September 1, 2016
QUO VADIS AMERICA?
There exists an ancient story the
Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz has preserved for us
under the title: Quo Vadis: A narrative
of the Time of Nero. The novel was published in 1895 and has had several
resurrections in motion pictures. It was based on the apocryphal Acts of Peter that were written in Greek
during the second century AD. The pamphlet was soon translated into Latin and
this is the version of which one aspect became the centerpiece of Sienkiewicz’s
novel.
Here is a brief synopsis. The Apostle
Peter was in Rome to spread the “Good News,” but had only encountered tragedy. Nero
ruled supreme and the wholesale slaughter of Christians in the Colosseum was
daily entertainment for the masses. His own life was now threatened and he was
urged by the faithful to leave town so that the “Rock” upon whom Christ had
founded his Church would not perish and thereby seal the doom of the entire
effort. He was implored to renew the work in Greece or Asia Minor where there
were no persecutions and where the faith could flower into full maturity,
rather than being nipped in the bud. But there was also his conscience. Should
he really leave his Roman flock to the wolves? Was he a coward
who was trying to save his own life under the guise of preserving the faith?
What would the Master have done under these circumstances? How could he serve
Him better: by leaving and spreading the Word, or staying and be killed?
We are told that he opted for life and
left the city. But on the Via Appia as the sun rose like usual for everybody
else something special happened to Peter. The sun did not proceed on its usual
course but came instead towards the old man who fell on his knees as he beheld
Christ. “Quo vadis, Domine?” – where goest Thou oh Lord – he
asked in a broken sobbing voice. The answer was: “If you desert my people I am
going to Rome to be crucified a second time.”
The Master had spoken, doubt was gone.
Rome was the center of the world and death was the way to conquer it. Legend
has it that he was crucified head down because he felt himself unworthy to die
in the manner of his Lord and Master. It took about 250 more years and untold
suffering before Constantine saw the flaming cross in the sky and legitimized
the Christian faith.
Nearly 2000 years of so-called
Christianity have gone by and we now may justly ask ourselves what all of this intervening
tremendous suffering and bloodshed has accomplished? Jesus said: “By their fruits shall ye know them.” We are
the fruits and it is high time that we look at ourselves and ask the Quo Vadis question in a personal manner
as well as for our country. The personal aspect has to be resolved by each one
of us privately and we have no right to foist our answer on others. But we do
have an obligation to act true to our convictions in the spirit of Christ whose
message was to heal wounds rather than inflict new ones.
We are, however, not only private
individuals but also citizens of a country to which we owe an allegiance and
responsibility. Those of us who were born here may not feel strongly about it and
simply “go with the flow,” but others who came here out of free will had to
take an oath before they were granted citizenship. The formula starts with:
"I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely
and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign
prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore
been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and
laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; …”
We, because I am one of them, therefore, have a special
obligation namely to take our citizenship seriously and whenever we see that
our new home is in danger we have to speak out. We cannot vouch for the result,
because that is out of our hands, but we must make the effort to declare the
truth as we see it.
It
is no secret that our country is in deep trouble at this time. The upcoming
elections dominate cable news and we are told by the pundits as well as the
print media that our choice in November will be crucial for the future of our
country as never before. They admit that both candidates, Hillary Clinton and
Donald Trump, have serious characterological flaws but we are supposed to
overlook them and simply vote “our conviction.” But when our conviction says
“None of the above” what are we to do? In theory we could vote for one of the
other parties either the “Greens” or “Libertarians” but that would be simply a
protest vote which carries no weight in our Republic because the popular vote
is meaningless. As has been pointed out again in the May issue, the President
who will be inaugurated next January will have been chosen by the Electoral
College whose members are appointed by the political party that carried their
individual state. Under these circumstances the electors will be beholden
either to the Republican or Democrat standard bearer. Although in theory they
could “vote their conscience,” the party bosses in each State are likely to
make sure that only the most faithful of the faithful will become electors.
When
Trump declared that the election system was rigged he spoke the truth but
applied it to voter fraud at the booth. As noted here the problem is much
deeper and actually anchored in the Constitution. The current system was well
meant by the framers but these men of good will could not clearly foresee the situation where two parties, who have become so hostile
against each other that their members hardly exchange greetings in Congress. This
stifles all constructive action and yet they are the only ones who supposedly
represent us.
When
we are told that our vote for Hillary or Trump is crucial for the direction of
the country’s next four years this is also true only within certain limits. Let
us assume, for the sake of argument, that nothing seriously untoward happens
between now and November 8 when Hillary will be elected President. Since she is
widely disliked by Independents and Republicans, if not detested, she will be
unable to enact pet legislations unless the Democrats win both the House and
the Senate. But even if this were to occur the Republicans could still stymie
her efforts by procedural votes and she will be just as hamstrung as Obama was
and is during his tenure. She may then take recourse to “executive orders,”
bypassing the quarreling Congress. The “executive branch” then also becomes the
“legislative” and by appointing Supreme Court Justices that fit her ideology
this third branch of government would also be fused into the same mold. All the
“safeguards” the Constitution has provided for usurpation of power by one
person, or faction, will have been obliterated. This is not fantasy but
apparent historic inevitability due to the road our country has traveled on for
the past decades. What is not fully appreciated by the majority of our people
is that past actions have consequences that become apparent only after a
considerable lapse of time when the abuses they engendered become obvious.
This
is what is likely to happen on the domestic scene but world events will not
automatically stop with Hillary’s election. She will be confronted with a
number of crises in various parts of the globe at unforeseen times. The blame
will be shifted to others, especially Russia and/or China, when in fact they will
be just the pigeons that will be coming home to roost. It is important to
realize that Hillary has always been a fervent interventionist. She subscribes
to the neocons’ creed that it is America’s responsibility to rule the world and
remove regimes we do not like. Her role as Secretary of State in the Libya
debacle is well known. It is less well known that the ideology that was
responsible for Libya was already at work in the nineties during her tenure as
First Lady. When Bill Clinton ran for
President he promised us that we would get “two for one” because that seems to
have been the promise she extracted from him for having saved his candidacy
after the Jennifer Flowers crisis. Hillary “stood by her man,” but there was a
price. Bill Clinton apparently had no particular foreign goals and would have
been content with devoting himself to domestic issues. But instead of developing friendly ties with
crippled Russia he was pushed into the confrontation which now is bearing full
fruit. Hillary cannot escape this responsibility because she helped formulate
policy behind the scenes. She favored NATO expansion unto Russia’s doorstep,
when that country was weak. She urged husband, Bill, to enter into the
“liberation” of Kosovo, which subsequently turned into a “narco
state.” She also agreed with the illegal bombing of Serbia.
Hillary’s
involvement in the still on-going Ukraine crisis seems on the surface to be
murkier because it unfolded after she had left the State Department. But the
seeds were sown in the 90’s during the Clinton Administration. Strobe Talbott was a long standing friend of the Clintons and in
February 1994 he was rewarded with the appointment as U.S. Deputy Secretary of
State, a position he held until 2001 when the Bush administration took over. During
Hillary’s Secretary of State Tenure he had privileged e-mail access. This is in
no way remarkable, but while working for the State Department he had hired a
young woman, Victoria Nuland, who had studied Russian literature, political
sciences as well as history at Brown University and had received a B.A. degree
in 1983. This appointment had ominous consequences.
Victoria
Nuland was initially Chief of Staff for Talbott and
soon moved into the position of Deputy Director for former Soviet Union affairs.
Her political outlook was in line with that of her husband, Robert Kagan, one
of the neocons principal architects and fervent supporter of the New American
Century goals as discussed on previous occasions (April 1, 2003; The Neocons
Leviathan. December 1, 2005; Albert Wohlstetter’s disciples.
September 1, 2013; 9/11 Context and Aftermath). Kagan,
by the way rejects the term Neo-conservative used by the founder of the group, Irving
Kristol father of the better known Bill Kristol, and prefers to see himself as
a “liberal interventionist.” This is actually quite apt because he does
interfere “liberally,” in the popular sense of “a lot”, in the affairs of other
countries which should be of no concern to him. Under these circumstances
Victoria made a smooth transition from the Democrat Clinton to the Republican
Bush administration where she served, according to Wikipedia, as the principal
deputy foreign policy advisor to Vice-President Dick Cheney. For services well
rendered, she was promoted in July 2005 to U.S. Permanent Representative to
NATO, a position she held until May 2008. She with husband Robert and his
brother Fred, who is likewise a fervent neo-conservative, was on the forefront
of leadership that brought on the Iraq war. The U.S. has never formally
admitted that this invasion of a country that had done us no harm was a war
crime under UN Statutes for which German generals had been hanged at Nuremberg.
Our politicians, regardless of party, also have never shown any inkling of
guilt for the disasters they have unleashed in the Middle East and North Africa
that resulted from this war. Condoleeza Rice, as national
security adviser, wrote the Iraq debacle off as the birth pangs of a new Middle
East. This led me to comment at that time that we shouldn’t be surprised if the
baby were to come with a turban on its head. The idea became reality a few
years later in the form of ISIS.
Mrs.
Nuland never had any second thoughts about the wisdom of “nation building” in
the image of U.S.’ neocons and when Hillary became Secretary of State she
appointed her in May 2011 to Spokesperson for the State Department. In the summer
of 2013, after Hillary’s departure, she was promoted to Assistant Secretary of
State for European and Eurasian Affairs, a position she holds to this day. “Eurasia,”
a term possibly adopted from George Orwell’s 1984, obviously is a polite term for the region
encompassed by the former Soviet Union. Nuland then became the chief architect
of the Maidan protests in Kiev, where she not only handed out cookies to
protesters, but also State Department money to her favorite opposition leaders.
The subsequent coup d’état which replaced, in the name of bringing democracy,
one corrupt president, who was friendly with neighboring Russia, with another
equally corrupt leadership whose allegiance was to the U.S. Regime change used
to be reserved for the CIA, starting in 1953 with the removal of Iran’s elected
leader Mosaddegh, but under Hillary’s tenure the State Department also assumed
this role.
We
keep blaming Putin for his aggression when in fact he was only responding to
the situation created by Nuland at the State Department. I have discussed her
role previously (Ukraine Crisis. March 15, 2014) including her feelings about
our ally the EU. In a tapped phone conversation with
our Ambassador in Kiev, prior to the coup, she gave directions on who should be
appointed to the future government. When the ambassador raised a question about
the feelings of the EU, the curt response was: “fuck the EU.” She has subsequently
apologized, but I am mentioning it here because this spontaneous comment does
reveal the true feelings of our “regime-changers.” This is not some old history
but a potential preview of what we may see if Hillary were to be elected. The
two are good friends and it has already been suggested that another job will be
waiting for Nuland either as National Security Advisor, Chief of Staff, or
Secretary of State. Under those circumstances we can kiss all hope for an
understanding with Russia good bye and this new Cold War could readily spill
over into a nuclear one. Not by design, but by ill-conceived provocations
and/or an accidental firing of a nuclear missile by either side which would
lead to a retaliatory response. It is significant in this respect that Hillary
already has formally endorsed the “first strike option,” which had previously
been repudiated. Since the past is prologue this is what we can expect if
Hillary becomes President in January. To summarize: when Hillary talks of her
extensive experience in foreign affairs we should remember that she has left
nothing but disasters in her wake.
Let
us now look at what a Trump Presidency might be like. Here the situation is
much less clear because he never held public office that would allow one to form
an educated guess as to what he might or might not do in the realm of foreign
affairs and their most important decision on war vs. peace. In contrast to
Hillary where the past is prelude private citizens can only comment on what
Trump has done in his private life, to the extent it is known, and how he has
conducted in himself in his business dealings. As far as private life is
concerned he is currently married to his third wife which tends to show that
marital vows are not particular meaningful to him. On the other hand we must
admit that his grown-up children Ivanka, Donald and
Eric appear to be solid citizens with sound judgment and one wonders how a
blustery, narcissistic person accomplished this task. His family seems to be
his closest advisors and whatever slurs the democrats will throw at him from
now till the election anti-Semitism can’t be one of them. Ivanka,
with whom The Donald is closest, married an orthodox Jew, Jared Kushner, and
converted to that religion. Papa Trump likes his son-in law and appreciates his
advice. The oldest son Donald gave an excellent speech at the nomination
Convention and may well have a future on the political stage. His younger
brother Eric is a nice affable person who is in charge of a section of Trump Enterprises
and treats his employees well. I can testify to this with certainty because one
of my granddaughters, Nicole, works at Trump
National Golf Club-Charlotte. Eric
Trump came to inspect the facility in the spring of this year and Nicole participated
in a private luncheon with him at the time. Before leaving, Eric shook hands
with all the staff including the kitchen help.
Papa
Donald does not seem to have a firm political vision apart from keeping
Mexicans and Muslims out, establishing law and order and “Making America Great
Again.” These are campaign slogans which tell us nothing about how he would
actually govern. During the past few weeks his advisors became terribly
concerned about his off the cuff remarks which alienate just about every
thinking person and tried to convince him to stay focused on attacking Hillary.
He agreed, started reading his speeches from the teleprompter but since he
seems to have an adult attention deficit disorder he can’t stick to the written
word and keeps ad-libbing with insults that are now mainly directed at Hillary.
Although he is no fool he certainly behaves in a foolish manner to the great
delight of the Clinton campaign. As pointed out in the August installment Hillary
is in a great deal of trouble over having made the State Department an arm of
the family business called Clinton Foundation and further release of e-mails
that have more than a whiff of corruption has been promised by Wiki-leaks
founder Julian Assange for the next few weeks. Instead of staying with these
issues, and explaining their importance to the average American, Trump resorts
to name calling with “bigot” the latest epithet he hurled at Hillary. As such
he is his own worst enemy and his staff can only cringe because as The Donald
told us the other day: “I am what I am.” This is true and he just can’t help
himself from going off script.
I
have discussed my personal feelings why he should not be elected on November 8 in
the April issue and there is hardly anything to add except two medical points
and some information that has come to light from subsequent reading about the
man. One is that he is chronically sleep deprived and brags that he doesn’t
need sleep. This is not healthy, because sleep-deprived brains can do weird
things for which their owner is not entirely responsible. We don’t know why he
doesn’t get his 6-7 hours of night-time sleep and one wonders if chemical
stimulants play a role. It would be up to the media to pay some attention to
this self-confessed fact. For the second, he fits the official description of
narcissistic personality disorder http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder/basics/definition/con-20025568.
How this might impact on his conduct as President we have no way of knowing.
Another
aspect we are woefully ignorant about is his actual wealth. For good reason he
refuses to make his tax returns public because they are likely to be
embarrassing. Although everybody repeats the formula of his being a
billionaire, these billions may well be only on paper rather than cold hard
cash and we don’t know his debt level. In addition, being a shrewd businessman,
who likes money, he might well have some off-shore accounts he may not want us
to know about. In business he seems to have been competent as well as ruthless.
There are several articles I came across. Marie Brenner wrote “After the Gold
Rush” for Vanity Fair which deals
with the time of Trump’s pending divorce from Ivana and the impending collapse
of his business fortune in the middle and late 1980s. http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner.
It is well worth reading because it provides an insight of how Trump handles adverse
situations. The article ends with his testimony in one of the several civil law
suits that had been brought against him.
Ms. Brenner wrote: “I wandered down to the press room on the fifth floor
to hear about Trump’s testimony. The reporters sounded weary; they had heard it
all before. “Goddamn it” one shouted at me “we created him! We bought this
bullshit! He was always a phony, and we filled our papers with him.” That was
in the 1980s, and viewing his performances on TV one gets the impression that this
characterization still appears to be appropriate.
Another
disenchanted reporter is Tony Schwartz who wrote The Art of the Deal, Trumps bible, for him. Jane Mayer of The New Yorker talked recently with Schwartz and her report can
be found on http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all.
The essential point is that Schwartz deeply regrets having written the book for
Trump because it painted a picture that hardly corresponded to reality. Coming
forward now was Schwartz’s attempt to atone for his early sin and possibly help
prevent a Trump presidency. Trump has threatened to sue Schwartz for his
comments but seems to have abstained from doing so at present. In addition, there
now exists a spate of laudatory as well as critical
books about Trump but it seems that the essence about the person is contained
in the mentioned two articles.
When
one is aware of the facts as they pertain to these two candidates for the
leadership not only of the country but the world one cannot help but shudder. I
mentioned that if Hillary were to be elected she would have to govern by
executive order because Congress dislikes her, the same would be true in even
greater measure if Trump were to win in November. He has alienated just about
everybody on the Republican as well as Democrat side and all attempts to
present an olive branch are bound to fail, just as Obama could not overcome the
prejudice against him. Thus, regardless who wins our Republican form of
government is likely to die a slow death being replaced by autocracy as
predicted in The Coming Caesars.
The book
was originally published in 1957 and its author, Amaury Riencourt, compared
Greek culture with Roman civilization. He concluded that Europe is the heir of
Greece while America that of Rome and that just as Rome lost its Republican
form government when the Empire became too big, so will America. Although the
Senate continued to exist during the Caesars, it was deprived of power. The same
is about to happen here and Congress may soon assume the role of the German Reichstag under Hitler after he had achieved full
dictatorial power. At present it is highly unlikely that Trump can win the
general election but his supporters are hoping for an “October surprise.” This
could consist of either profoundly damaging information about Hillary or an act
of terrorism that will shock the country into voting for Law and Order.
Regardless
who wins, the country is headed for a great deal of trouble during the next
four years. The debt of >$19 trillion
dollars is unsustainable, the Wall Street created bubble is likely to burst
again and if the current war mongering against Russia persists there may well
be a major war in the offing. If it
were to be nuclear the few remaining pockets of humanity wouldn’t need to worry
about global warming because nuclear winter is likely to have taken its place.
Even
an amateur student of history can only wonder about the infinite stupidity of
our politicians who keep provoking the Russians. All of us know the image of
the Russian bear and our “leadership” assumes that it can be made to dance to our
tune. This is not only fantasy but a serious mistake. A more realistic picture would
be that of a Mama Grizzly who will do everything in her power to protect her
cubs. Defending Holy Mother Russia was after all the rallying cry that defeated
not only Napoleon but also Hitler. Stalin ditched his demand for the people to
be good communists after the 1941 defeats and instead appealed to the masses through
the Orthodox Church. It thereby became “The Great Patriotic War” and this should
tell us what would be in the offing if our ruling circles were to persist in
provoking the Russian bear. Thus, unless whoever gets voted in listens to
impartial historians, rather than the military or self-serving politicians,
she/he will inevitably repeat the mistakes of the past with an even worse
outcome for us and the entire world.
The
15th anniversary of 9/11 is coming up and since it is this unsolved
crime that brought about all the current and likely future disasters I intend
to present a separate edition on September 15.
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