Remember the old movie, The Manchurian Candidate? The 1962 political thriller depicted a veteran of the Korean War, who had been brainwashed while a prisoner of war, to assassinate the leading presidential candidate so that the vice-presidential candidate could win the presidency. A secret “palace coup d’état” would then impose a draconian suspension of democracy in service to the KGB.
A 2004 remake starred Denzel Washington playing the other veteran who knows something is wrong. The remake updated the conflict to the Persian Gulf War and the perpetrator to a U.S. corporation, “Manchurian Global.” A slick candidate for the U.S. presidency has been “brainwashed” to do the bidding for a foreign power – a corporation foreign to American democracy, that is. The inevitable struggle between good and evil ensues.
The Manchurian Candidate Wins
I think we have an apt metaphor here for the rise of Trumpery, the results of which we all now experience. However, these days the president may or may not be helping the Russians. But they appear to have helped him jam the culture of core American values and national security in service to the Billionaire Class and especially his own (secret) global financial interests. The whole thing, morally as well as socially and economically, is far, far away from serving ordinary Americans. It is, in a word, foreign; the new normal of political corruption has infected many Americans through the demagoguery of the Manchurian President. He had come out from behind the wall of privileged wealth to claim common cause with the people. Total betrayal.
The financial and corporate elites in whose interest Trump promulgates endless executive orders are foreign in every way but their rhetoric. They care no less for the public interest than does the Manchurian President. The Vicar of Venality encourages the congress of Republican corporatists to trash the modest Affordable Care Act in favor of massive tax cuts for the super-rich, disease and death for the “losers” — us. He stifles as many federal agencies that work to protect the public interest from plunder capital as he can. He viciously assaults public discourse via hateful twitter tropes.
The “Reality TV” show that now guides the nation entails the Branding of the President as the only real “winner” among the rest of us “losers.” The amoral Trump Brand touts greed and meanness as its central principle for gaining the power that allows him to take what he wants, whenever he wants, from whomever he wants — from contractors or employees who he refused to pay to pretty women he feels entitled to grope at will. We must realize that he projects this evil vindictive brand across the world in our name. Our nation’s security suffers for it.
More Shocks to Come
These are dangerous times and we all need whatever bits of useful advice we can garner to counter the Manchurian President. That is why I recommend you read Naomi Klein’s latest book, which gives valuable insight into both Trumpery and its application of the neoliberal economic (and political) “shock doctrine” to our own nation.
The first few chapters of her new book, No is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, integrate Klein’s insights from previous books on branding, disaster capitalism, and the climate crisis, to offer what may be the most intelligible answer to the question, “What is Trumpery?” Her new video, “How to resist Trump’s shock doctrine,” outlines some key actions the rest of us should take. Check it out. Let me know what you think.
The history of the American political economy exposes a very long and persistent attempt by privileged elites to destroy the democracy that would interfere with the completion of their hegemony. Nancy Mclean’s new book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, makes one thing very clear. Much of what passes as ordinary “conservative” politics is part of a larger plan to destroy democracy in America.
The Great Wall of Trump’s racist misogynist rhetoric symbolizes something far more sinister than a physical deterrent to illegal immigration, instilling fear of the infiltration of terrorists, or Trump’s juvenile denigration of women and anyone not a U.S.-born white male. Of course, it elevates a certain xenophobic fear of the other in an uncertain world, adding to the angst that breeds the extreme nationalism and racist scapegoating that demagoguery has always encouraged and exploited.
Naomi Klein emphasizes in No Is Not Enough, that as aberrant as he is personally, Donald Trump is in a much deeper sense the logical result of the campaign to destroy democracy in the name of a libertarian future for the super-rich. His actions are a perfect fit for the neo-liberal agenda of the billionaire plutocrats who would rather not have to deal with a democracy in their quest for total power.
Transcending Trumpery
Trumpery is not so much about building a physical wall on our southern border as it is about reinforcing and extending the Great Wall of Disparity dividing us all off from those 600 Super-rich who make up the 1% of the 1% of wealthy Americans who gain from his policies. The tweets are his personal form of the much broader distractions the corporate mass media propagate daily to redirect public attention from the plunder of the our commonwealth.
As Robert Schenkkan’s brilliant new play, “Building the Wall” demonstrates, the achievement of a fascist state will come through the creeping engagement of ordinary ‘functionaries’ (people) in the machinations of oppression. The ultimate result – genocidal practices that remain at the core of the cultural heritage of the corporate state – further delay the unfinished American Revolution. It was integral to Canada’s colonization of indigenous peoples as well. Given the national political situation, resistance must continue. But the remaining viable path to survival of humanity in spite of the plutocrats is to transform local communities to harmonize with their ecosystems and each other to thereby replace the plutocracy with direct local democracy. Only such a transformation can at last complete the American Revolution.
