The U.S. political and media culture has produced two of the most incompetent figures imaginable to vie for the role of leading the country into the abyss, writes Jim Kavanagh.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during the Sept. 10 presidential debate on ABC News. (C-Span screen shot)
By Jim Kavanagh
The United States of America is on the verge of World War III in three different theaters. Its social economy and infrastructure are in tatters. It’s actively engaged in genocidal ethnic cleansing — killing tens if not hundreds of thousands of mainly children and women and spitting on every precept of humanitarian and international law — on behalf of an atavistic settler-colonial project.
It is more than ever despised and less than ever feared in a world escaping its control. And in this catastrophic conjuncture, the U.S. political and media culture throws up two of the most incompetent figures imaginable to vie for the role of leading us into the abyss.
The U.S. electoral system is insultingly anti-democratic. Built around donor control, a pastiche of opaque voting and tabulating systems including black-box proprietary electronic machines that could allow undetectable fraud, and, topping it all off, the Electoral College.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are the two most perfectly clownish figures to lead this election circus, which appears guaranteed to end up in a fight over the result.
The proper response to this should be an organized public, political boycott.
The ruling class doesn’t much care about which duopoly clown emcees the circus; the majority of the people not voting, sapping legitimacy from the system, is what it fears most.
Trump recently said:
“Just as I promised I recognized Israel’s eternal capital and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem, Jerusalem became the capital. I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. You know, Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House, probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there, and they were always after…
And as soon as I’d give them something, always for Israel, as soon as I’d give them something, they’d want something else. I said, give me a couple of weeks, will you please?
But I gave them the Golan Heights, and they never even asked for it. You know, for 72 years, they’ve been trying to do the Golan Heights, right? And even Sheldon didn’t have the nerve. But I said: You know what? I said to David Friedman, give me a quick lesson, like five minutes or less. on the Golan Heights. And he did. And I said: Let’s do it. We got it done in about 15 minutes, right?”
This was even worse than his notorious answer as a candidate at the Republican debate in 2015:
“Q: You’ve also supported a host of other liberal policies, you’ve also donated to several Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton included, Nancy Pelosi. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business related favors. And you said recently, quote, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.
TRUMP: You better believe it… I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.
Q: So what did you get from Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi?
TRUMP: I’ll tell you what. With Hillary Clinton, I said, be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why? She had no choice! Because I gave.”
Trump — the purported anti-Swamp candidate — is telling us that, as president, he had his biggest donors at the White House “almost more than anybody outside of people that work there,” always after something, “always for Israel,” and he was eager to give them anything they wanted, contravening decades of fundamental U.S. foreign policy and international law to do so.
In fact, he was so eager to please, he gave them a contravention of longstanding national policy and international law “they never even asked for” — recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. That was an issue of national policy and international law about which, he tells us, he was entirely ignorant, and was content to radically overturn after a lesson of “five minutes or less” from an uber-Zionist.
Trump, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu behind him, looking over his shoulder, signing proclamation recognizing Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights, March 2019. (White House, Shealah Craighead)
Donald Trump is telling us that the president of the United States is, and he as POTUS was, a figurehead who, in return for their money, takes orders from his donors like a servant, and uses the apparatus of the United States government and his position as overseer of a global empire to literally “give” those donors parts of other countries.
Because “when they give, you do whatever the hell they want you to do.” He is telling us that, as a politician and president, he became exactly the kind of swamp creature he criticized his opponents for being in 2015. Donald Trump 2024 is confirming for us, and bragging about how well he embodies it: “that’s a broken system.” You better believe it.
Can you say “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”?
I dare any MAGA disciple to deny that s/he would renounce as a traitorous swamp creature any Democrat s/he heard bragging about how they let “George and Alex” Soros (rather than “Miriam and Sheldon” Adelson), as his/her most frequent guests, run around and run the White House, ordering up changes that overturn longstanding national policy and international law — and then try to deny that Trump is exactly the same kind of creature.
I’m sure any MAGA disciple will say: “But Biden/Kamala/the Democrats do the same thing! They’re just not as obvious about it.” And they are right. And that’s the point, the entire point, of the duopoly choice. And it’s the reason, the principal reason, for the dominant faction of the ruling class’s antipathy to Trump.
The Democrats obscure and gloss over their obsequious fealty to the rulers with gentler, kinder, “progressive” rhetoric and insistent claims to champion the “middle class” (“working class” is so 20th-century). Trump, who’s captured the Republican Party, keeps saying what’s supposed to be the quiet part out loud.
He is comfortable bragging about his mega-donors running around the White House because he considers himself one of them, born into their club, so what’s wrong with that? The Democrats take a quieter, more humble posture when being invited to manage their master’s domain.
Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff pause after planting a pomegranate tree in the garden at the vice president’s residence on Oct. 7, 2024, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks in Israel. (White House, Oliver Contreras)
There are many people, including longtime Democrats, who are so rightfully angry about the incompetence, failure, and betrayal of Biden-Harris and the Democrats, that they’re considering voting for Trump, just to shake things up. One of my readers succinctly captured the reason for Trump’s appeal beyond his MAGA base: “The fact remains that there is something in Trump that the deep state thinks it cannot control.” That appeal was only enhanced by the two assassination attempts.
There’s no denying the Deep State distrusts him, and for good reason: No one, including Trump, knows what he will do or say next.
He’s got no firm political ideology, just stubs of ideas, a few of which are not bad. But he doesn’t have the intellectual capacity or political facility for executing them. And he has a ton of bad ideas.
Sometimes both at the same time — like ordering an attack on Iran and calling it off at the last minute. Narcissism and confusion mask insecurity. Precisely contrary to how he wants to be seen, Trump is actually a weak, insecure political actor, susceptible to being pushed around — especially by those he perceives as rich friends or tough guys, and who know how to handle his narcissism and need.
And they tend to come from the Deep State creatures (capitalist moguls, military/intelligence operatives, and neocon warmongers) he surrounds himself with. They, and the donors, will get him to do whatever the hell they want.
OK, maybe nine out of 10 times. As the writer Keaton Weiss has said, betting on Trump is like playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in the gun. But the idea that Trump will be different this time, in any programmatic sense — that he’s going tp embrace and fight for someone else’s program of free speech or Making America Healthy Again versus his stated program of making America, and Israel, “powerful” again — is wishful thinking, as futile as the idea that someone’s going to push Kamala left.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Trump at rally in Glendale, Arizona, in August. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Please, did you forget he already was president for four years? Did anything fundamentally change? Do you think he’s not the same guy who prosecuted Julian Assange and assassinated the Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani?
Trump is an ignorant, arrogant, narcissistic scion of the ruling class, who brags about being all of those things in ways that often embarrass, and can undermine support for, the capitalist dictatorship and the U.S. empire.
He tells us he’s going to “Make Israel Great Again” (‘cause he, too, thinks that’s the job of the U.S. president), blow Iran to smithereens, intimidate Russia and China into submission, make American women stop thinking about abortion rights, and, yes, “close the internet.”
He thinks he should be president because he is who he is, and he’ll talk his way out of it if he makes his arrogance too manifest.
Of course, the Democrats, now led by Harris, are supercilious, hypocritical defenders of the ruling class, American imperialism, and Zionism, who adopt whatever rhetorical strategies might fool disaffected constituencies into thinking they’re something else. Bur many people are fed up with their game and don’t believe anything they say.
Kamala has been the darling of the Democratic donor elite since she was anointed at a 2017 meeting in the Hamptons “with Hillary Clinton’s biggest backers,” where, “already said to be the Democrats’ top fund-raiser,” she “expand[ed] her influence and ambitions” and was “talked about as a 2020 presidential hopeful.”
Harris and Clinton with Rachel Ruto, back to camera, wife of Kenya’s President William Samoei Ruto, at a White House reception in May. (White House, Lawrence Jackson)
Unfortunately, she didn’t get any votes from actual people and, after her blistering attack on Joe Biden — Don’t worry, ”It was a debate!” — dropped out of the race before the Iowa caucus. Don’t worry, the donor cabal got her on the ticket in 2020 and got her as the presidential nominee this year — no votes needed.
Kamala tells us nothing much about what she will do because she has no idea what she will do. Her vacuity and opportunism are on display with her word-salad responses to specific questions that leave even Oprah wide-eyed and her bizarre attempt to pretend she’s a newcomer who hasn’t been part of the Biden administration for the last three-and-a-half years.
Kamala thinks she should be president because she’s not Trump and has proved herself a compliant minion of the donors. She might get herself into the presidency by talking as little as possible and allowing wishful thinkers to project what they’re looking for onto her.
Advice to both candidates: “Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”
Homes and caskets and people are floating around North Carolina and Tennessee, Israel is continuing to kill and maim hundreds of people per week in Gaza and is bombing and invading Lebanon, Iran has just sent a salvo of hundreds of ballistic missiles into Israel, the U.S. has sent 40,000 troops into an undeclared war, and we are waiting to see how the disasters unfold from here.
Both of these ignorant, imperialist and rabidly Zionist candidates are trying to keep the growing number of Americans, who are rightfully angry because they are getting nothing from American capitalism and imperialism, safely enclosed in the duopoly corral, where they can be blown to smithereens in WWIII or ground down as their infrastructure and social economy are drained away by profit-seeking vampires.
Blackstone is now buying up mobile home parks, to suck more money-blood out of struggling people living in the very last bastion of affordable housing. But don’t worry, Israel and Ukraine got $8 billion each.
In the midst of all this consequential chaos, we have no idea who’s actually running the country. The fact that the president is a figurehead for the ruling class and the deep state apparatus has never been more apparent, nor more blithely accepted. Woodrow Wilson and Ronald Reagan had to hide their enfeeblement. Now the whole world knows Joe has checked out, and it’s a big yawn. The president is a zero.
Still, there have been some presidents who were smart. Or at least competent. Or at least articulate. Or at least persuasive. Roosevelt, Kennedy, Obama, even early Reagan to an extent. These two are none of that. In a context where intelligent statesmanship has never been more necessary, it will be worse than zero.
One of these two will become president of the United States. To think either of them is an anti-establishment, anti-war, free-speech candidate who will save democracy, or drain the swamp, or avert the disasters we face, is to be inflicted with either Trump Derangement Syndrome or its mirror image, MAGA Personality Cult.
Believe what the presidents of the United States have told you about themselves and this country. With either of them, as Biden said: “Nothing would fundamentally change.” This country will still be, as the other man said, an “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.” And, as the other other man said, most recently and succinctly, they will both do “whatever the hell their donors want them to do.”
We’re screwed. The demise of America seems irreversible. Whoever becomes president, it will be a catastrophe — for us and for the world.
Jim Kavanagh taught Literary and Cultural Studies at Princeton, Carnegie Mellon and Wesleyan Universities and writes political analysis for independent media. He is a frequent guest on The Critical Hour and Political Misfits on Radio Sputnik, and on PressTV. His work can be found on his Substack and his YouTube and Rumble channels. He was a co-founder of NYC Free Assange.
A version of this article originally appeared on The Polemicist, the author’s Substack page.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.