12-31-2017, 11:40 AM
HISTORY OF THE WORLD AT YEAR 1 AFTER TRUMP
The world has endured one complete and completely calamitous year of Donald Trump, the president of the United States - "Mr President", as Americans reverentially refer to him. After a tumultuous and deeply divisive presidential campaign, in a free and fair general election, Americans elected a notoriously racist, consistently misogynistic, white supremacist, xenophobic, real estate charlatan as their president, entrusting him with their highest and most revered political office. He was solemnly sworn in "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" on January 20, 2017, at 9am.
To be fair, in electing Donald Trump as their president Americans did not have much of a choice, for opposing him in the final election was a singularly corrupt corporate lackey and carpetbagger named Hillary Clinton who systematically sabotaged the campaign of the only decent American that could have been elected president - Senator Bernie Sanders.
Given their choice between Hillary Clinton and a nefarious charlatan, Americans opted for the nefarious charlatan. There are certain snakes in hell from which you run to dragons, as we say in Persian. The world thus nosedived into perhaps the most dangerously destructive year in its recent history. We are now living that history. We are about to finish its first year: year 1 AT (after Trump).
We, the future historians of our present
The future historians (if Trump leaves us a future to fathom and does not cause a nuclear holocaust or an environmental calamity does not put an end to us all) ought to know that this US president wakes up early in the morning and the first thing he does is start bombarding the globe with the most inane, most imbecilic salvos of gibberish that emerge from his mental and moral indigestion. He calls them his "tweets". What a beautiful word to abuse and waste for his blithering verbal diarrhoea - no harmless birdie ever chirped anything but joy in this world. Then he goes about issuing his racist misanthropic fatwas against one thing or another.
One day, he bans Muslims from entering the US; another day, he pulls the US out of environmental accords meant to preserve the earth; the next day, he wants to build a wall at the Mexican border because he thinks Mexicans are rapists; and the day after, he steals a whole historic city and gives it to his Zionist financiers, before, just for fun, saying Haitians "all have AIDS". If he doesn't have anything else to do, he just tweets - a few Islamophobic videos, defends some neo-Nazi thugs, and makes a few anti-Semitic remarks. His supporters just love him for these spontaneous outbursts of his true nature. "He tells it like it is," they say.
Trump consistently lies, systematically cheats, unabashedly insults weak and vulnerable people. He keeps up with his predecessors' habit of mass-selling arms to Arab tyrants to kill more Muslims, gives them for free to Israelis to keep killing more Palestinians and stealing their lands, and he then awards them by declaring Jerusalem their capital. The world is scared witless of climate change. He says global warming is good to combat cold weather.
The world is aghast at the range of sexual assaults and sexual harassment perpetrated by powerful men and here he is the president of the United States, the most dangerously powerful man on planet earth, facing allegations of predatory sexual misconduct. We the future historians of our present must rush to anachronism to tell our posterity (if there will be a posterity) what has happened to us.
A neo-globalist
The world looks at the United States today and shivers with outrage, with fear and trembling, aghast at the moral and political bankruptcy of a "democratic system" that results in such disgraceful insults to common human decency. This is in sharp contradistinction to what any decent American thinks of himself or herself. Trump's election has brought the majority of Americans to the bosom of humanity at large - fearing for themselves their own elected imperial officers. There are those among Americans who think Trump is a political isolationist or an economic nationalist. But that is not the case. Politically, he is a warmongering bully that has intensified bombing of nations and then sought to close the US borders to its catastrophic humanitarian consequences. That is not isolationism. That is amoral cowardice.
The same goes for his economic policies. He wishes to rob the world of its natural resources, destroy the environment, and enrich his obscenely rich political backers. That is not economic nationalism. That is highway robbery on a global scale. The first target of Trump's nefarious economics has been American people themselves. His monumental tax scheme that his fellow Republicans just passed will target the poorest segments of the US society to enrich the tiny upper echelon of the country. What sort of "nationalism" is that? He is a thief stealing from the poor enriching the rich even more.
What Donald Trump has staged is first and foremost the moral and political crisis that "Western democracy", in general, and American democracy, in particular, face today. All the way from Plato and Aristotle to Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville, the world has been force-fed, lectured at and politically held hostage to overdoses of highfalutin treatises about "Western liberal democracy" - the crowning achievement of which is this clinically diabolical buffoon. Trump is no isolationist or nationalist. He is a neo-globalist of fear and fanaticism, of thievery for the rich and destitution for the rest.
The law of diminishing returns
A year into the Trump presidency, the global perception of common American decency has been seriously diminished, the fear of its vulgar and violent militarism increased, the brutish impact of US disregard for planetary environmental calamity intensified, nefarious US allies like Saudi Arabia and Israel given free hands to slaughter people in Yemen and Palestine with impunity, the poorest and most vulnerable segments of American society targeted for even more impoverishment, its richest pockets made even deeper and more obscenely rich.
The world, including the majority of Americans, stand today on one side, and Donald Trump and his richest and most dangerous beneficiaries from Washington to Tel Aviv to Riyadh on the other. They are wreaking havoc across the globe and we are bracing for even worse to come.
A shining truth emerges from this calamitous condition of humanity at year 1 AT of our world history. The world is forever freed from all its dangerous delusions: from the nativist American democracy to European liberal globalism, from the corrupt Russian oligarchy to the globalised Chinese communism, from xenophobic Zionism to megalomaniac Islamism, from homicidal Hindu fundamentalism to genocidal Buddhist nationalism. Free at last, as the moral voice of Martin Luther King Jr, declared, thank God Almighty we are free at last from all the false god terms of our history - just a year into the presidency of our very own Roman Emperor Mr Donald Trump, Real Estate Developer, Inc. We are freed from all delusional fantasies East and West and walk through this valley of despair with our eyes and hearts wide open, our minds and intellect clear and caring - the modest prophets of our own uncharted destinies.
NEW GLOBAL ARCHITECTURE
Since the Second World War, the US had dominated much of the world on the strength of its military, the vast network of its intelligene apparatus, and the power of its dollar. The collapse in 1991 of the Soviet Union merely added to American hubris. Nearly 85% of the world’s central banks maintained their reserves in US dollars. Additionally, in 1973, the Americans forced the Saudis — the world’s largest oil producer at the time — to trade oil only in dollars; hence the term petrodollars.
At the beginning of this century, the euro emerged as a rival to the US greenback. The euro has captured 20% of the reserve currency market diminishing the dollar’s dominance. Now another currency — the Chinese yuan — is making itself felt on the global financial markets. The yuan is emerging on the strength of the Chinese economy that is already the second largest in the world. In a decade or so, it is expected to surpass the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The US also has a huge trade deficit with China, not because of unfair trade practices or lousy deals, as Donald Trump alleges, but because American corporations make lousy products. They have also outsourced most manufacturing jobs overseas to gut the wages of American workers.
The yuan’s rise is inevitable because of the strength of the Chinese economy and Beijing’s massive trade with other countries. China has also entered into bilateral agreements with a number of countries whereby they would trade in each other’s currency, bypassing the dollar. This has already happened with Russia and moves are afoot to make similar arrangements with Turkey, Pakistan, and countries in Southeast Asia. These are hopeful signs and would certainly further diminish the dollar’s influence.
China has more than $2 trillion in reserves. It is gradually divesting dollars and acquiring gold. In fact, both Russia and China have agreed to back other countries’ reserves with gold. This was the arrangement until 1971 when then US President Richard Nixon de-linked the dollar from gold. The yellow metal priced at $35/oz at the time is now trading at more than $1,200. This reflects the precipitous drop in the value of the dollar whose victims are other countries.
On the military front as well the US has suffered massive blows. Despite its huge stockpile of weapons and obscenely high military budget (officially at $650 billion per annum), the US military has not won a single war on its own. This may sound strange but it is true. Let us look at the record. The US has never fought a war on its own; it always gathers allies (it actually coerces them to join) to fight weaker opponents. Despite this, the US and its allies have not succeeded. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria offer recent examples. North Korea continues to defy US threats.
After its defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of ragtag bands of Taliban fighters, the US decided to use proxies. Al-Qaeda and ISIS emerged to cause havoc in Iraq and Syria. In both places, the takfiri terrorists have been defeated and their territorial possessions reduced to isolated pockets. This came about as a result of determined help from Hizbullah and Islamic Iran to their allies in Iraq and Syria. Western media outlets harp on Russia’s air force achieving victory in Syria but deliberately ignore the more important role played by Hizbullah and Iran. According to military experts, the air force contribution to any modern war effort is about 10%. It is troops on the ground that make the real difference. Russia does not have boots on the ground in Syria; the US does — about 2,000 of them — and it has established illegal bases in the country.
Washington alleges that it is fighting ISIS terrorists. This is a lie; ISIS is a creation of the US and its allies. Following their defeat in Syria, ISIS terrorists were transported by American helicopters to Afghanistan. Zamir Kabulov, Russia’s special envoy for Afghanistan, said last month that there are more than 10,000 ISIS terrorists now operating in Afghanistan, thanks to US support.
There is no reason for US Special Forces to be present in Syria anymore; there never was a genuine reason in the first place. Their presence in Syria is illegal. General Qassem Solaimani, Commander of Iran’s Quds Force, in a message to the US last month warned it to get its troops out of Syria or they will be driven out. Unlike the US, Iranian commanders do not make empty threats; they fulfill them.
Thus, the twin pillars of US hegemony — its dollar and military — are both in decline. America’s crumbling infrastructure, shuttered factories, and crumbling cities with collapsing bridges and rotting water pipes are proof positive that the US is in terminal decline. Even its European allies — Britain, France, and Germany — have had enough of American hubris. They are charting their own course in global affairs. A new multipolar world is emerging, one that promises a better future for humanity than America’s exceptionalism.