TRUMP: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

In just over two weeks there has been a whirlwind of chaotic activity emanating from a Trump Administration that has left America and the world shell shocked. This weekend, unrepentant, he continued his unprecedented POTUS behavior by denigrating and delegitimizing the Judiciary. Then he repeated his admiration for the dictator Putin, the only foreign leader he has not denigrated. He then defended the Russian atrocities by arguing that America was morally equivalent to them. How does one begin to make sense of a Presidency that is seemingly rudderless and flaying counterproductively in every direction? In addition it appears, unconstitutional, inefficient, shoddy, untruthful and amateurish. Can there however be any sane analysis of what appears to be insanity? 

TRUMP IS CHANGING THE AMERICAN VALUE SYSTEM

The mistake pundits are making is that they analyze Trump in terms of the traditional American laws, customs and values. The problem is that Trump’s intention is to change the very basis of what America was founded on and has stood for nearly four hundred years. Trump is a nationalist totalitarian white supremacist and sees himself leading a worldwide movement in that direction. The chaos too is intentional and designed to anesthetize and numb everyone into accepting this non stop lunacy as normal. Everything else he does is peripheral to the objective of a coup d’etat of America’s system of governance. Most of his other activity is to mollify gullible Republican constituencies so as they won’t challenge his revolution too seriously - a judge for the Evangelicals, a Cabinet made up of insiders for the Establishment, financial deregulation and tax reduction for the party faithful and so on. 

WHAT JAY H. ELL IS AND IS NOT ARGUING

It is important to note what Jay H. Elll is not arguing here that the principal deficit of Trump and his administration is……..

…..that he is negligent and amateurish as exhibited by the raid in Yemen, (Hillary Clinton had seven Republican Congressional investigations for far less of an allegation); 

…..that he has betrayed his followers in not only not draining the swamp but filling it with incompetent party hacks, donors and billionaire financiers and of course "some good people";

…..that he is systematically making America the polecat of the free world by antagonizing our allies such as Australia, Mexico and Germany and by threatening abandoning NATO;

….that thus far he has done very little to directly fulfill his populist promises, rather he has focussed on the needs of financial institutions and corporations. Absent is the campaign rhetoric to save medicare and social security. In addition notwithstanding his campaign promise to attack drug prices he mentioned nothing of this in his meeting with CEOS of pharmaceutical countries….

….that by his habitual lying and by his megalomaniacal anti social personality and his dishonorable business practices he is not competent to be President ………

…..that he has not only not replaced Obamacare after neutering it he has created a vacuum by putting nothing in it’s place 

…….. Rather Jay H. Ell is arguing that his recent “travel” executive action fulfills his dark racist agenda to keep America white against the existing demographic trends within the country. The latter he will reverse by deportations and voter restriction. His executive action is an attempt to halt immigration into this country of those refugees and peoples that would normally be the basis of adding to America’s population due to the humanitarian crisis in Syria and other Muslim totalitarian crises.

IT’S THE BANNON STUPID!

To comprehend this all one has to start with the philosophy of his number one advisor Stephen Bannon and Trump’s conversion to it. Also one has to ponder how did this right wing fringe operative become, in the assessment of Time, the second most powerful man in the world? As Bannon operates in the shadows and rarely gives interviews, one has to dig deep to find him on record. (His only recent connection with the Press is an unsolicited phone call to the New York Times when he told them and all the media to “shut up” and stop acting as the opposition to Trump).

Steve Bannon took over Breitbart News a right wing operation and turned it into an extremist white supremacist racist outfit according to conservative journalist Ben Shapiro. Shapiro then resigned as editor of Breitbart News as a result. Shapiro maintained that founder of Breitbart news was an avowed anti racist and that his message has been distorted by Bannon. Two other key allies in Bannon’s objective are Milo Yiannapolous and Robert Spenser. The former gained prominence when the misdirected student protest at UC Berkeley resulted in him being unable to speak there. This action resulted in the subsequent support that this otherwise nonentity received from the President of the United States who threatened to withdraw Federal Funds from the University as a result. Robin Spenser, regarded as a key intellect, in an interview with Mother Jones openly admitted that the movement was for a white America.

BANNON’S MOVEMENT THE RACIST ALT RIGHT AND TRUMP’S CONVERSION

Steve Bannon’s “movement” is generally known as the alt _ right. Bannon, in an interview with Sarah Posner of The Nation, prior to becoming involved in the Trump campaign and while still with Breitbart News,  proclaimed that, “We’re the platform for the alt-right.”. The latter cheered on white nationalist groups. They are said to embrace all anti immigrant, anti Muslim and ethno - nationalistic provocateurs. Many of their supporters are anti semites as well. Steve Bannon is their leader. 

Most revealing in a Sarah Posner early interview with Bannon was his statement on Trump’s position in the alt movement. Bannon claimed that Jeff Sesson’s, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General was a leader long before Trump became involved in the populist nationalistic movement. Sesson’s has maintained that Civil Rights Movements were un American and Communist inspired.

Another Posner revelation showed Trump’s evolution into the extremist movements positions when he argued with Bannon on the radio on the issue of foreign students who were successful in American Universities being forced to return to their homes when they could make a contribution to American society. Bannon countered that it was more important that America maintained its traditional identity and send these people back home. This is Trump’s position today. While America was sleeping Trump not only appeared on the Howard Stern show but was a regular feature on Bannon’s airwaves.

Bannon is a great believer in the Leninist theory that chaos was a successful strategy at controlling the masses. This would explain, in part, The Donald’s non stop barrage of scatterbrain initiatives.

TRUMP’S BEHAVIOR AS AN ALT RIGHT KEEP AMERICA WHITE SUPPORTER

If one now analyzes the POTUS’s behavior in the light of an alt right racist purist fighting against the demographic tides and America’s own Constitution, his actions begin to seem more coherent. His run in to his Presidential bid was preceded by a five year unseemly campaign to delegitimize America’s first African American President - Barak Hussein Obama. His declaration on announcing his run was his desire to deport eleven million “off white” Mexicans and Latinos and build a wall to keep the rest out. He then wanted to stop all Muslims from coming into the country till we knew, “What the hell was going on”. He maintained that a Federal Judge of Mexican heritage was prejudiced against him. With regard to African Americans he painted a grim picture of all of them savage like killing one another and did nothing to detract from Republican efforts at voter suppression.

He connected with every right wing populist movement in Europe declaring himself the leader. He denigrated and scoffed at those, particularly Germany’s Angela Merkel, America’s closest ally at present, for her acceptance of a million of Muslin refugees, Crucially, he allied with Vladimir Putin who he proclaimed was the last white hope for Christianity in Europe. The latter would partner him in his world wide racist and anti Islamic crusade.

THE PROCESS

Now The Donald certainly couldn’t run on this racist agenda alone. As persuasive and as well known as he was he needed to somehow get the whites behind him without appealing to them on simple racial lines. He had to use the age old formula of populist nationalists. He needed to impress on them that they never had had it so bad. This he did by exploiting the obscene disparity of wealth between the workers and their corporate bosses. This coupled with the fact that high paying jobs had been outsourced to other countries resulted in a crucial number of workers who formerly supported the Democrats to switch to him in key states. He claimed further that Governments had abandoned the average Amrican in favor of their and their supporters pockets. He would put America First.

He then needed to find the scapegoat for all their woes besides the disgusting capitalists - “the other” and the “other” nations that were victimizing the most powerful nation in the world. Finally, he had to argue that the Muslim immigrants were the sole cause of terrorism in America. This is patent nonsense as in America you are seven times more likely to be killed by a right wing extremist than a Muslim terrorist. 

So he had his scapegoats for income inequality and for terror. He then painted this picture of America in a dissolute shambles with everyone hiding under their beds as planeloads of Muslim terrorists arrived each day. Together with the anger of the abandoned blue collar worker he was able with the vagaries of the American Electoral system to be elected President with three million less votes than his opponent.

THE OUTCOME

Within the spate of two weeks Trump has sought to consolidate his position within the GOP. This he has done by appointing a Cabinet that would not be out of line with any Republican purist and a series of Executive orders that are ad idem with GOP policy orthodoxy. He then embarked on his first major push, by Executive Order, to rid the country of any Muslim entering it and excluding some of those legally here. When challenged by the Judicial Branch his response was who the hell were they to interfere with way he governed. 

One bright spot is that Trump’s Presidential nominee for the Supreme Court will serve as a sounding board for whether or not the Supreme Court should uphold the tripartite separation of powers under the Constitution between the Administration, Legislation and the Judiciary. 

 AT THE END OF THE DAY

The ideological position of Trump is at odds with the American Constitution and its way of life. By a quirk of history a right wing racist extremist policy as articulated by his Chief Security Advisor Bannon has assumed the ascendancy on the American political landscape. No one knows how this will end. But one thing is for certain those pundits that sit night and day and wonder whether his UN Ambassador Nicki Halley’s attack on Russia’s Ukrainian position and Trump’s own public endorsement of Putin represents uncertainty and or conflict in the camp need to wake up to reality. Likewise those who just think he is a deranged ad hoc amateur with no ideology better realize that just because they may be right on their former assessment doesn’t make them right on the latter. 

The fact that we know “What the hell is going on”, unhappily in no way ensures that Trump will not be successful. Democracy is a very brittle institution and should he succeed he won’t be the first populist demagogue to do so.