Jeff Sessions is Trump's Attorney General. Gaffney's CSP awarded Sessions the annual 'Keeper of the Flame' award in 2015. Sessions has previously expressed sympathies for the Ku Klux Klan. He has closely associated with far-right anti-immigrant organizations founded by John Tanton, a driving force in America's white nationalist movements. In 1993, Tanton declared: -- for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that." Yet Trump's new Attorney General is known for frequently quoting from Tanton's groups, showing up at their press conferences, and has even received recognition and campaign contributions from them.
The John Tanton connection opens up a can of worms. Kellyanne Conway, Trump's Counsellor, is also connected to Tanton. Her polling firm was previously contracted by Tanton's anti-immigration platform Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
Numerous other officials involved in the Trump team"---"-Lou Barletta, Kris Kobach and Julie Kirchner"---"-have direct organizational ties to Tanton's FAIR".
Stephen Miller is a senior policy advisor to Trump. He previously worked as communications director for Jeff Sessions in his senator's office, and crafted the strategy to defeat a bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2013. During his university days, he worked closely with the neo-Nazi leader Richard Spencer, who coined the term "alternative Right" as a new way of capturing a movement about white racial identity".
However, the Trump team's ideology is not solely neofascist; it's a blend of neoliberal, neoconservative, and neofascist.
Trump's cabinet consists largely of billionaires from the private sector who are following a neoliberal agenda. For just a few examples: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is working to privatize public education. Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta, appointed to the National Labor Relations Board by George W. Bush, consistently decided with employers and against workers during his term. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, hedge fund manager, former partner at Goldman Sachs, and former board member of the financial holding compay CIT Group, is working to further deregulate Wall Street.
Trump's defense appointees and advisors are part of the military industrial complex. For example, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of security firm Blackwater (now Academi), notorious for its slaughter of civilians in Iraq. Secretary of Defense, General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis, was on the board of General Dynamics, one of the biggest defense contractors in the world. Secretary of Homeland Security, General John F. Kelly was vice chairman at the Spectrum Group, which lobbies for defense contractors, and on the boards of Michael Baker International and Sallyport Global, both private Pentagon contractors.
Trump's administration and the Republican and Democratic parties differ in some ways, but their main agenda is identical: enrich the corporations and use the military to expand the empire. The Democrats have a more progressive facade, softer about things like abortion and gay marriage that don't really matter to them, while Republicans take a harder line to appeal to their evangelical and neofascist base. But when it comes to the really important issues, both parties are the same.
Many people voted for Trump because they thought he was an outsider who would change the status quo. However, it turns out that the Trump administration, like the Republicans and Democrats, is embedded in the Deep State, although with a more white nationalist flavor. Here is Wikipedia's definition of the Deep State:
Deep state has been defined in 2014 by Mike Lofgren, a former Republican U.S. congressional aide, as "a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.
The thing is, the trajectory the Deep State is on is unsustainable. The neoliberal paradigm is pretty clearly leading the world to another financial collapse. The neocon paradigm of perpetual wars to aggrandize the American empire is also unsustainable. Taxpayers will not continue to bear the financial and moral burden, and those targeted by U.S. attacks will fight back with terror or whatever other means they have. It probably won't be long before drones start coming our way. Continuing on the same course is likely to lead to the collapse of the American empire, which will bring down the financial system too. Add in the human and financial disruption that climate change will bring, and the picture is not pretty.
We need a paradigm shift, and this will not occur by voting for a regime belonging to either Democrats or Republicans. The shift has to occur at the level of the Deep State and the neoliberals, neocons, and neofascists who run it.
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