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“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. - Friedrich Nietzche; Beyond Good and Evil
The danse macabre of the 2016 U.S. election is, mercifully, nearly at an end. And, though the result might not be a certainty, the outcome for Americans, and much of the world, is assured. For, despite pretensions to the contrary, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump represent extreme dangers in the near, medium, and long term. And so, into the abyss we go.
If this analysis strikes you as morbid and overly bleak, then you may be one of the fortunate souls to have ignored the morass of the U.S. political circus. But for those whose vices includes the voyeuristic masochism that comes with following U.S. politics, and whose values are rooted in those long-lost treasures called morality, ethics, and conscience, there is little to be hopeful about. The counterfeit “Hope and Change” are exiting stage right, and the nakedly hopeless once again line up to be anointed with the oils of the power elite. Such is the stark reality of America in 2016.
And so, the responsibility of truthful analysis rooted in material reality, to say nothing of the aforementioned conscience, falls on those whose worldviews are not relegated to rooting for Team Blue or Team Red, and who refuse to be cowed by the imperial Wicked Witch and the proto-fascist Lex Luthor. As the inimitable Hunter S. Thompson famously put it, “We’ve gone from bad to worse to rotten … and the outlook is for more of the same.”
President Clinton: The Nightmarish Vision
Progressive friends are fond of professing their lack of enthusiasm for Hillary as they nervously reiterate that they feel forced to support the Butcher of Tripoli to prevent the Mussolini of Midtown from sitting in the Oval Office. And while they may feel a sense of responsibility to keep the fascist bogeyman from power, they conveniently feel exactly no responsibility for the crimes that will be committed by Clinton. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
And, lest I be accused of hyperbole, I should be clear that Clinton’s criminality is very much a reality.
On foreign policy, Clinton not only shows the world the abyss, she pushes us over the edge and into it. Consider Hillary’s repeated calls for a “No Fly Zone” in Syria which, aside from expanding a vicious that has already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions, runs the Strangelovian risk of provoking war with nuclear-armed Russia. There was a time when preventing nuclear war was a core value of progressive politics; not so anymore, apparently.
Of course, if Libya is any indicator, Hillary will sleep soundly in the knowledge that many more hundreds of thousands will die, countries will be torn apart, and the already inflamed Middle East will turn into a raging inferno, if not a mushroom cloud.
Going deeper into the sanitarium of Clintonian foreign policy, Hillary has made not-so-veiled threats against China and Russia, promising to “ring China with missile defense” and threatening Russia with “political, economic, and military responses,” as she infamously stated in a speech before the American Legion. Leaving aside little inconveniences like nuclear winter and the destruction of life on Planet Earth, Clinton’s foreign policy is marked by the same core tenets of US imperialism or, as the jingoes that rule the roost in Washington like to refer to it, “American Exceptionalism.” Perhaps this is why nearly every US neocon and war criminal, from Henry Kissinger to Robert Kagan, is supporting Clinton; Hillary promises more and bigger wars, just the sort of murderous policy that the military-industrial complex beast needs to sustain itself.
Let us not forget Latin America where Clinton has already wrought destruction on an industrial scale, and where she promises even more bloodletting. While Secretary of State, Clinton and her henchmen such as Lanny Davis, facilitated a right-wing coup in Honduras which has led directly to the deaths of untold thousands of innocent Hondurans, including the revered feminist and Indigenous activist Berta Cáceres. In fact, Cáceres herself explained in a 2014 interview:
“We’re coming out of a coup that we can’t put behind us. We can’t reverse it. It just kept going. And after, there was the issue of the elections. The same Hillary Clinton, in her book, ‘Hard Choices,’ practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the meddling of North Americans in our country. The return of the president, Mel Zelaya, became a secondary issue. There were going to be elections in Honduras. And here she [Clinton] recognized that they didn’t permit Mel Zelaya’s return to the presidency.”
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But Clinton’s policy in Latin America will be much more destructive than simply facilitating coups. In fact, Clinton will be the dutiful servant of Wall Street when it comes to bringing Latin America to heel after two decades of independent policies from the socialist and/or social democratic governments in the region.
Between her close relationship to Goldman-Sachs and other Wall Street banks which have played a pivotal role in the recent regime change in Brazil and the ongoing attacks on Venezuela and Ecuador, and her commitment to the Cthulhu of free trade, Clinton will further deepen Washington’s exploitation of Latin America.
With Clinton in the White House, her pro-Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), pro-Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) position will have a deep impact on Latin America and the world. And while Clinton has tried to deny her support for TPP, it is easy to recall her referring to that odious agreement as “the gold standard in trade agreements.”
With right wing governments now in place both in Argentina and Brazil, Clinton will be perfectly positioned to reorient Latin American politics back to its traditional role as footstool for Yankee imperialism. Indeed, Argentina’s President Macri has already signaled his desire to use Mercosur as a vehicle for entering into TTIP, the massive free trade agreement that would open up participants to European and U.S. capital. He has equally indicated his desire to move closer to the Pacific Alliance countries, three of which (Chile, Peru, and Mexico) are already on board with the TPP.
And, of course, Clinton will continue the U.S. policy of militarizing Latin America using the so-called “War on Drugs” as the pretext for doing so. Not only will such policies bring smiles to the faces of the Wall Street hyenas backing Hillary, they will expand the U.S. military footprint throughout the region in a bid to ensure that no truly independent Latin America will be possible.
Trump and the Politics of Delusion
Where Clinton might best be seen as a many-headed hydra – Cthulhu on the Campaign Trail – Trump might best be understood as Frankenstein’s monster in suit, tie, and hairpiece.
And, despite his image of crusader against Beltway buffoonery, Trump offers very little in terms of substantive policies to help working class and poor people, millions of whom have gravitated to his campaign.
For while Trump talks a big game about the need to reverse the destruction wrought by NAFTA and free trade, his policy proposals on that front amount to merely making the super-rich super-richer. Similarly, Trump mouths the talking points of a right-wing isolationist, but his actual foreign policy proposals merely promise to drop the pretense of humanitarian and morally justified war.
Trump was lambasted for correctly pointing out the inherent danger of confronting Russia over Syria and noting his disagreement with the idea of military force against Assad. However, in their irresponsible rush to crown the Donald as the Prince of Peace, millions of Americans conveniently forgot that Trump has also called for up to 30,000 U.S. ground troops to be sent into Iraq and Syria in a push to “defeat ISIS.” It seems that Trump, like Clinton, is adept at speaking from both sides of his mouth.
Similarly, the question of economic and trade policy continues to be critically ignored. That is to say that the media reports what Trump says, but does almost no substantive analysis of the actual policies. For instance, Trump correctly points out the economic devastation of free trade which Hillary Clinton supports. His answer? More money to the wealthiest Americans.
According to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, Trump’s economic plan would cut taxes by $6.2 trillion over the next decade, with 47 percent of that going to the top 1 percent. And while tax reduction might sound nice for working Americans watching their real earnings continue to fall, the reality is that Trump’s extreme trickle-down economics will only impoverish Americans further. The fact that Trump is able to posture as an economic populist says as much about the corporate media as it does about the inability of Americans to understand what is in their own best interests.
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And of course, it must be noted that Trump is trading in the sort of viciously racist politics that, it must be said, forms the core of American political and social history. Trump is merely giving expression to the racist attitudes forcibly suppressed (at least publicly) these last decades. Trump represents the antidote to immigration and destruction of a once great America by the brown-skinned others, be they Mexican, Arab, or Chinese.
In effect, Trump is the right-wing Obama in terms of this campaign. He is the empty vessel into which the angry, frustrated, and volatile public can pour their hopes and dreams, a blank screen on which to project the movie Americans wish they were living.
But this is no work of fiction, this is real life. And while some might prefer the dream to the waking nightmare, reality still must be faced. And this election, a choice between Tweedle Bum and Tweedle Bummer is, in many ways, the epitome of everything that’s wrong with America.
We’re not “Stronger Together” because there is no together: the U.S. is run by, and works for, the elites. We can’t “Make America Great Again” by feeding the rich while simply retreading all the same reactionary, racist, and neocolonial attitudes that have made this country the heart of global imperialism for the last 75 years, at least. No, there’s nothing to be gained from jumping headlong into the abyss.
And so, pardon me if I don’t get too worked up on Election Night, as millions of Americans are glued to their TV and computer screens watching the results of the vote. Some will clutch their blue pennants, others their red ones. I’ll be reaching for the remote control in hopes of finding something, anything, else to watch.
Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. He is the editor of StopImperialism.org and host of CounterPunch Radio. You can reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com.
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