Ralph Nader may have missed stating the core diagnostic point in his — "Expected Countervailing Forces to Trumpism are Failing"

13 October 2020

Caveat

I mean Ralph Nader no disrespect with what follows. He is one America's genuine treasures.

My ultimate point is that Nader's below-cited essay may have missed an opportunity to explicitly state the United States' decomposition diagnosis.

Ralph Nader's premise

From CounterPunch:

Let’s give dangerous, dictatorial, corporatist, lawless, unstable, Donald Trump his due.

He has shown us just how weak our various countervailing institutions and constitutional standards are in checking the excesses of the most impeachable President in American history.

He has intimidated almost everyone with any power or influence into submission or silence.

Ralph Nader lists the following failed American societal elements

big business

congress

Democrats

fired cabinet members and presidential staff

ineffectual civic organizations

intelligence agencies and FBI

judiciary

labor unions

legal organizations

major media

military

organized science

organized women

progressively oriented allied countries

religion

universities

He efficiently explains how each element failed to act effectively — or in accord with what one might think was its duty or self-interest.

I see the situation with a noticeably different emphasis

This difference is important, provided that one wants to fix what is arguably wrong with the American Republic.

My counter-premise is simple

Donald Trump is America's true face.

Rotten. Corrupt. Exclusively self-interested.

As a result of how the United States is actually structured, the systemic elements that Nader lists have nothing of substance to lose by letting Trump run wild. At best, Toddling Donny is a minor pimple on their predatory self-satisfactions.

Many among Nader's listed system elements have directly profited from Trump's existence. And those that have not raked in direct loot, have nevertheless aggrandized themselves by pretending to oppose the President and gathering prestigious clout and influence in their opposition.

President Trump is, therefore, not actually intimidating these people, organizations, corporations and societal hangers-on. For them, this is "business" as usual.

As long as the blood supply that they feed upon remains intact, they are not going to do anything that might personally cause them discomfort.

Universities are a good (but subtle) example of the latter point. Caught up their identity-dissecting and populace-separating bullshit, they are financially and monopolistically impervious to what is actually going on in the real world.

In truth, the United States has become a free-for-all among exclusively self-interested graspers.

The moral? — Follow money, track prestige, identify self-interest

If we make the separation and distinctions that Nader has, without saying more — we miss the ultimate point about self-created philosophical rot.

What we are witnessing is the US corpse decomposing. Our cadaver's murderer is our addicted fondness for rampaging avarice and narcissistic self-promotion.

In this metaphorical model, the systemic elements that Nader identified are the national corpse's still-feeding maggots.

A country that overtly rejected (and continues to reject) Community in its daily actions — cannot be expected not to structurally rot from the inside out. Predatory capitalism is not a historically durable society-organizing principle.

Donald Trump is merely national decomposition's odor made obvious. He is the leaky balloon that American decay is filling with putrefaction gases.

The key point is that the United States made and elected President Trump. Not vice versa.

Reverse this causation (by making Trump the culprit) and we get the medical diagnosis backwards.

PeteFree.com

Ralph Nader may have missed stating the core diagnostic point in his — "Expected Countervailing Forces to Trumpism are Failing"