The Bizarre States of America–2/2

 

Seen from Abroad “Bizarre” Seems to Be the Operative Word

To Europeans the American political milieu seems riddled with semantic manipulation. US politicians love the Pavlovian use of trigger words and phrases to elicit nationalistic citizen responses. If you want to promote a dubious war or a convenient regime change just use the term “our boys” repeatedly, or the word “patriotism” and any of its derivatives. Any reference to “our flag” or the “national anthem” will also work. It’s easy for them to undermine American citizens’ civil rights by citing “national security” or “terrorism.” Never mind that it’s American state terrorism that leads the world in false-flag atrocities and devastating economic deception perpetrated by their clandestine services abroad. (Need examples? See any book by John Perkins or William Blum.)

Wacky Pastors and President Trump’s Middle East Policy

From The Independent May 15, 2018–The Rev David Swaggerty, leader of CharismaLife Ministries in Columbus, Ohio, told the Religion News Service, that the embassy relocation was not simply a geopolitical bonus. “We see the embassy as crucial to God’s timing to bring about the revelation of the Messiah,” he said.

In a stunning exercise of institutional irony, it was Robert Jeffress, the wacky pastor known for suggesting that the Jews and Muslims are headed for hell, who was commissioned by the Trump team–or President Trump himself–to pronounce the Jerusalem embassy’s opening prayer.

A sector of the evangelicals that experts in these matters refer to as “premillenialist dispensationalists” believe the transfer of the embassy and the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will help bring about the so-called Rapture, an event in which they believe all Christians, living and dead, will ascend into heaven and join with God. As news website Vox points out, these interpretations based on the books of Revelation and Daniel, suggest the return of Jesus will take place once the Jewish temple in Jerusalem is rebuilt and Israel is made an exclusively Jewish state.

Does anyone know why the United States is fertile ground for such grotesque fanaticisms on such a grand scale? If you do, would you please be kind enough to explain it to us here, at the end of this post, in a comment?

Some analysts have suggested that the embassy transfer from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was a cynical Trump move designed to win the votes of these evangelicals in the next presidential election. It is estimated that there are some 60,000,000 of them. Here is a statement by Trump that would seem to confirm that theory.

Did President Trump Realize What He Was Doing?

Was President Trump fully aware of the grave implications not only for the Palestinians but potentially for the entire world of his embassy transfer? It’s possible that he wasn’t. Either way it’s a moot question. Even if he had foreseen the Israeli Defense Force snipers joyously picking off unarmed Palestinian demonstrators on the other side of the Gaza border fence he wouldn’t have done things any differently. His decision was determined by two of his highest-priority agendas: a slavish devotion to Netanyahu and Israeli fascist objectives and the necessity of pandering to the evangelical vote in the U.S.

The world is driven by extravagant ideologies, each one with its relentless egomaniacal agenda and Trump and the Rapture loonies are typical examples. The latter will follow their preposterous agenda straight through the metaphorical gates of hell if they are told by some tent preacher they are the gates of heaven, whatever innocent bystanders must be sacrificed along the way.

The same rule of thumb applies to the American militarists with their full-spectrum-dominance ideology and their agenda of world conquest. Nothing will stand in their way—until something stands in their way. The NRA gun-worship phenomenon follows the same pattern.

The Americans’ latest cruel and unusual undiplomatic move, just a few days ago, was to launch joint American-South Korean military maneuvers immediately after an unprecedentedly cordial peace meeting between Kim Jong-un representing North Korea and Moon Jae-in the South. Observers are convinced that considerable American arm-twisting was necessary to move the South Koreans to take such a step at this time.

This morning’s Washington Post (17 May 2018) headlines their follow-up story about North Korea breaking off negotiations with the South, “Kim Jong-un Gets Cold Feet.” As so often happens in Washington, they got the story backward. It’s not about Kim’s feet; it’s about the Americans bullying the South Koreans into military maneuvers at a critical point in the negotiations.

Kim Jong-un’s response, according to the North Korean news service KCNA, was to suspend further high-level talks with Moon Jae-in of South Korea. In addition, North Korea has threatened to cancel the planned summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un scheduled for June 12 in Singapore, saying the US should carefully consider the fate of the upcoming meeting, in view of what it calls “provocative military disturbances with South Korea,”

The American move was not entirely unexpected, as it seemed clear to old Korea hands that no amount of hand-holding between North and South would induce the United States to loosen their controlling grip on South Korea, a grip that has remained implacable since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

I want to mention some more examples of what I perceive as American strangeness at home and abroad. But I think you get the picture and I’m loath to bore you, so let me just cite a few of the more egregious cases in a list:

• The lynching of two black youths that took place outside Moore, Oklahoma in the month of April 2018, an act that was somehow overlooked by U.S. national media.
• The American “defense” budget, variously cited as 16% of the discretionary and mandatory federal budget according to Politicfact.com, or 55% of discretionary spending according to other sources, equivalent to the military budgets of the next seven countries on the list, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. But the U.S. is not a nation of war-mongers. What would their defense budget look like if they were?
• The naming of American torture maven, Gina Haspel, to head the CIA. (But don’t worry, she promises to be a good girl from here on out.)
• The kid-gloves treatment of the bands of neo-Nazis and White Supremacists at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August of 2017.
• Members of the Trump team—It’s not yet clear at what level.—hiring an Israeli private-intelligence firm, Black Cube, to compile profiles on Colin Kahl and Ben Rhodes, Obama-era advisors who advocated the Iran nuclear agreement. Why investigate them? Why use Israeli investigators? As if the United States didn’t have competent detectives of its own. What other sensitive matters have these Israeli spooks gotten into? Is this really kosher?
• Last but not least, given the wealth of the country and the astronomical amounts of money they spend on the military, isn’t it a criminal anomaly that they don’t have universal health care, as in the civilized world?

Full disclosure: I confess I’m running out of adjectives to characterize the reality twists and shape-shifts that are occurring over there. I’ve lived in Europe now for two-thirds of my life and it’s possible that my thinking is different–more critical–from that of normal Americans. I must admit that possibility. But so different?

Back to Part 1/2

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