Category: USA

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Counterfeiting information.

Although trite to say so, if knowledge is power, then information is its currency. The more complete the information at hand, the more knowledge that it imparts, which can be wielded for bad or good.

In that light, spreading disinformation is akin to counterfeiting. It is fraud masquerading as fact. The more it is accepted and disseminated, the more genuine informational “currency” (including scientific and factual information) is devalued. The more legitimate information is devalued the more it becomes indistinguishable from disinformation. This is the purpose of many psychological warfare campaigns and is a standard tool for authoritarians that rely on so-called “gaslighting” tactics to keep their subjects confused or ignorant of actual reality and the circumstances of their rule.

Actors who use disinformation campaigns in liberal democracies are no more than imposters and counterfeiters attempting to influence the political market. Counterfeiters and imposters are not accepted in the financial and business markets, so there is no reason to accept them in the political and social realms. Instead, they should be seen as malignancies that need to be excised.

This should be the bottom line for political parties and social media platforms: disinformation is fraud. Peddling information counterfeits should be avoided and blocked rather than enabled, much less encouraged. This is not a “free speech” or civil liberties issue. It is a matter of countering malign deceptions deliberately designed to hinder and cloud the flow of legitimate information in the social and political spheres.

The threat to democracy posed by information counterfeiting is worsening. The proliferation of social media and the descent into “winner take all” disloyal political competition has aided the trend. Information counterfeiting is now used by both domestic and foreign actors who may or may not be working synergistically. It no longer is confined to times of open (inter-state or civil) conflict. For the foreign actor it is a means of weakening a targeted society from within by sowing division and partisan/racial/ethnic/religious/cultural rancour. For domestic actors it is a way to pursue partisan advantage and achieve political gain even if over the long-term it serves the purposes of hostile foreign agents. Be it myopic or strategic in objective, political counterfeiting is inimical to liberal democratic values because it seeks to impede or disrupt the flow of legitimate information in society.

It may seem obvious that disinformation and “fake news” is bad. But it is particularly bad when those who start the spread of disinformation turn around and accuse opponents of doing so when challenged on factual grounds. That is when Orwell meets Alice in Wonderland when it comes to the information stream framing the narrative that informs public opinion.

I have chosen here to rephrase the subject of disinformation as a form of counterfeiting. Not only because it advises caution when validating political claims, much like one would do when checking a label, stitching, material, ink or other components of a branded product, commodity or banknote. Doing so also removes arguments about free speech and rights of expression from the equation when it comes to confronting and countering disinformation in the public square because it frames the matter as one of fraud, not opinion. That should then become the basis for legal approaches to framing fair, just and proper responses to the problem.

Otherwise liars, cheats, agitators and provocateurs will continue to peddle false public narratives in pursuit of selfish gain.

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When the dictator wears capes.

Today Chileans voted overwhelmingly to elect a constitutional assembly and redraft the 1980 Constitution promulgated by the dictatorship of Agusto Pinochet. I regret that my old friend Bob Barros, whose death I wrote about a while ago, is not around to see this moment because he was the first person to write a book length analysis of the Chilean dictatorship’s attempts to institutionalise its rule via legal means, including constitution drafting.

The process for redrawing the foundational charter will involve electing a citizen constitutional convention next year, then voting on its draft version of a new charter in 2022. Presumably authoritarian clauses such as granting the military 15 percent of pre-tax copper revenues will be removed in the process.

But that is not what I am here to write about. Instead, I bring Chile up because events in the US remind me something my father told me years ago when we were watching Pinochet trying to neutralise the transition to democracy by organising a referendum in 1988 on extending his rule for another eight years. The wording of the referendum was deliberately phrased in Pinochet’s favour, with a “Yes” vote being a reaffirmation of support for the Motherland while a “No” vote was construed as unpatriotic and a negative slap at all that was good in Chile.

As it turns out, in 1989 I just happened to be a Research Fellow at a think tank at the same time that one of the architects of the 1988 “No” campaign was in residence. His name is Eugenio Tironi, a sociologist, who was one of those responsible for turning a “No” vote into a positive affirmation of support for democracy and a “Yes” vote as continued support for oppression. His accounting of the obstacles the “NO” campaigners faced, both in terms of physical intimidation (it was a murderous regime that they were confronting after all) and in terms of the institutional deck being stacked against them, was inspirational. The “No” vote won with 56 percent in that contest and the rest, as they say, is history. Yet, even though there have been amendments to the 1980 constitution, it took forty years for it to be designated for comprehensive review.

Again, I digress. During those years my father, who had been the head of the American Chamber of Commerce and managing director of a foreign multinational in Chile in the 1970s and was a friend of Pinochet and some of his ministers, strongly debated with me the merits of the so-called “Chilean Miracle,” military authoritarians as political circuit breakers and the role of the “Chicago Boys” in crafting Chilean economic policy. I have a University of Chicago Political Science Ph.D. from that era and had many run-ins with the Chilean (and Argentine, Brazilian and South Korean) economics graduate students of the time, many of whom were junior military officers directly involved in atrocities and other human rights abuses. Let’s just say that we did not get along on or off the soccer field.

By 1989 I had written a bit about military authoritarianism, state terror, democratic transitions and issues of labour politics and civil-military relations in transitional moments. I had begun also begun my affiliation with various US security agencies, something that lasted until I emigrated to NZ. So the discussions with my father were driven by ideological difference but for both of us the conversations were grounded in practical experience in Latin America–his doing business for over 30 years in the region and mine as a result of the mix of personal and professional experiences dating back to my childhood in Argentina.

During the 1988 referendum in Chile by father and I happened to be spending time together when out of the blue he said “when the dictator starts wearing capes, he is soon to fall.” Seeing the dumbfounded look on my face he explained that it was a variation on the “emperor has no clothes” theme. To wit: when a military dictator starts looking like Elvis in his final (Las Vegas) years, it means that he no longer has anyone around him to give him objective assessments of his position. Surrounded by sycophants and yes-men, the dictator loses an important feedback loop by which to judge the efficaciousness and popularity of his actions. At that point he starts making mistakes and yet no one will point out to him where he went wrong. By the time he realises that he has gotten himself into trouble via faulty decision-making, the knives are out and the rats are jumping ship.

That was what the 1988 referendum was for Pincohet. I mean, look at the guy:

Heck, his whole entourage had the syndrome:

It is possible that “el Viejo,” as we called my old man, may have warned “Don Agusto” that his uniform had limited mileage, even if his advice went unheeded. At a minimum my father understood that the general needed to drop the capes when sharing public space with foreign executives. Around my Dad he apparently did (sorry for the scan but it tells the story nevertheless):

The captions write themselves at this point but suffice to say this was before Pinochet went full Elvis.

The larger issue is that once you reach the wearing capes state of affairs, it is all over but the shouting.

That brings me to Donald Trump. True, he does not wear capes (although he does wear long overcoats, as Barbara has kindly pointed out in a comment) and true, he is an elected wanna-be Pinochet not installed by coup. But if his ridiculous hair and fake tan are not clear indicators of his “cape syndrome,” then the fact that he is now standing on balconies and stages barking about socialism, low water pressure, “rounding the corner” on Covid-19, repeating that more testing means more cases, then refusing to quarantine or socially distance numerous infected White House employees while claiming that he is “immune” and saying that Biden is going to allow dark males to rape and pillage in white suburbia are all one needs to understand that he is mentally and politically done. Either he is not listening to his advisors or they are not telling him the truth, but either way his path is his downfall. For a guy who supposedly is the most powerful person on earth, his world is really small and strikingly insular.

I mean, really:

Come to think of it, Trump probably has a cape or two in his closets, complete with matching hoods, but breaking them out at rallies might be too much for most voters (although one has to admit that it would be a truly epic moment in US political history if he did so). So when it comes to determining if he has reached peak “cape,” we will just have to settle for what he says and does (and not do).

All of which suggests that he is delusional when shouting MAGA! when in fact he is swimming upstream into a blue tide.

PS: It has come to my attention that Darth Vader and some of his minions also wore capes. Make of that what you will.

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A suggestion for Biden’s foreign policy (with bonus “A View from Afar” podcast).

I have been thinking about US foreign policy after the upcoming election. My working assumption is that try as he might, Trump will lose the election and be forced from office. There will be much litigating of the results and likely civil unrest, but on Jan 21, 2021 the Orange Merkin will no longer disgrace the office of US president.

The damage to the US reputation and interests done by the Trump administration has been extraordinary and will take much time and effort to reverse, and even then some of the damage may be irreparable. The scope of what has to happen is too broad to discuss in a short KP post, but here is some food for thought: If Biden wins the US election he should name Barack Obama as ambassador extraordinaire/special envoy to lead the repair, restoration and reform of US foreign relations.

That is a very big task, which is why no one can do more to undue the damage wreaked by Trump than POTUS 44. Obama is the most respected politician in the world according to global surveys and his party is (slowly) moving leftwards. The latter is important because it means that some of the old shibboleths of US foreign policy like unconditional support for Israel or Saudi Arabia can be challenged from within the Democratic establishment of which Obama is part. More broadly, he represents both continuity and change in US foreign policy, and has the stature to confront, cajole and convince international interlocutors. Unconstrained by the strictures of the presidency yet deeply aware of US failures and flaws–including his own while POTUS–as well as its strengths and interests, Obama would have relative freedom and autonomy when negotiating on the country’s behalf. That affords him some room for manoeuvre when addressing thorny matters of international import.

All he needs is institutional (presidential, most importantly) support and the awareness that the US cannot return to the status quo ante. Post-Trump and post-pandemic, with new power contenders firmly entrenched in the international scene and with a broad erosion of international norms and mores, the world is a different place than it was during his term in office, and not necessarily one that looks to the US for unchallenged leadership or moral guidance. That is precisely why someone of his stature is needed to help redefine and reconstitute US foreign relations.

Theoretically Obama could take a step down to SecState, but that is awkward given his previous job and prior relationship with Biden. Making him a global Mr. Fix-It answering directly to POTUS 46 gives him institutional weight commensurate with his stature as ex-president. That frees up the eventual SecState to concentrate on rebuilding the foreign service (decimated by Trump’s minions) and conducting the daily business of diplomacy while Obama concentrates on the hard nuts to crack: the suspended START intermediate range missile negotiations with the Russians, the abandoned Iran nuclear limitation deal, the cancelled Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade compact, Israeli-Palestinian relations, the DPRK impasse, etc. He knows the issues, he knows the principles and principals involved and he knows the history behind and between them.

There will be much on Obama’s plate, to be sure, but with enough resources devoted to the task such a division of labor between him and the State Department could more rapidly address the myriad areas of foreign policy that have been left derelict or deliberately damaged by the mediocrities currently running the White House, Foggy Bottom and other agencies of the federal government responsible for foreign policy issues. That makes the selection of SecState especially important, as the person would need to be able to handle Obama’s plenipotentiary status and also the demands of running the foreign policy bureaucracy while supporting the ex-president’s endeavours.

Biden has already singled that he will use some “old hands” (mostly Obama staffers) in his foreign policy team and will re-assert the preference for democracy and human rights in his approach to foreign relations. But his nostalgic perspective will need to be seriously tempered by two incontrovertible facts, one internal and external. Externally, he will take office at a time when the US is a declining power confronted by rising and resurgent powers and an absence of consensus on how nation-states should behave in such transitional times. It no longer has the will or the ability to be the world’s policeman and the US-led global economic model operative during a half century has seen its frailties exposed by Covid-19. The US must adjust accordingly.

Internally, Biden must agree to a significant number of the foreign policy demands of the left-wing of the Democratic Party not only in order to win the election but in order to achieve stability within government after it. He will try to do so incrementally rather than radically but the bottom line is that he has to do so given the changing times in which we live.

Then there is the military aspect of foreign policy. Since Bush 43 the US has been over-reliant on the military as a blunt instrument of foreign policy to the detriment of diplomacy. The traditional dictum that the military should be used only when diplomacy fails has long been discarded, and the Trump administration simply does not comprehend that “military diplomacy” is not always about the deployment, threat and use of force. The relationship between diplomacy and military force is not a zero sum game. The approach to it therefore has to change.

Recently Hillary Clinton has written about the need to reconsider the “Four D’s” of foreign policy: defence, diplomacy, development and the domestic sources of US international relations. Although she (like Biden and Obama) remains wedded to the liberal internationalist school of thought whereby market economies and democratic politics are considered to be the best economic-political combination for both national as well as international politics (something that is under serious challenge on a number of fronts including from within the US), her call for a review and revision of the priority placed on the four pillars of US foreign policy represented by the “D’s” is worth considering.

In fact, although there is a need to bring in fresh and more progressive voices into the US foreign policy establishment, Hillary Clinton might just make an excellent Secretary of Defence should she be willing to take the job. After all, no one is going to say that her relatively hawkish views are ill-suited for the job running the Pentagon, and her vast experience can be used to bring entrenched interests within it into line, assuming that she believes her own words about the need for institutional reform. Like Obama, she can represent continuity and change, this time in US military policy. She knows the issues, she knows the principles and principals involved, and she knows the history behind and between them.

After the disaster that is Trump and company, her perceived flaws pale in comparison–and they will not be up for electoral scrutiny in any event since SecDef is a nominated position confirmable by Congress, not an elected position subject to the popular vote. Should the Democrats cut into the GOP Senate majority or win control of the Senate in November, then she should be given serious consideration for the job.

There will be much work to be done. The US needs experienced hands to undo the damage, but it also needs an ideological rethink given the changed context post-Trump. In an ironic way, Trump has cleaned the slate and therefore cleared the way for a new approach to US foreign policy. That moment is soon to arrive. So long as Biden, Clinton and Obama have learned from the past and are listening to the left side of the Democratic base, it seems sensible to use them in their reconfigured roles.

For more on this check out this week’s “A View from Afar” podcast.

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Media Link: Nuclear strategy, then and now.

Although I had the fortune of being a graduate student of some of the foremost US nuclear strategists of the day (1970s) and later rubbed shoulders with Air Force and Naval officers who were entrusted with parts of the US nuclear arsenal, I seldom get to write or speak about the subject nowadays. However, in this week’s “A View from Afar” podcast with Selwyn Manning, we discuss the evolution of nuclear strategy and the impact of technology on logics of deterrence. It is all-too-brief but I think we got to the gist of the matter.

You can find the podcast here.

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In the US, the End of Days.

I am feeling a bit impish today and so for no particular reason I thought I would share this thought, which I first posted over on twitter:

“Hurricanes, wildfires, floods, heatwaves, murder hornets, street protests, armed vigilante militias, a lethal pandemic and a corrupt authoritarian using the federal government for partisan and personal purposes. All that is needed this election year is a plague of locusts for the US to go full End Times.”

Or think of it this way. The US is like the drunk who finds himself waking up in a gutter covered in his own filth. He has reached an epiphany: he has hit rock bottom and can either seek treatment in order to sober up or he can die miserably in the street. Does he go seek treatment or does he continue on the same course? One choice is tough, the other easier. The body (politic) wants to return to the bottle but the mind says that it is time to quit even though delirium and tremors await.

The US political class needs to use this election year as an intervention that leads to the political equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous. The greed, corruption, hyper-partisan hypocrisy, corporate toadying, lobbyist revolving doors, slush funds and PACs–all of that has to go if they are to save the system from themselves. The question is, can they do it?

The problem is that in order for effective political reform to occur in the US the political class needs to understand that they have hit rock bottom. Not just in the person of Donald Trump but in the entire state of affairs involving the political system. It is dysfunctional, sclerotic, permeated with sleeze, deeply penetrated by vested interests and easily manipulated by money. It needs to be overhauled and revitalised.

I am not sure that the US political class understand this to be the case. Certainly not the GOP, which has used the deficiencies of the system to great partisan advantage. Not necessarily the Democratic Party, which has its own closets and skeletons to cleanse. So it remains to be seen if this election year will be the equivalent of a drunk’s epiphany for them.

Then there is US society. Still intoxicated on the myth of American exceptionalism and still addicted to its jingoistic militarism, armchair patriotism and sense of moral-ethical and physical superiority. Still under the spell of populist charlatans and Christian fundamentalist snake oil peddlers. Still profoundly myopic and inbred in its understanding of the larger world in which it exists. It too, must shake off the hangover and come to the realisation that the US is a hollow shell of its former self, a decadent and vulgar great power led by mediocrities now competing with rising powers not for world dominance but for a continuing place at the geostrategic table. It may not be at the point of eating crumbs yet, but the direction in which it is heading is evident.

The rot in US society comes from within. No external power has been able to do to the US what its own divisions and contradictions have done. What external powers have been able to do is exploit those divisions to their advantage in order to further weaken the US. After all, why confront the US while it remains military strong when a longer-term campaign of internal corrosion can undermine its ideological unity and military strength without firing a shot in anger?

Once nationally divided along the lines witnessed in Charlottesville, Portland, Kenosha and elsewhere, the rot born of societal malaise will seep into the US’s war-fighting capability (as it has already with regard to policy disagreements within DoD about the impact of Covid-19 on force readiness). When that occurs, the US can be more readily confronted at a kinetic and diplomatic level.

What is clear is that, even if the Democrats win in November by taking control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, if the US continues on its current path it will not recover. It may get out of the gutter produced by the four year bender that is the Trump years but it will only get as far as the equivalent of a park bench when it comes to political sobriety and societal health.

The ultimate problem is hypocrisy and delusion. No one wants to admit that the US is in decline and no politician will get elected if s/he honestly says so. Yet that admission is exactly what has to happen because it is the social and political equivalent of standing up in a room full of strangers and saying “hi, I am Uncle Sam and I am an alcoholic. I am here to change my life.”

That day may never come. But the End Days will.

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The MAGA pyramid.

This is a short reflection on the what of Trump’s support in the US two months out from the national elections. For weeks now I have been saying to friends here and in the US that whatever the result, there will be bloodshed in the streets. If Trump wins, his armed supporters will celebrate with open displays of armed intimidation, which will include assaults on those who may chose to oppose them in public spaces. If he loses they will go nuts and attack those who they believe had a hand in stealing the election, especially if he calls on them to defend his stolen victory against the usurping Democrat-led coloured hordes. It will not be pretty, and it has already started in Kenosha and Portland.

Although any sane person would believe that after four years the US simply cannot sustain more of the idiocy, corruption, self-serving greed, bigotry, racism and xenophobia that marks the Trump administration, the truth is that he can get re-elected. With his polling weighed down by the pandemic and its attendant economic downturn, he is pulling out all the stops, with his racist dog-whistling now a full-throated megaphoning disguised as a defence of law and order that is starting to resonate with white audiences unfamiliar or uncaring about the realities of (often militarised) policing in the country. His fear for “suburbia” is no more than a code word for “the coloured folk and commies are coming to harm you, ” with the entire GOP falling into line behind his ugly tropes.

Even though Joe Biden leads most polls and they are doing well in many congressional races, the Democrats need to be careful. Biden is a lacklustre candidate at best who along with the Democratic National Committee has turned his back on the liberal wing of the party in favour of yet more centrism (or better said, in favour of the corporate wing of the party). While a strong choice for Vice President, Kamala Harris is no socialist. The Clinton/Obama wing continues to dominate the campaign strategy, eclipsing Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and the progressives who rally behind the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Once again we are told that the election is too important to lose and that a safe pair of moderate hands palatable to middle class white folk is the best way to ensure that Drumpf is consigned to the ash bin of history.

That dynamic pushes the Democratic agenda onto two legs: Biden/Harris as the “not Trump/Pence” alternative; and identity politics. The reckoning appears to be that in a character match-up Biden/Harris win, and that the changing demographics of the US have reached the point to where appealing to non-whites (yet including white women and youth) is a key to success. It includes appeals to non-binary, liminal or non-heteronormative people. But for that to electorally resonate, the logic goes, the ticket must appear to be “reasonable,” that is, to be centrist and “unifying” in its appeal. Nothing about class can be voiced other than the usual platitudes about the hard-working working classes. Nothing that can be weaponised against it by the label “socialism” can be openly mentioned, such as universal health care and welfare reform, debt relief, etc. These unmentionables may resurface after the election in the event of a Democratic victory that includes winning back both houses of Congress (and assuming that civil war does not break out), but they are not part of the campaign platform because the corporate Democrats do not want to be painted as radicals intent on destroying the American (read: white) way of life–claims that were on ample display at the circus side show that was the Republican National Convention.

This poses dangers for the Democrats. In 2016 Steve Bannon correctly argued that all Trump had to do to win was to appeal to lower middle class and working class whites on economic and cultural grounds. It did not matter if he could not fulfil his campaign promises of economic re-birth. It did not matter if by “culture” his appeal was to retrograde sentiments about a past long gone and best forgotten. What mattered was that the Democrats would be too busy fighting amongst themselves along identity and ideological lines, and this would cause large numbers of would-be Democratic voters to abstain from doing so. Added to the fact that Hillary Clinton was successfully painted (with Russian help) as an out-of-touch elitist with murky connections to nefarious swamp figures at home and abroad (in a Trump projection if there ever was one), and Bannon was proven right. 45 percent of eligible voters did not vote in 2016, and of those most were young and/or non-whites who traditionally lean Democratic in national elections.

In 2020 the stakes are higher now that it is clear that institutions have not been able to contain or even restrain Trump in his sociopathic use of public office for private gain. But the Democratic strategy remains the same: appeal to the centre, try to be “nice,” call for unity, and pander to important interest groups that are not reducible to socio-economic class position. Trouble is, there no longer is a majority centre in the US, polarisation is a seismic fault line fracture in American life that transcends politics, and the fundamental unmentionable of socio-economic class and class inequalities fester like an undetected mestasizing malignancy within the US body politic that no amount of chest-beating mythologizing can cure.

More to the point, no matter what the contradictions of US society may be, Trump’s supporters are not interested in unity and centrist moderation. Some may not realise that they are on their economic and political deathbeds, but they all are itching for a fight and are willing to fight dirty in order to prevail even if it is for the last time. In fact, that is explicitly what the alt-Right notions of replacement and acceleration are all about: start the race war now while whites can still prevail, and accelerate extant social divisions in order to do so. The key to their success is to be organised and armed.

So who are the MAGA morons who are the reliable base that Trump can stoke with his scapegoating and fear-mongering? The answer resides in what we might call the MAGA pyramid.

At the bottom are those who are truly deplorable: racists, bigots, misogynists, xenophobes and assorted other a-holes of various stripes. They are not necessarily stupid or poor meth heads living in trailer parks. They are just evil at heart–true scumbags now encouraged and enabled by Trump to come out from under their rocks and revel in their moment in the light.

Many of them are armed.

Above them are the ignorant. These are people who by dint of lack of intellectual capacity, education, exposure to alternative views or ways of being and other consciousness-raising aspects of social life are easily manipulated and fooled. Some of them are also racist bigots and/or sexist xenophobes. They include the gullible who think that their industrial-era jobs are coming back. They are the fools who think that Covid is a hoax or just another flu, that masks are an assault on freedom and that the Clinton ran a paedophila ring out of the basement of a pizza parlour in Northwest Washington DC. These are the QAnon crowd, now mixed in with anti-vaxers, anti-fluoride and other tin hat-wearing bozos who are easily sold the snake oil about the Deep State, Rothchild’s, Trilateral Commission and other global networks run by Soros lackeys and supplicants. It includes true religious believers who think that somehow Trump, while flawed just like Abraham, is God’s chosen vessel for restoring the US to its position back up on that crumbling hill.

Many of them are armed.

At the top of the pyramid are the opportunists. They include Trump and his entourage, but also corporate actors who have taken advantage of the window of opportunity presented to them by his de-regulatory and tax-cut policies. It includes guns and weapons manufacturers trading on his bully penchant for believing that violence is strength. It includes crony capitalists making money off of projects such as the Wall. It is blessed by Evangelical leaders likeJerry Falwell Jr., he of unzipped pants and pool boy threesome “cuck” fame. It includes rightwing ideological extremists who seek to use his administration as a vehicle for their own nativist agendas (think Stephen Miller, Seb Gorka or the departed John Bolton and Bannon himself) and the “conservative” media ecosystem that feeds off the intellectual detritus that oozes from the GOP partisan swamp. That includes a slew of Republican politicians seeking to coattail on evil and venality for their own gain, even if that turns out to be a losing proposition if you are Paul Ryan or Jeff Sessions. It includes the modern equivalent of house negros (e.g. Herman Cain, of Covid death fame) who step and fetch for the master even in the face of his long history of racist contempt for everything that they represent in humanity. Less one think that I am being unkind to these modern day Toms, remember that they are descendants from what Trump described as s***hole countries” that are not like Norway, and share skin tones with people who Drumpf has declared to be traitors and thugs because they take a knee or to the streets to protest systemic racism in the land of the free.

Trump opportunists come in many guises and are both high- and low-brow in nature, but their single commonality is that they know that their collective fortunes rest on manipulating those below them in the pyramid. So long as there are suckers, dupes and rubes to play in the great con game known as the Trump administration, then there always will be players like those surrounding and supporting him who will be there to play the MAGA morons for all its worth.

They too are often armed. And when not armed themselves, part of the con is that they enable and ensure that those below them in the pyramid maintain unfettered access to guns–and listen to directions.

Some may rebut this trichotomy by saying that there are true believers in the Trump support pyramid. That may be true of deplorables like David Duke and ignorants such as assorted old war veterans ripe for the fleecing. But the vast majority of the opportunists understand that Trump’s one belief is in benefitting himself, and if they can do so as well by toadying up to him, then the more the merrier. This project is not about what he and they can do for the country. It is about what personal and political benefit they can extract from their access to federal power while the joyride lasts.

The question of the moment is whether that the mass violence that might break out the night of the elections (November 3), will in fact start earlier. The way things are going it seems that in the measure that Trump and his minions begin to sense the real possibility of defeat, the more they will appeal to their base–the bottom two thirds of the pyramid–to take direct action in order to prevent that from happening. If violent unrest becomes wide-spread then the stage is set for the use of Executive powers to declare a state of national emergency that permits the postponement of the elections. Thus a call to “patriots” to take up arms before the election in defence of “democracy” is entirely possible, and as we have seen in recent days, rightwing militias are ready and willing to heed the call. If that happens, then basic issues of civil-military relations and constitutional principles come into play, if not the integrity of the Union itself.

We must remember that for Trump and company the stakes are deeply personal. Many of these people, not just Trump himself, face the serious possibility of criminal prosecution once they leave office. Not just for what they may have done as private citizens before or on behalf of the current president, but for using their public offices for private gain. As many have pointed out, the parallels and ties between organised crime, the Trump business empire and the Trump administration are clear and tight. The network of Trump-connected criminal opportunists may therefore be very wide, so there is strong incentive for them to collectively do everything in their power while in office to forestall and prevent liability down the road. Four more years may buy them that.

The issue is whether a shift in the political sands will bury the pyramid of support that they need for that to happen. One thing is certain: the Trump administration has already begun digging its defences.

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Research Link: the 42 Group Global Strategic Report Q1-2/2020.

I have been fortunate enough to receive regular reports from the 42 Group, a defence and security-focused collection of youngish people whose purpose is to provide independent strategic analysis to policy makers and the NZ public. Their work is very good.

I asked the person who sends me their reports if it was Ok to republish the latest report here. He agreed, so here it is.

42-Group-Global-Strategic-Report-Q1-Q2-2020-v1.0-Compressed-Signed-1
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