its anti-establishment bona fides that have been established
thus far, there are worrying signs that history is making an effort to repeat
itself. Several worrisome political appointments have been made, and yet each
of them still holds out the promise of making America great again if they can
stay true to the highest values we gave the Trump team credit for. Below, I
will look at some of these key appointments and present a litmus test for each.
Should they choose the path of peace and prosperity, then they will enjoy the
continued support of truly independent minded voters like myself. Should they
choose the path of war, greed, and corruption, then their mandate will
evaporate and it will take untold levels of brutality for this administration
to continue to govern.
The
optimist in me subscribed to the theory espoused by Michael Rivero, radio host
and webmaster of whatreallyhappened.com. He cautioned those of us getting
nervous that Trump had to bide his time before waging a morally correct,
full-frontal assault on the Washington establishment. Just days ago Senator
Jeff Sessions was finally confirmed as US Attorney General, filling the cabinet
post most essential to “draining the swamp.” He will have to work together in cooperation with congressmen
like Jason Chaffetz, Trey Gowdy, Rand Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, Dennis Kucinich, and
others like FBI Director James Comey. For all of the foot-draggers in the fifth column, they will probably
want us to wait for the confirmation of Trump's Secretary of Labor, scheduled
for February 16th, before we can expect to see Washington’s
criminals in handcuffs. However, time is of the essence and every week that
goes by without radical action against the Washington elite is another pint of
fluid lost by an administration that is hamstrung by the fact that they are out
of their element and going against the grain.
The
optimists and pundits of the web promise that legal action against the elite
banksters, fraudsters, drug traffickers, gun runners, traitors, and pedophiles
is going forward this coming week, not sometime after the 16th. It
is time for Jeff Sessions to immediately start prosecuting the Clinton cabal
and all of their enablers for crimes against humanity, including but not
limited to cynically running guns, intel, and aide to the terrorists driving
the breakup of Libya and the bloody civil war in Syria. They must all be
stopped, their networks rolled up, and their chance to go underground prevented
forthwith. People sporting pink hats need to understand that human trafficking and
drug abuse have skyrocketed in the Middle-Eastern countries that Bush, Clinton,
Obama, et al, targeted for regime
change. They unleashed a human catastrophe of untold magnitude, for which
justice must be sought immediately.
Over the
past few months there have been numerous roundups of low level criminals
involved in child porn and underage prostitution, culminating in the more widely
publicized arrests in California and then Houston at the time of the Super Bowl.
It’s impossible to say how many leads have been generated tying abuse on the
streets and in the neighborhoods to men like Anthony Wiener, the Podesta
brothers, or Jeffrey Epstein, but only vigorous prosecution and unlimited
resources will give us an answer for sure. These rings and their top sponsors
in higher positions of power all need to be investigated from every direction.
Lest anybody be accused of a political witch hunt, bear in mind how easily
these investigations could stretch all the way back to the suspicious death of
the D.C. madam during Cheney’s reign.
Whether
the Attorney General and the Justice Department will be able to pursue high
level prosecutions of the Clinton cabal and their global network of
narco-trafficking Neoliberal thugs will determine whether Trump is able to
fulfill one of his most important campaign promises. That fight must be led by
Jeff Sessions, but there is a related litmus test that pertains to him more specifically.
As he is a renowned proponent of the criminalization of recreational drugs, he
faces a choice like no other conservative AG before him: to fight against the
legalization of cannabis or to go after the high-level narco-traffickers
fueling America’s opioid epidemic with Afghanistan’s booming opium product.[1]
It is no small coincidence that cannabis treats many of the symptoms caused and
alleviated by expensive prescription medicines, and that the abuse of
prescription opioid pain-killers dovetails seamlessly with the importation and
injection of illicit heroin.[2]
Can Trump and Sessions kill two birds with one stone, or are they going to let
the phony Drug War remain the foundation of Big Pharma profits and the
prison-industrial complex? To be sure, asking Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead a
study on vaccine safety would certainly seem to signal that Trump is ready to
make good on some of his threats against Big Pharma.
On the
one hand, prosecuting the political class and draining the swamp could produce
the most epic, historically significant revelations since the Iran-Contra
hearings that ushered in the Clinton cover-up of Bush Sr.’s crimes. On the
other hand, the complexity and ambiguity of America’s relations with Iran do
not bode well for today’s optimists. Are we really supposed to believe that
they violated a nuclear disarmament pledge by testing a conventional ballistic
missile? Let’s not forget that they were trying to procure Tow missiles for
self-defense back when Bush Sr. was playing both sides of the Iran-Iraq war.
Which is all to say the following: Will National Security Advisor General
Michael Flynn push the Iran issue for leverage in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, or will
he try to fulfill the Neocon prophesy, “Real men go to Tehran?” Alexander
Mercouris, of The Duran, argues in
favor of the former.[3]
The trial balloon of appointing arch-Neocon Elliot Abrams to Deputy Secretary
of State indicated an unfortunate tilt toward the latter until it was shot down.
While Abrams is an abomination and should be in jail by now, there is also a
case to be made that Neocon bellicosity is what helped bring Iran to the very
bargaining table that Trump has decried since his campaign. Appointing Abrams
would have been another major red flag, but ultimately relations with Iran must
be couched in terms of the wider prospects for peace in the Middle East. In
Trump-speak, “We shoulda took the Iraqi oil” is another way of saying that we
will need to maintain the full operational integrity and influence of the Green
Zone in Iraq to make the most of a bad situation inherited from clan Bush.
As we
have seen from the proxy war that tore Syria apart, it is impossible to discuss
the prospects for peace in the Middle East without acknowledging the role
played by regional hegemon Iran or global power rival Russia. In concert with
seeing the Clinton gang behind bars, the hope for détente with Russia was one
of the biggest reasons for sane people to vote for Trump and soundly reject
Hillary during the election. For anyone with any semblance of anti-war values
this was a slam-dunk. To this day, Rex Tillerson holds out the hope and promise
of reaching a modus Vivendi with
Russia that will see a major shift of U.S. energies away from the NATO buildup
on its eastern flank. Although it appears that the troop buildup is continuing
in Eastern Europe without a pause, Reuters reports that this is because of
last-minute actions by the Obama administration to “lock in” the sending of
reinforcements to the region.[4]
It is essential that the high crimes and misdemeanors of the political class be
fully prosecuted so that Secretary Tillerson’s State Department has a free hand
to pursue a rational foreign policy, including working with Russia to mop up
all of the U.S. sponsored terrorists wreaking havoc in Syria. There
needs to be commensurate pressure put on SecDef Mattis to rein in the Pentagon
cowboys who didn’t get the memo about averting World War III.
At the
weekly news cycle closing bell on Friday, an article appeared on
governmentslaves.info quoting Trump speaking to the Major Cities Chiefs
Association (MCCA) in Washington, D.C. on February 8th:
‘As for the drug cartels that have
operatives throughout the United States, President Trump said “we’re going
to take that fight to the drug cartels and work to liberate our communities
from their terrible grip of violence. You have the power and knowledge to
tell General [John] Kelly — now Secretary Kelly — who the illegal immigrant
gang members are.”’[5]
As with
all of the policy decision points outlined above, this one also has the
potential to go either way. Either Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security
General John Kelly will take this opportunity to redirect the drug war to the
Sinaloa cartel’s enablers at ICE, CIA, DEA, BoA and HSBC or they will continue
to target low level users and distributors just like every other corrupted,
suborned administration before them. By the outcomes of each of these momentous
policy decisions we will know whether Trump is truly a man of the people or if
he is the last and final pastiche of party politics in America as so many of
his detractors claim. I am hoping for the former but history has
taught me that betrayal knows no bounds in American political theater.
[1] TeleSUR. "Afghan Opium Production 40 Times Higher Since
US-NATO Invasion." MintPress News. 31 Aug. 2016. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.
<http://www.mintpressnews.com/afghan-opium-production-40-times-higher-since-us-nato-invasion/219974/>.
[2] Nolan,
Dan, and Chris Amico. "FRONTLINE: How Bad is the Opioid Epidemic?" PBS,
23 Feb. 2016. Web. 11 Feb. 2017.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-bad-is-the-opioid-epidemic/>.
[3] Mercouris, Alexander. "Why does General Flynn hate Iran?"
The Duran. 09 Feb. 2017. Web. 11 Feb. 2017. <http://theduran.com/general-flynn-hate-iran/>.
[4]Emmott, Robin, and Andrius Sytas. "NATO allies lock in U.S.
support for stand-off with Russia." Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 09 Feb.
2017. Web. 11 Feb. 2017.
<http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-nato-idUSKBN15O1CH>.
[5] Chapman, Michael W. "Trump on Drug War: 'We're Going to be
Ruthless ... We Have No Choice'" CNS News. 10 Feb. 2017. Web. 11 Feb.
2017. <http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/trump-drug-war-were-going-be-ruthless-we-have-no-choice>.
