Editor’s Note: Jeremy Scahill, author of “Dirty Wars,” minces no words in his reaction to Trump/Clinton and their second “debate.” Scahill’s article appeared originally at The Intercept.
Trump may go away, but the people he has empowered will not
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during the town hall debate at Washington University on Oct. 9, 2016, in St. Louis, Missouri.
Photo: Rick Wilking/Getty Images
These presidential debates — certainly this one — serve as the most stark commentary on how bankrupt the U.S. electoral system is.
This is the choice the system produces for “viable” candidates.
The cartoonish villainy of Donald Trump is a major factor in distracting attention from the hawkish, neoliberal policies of Hillary Clinton. Hillary’s best selling point for a lot of people — Democrats and, increasingly, Republicans — is: I’m not batshit crazy like Trump.
There is rarely a focus on Clinton’s embrace of regime change, her role in creating the conditions, as secretary of state, for the horror show currently unfolding in Yemen, or her paramilitarization of the State Department. Clinton has never been asked about her role in the secret drone “kill chain” the Obama administration has now codified as a parallel justice system, where there are no trials, indictments, or convictions, but a whole lot of death sentences. Just as Clinton avoided real questions about Libya thanks to the clownfuck Republicans’ carnival over Benghazi, she emerges as the only choice for many sane people. That she is buddy-buddy with Wall Street, speaks one way to them and another way in public, becomes a footnote. She is the empire candidate and that is why the John Negropontes and Max Boots and George H.W. Bushes of the world have embraced her.
Here is the thing, though: Both Clinton’s and Trump’s candidacies have fucked us — albeit in different ways. Hillary represents more of the same bipartisan warmongering. And, under Obama, that has been met with a lot of silence and complicity from liberals. Depressing.
Whether Trump wins, loses, or loses big, he has empowered fascists, racists, and bigots. He did not create them, but he has legitimized them by becoming the nominee and openly expressing their heinous, hateful beliefs. This, to me, is one of the most frightening developments on a domestic level in the U.S. this election cycle. Trump may go away, but the people he has empowered will not.
Much of the post-debate analysis I’ve read from last night’s presidential debate has focused on Donald Trump’s crudeness, his threat to prosecute and jail his political opponent, the way in which he stalked her on the stage, looming in the background and crowding her, and finally his non-apology apology about “locker room banter.” Yes: Trump is most definitely lewd, crude, and socially unacceptable, but that’s hardly the worst of his qualities.
His worst quality? His sweeping ignorance to the point of recklessness when it comes to matters of national defense, and specifically America’s nuclear arsenal.
This is what Trump had to say last night about the U.S. nuclear deterrent:
But our nuclear program has fallen way behind, and they’ve gone wild with their nuclear program. Not good. Our government shouldn’t have allowed that to happen. Russia is new in terms of nuclear. We are old. We’re tired. We’re exhausted in terms of nuclear. A very bad thing.
This is utter nonsense. First off, nuclear weapons are not people. They don’t get “tired” or “exhausted” or “old.” Second, the U.S. nuclear program has not “fallen way behind” the programs of other nations, certainly not Russia’s. Third, even if portions of Russia’s nuclear program are “new” (whatever that means), that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the United States. “New” in this case may mean safer and more reliable systems that are less prone to catastrophic error.
Here’s an undeniable fact: The U.S. nuclear arsenal is by far the world’s most powerful and advanced. The key aspect to nuclear capability is survivability, and nothing is more survivable than America’s force of Trident nuclear submarines. Virtually impossible to detect, America’s Trident force is essentially capable of destroying the world. One submarine carries enough missiles and warheads to devastate every major city in Russia (or any other country, for that matter). What more is needed as a deterrent?
Specifically, an Ohio-class Trident submarine can carry up to 24 nuclear missiles, each with up to eight nuclear warheads, each warhead equivalent to roughly six Hiroshima bombs. That represents a potential for hitting 192 targets, each with six times the impact of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 (which killed up to 200,000 people). That’s 1152 Hiroshimas from one submarine — a rough calculus, I know, but accurate enough to show the awesome might represented by a small portion of America’s nuclear force.
The Trident missiles are also incredibly accurate, with a circular error probability of less than 150 meters. And the U.S. has 14 of these submarines. (Not all are on patrol at any one time.) These highly sophisticated and ultra-powerful submarines are further augmented by land-based ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) and bomber planes (the “air-breathing” element), forming the other two legs of the American nuclear triad. Again, when it comes to redundancy, accuracy, and survivability, no other country comes close to America’s nuclear capability.
This awesome nuclear force is not a sign the U.S. is “old” and “tired” and “exhausted.” It’s a sign that the U.S. is incredibly powerful, and, if you’re a foreign leader, incredibly dangerous, especially if America’s next commander-in-chief is undisciplined, thin-skinned, and in possession of a scattershot knowledge of military matters.
Back in March of this year, Trump boasted at a debate that the U.S. military would follow his orders irrespective of their legality. In this latest debate, he yet again revealed that he has no real knowledge of America’s nuclear capability and how modern and powerful (and scary) it truly is.
Sure, Trump is crude, lewd, and sexist, but those qualities won’t destroy the world as we know it. Ignorance about nuclear weapons, combined with impetuosity and an avowed affection for he-man wild-card generals like George S. Patton and Douglas MacArthur, is a recipe for utter disaster.
Trump, a self-avowed winner, is the sorest of losers
W.J. Astore
Are there too many articles about Donald Trump? You might say yes, until, that is, you realize the man has a fair shot at being America’s next president. With that disaster in the making, one must speak up, which is what Tom Engelhardt has done at TomDispatch.com. Engelhardt shows us what Trump is all about – and what that reveals about the present American moment.
He’s made veiled assassination threats; lauded the desire to punch someone in the face; talked about shooting “somebody” in “the middle of Fifth Avenue”; defended the size of his hands and his you-know-what; retweeted neo-Nazis and a quote from Mussolini; denounced the outsourcing of American manufacturing jobs and products while outsourcing his own jobs and products; excoriated immigrants and foreign labor while hiring the same; advertised the Trump brand in every way imaginable; had a bromance with Vladimir Putin; threatened to let nuclear weapons proliferate; complained bitterly about a rigged election, rigged debates, a rigged moderator, and a rigged microphone; swore that he and he alone was capable of again making America, and so the world, a place of the sort of greatness only he himself could match, and that’s just to begin a list on the subject of The Donald.
Engelhardt highlights an aspect of Trump that more Americans need to see: Trump the Sore Loser. Consider his first debate with Hillary Clinton. Instead of taking personal responsibility (“I had a bad night, but I’ll win the next one”), Trump blamed everyone else and anything else. The election’s rigged. The media’s against me. My mic was bad. And so on. Everyone’s accountable except himself.
In his sore losership, Trump is much like America. One example: It took (some of) us nearly fifty years to get over defeat in the Vietnam War. In fact, many U.S. “experts” still aren’t over it, arguing that America really won that war (like Trump argued he’d won the debate with Hillary at subsequent rallies), or alternatively that the war was “rigged,” i.e. that American troops were winning until they were stabbed in the back, betrayed by a hostile and biased media and pusillanimous and disloyal civilian leaders. Really?
Here’s another telling excerpt from Engelhardt on Trump:
In relation to his Republican rivals, and now Hillary Clinton, he stands alone in accepting and highlighting what increasing numbers of Americans, especially white Americans, have evidently come to feel: that this country is in decline, its greatness a thing of the past, or as pollsters like to put it, that America is no longer “heading in the right direction” but is now “on the wrong track.” In this way, he has mainlined into a deep, economically induced mindset, especially among white working class men facing a situation in which so many good jobs have headed elsewhere, that the world has turned sour.
Or think of it another way (and it may be the newest way of all): a significant part of the white working class, at least, feels as if, whether economically or psychologically, its back is up against the wall and there’s nowhere left to go. Under such circumstances, many of these voters have evidently decided that they’re ready to send a literal loose cannon into the White House; they’re willing, that is, to take a chance on the roof collapsing, even if it collapses on them.
That is the new and unrecognizable role that Donald Trump has filled. It’s hard to conjure up another example of it in our recent past. The Donald represents, as a friend of mine likes to say, the suicide bomber in us all. And voting for him, among other things, will be an act of nihilism, a mood that fits well with imperial decline.
Trump, in other words, embodies the resentment of Americans who are used to seeing themselves (and their country) as winners, but who now recognize, at least on some level, they are no longer winners – that they may be, horror of horrors, losers. And, much like Trump, they are sore about this – but not sore (or honest) enough to look in the mirror. No – far better to cast about for scapegoats, to shift the blame, to avoid taking any personal responsibility.
Trump is the Sore Loser of sore losers. His (possibly winning?) appeal is to tell certain Americans exactly what they want to hear: That it’s not your fault that you’re losing. No – it’s the fault of others. Mexicans. Muslims. China. Pushy women. The liberal media. You name it.
Trump, as Engelhardt notes, is a declinist candidate, a rare thing indeed. But he’s declinist with a twist. He’s not trying to motivate Americans to be better. There’s no idealism to his pitch. No appeal to the better angels of our nature. No – Trump is all about finding (marginal and vulnerable) people to blame and punishing them.
Again, he’s the sorest of losers. Come this November, Americans need to make sure he remains a loser.
Should the United States reject the “first use” of nuclear weapons? That question was put to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during their first debate. Colonel (retired) Andrew Bacevich asks us to take their answers seriously in his latest insightful essay at TomDispatch.com, which I urge you to read here in full.
Trump was asked to respond first, and his rambling answer, I thought, showed the evidence of someone who had crammed for a test. He was desperate to show he knew something – anything – about America’s nuclear forces (here some may recall how Trump obviously knew little about America’s nuclear triad during the Republican primary debates). So Trump rambled on about obsolete B-52s flown by the sons and grandsons of previous pilots, a non sequitur since the B-52 has been continuously upgraded with new engines, advanced avionics, the latest in high-tech weaponry, and despite their age they’re still more than capable of doing the job. But somebody must have told Trump to use the B-52’s age as a talking point, and he was determined to get it in.
As confused and incoherent as Trump’s reply was (read more about this at TomDispatch.com), at least he tried to grapple with the issue. Trump did reject First Strike. He did refer to the terror of nuclear war, even as he got lost in other talking points about North Korea, Iran, and allegations about how weak on national security Obama is.
By comparison, Clinton’s response was classic Hillary. Avoid and evade. Try to be all things to all voters. Bloviate, in other words, as Warren G. Harding did in 1920. In essence, Hillary ducked the question. She refused to address the issue of first use of nuclear weapons; indeed, she didn’t address nuclear strategy and policy at all. Instead, she drew a contrast between her experience and predictability versus Trump’s inexperience and unpredictability. Her message was clear: I’m not talking about nuclear weapons or policy, except to say you shouldn’t trust Trump with the nuclear launch codes.
Who won on this question? Bacevich is right to say neither candidate won, but it’s clear who lost: the American people. And the world.
It’s shameful that this country hasn’t rejected the first use of nuclear weapons. It’s also shameful that instead of working to eliminate nuclear weapons, the U.S. is actually planning to spend nearly a trillion dollars over the next 30 years to upgrade that arsenal. For what possible strategic purpose, one must ask? America’s current nuclear deterrent is the most powerful and survivable in the world. No other country comes close. There’s no rational reason to invest more money in nuclear weapons, unless you count the jobs and money related to building new nuclear submarines, weaponry, bombs, and all the other infrastructure related to America’s nuclear triad of Trident submarines, land-based bombers, and fixed missile silos.
Neither Trump nor Hillary addressed this issue. Trump was simply ignorant. Hillary was simply disingenuous. Which candidate was worse? When you’re talking about nuclear genocidal death, it surely does matter. Ignorance is not bliss, nor is a lack of forthrightness and honesty.
Next time, Mr. Trump and Secretary Clinton, let’s have some rigor, some honesty, and some wisdom on the issue of nuclear weapons. Not only America deserves it – the world does.
It’s a serious question, and I’m not the first to ask it. Michael Moore wrote an intriguing article that suggested Trump was deliberately trying to sabotage his own campaign.
Trump is seemingly doing his best to alienate everyone but white males driven by testosterone. Today, he suggested that military veterans who suffer from PTSD do so because of their own failings, i.e. that they simply can’t handle what stronger veterans can handle. Add this (careless? ignorant?) statement to attacks on a Gold Star mother, the denigration of John McCain’s military service and time as a POW, and all the other attacks on Mexicans, Muslims, even an entire gender (his high school locker room mentality when he talks about women), and you have to wonder how such behavior could possibly be part of a winning strategy.
Why would Trump want to be president? To him, the salary is vanishingly low, and the workload incredibly high. Sure, being president would feed his ego, but Trump is mainly driven by capitalist greed and the celebration of his own magnificence. Being president is burdensome. It can be tedious, even boring. It requires discipline. Self-control. These are realities that don’t play to Trump’s strengths.
Trump is a showman. A braggart. A strutter. He’s thinks of himself as the biggest fish in the smallest pond. He seems to delight in thrashing around and upsetting all the little fish. But he’ll have precious little chance of doing this if he’s shackled to the Oval Office and all the responsibilities that office entails.
One thing is certain: Trump is rewriting all the rules of U.S. presidential politics. It’s hard to keep track of the constituencies he’s offended, the bridges he’s burned, the leaders he’s estranged. That he can still win it all is incredible: indeed, it may be incredible even to Trump.
Trump, I believe, would personally profit far more from losing the “rigged” election than winning it. If he loses, he becomes a martyr, at least in the minds of his followers. He can build a Trump Network/conglomerate that taps all the voters he’s rallied — and riled. He can milk them for all the money they’re worth, and bask in their adulation while being unencumbered by the real responsibilities of holding public office.
By losing, in other words, he’ll really be winning. Between now and the election, look for more outrageous statements by and from Trump. He already knows he can say or do almost anything without losing his core supporters. (As he himself boasted, he could shoot someone in cold blood in New York City and his loyal followers wouldn’t blink.)
Look for him to lose in November as well. And then look for him to clean up — big-time.
What kind of a presidential candidate tweets in the middle of the night about alleged sex tapes involving a former Miss Universe winner? Indeed, what kind of a man does this?
Donald Trump is a chump. I’d call him a chimp, except it would be an insult to chimpanzees everywhere. The man has no discipline, no sense of decorum, and no compassion for others (let’s not forget his signature line, “You’re fired”). Indeed, he seems to revel in humiliating others. This was mildly amusing when he was taking on equals on the stage during the Republican primaries, but it’s disturbing in the extreme to see him bullying the little guys and gals for whom he’s supposedly a champion.
So many sane people and major newspapers have gone on record as being against Trump that there’s little I can add. Sadly, Trump’s followers seem unperturbed and undisturbed no matter his insults and tyrannical behavior.
All I can say is this: Trump is not the kind of man my father taught me to be. My dad, who fought forest fires in Oregon in the CCC, a veteran of an armored division in World War II, a city firefighter for more than 30 years until his retirement, treated people fairly and squarely. He was humble about himself and considerate to others. I can’t recall him insulting others, certainly not in the intentional and hurtful way that Trump directs at others. Trump is especially fond of attacking women or minorities or anyone he sees as vulnerable, the very opposite of my dad’s code of behavior.
Don’t get me wrong: my dad wasn’t perfect. He had his faults. But his faults were not directed at others; he didn’t try to demean or diminish other people, as Trump so obviously enjoys doing. Unlike Trump, my dad wasn’t boastful; indeed, three favorite sayings of his were: “Still waters run deep,” “Don’t toot your own horn,” and “The empty barrel makes the most noise.”
You were right, Dad. The rushing nonsense from Trump exhibits his shallowness; the man is constantly tweeting his own horn; and, like the empty vessel that he is, he makes an awful amount of noise.
Trump: Not the kind of man my father would respect; not the kind of man our country needs. Dump chump Trump.
Last night’s debate made for grim watching. I’m a fan of neither candidate, but Hillary performed far better than Trump. She kept her poise, she smiled, she stayed on her talking points. She was, in a word, disciplined. Measured. And smart. She admitted she was wrong about the emails, apologized, and moved on. She projected calm. Not surprisingly, she was well prepared and knew her stuff.
Trump was the total opposite: ill-prepared, mugging and pulling faces for the camera, angry and unsmiling, wandering from his talking points, often losing himself. He was, in a word, undisciplined. And Trump never admits he’s wrong, whether about the Iraq war or the birther issue or his tax returns or what have you. Instead of calm, Trump projected anger. Despite running for president for more than a year, he seemed ill-prepared and not in command of the narrative.
Whether any of this matters in the long run remains to be seen. But what surprised me the most about Trump was the lack of a positive message. Where was Reagan’s sunny optimism? Where was George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism? Where was the hope? Trump just seemed angry: angry at Mexicans, angry at the Chinese, angry at corporations for taking American jobs overseas, angry at Hillary for her negative ads. (I guess “Crooked Hillary” doesn’t count as negativity.)
Can you win a presidential campaign when your primary appeal is an angry one? Anger that is often directed at various minority groups as well as your opponent? I suppose we’ll find out, come this November.
Trump sniffled a lot and was perhaps suffering from a cold. As the debate dragged on, he lost steam and grew increasingly incoherent. You could see Hillary’s confidence grow. She’s not the best debater; she has a tendency to lecture, to drone on, to lose the attention of the audience. But his dismal performance overshadowed her occasional forays into the weeds of wonkishness.
Trump, in sum, emerged the loser, and for a self-professed “winner” like Trump, that is indeed a bitter pill to swallow.
Sorry, I have no special insight into tonight’s debate. I’m guessing Hillary will win based on points, but that Trump will also win by being present on the same stage. More celebrity than politician, more showman than man of substance, Trump knows how to control his own image. Hillary will command the facts; Trump will command the audience’s attention. It’s a win-win for them but a lose-lose for America.
I had a strange dream last night. I dreamed that Trump arrived at the debate, riding a chariot and posing as Caesar. And the audience applauded. I was desperate to ask a question (yes, I was in the audience, don’t ask me how), and got the chance. I said something like this: “I was in the military for 20 years, serving my country, yet you, Donald Trump, dodged the draft during the Vietnam War. You claim to be on the side of veterans, but you arrive here dressed as Caesar, as a conquering hero, even though you yourself never served. Have you no sense of decency, sir? Have you no shame?”
I swear: I rarely remember my dreams, and those that I do remember have nothing whatsoever to do with presidential politics. In my waking hours, I don’t think of Trump as Caesar. He’s more of a Nero, a deeply flawed narcissist who will fiddle while America burns.
Hillary raises different issues. I keep seeing, both in print and on TV, the argument that Hillary is imperfect, secretive, compromised by special interests, a person of questionable judgment, but that we must vote for her simply because SHE’S NOT TRUMP. Trump is so bad, such a hazard to democracy, the argument goes, that we must swallow the jagged big pill that is Hillary, no matter how painful that pill may prove, simply because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.
It’s sad indeed that some people’s best (only?) argument for Hillary is that SHE’S NOT TRUMP. For me, I can’t get past the Democratic Party’s efforts to rig the primary process in her favor against a true populist with integrity, Bernie Sanders. It’s Bernie, not Hillary, who should be running against Trump, but the Democratic Party establishment determined from the beginning that Hillary, not Bernie, would be its nominee.
Of course, both parties, Republican and Democrat, want to keep alternatives from us. The shameful part of tonight’s debate is that Gary Johnson (Libertarian) and Jill Stein (Green) are excluded. In short, there will be no “debate” tonight in any meaningful sense of that word. Instead, we will get a narrow discussion of establishment views with considerable jousting and posturing (and perhaps some mugging from Trump), generating some heat but precious little light.
Yes, I will watch the debate. I just hope some version of my dream of Caesar’s rapturous appearance doesn’t come to pass.
When Hillary Clinton called out half of Trump’s supporters as “deplorables,” to the point where some are “irredeemable,” I shook my head at her elitism even as I was surprised by her lack of political acumen. Her comment lumping these “deplorables” into a “basket” came at a fundraiser on September 9th, even as her podium touted the message “stronger together.” As I wrote in a Facebook post on September 10th, “Painting half your opponent’s supporters as [potentially] irredeemable is just bad strategy.”
But it’s worse than that. First off, Hillary should have known better. After all, she went aggressively after Barack Obama when in 2008 he made his comment about bitter rural folk clinging to guns and religion. (And Obama’s comment is considerably milder than Hillary’s.) By calling out Obama for his comment, Hillary was able to win that year’s primary in Pennsylvania. Second, for a seasoned pol Hillary showed a surprising lack of discipline. She herself prefaced her remarks with the phrase, “to just be grossly generalistic.” Grossly generalistic? That’s supposed to be Trump’s sphere, not Hillary’s.
But third and finally is that word, “irredeemable.” Having been raised Catholic and having studied evangelicalism and American religion, that word instantly caught my attention. For Christians, to suggest that someone is “irredeemable” is in itself deplorable. It’s as if you’re limiting the agency of God. God determines who is redeemable and who isn’t. No sinner, i.e. human, has the probity or power to do so.
All Christians know the story of the thief on the cross next to Christ as He was crucified. Christ chose to redeem that man, saying to him that “today, you will be with me in paradise.” As I type these words, an old hymn plays in my mind: “Christ, Jesus, victor. Christ, Jesus, ruler. Christ, Jesus, Lord and Redeemer.” For God, no one is “irredeemable,” nor should any person make such claims, for God’s ways are past searching out.
You don’t [use that word, irredeemable] — America is built on redemption. People came here because things weren’t working out.
My generation, the old, oldest fart generation, OK, 13 percent of us were in favor of same-sex marriage 15 years ago, now 41 percent. On civil rights, America has changed dramatically and profoundly. We believe in redemption, not just because you’re a liberal, because you’re an American.
And that — when you write off people and blame the customer, that is really bad.
And the person who was at the Emanuel Baptist — AME Church in Charleston, they believe the guy who shot and killed their close friends was redeemable, but she thinks millions of Americans aren’t?
And that speaks and I think it plays, because there is a brittleness there. And I don’t know if there is a brittleness within. I sort of doubt it. I think she’s probably a very good person within. But there has been a brittleness to her public persona that has been ungenerous and ungracious. And it plays a little to that and why people just don’t want to latch on [to her campaign].
If Hillary loses the election in November, it may very well come back to her “grossly generalistic” comments on September 9th, when she anointed herself as the judge of who is redeemable and who isn’t.
Last night’s “commander-in-chief” security forum that featured Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was, not surprisingly, disappointing. (You can read the transcript here.) Trump recently stated he was in favor of large increases in defense spending, but he wasn’t asked about this. He wasn’t asked about his support of torture, nor was he challenged on his remarkably dangerous statement back in March that military officers would obey his presidential decrees, even when they were unlawful. Hillary was challenged on her email fiasco at the State Department, and rightly so, but she pretty much got a free pass on her support of the calamitous Iraq war and the chaos following the Libyan intervention. And of course neither candidate was challenged on their blanket support of Israel.
What you got was two self-absorbed candidates, one wonkish, the other one clearly a wanker, both of them posing as warriors as long as someone else’s kids are doing the fighting. Here’s a question for Trump and Hillary: the next time you deploy troops to Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan or wherever, will you include Ivanka or Chelsea, respectively, and put them in harm’s way?
Most interesting to me was Trump’s old-fashioned imperialism, which explains much of his appeal to the rabid right. Here’s what Trump had to say about how the Iraq war should have turned out for the USA:
“We [the USA] go in [to Iraq in 2003], we spend $3 trillion, we lose thousands and thousands of lives, and then, Matt, what happens is, we get nothing. You know, it used to be to the victor belong the spoils. Now, there was no victor there, believe me. There was no victor. But I always said: Take the oil.”
You have to hand it to The Donald: at least he’s occasionally honest. The Iraq war was about oil, among other things, and Trump says the USA as the “victor” should have taken it. Why? Because might makes right. Because, as Thucydides said so many centuries ago, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer as they must.
Remember when George W. Bush said Iraq’s oil was the “patrimony” of the Iraqi people and that the USA wasn’t about to take it? That the Iraq war was about freedom and democracy in the Middle East, not a naked grab for resources? Trump is having none of that. Any wonder that he’s so popular among Americans who are tired, as they see it, of losing?
“Take the oil!” It’s a statement that could easily appear on the next iteration of Trump’s baseball cap.
Bracing Views 