Trump fires Comey and suddenly becomes the Stalin-Devil — does that make sense?

© 2017 Peter Free

 

12 May 2017

 

 

Theme — nothing new here

 

President Trump is merely the most visible face of the totalitarian stream that has increasingly diseased American government for decades.

 

The uproar over President Trump's James Comey firing misunderstands the systemic nature of the autocratic cancer that has been eating away at Liberty for very many years.

 

 

I am not a President Trump fan, but still . . . get a grip?

 

FBI Director James Comey deservedly got the Trumpian boot two days ago and an instant backlash began:

 

 

Totalitarian Devil Trump, it accused, had done a very bad thing.

 

White Knight Comey was the only wall standing between Trumpian dictatorship and Russia-free American liberty.

 

With Comey's departure, so the Party Line goes, the last bastion of All that Is Holy has been flattened.

 

The tides of autocracy are, because of this firing, inevitably going to sweep us to doom.

 

 

Does such theatrical anguish even begin to make sense?

 

Let's begin stringing some of Rationality's dots.

 

At the outset, I grant that President Trump probably fired James Comey for reasons that had nothing to do with the previous Director's Hillary Clinton-squashing behavior.

 

But so what?

 

As everybody with a legal grasp has pointed out, it is the American president's lawful prerogative to fire the director of the FBI. He or she does not need a good reason. "I don't like your lame posterior," is good enough.

 

 

The Backlash Boosters' basic indictment (of Trump) is that . . .

 

Comey's firing defies "political tradition."

 

The American president is supposed to (they say) leave the Director alone to investigate, or otherwise professionally behave, as her or she reasonably lawfully wishes.

 

This evidently sacrosanct American way of doing things (we are led to infer) requires that the FBI provide a check against the President's potential seizure of power.

 

With this, the Backlash cues the ghosts of former President Nixon, Watergate, and that escapade's near miss in allegedly destroying the nation.

 

In sum, Backlash-ists hold that President Trump is trying to quash the FBI's investigation into his Administration's alleged Russia connections. And that, we are expected to agree, Liberty cannot tolerate.

 

 

But — let's examine this Trump-wants-to-be-king allegation

 

Even if true (as it almost certainly is), does that matter?

 

Again, no.

 

This aspect is where History and clear thinking need to pound their ways onto our mental stage.

 

 

First — as a thought experiment — let's agree to some of the alleged facts

 

Let's assume that President Trump does have massive investments in (a) Russia or (b) some place Russian behavior might affect.

 

We can even stipulate to the (apparently randomly generated) suspicion that some of these interests involve Russian mob or global criminal ties.

 

Let's also grant (for purposes of this mental exercise) that former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn really did talk to the Russians, before the Trump Administration took office.

 

And we will even withhold contesting the floated accusation that General Flynn:

 

 

(a) illegally told the Russians that

 

(b) the Trump Administration would not follow through with the enhanced sanctions which

 

(c) the still-in-power Obama presidency had just promised to

 

(d) hammer them with.

 

 

Anti-backlash reasoning step 1 — would any of these hypothetically granted facts matter in the Real World's scheme of things?

 

Not really.

 

Here's why.

 

The fundamental issue with Trump is his business empire.

 

Having money in places that can "screw" with it, leaves the President (and his family "nepotists") vulnerable to foreign pressures that might harm U.S. interests — that the President is (at least theoretically) obligated to protect.

 

But did anyone or any institution with national influence meaningfully object to President Trump's recklessly kept swath of world wealth, when he took the presidential podium?

 

Hardly a peep.

 

Nothing out of Congress. Nothing out the Justice Department. Zip from any former president that I'm aware of. And essentially apathetic silence from America's vast public.

 

Nada.

 

The Rich Man walked into the White House, as if he could combine blatant dynastic nepotism with cosmically large (probable) financial conflicts of interest — and no one vigorously got off Complacence's Lap to interfere with such egregious nonsense on our (alleged) Republic's behalf.

 

It is only the Russia aspect of President Trump's self-interests that seems to bother the partisan and reflexively anti-Russian American apparatchiks, who want to suck the President's monarchically tainted blood.

 

Instead of wanting to deal with the overarching conflicts of interest problem, this Backlash group has narrowed in on only one of its subordinate aspects — simply because the "guys" on its other end are Russian.

 

Let's go a Real World step further.

 

With respect to Mike Flynn's illegal, pre-inauguration (here hypothetically granted as true) Russia-reassurance — such a chat would have made perfect sense to a business-oriented, get-it-done mind like Donald Trump's.

 

Or, frankly, to anyone else who is not a bureaucratically minded or overly legalistic stone-head.

 

In fact, General Flynn's hypothesized communication with the Russians would have given the Trump Administration an intelligent head start on:

 

 

(i) implementing

 

(ii) an arguably necessary toning down of

 

(iii) a debatably overly hostile relationship with

 

(iv) the one nation on the planet that (certifiably) can blow us all up.

 

 

Though General Flynn's (alleged) pre-inauguration action would clearly have been illegal, what practical difference to American interests would it really have made?

 

Zero.

 

A tempest in a thimble.

 

President Obama was about to be gone, and the new guy was merely letting the Bear Guys know what they could expect American policy to become just a few days down the road.

 

Makes perfect sense and is fully in keeping with the spirit of then candidate Trump's "keep Russia as more friend than enemy" campaign statements.

 

 

Anti-backlash reasoning step 2 — we voted for a known autocrat

 

We elected President Trump, fully knowing that he is a dictator wannabe.

 

"I will(s)" overflowed all his speeches. His communications with us either denied or implicitly ignored every other power source in American Government. For Donald Trump, these Constitutional balances did not then (and do not) now exist.

 

We elected him anyway.

 

The people who supported then candidate Trump (reportedly) massively still do.

 

In fact, I suspect that many of the people who voted for President Trump wanted a King in power.

 

And those who voted for Hillary Clinton were — probably unwittingly, due to our characteristic colossal levels of historical ignorance — voting for a de facto Queen.

 

President Trump is acting forcefully in exactly the way that we knew (or should have known) that he would.

 

So — why have so many people (on both political sides) started whining only now about the autocratic tendencies allegedly embodied in James Comey's forced departure?

 

Were "y'all" asleep before?

 

 

Anti-backlash reasoning step 3 — nothing's especially different now than it has been for decades

 

Let's toss in some pertinent American history.

 

The two most recent pre-Trump presidents — to take a trivially small sample — acted like quasi-totalitarians themselves.

 

 

When Republican George W. Bush acted monarchically, Democrats howled their tear-stained, stinging uproar to the heavens.

 

When Democrat Barack Obama did the same thing, Republicans rent their clothes and bemoaned the loss of the Republic to the equivalent of Black Hitler.

 

 

In the United States (evidently) — My Autocrat is okay but yours is not.

 

President Trump's dictatorial tendencies are not a new American thing. He is just more open about his contempt for the American system of governance.

 

It is not as if all Trump's recent predecessors have not used the same anti-democratic system to their quasi-totalitarian advantage whenever they could. They have just been less ostentatious — meaning that they hid behind hypocritically acquired camouflage — about it.

 

So (again), why do we do treat the Comey firing, as if it is the lead rider in the Devil's Advance Guard?

 

It is not as if Democracy's Demise should be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention for the last few tens of years.

 

 

Last — consider the American System as it actually exists

 

With regard to the demonization of President Trump, consider that (generally speaking), Americans personalize everything. Our ability to think systemically and systematically is close to zero.

 

As a result, we seize on aspects of a leader's character or performance, as if those elements almost alone determine political and social outcomes.

 

The system that the leader is operating in (and influenced by) usually gets off without much serious consideration.

 

As a consequence of our widely shared blindness to the specifics of organizational and social contexts, we like to burden our leaders with the entirety of saving "our" flaming behinds from Purgatory's heat (however Purgatory is personally defined).

 

Similarly, we start wars abroad because we don't like whomever is in charge. The systemic and populational consequences of our "interventions" are always (insofar as History can tell) ignored. Which results in millions of unnecessary deaths and equally avoidable suffering.

 

Pertinent to the Comey firing specifically, we characteristically overlook the fact that the American governmental structure was designed to take the unpredictable effects of personality, evil gremlins and well-meaning knights out of the process of governance.

 

The Founders intentionally deemphasized the importance of personality and personal competence in government. Theirs was an institutional and systemic perspective that reverses how most of us think, emote and act.

 

The Founders thought, reasonably enough, that the three allegedly coequal governmental branches would supposedly check and balance each other.

 

By belonging to one branch, civil servants and their bosses would automatically glance suspiciously and jealously at the two competing others. Self-interested battling between the branches of government would, theoretically, protect the public from the machinations of any one branch or any one person or group.

 

Centuries later, admittedly, these checks have been mostly captured by the Great American Plutocracy. Which pretty much runs things the way it wants.

 

Plutocracy has become an essentially unitary form of government. Wealth's self-interest monopolizes prevailing perspectives across the power board, regardless of the Ghost Governmental Branches that remain in pretended place.

 

Pertinent to the Comey firing, one aspect of the Great American Plutocracy is its Deep State security component.

 

The Deep State consistently acts to control powerful renegades and kooks that it does not like. Its prime directive is to mold or squish Plutocracy-irritating leaders' prerogatives and actions.

 

The Deep State therefore institutionally serves as a check against President Trump's undiluted will. And the Deep State gets what it wants.

 

For example, Mike Flynn got into trouble because the Deep State went after him. President Trump reversed his many campaign positions, once in office, because the Deep State "influenced" him to make the changes.

 

Precisely the same thing happened with President Obama. He campaigned as the anti-Bush II and — once installed in the presidency — out-Bushed his predecessor in virtually every conceivable way. (Except, maybe, homespun beer buddyship.)

 

So, why would anyone think that — just because President Trump fired James Comey — the Deep State's maniacal seventy year interest in demolishing all things Russian would necessarily end?

 

 

The moral? — Who do you think is really running American Government?

 

(a) The wannabe King or (b) the wannabe King as heavily influenced by the Great American Plutocracy?

 

Nothing has substantially changed since the Bush II and Obama administrations.

 

Plutocracy goes where it wants. American democracy is dead. The autocratic House of Orange's influence will only go so far as the Great American Plutocracy and its Deep State Steel Fist wants it to go.

 

If America's security apparatus wants to nail the Trump Administration with alleged Russia ties (real or not), it will.

 

But, on the other hand, if the Trump Administration throws it some placating cookies, it may not.

 

This is no different, in practical effect, than the situation was under President Obama. He just concealed his placating quasi-puppet-tude more gracefully (and therefore more dangerously) than President Trump wants or is able to.

 

In sum, James Comey's firing does not mean diddly with regard to the totalitarianization of the United States.

 

A triple alliance between King Trump, the Great American Plutocracy and the Deep State — to the degree that those components can be separated — will simply put an easily visible Death Stamp on what had existed before, but remained out of convenient sight.

 

If we really want Democracy and Liberty, we are will have to:

 

 

think systemically and systematically

 

and

 

pry governance away from the Elites who have stolen them.

 

 

President Trump may be a happily convenient (and often quarrelsome) symbol of Liberty's decline, but he is not even close to being its genuine cause.

 

Hitler, for example, rose to power in Weimar Republic Germany because he generated so much support among dissatisfied institutions and public. His manipulative evil genius came along at the "right" time.

 

It is no different in the United States today. We, of course, will not get close to seeing this, until we stop insisting on simple-mindedly personalizing every "damn" thing that Time throws our way.

 

President Trump is inarguably not good for Liberty, but he is only the symbol of a long-rotten system.

 

If one reacts only to President Trump's shenanigans, one misses the systemic corruption that institutionally generates and supports him.

 

Consequently, the uproar over Director Comey's firing is attention-diverting BS.