Day after day my readers from the #MAGA crowd keep hoping I’ll be proven wrong about Donald Trump, and day after day all they ever get is more signs that I’m right.
In a new interview on CNBC, President Trump said that he is now open to supporting the infamous Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, the free trade deal whose toxic globalism Trump’s populist 2016 campaign made a key point of criticizing at every opportunity. The president added that he’d only consider signing on to the TPP “if we made a much better deal than we had,” but no matter what Trump’s definition of a “better deal” is the fact that he’d consider signing such a trade agreement under any circumstances is already necessarily a violation of his campaign promises of replacing multilateral trade agreements with one-on-one bilateral deals.
“There’s no way to fix TPP,” Trump said in 2016. “We need bilateral trade deals. We do not need to enter into another massive international agreement that ties us up and binds us down, like TPP does.”
No matter what Trump’s hypothetical new and improved TPP would look like, it would necessarily be another massive international agreement. This would necessarily be yet another broken campaign promise, and Trump’s base will have yet another sign that he has picked up the “false song of globalism” he campaigned against, both militarily and economically. His “bilateral trade deals” were as fake as his non-interventionism.
Bernie Sanders summons team to discuss 2020 https://t.co/QnpHFEOHXa pic.twitter.com/oQyjLpgGu1
— POLITICO (@politico) January 25, 2018
At the same time Trump supporters learned that they may be getting the TPP after all, on the other side of the gap Democrats were hearing that Bernie Sanders has gathered a team to talk about the possibility of a 2020 presidential run. This has drawn excitement from progressives all across America, but in some strange way I can’t help but feel more or less the same about both these two stories. As the MAGA crowd slowly loses hope in their savior, the Berners are gaining hope in theirs.
But there is no savior coming. This game doesn’t work that way.
Not that you will see me discouraging people from supporting Sanders if that’s what the 2020 election boils down to. American progressives want the things Sanders says he wants to give them, and the awkward, clunky shuffle towards what the people want is what will ultimately overthrow the oligarchic cancer which has metastasized throughout the nation. Sanders has a lot of problems, most notably his continued collaboration with the warmongering Democratic party and facilitation of the despicable Russiagate psyop, but I could see him playing some role as a tool of the people against the sociopathic elites who are oppressing them.
But that’s what this is all about: a people’s revolution. It will never, ever, ever be about one man or woman who will swoop in and save the day, because no matter how awesome that man or woman is they’ll only ever be just one small person in the face of the vast omnicidal ecocidal threshing machine that is the US power establishment. Neither Bernie nor Trump are in any position to save the world from this machine, and we’ve been seeing this reflected in their actions as they choose the establishment over the people time and time again.But collectively we all can kill it.
Bernie Would’ve Won… And He Wouldn’t Have Been Much Better#BernieWouldHaveWon #BernieSanders #DeepState #Oligarchyhttps://t.co/9xEGWI2U8Q
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 21, 2017
Trump Isn’t Another Hitler. He’s Another Obama.#MAGA #Trump #Democrats #Republicanshttps://t.co/ar5t7dO43i
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) January 6, 2018
A lot of Berners still maintain the belief that the Democratic establishment sabotaged Sanders’ campaign because they were afraid of him, but that’s simply not true. Bernie is just one man; the establishment was never afraid of Bernie. They were afraid of you. They were afraid of the populist insurgency throwing an unapproved candidate in the path of the Anointed Queen Hillary despite being instructed by the mass media propaganda machine over and over again that they were not permitted to choose him. They were afraid of the people. And they should be.
So sure, support Bernie 2020 if that’s where this journey ends up taking you, but don’t you dare give him your power. Don’t you dare place your faith in him that he will fix everything like Obama’s supporters naively did in 2008 and Trump’s supporters naively did in 2016. Don’t you dare place your faith in him that he will overthrow the oligarchy and restore power to the people, because he won’t. He can’t, no matter how well-intentioned he might be. Only you can do that, in collaboration with your brothers and sisters across the nation.
Don’t trust Bernie. Don’t trust Trump. Use them as tools to the extent that they are useful, but don’t you dare ever make the mistake of believing them to be more than that. They aren’t what’s going to save the world from its problems. You are.
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6 responses to “Stop Looking For Saviors”
Bernie is great, and I did what little I could to try to get him elected in 2016.
But Tulsi Gabbard will be a better candidate in 2020.
I couldn’t agree more. The mindless hero worship of HRC by her supporters irritated me as much as their indifference to her rabid foreign policy and neoliberalism.
You know well that the next and the next…and all the following “leaders” …will be the same unless the inner revolution takes place!
The system is now too complex to bring fundamental universal change as THAT is what is needed to save life in our home planet!
I’m not fooled by anything. Disgusted is a better description.
I have loved most of what Sanders says, but far from everything he has done. I do continue to monitor him via The Sanders Institute, Our Revolution, his open appearances and broadcasts and via independent news media. I still like most of what he says, but even less of what he does.
As for Trump and the TPP, this is not news. Since I decided to follow, to see where things go, I did not retain the source. However, it was nearly a month ago that someone on the inside leaked, not the content but the comment, that a the trade agreement Trump was then pushing looked very much like the TPP.
A simple glance at what Trump has been trying to do, over his work history and especially over the past year, has long made it clear that he favors corporate globalism – just as long as he is one to profit greatly from it.
Trump is an insecure bully who thinks that money and power can truly replace his emptiness more than can acting on behalf of humanity.
At his age, I doubt that he will change. And, unless the majority of Americans lose the precious comfort they enjoy (even under the duress of long working hours, lower real pay, fewer benefits and loss of Constitutionally-endowed freedoms), nothing will change in the short run.
When those losses occur, not if they do, I see the next revolution as a violent one. Neither Trump, Sanders, nor I – by dint of age – is likely to be here to see it However, I cannot see how it won’t be violent, for the longer the decline persists, the more and more power will be gained by the “sociopathic elites” [thanks for that term, Caity]. The tipping point for a chance at a peaceful resolution is not very far away at all. Once that point passes, oligarchic power will be totally too strong to overcome peacefully.
Can I have an “Amen!” for the sister?
Well said… I’m glad it’s been said as well… needd to be.