Trump Dreams vs Trump Reality -- Hopes Still Permitted!

From The Unz Review

For a lot of Trump supporters the past week has been a painful one. Whether we chose to react with abject panic or pretended like nothing happened, something didhappen and it was something big: the Three Letter Agencies pulled-off a de facto coup against Donald Trump by forcing him to fire his most important foreign policy adviser and the man who had dared to declare that he wanted to reform the bloated and largely ineffective US intelligence community.

There is no way of putting a brave face on what happened. Not only because it showed that Trump is not loyal to those who are loyal to him, but because this episode pretty much killed what I would call the "Trump dream." I chose my words carefully here. I speak of "Trump dream" as opposed to the Trump reality. Let me explain.

The "Trump dream"

When Trump won the election the spectrum of hopes about his actions was very wide. It ranged from "Trump will forever reshape the international system, end the Empire and bring peace and prosperity to the USA," to "he will never be as bad as Hillary no matter what he does." On that spectrum, here is what I would list as the key elements of the "Trump dream":

1. Draining the swamp: kicking the Neocons down to the basement they crawled out of 24 years ago, reforming the US intelligence community, possibly even dissolving the CIA or, at the very least, subordinating it, and the JCS, to the President.
   
   
2. Making peace with Russia and negotiate a "grand bargain" which would clearly spell out how the USA and Russia would act towards each other and jointly against common threats. At the very least, this would imply an agreement on the Ukraine and Syria.
   
   
3. Work with Russia to create a new European security system which would keep NATO as a political organization, but which would "dilute it" into a new security framework ranging from Portugal to the Ural mountains and which would include a 21st century version of the Conventional Forces Europe treaty.
   
   
4. Stop pouring billions of dollars into the Empire and redirect the immense resources currently wasted on war, aggression and subversion back into the United States and their decaying infrastructure, medical care, education, small business, etc. Until now, the main profitable sectors of the US economy were either the military-industrial complex or finance. The hope was that Trump would kick-start the "real" economy: the production of goods and services.
   
   
5. End what I would call the "dictatorship of the minorities" and replace it with a restoration of the sovereignty of the majority of the American people over their country. The "Rachel Maddows" who used to be the "ideological masters" of the AngloZionist regime would be gently ushered towards the doors and replaced by people most Americans could identify with.
   
   
6. Law and order would be restored to the USA and the uncontrolled flow of immigrants would finally be regulated at least to some degree.
   
   
7. Last, but most definitely not least, Trump would not act on this stupid, counter-productive and self-defeating Iran-bashing and China-bashing rhetoric. Remember -- what I am listing here is not a realistic evaluation of what Trump might do once in power, but what I deliberately called the "Trump dream" with emphasis on the second word. Sure, there might be those who wanted Trump to deliver on his threats and possibly even start a war with Iran or China, but I have not met them. (Then again, these are not people I like to be around). Again, this is my, subjective and personal outline of what I think many (most?) Trump supporters were dreaming about, nothing more.

Following the past week, I would say that, for the most part, this dream is now over, especially points 1, 2, 3 and 5; points 6 and 7 are on life support and only 4 is having of chills and a runny nose but might still live.

They key, of course, is point 1: draining the swamp. In other words, wrestling the power away from the Neocons and the US "deep state" and putting it back where it belongs: in the hands of a President with a mandate of a majority of the American people. That is, alas, the biggest loss we all suffered last week: the man who was supposed to drain the swamp got a humiliating smack-down by a deep state drunk on its own infinite chutzpah. The biggest deal is not that Flynn was sacked, although that is a big deal, but the fact that the deep state forced Trump into publicly betraying Flynn and sacking him instead of those who were involved in this palace coup (including Pence himself).

What the deep state demonstrated this week is that everybody in the Executive Branch serves not at the pleasure of the President, but at the pleasure of the deep state, including probably Donald Trump himself.

By terminating Trump's #2 the Neocons have now shown the world that everybody else (#3, #4, etc.) and possibly #1 are all here only to the extent that they, the Neocons, let them. I am personally convinced that unless Donald Trump finds in himself the courage to mount a major counter-attack, the Neocons will find a way of kicking him out of the White House before his term ends. That is typically their style: sending "messages" and "making an example."

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