For their part, the president and his supporters continue to hold well-attended political rallies around the nation where the mantra of "drain the swamp" is commonplace, referring to President Trump's repeated questioning of the patriotism of those in the nation's security agencies, many of whom have loyalties to now-retired Democratically-appointed agency heads. In addition, President Trump continues to belittle mainstream media reporting in the country as nothing more than "fake news". So enamored are his followers with their candidate's worldview and statements of reality, few of them now give any credence to US mainstream media sources or reporting.
And while much of the public is caught up in this domestic squabble, one should never forget that what unites the Republican Trump and his Democratic foes is their desire to maintain the sine qua non of a capitalist economic system: the dominance of the capitalist class.
Domestic disputes between the Republican Trump and the Democratic Party opposition have revolved largely around the issues of tax cuts, immigration, tariff policy, minority civil rights, and the status of women.
Major focus, however, has been on the alleged differences over US foreign policy, especially as regards the ongoing US intervention into Syria and support for the "Free Syrian Army" or for the so-called "Syrian Moderate Opposition" and the effort by the US, the U.K., the Gulf monarchies (especially Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain), France, Israel, et al. to topple the elected government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Democrats and their national security agencies 'Deep State' allies have waged this insurgency since at least 2013 by providing logistical and intelligence support, as well as arms, money, medicinal, and other types of assistance to the Al Nusra Front or its synonyms--Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda, ISIS, ISIL, IS, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham or, colloquially in the Arab world as Daesh--all of which are Salafist jihadist fighters recruited by Saudi Arabia and the unelected Gulf monarchies to overthrow al-Assad so as to build a pipeline from the Persian Gulf monarchies through Syria in order to supply Europe with oil and natural gas and thus forestalling Russia supplying such energy resources.
While both factions of the US ruling class recognize that the unelected monarchies of the Persian Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, are the source of all, if not most, of these jihadists groups through their funding, support, and export of Wahhabism around the world, neither faction speaks openly of the absolute corrupt, reactionary, despicable, and utter depraved character of the KSA and the other Gulf monarchies, for that would be to bite that hand that feeds them (Shane, August 25, 2016), Each faction caters to the Saudi royals--who are the directors of the Gulf Cooperation Council monarchical states--in hopes of being lavished with lucrative arms and other business deals in addition to the channeling of donations to their campaign coffers.
To the contrary, Donald J. Trump ran on his stated intention to 'get out of Syria'. Much national treasure and prestige has been put into this effort to date, as the insurgency is against international law, but was deemed necessary by US Deep State strategists because Syria never attacked nor provoked the United States directly. Thus, utilizing the pretense of an alleged new norm of international law, the so-called 'Responsibility-to-Protect' or 'R2P' doctrine, the US, acting on the pretense of 'humanitarian intervention,' first had to oversee the creation of an internal Syrian opposition force and then claim that it was being unjustifiably targeted by the government of Syria. The rest is history.
Since 2015, at the invitation of the Syrian government, Russia has involved itself in the Syrian conflict and has decidedly tilted the balance against western plans in the country while liberating over 95% of the territory of the Syrian Republic from jihadists terrorists. At present, the last stronghold of the Syrian opposition is corralled in Idlib, Syria and is being destroyed by the combined efforts of the armies of Syria and Russia and supporting forces. This despite the warning from US National Security Advisor John Bolton against the use of chemical weapons to exterminate the remnants of the ISIS terrorists in Idlib, a charge parroted by US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley as well as Britain's ambassador to the UN Karen Pierce. Not wishing to engage the US in a direct war at the present time, Russian President Putin, on September 17, 2018, made a temporary deal with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to establish a buffer zone around Idlib in an attempt to diffuse western anxiety as their last stronghold in Syria faces annihilation.
Other foreign policy squabbles in this ruling-class factional split within the USA pivot over whether Russia--as per the Democrats, or China--as per the Republicans is the primary threat to the United States, with the alleged threats of North Korea currently on the backburner while the supposed threat from Iran awaits President Trump's retaliatory ultimatum against any country that trades with Iran after November 5, 2018 and which reimposes US sanctions on Iran as a result of the US pulling out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or the Iran Nuclear Deal by President Trump on May 8, 2018. With regards to undermining the elected governments of Nicaragua, Venezuela, and others in Central and South America, much of this activity has clear bipartisan support amongst the two major US political parties.
Squabbling Siblings
International observers of US politics query if these are serious disagreements that threaten the unity of the American empire or are these so-called approaches to foreign policy only differing approaches of how best to protect US dominance of the world capitalist economy, maintaining its international hegemony, dissuading foreign competitors, and keeping the capitalist engine chugging along on the home front? Why does there appear to be amongst adherents to these two cliques such a divergence by way of data and facts?
On August 8, 2018, Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's lawyer, asserted that "truth isn't truth" when attempting to explain why the president should not testify before Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigatory team so as to avoid entrapment that might lead to a charge of perjury. Only a week prior, Giuliani had rejected CNN reporter Chris Cuomo's assertion that "facts are not in the eye of the beholder" when he retorted: "Yes, they are." "Nowadays they are." And in May of 2018, Giuliani, in an interview with The Washington Post stated that the Mueller investigation team "may have a different version of the truth than we do." And this line of reasoning follows presidential spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway's statement in January of 2017 when she cited "alternative facts" which the White House had of the size of the inauguration crowds for Trump (Morin and Cohen, August 19, 2018).
During his campaign, the American public was made aware by the mainstream media of the existence of the "alt-right" or the "alternative right" grouping of "white supremacists/white nationalists, anti-semites, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, neo-Confederates, Holocaust deniers, conspiracy theorists and other far-right fringe hate groups." Once elected, Trump included in his administration several figures associated with the alt-right including Stephen Miller, Julia Hahn, Michael Flynn, Sebastian Gorka, and Steve Bannon, the latter who claimed that the rightwing news service Breitbart was the platform of the alt-right and that it would promote its ideology ("Alt-right," Wikipedia, October 27, 2018).
The necessary unity of any stable state in the international arena is put into question by the ongoing partisan battles in the United States today. What is being portrayed, to the contrary, is a factional split between the two mainstream US political parties--Republicans vs. Democrats--which hints at the dissolution of the country.
However, on September 5, 2018, this narrative of factional conflict took a significant new tact when an anonymous individual within the Trump Administration, allegedly, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times, the 'newspaper of record' for the nation, which claims to print All the News That's Fit to Print, entitled "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration," with the anonymous author stating initially: "I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations". The writer claimed that "unsung heroes" on Trump's administrative team were "working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations" (Anonymous, September 5, 2018).
Political observers around the world, but especially within the United States, took notice of this unprecedented action of publishing an anonymous op-ed by one of the nation's most prestigious newspapers and pondered its meaning. Anonymity is shied away from in journalism, as a news paper or media outlet can allege any sort of libelous or slanderous accusations if there is no one to hold accountable for such assertions. Hence, to undertake this unprecedented publication of an anonymous editorial either implied that the newspaper of record for the country--The New York Times--was slipping in its ethics or that the current political environment is now suddenly in a revolutionary situation, akin to the late 1700s, when Hamilton, Madison, and Jay had to sign their Federalist essays with the pseudonym "Publius" to avoid retaliation by opponents.
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