What the Hell is Wrong with President Trump and His Foreign Policy?

Without a doubt, bombing the airfield in Syria and dropping the giant bomb on the I.S. stronghold in Afghanistan demonstrates to the world that with the new President in charge, the game has changed. Trump showed that he cannot be messed with and is determined to lead and to take action.

However, in a time of cyber manipulation, with mainstream media operating as ideological propaganda tools and politics deteriorating into a madhouse of hateful obstructionism and partisan malice, reality can only be grasped by sound intuition good judgment in combination with inclusive and critical reflection. 

The so-called facts presented by news outlets, intelligence services, and congressional investigative boards too often make up facts, intentionally distort, and tailor them to political expediency. Utilitarian convenience has created a climate that condones lying and cheating, the shirking of accountability, and the denunciation and demonization of political opponents, including their opinions. Certain media outlets, the CIA, the FBI, have all lost their credibility. Nothing they present can be taken cum grano salis anymore. The primary requirement for professionally operating government organizations - political impartiality and neutrality - is no longer a given. No doubt, in many respects, the political culture in the U.S. has deteriorated to alarming lows. 

In light of all this, one has to ask who is advising President Trump and what happened to Trump's pragmatic judgment? Rhetorical excellence is, for the most part, natural talent, and Trump's plain and straightforward language might serve him well in certain respects. But how is it possible that a sitting president calls the President of another country an animal and a butcher? Somebody should advise Mr. Trump that if he makes such statements, they ought to be put in a conditional form: "If President Assad has personally ordered the gas attack, we would certainly have to consider him to be a merciless butcher, a vile individual?" 

Yet, there is no evidence that Assad ordered the use of chemical weapons. There is not even clear evidence that Syrian government troops used those weapons. Instead, every reasonable calculus points to the fact that the rebels exploited an air attack by a Syrian government fighter jet to release chemical substances themselves to blame the government and, at the eleventh hour, reverse the fortunes of war. Everybody knew that the government forces, with Russian support, were winning and pushing the insurgents back. Everybody knew that it would be outright insane and counterproductive for the Assad regime to use chemical weapons at this point. Not only would it not serve any meaningful purpose as conventional warfare was doing the job, but it would also turn the public opinion against the government. Who would order such a stupid move, even at the chance that the public would blame the use of chemical weapons on the rebels? 

Undoubtedly, the ideas of neoconservative hawks, dangerous madmen like John McCain or Lindsay Graham, most likely pushed by lobbyists of the military-industrial complex, have somehow found their way into the White House and have clouded the judgment of advisers and the President himself. When an American Secretary of State shows up in Russia and, as far as the government of Syria and its support by Russia is concerned, stipulates an ultimatum of virtually unconditional surrender, he leaves the Russian counterparts no room for negotiations. Moreover, he also compromised the principles of diplomatic conduct.

Aside from demonstrating to the world that President Trump is a strong leader, the reaction to the use of chemical weapons in Syria has been an unjustifiable one, strategically as well as morally. 

One of the Pax Americana's pernicious errors attempted since the end of the Cold War was the disregard for international players' legitimate strategic interests. While other global players might pretend to bow in the face of the U.S.'s overwhelming military might, it certainly does not help establish a just and balanced world order. It only accomplishes further destabilization and weakening of international relations and increases the animosity toward the United States in many parts of the world. 

Trump raised hope and was elected not the least for the essential turnaround in U.S. foreign affairs policy after the dreadful Obama years. With Trumps premature and gullible reaction to the use of chemical weapons in Syria, his excessive interpretation of U.S. national security interests, and his further alienation of Russia, he is about to betray the expectations for the urgently needed change in U.S. foreign policy along the lines of stopping regime change and nation-building around the world. Instead, what he should pursue is cooperation with Russia and China and the partners in Europe and NATO to fight the real threat – radical Islam and its affiliated terrorist organizations. 

At this juncture of events and less than three months into Mr. Trump's presidency, the only hope remains that the President and his advisers and foreign affairs counselors come to their senses. Mr. Trump must live up to his campaign promises and disentangle the U.S. from the endless involvements in unjust wars in the Middle East, stop regime change interventions, and overcome the Russophobe stance in U.S. foreign affairs.

New Despotism - The Tyranny of the Mob

A new form of totalitarianism is upon us. It has arrived in the form of ideological despotism, wielded by the aggressive and intolerant leftist mob. It is the bold attempt of the culturally and morally degenerate of our time to implement a kind of 'mental dictatorship.' The plebeians of our day are no longer a class of citizens unable to read and write. They are those ill-educated and ignorant, rationally and/or morally wanting individuals who can potentially come from all strata of society teachers, journalists, and academia, scientists and politicians. 

 

Besides third-wave feminists, Black-Lives Matter activists, and Never-Trumpers, the most prominent representatives of this vast group of misguided people, who combine education with moral deficiencies, are well known. I count many of the Democrats (Reid, Clinton, Pelosi, Schumer, and the like) and Republicans (McCain, Rubio, Graham, to name a few) in Congress and Senate plus the neo-conservative and neo-liberal nomenclature in the State Department to this group. Yet, to be found at the peak of this particular deprivation was the previous holder of the most powerful political office globally, B. Obama.  

In recent years, the intellectual-educational and moral-ethical decline in culture and politics became ever more tangible in all society and state segments. In my blog entries, I have criticized the idiocies regarding the destruction of the nation-state by open border policies and the interventionist foreign affairs approach, combined with astonishing neglect of strategic and geopolitical parameters in international relations by the U.S. government and the transatlantic alliance. I also addressed the self-destructive equating of the Muslim religion, the bewilderment over (trans-) gender relation, and the general cultural decline in western societies.  

The confusion reached a sad apex in the race for the White House and specifically in the open war waged by the bulk of the mainstream media against the new president and his administration since his inauguration. The level of injustice and sheer destructiveness of the political opposition and most of the press is almost incomprehensible. It has reached a degree indeed unparalleled in Western post-World War II societies and is seriously putting in question the U.S. political system's maturity and proficiency. 

What shook up our civilization's societal fabric to such a degree and corrupted the sanity and sound judgment of politicians, educators, communicators of essential parts of the citizenry? I have addressed the reasons in my blog essays over the past few years. I alluded, among others, to the absurdities of the ideological tools such as the exploitation of political correctness, the undifferentiated interpretation of the notion of equality, the anything-goes of value relativism, the socialization of the young generation along the lines of egotism and individual hedonism, the absence of character-building efforts at home and in the places of education and culturization. Finally, I addressed the corruption of the educational culture by depriving it of classical art instruction ingredients. In other words: At the bottom of the dilettantism in politics and political relations in domestic and international affairs lies the utter lack of philosophical depth and wisdom.

  

The political illiteracy and moral confusion led to the described and criticized follies in domestic (i.e., immigration) and foreign affairs (i.e., support of insurgents and destruction of nation-state structures). Based on their misconceptions regarding the ontology of political and social coexistence (see my blog essay of November 2015 https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/11/immigration-us-and-europe-governed-by.html), governing authorities in the U.S. and Europe engaged in unjust interventions in the Middle East, in the Caucasus, in Asia, severely damaged the social fabric of the U.S. and European societies, and widened the domestic ideological divide to the point of irremediableness. 

The portrayed intellectual and moral decline became forcibly apparent in the wake of the U.S. presidential elections. Blind individual prejudice and pride, assertiveness, and stubbornness seem to be more important than objectivity, dignity, truth. Personal vanity not to have been wrong seemingly trumps all insight and appears to override all disabusing by experience and learning from actual failure. People and governments maintain their positions of prejudice and ideological bias at all costs. Political discourse appears to have degenerated into nothing more than turf warfare over partisan policy notions and the constant denial of responsibility for failed decisions (shining example in its negativity again B. Obama - Syria, Libya, ACA)

The epitome of the intellectual and moral carnage that has characterized the political rivalry of recent weeks, months, and indeed years is the apparent attempt to delegitimize conservative opposition and virtually destroy the newly elected U.S. president and his administration. Instead of partaking constructively in the political business and contributing to the bonum commune despite contrasting and opposing stances, large parts of society engage in outright destruction and annihilation, including media and representatives of the legislative estate. The decadence has reached an alarming degree. 

Short of outright civil war, things could barely get worse. Think about this: The oscillation of governments is natural to democratic republics. Thus, the alteration of governing regimes astounds only the under-educated and ideologically stultified. And probably those few who fantasize about an authoritarian one-party rule in the People's Republic of China style. The apparent attempt to disregard the outcome of the presidential elections and delegitimize President Trump's governance is not just the political left being a sore loser and incapable of accepting the rebuke of their Marxist-utopian globalist ideas by the electorate. In essence, it is a fascistic move on the part of those liberal and progressive elements in society and state who, in their arrogant hubris to govern unimpeded for the foreseeable future, might not even be consciously aware of the baseness of their doings. 

As I made clear in my blog essay below on "Truth in Life and Politics," to acknowledge existential verities and show dignity in the face of a legitimate opponent's victory requires proper knowledge and understanding of human relations and necessitates ethical disposition and moral strength. The current state of social and political affairs in the United States of America demonstrates most ostensibly the interconnection between the theoretical and practical judgment, the inescapable bond between knowledge and action, cognition, and morality. 

When the intent to see elected officials fail becomes more important than helping them succeed, an existential threat emerges. When, in a democratic political system, partisan dogmatism and party-political arrogance gain the nation's best interest over partisan dogmatism and party-political arrogance, the disconnect between those two intrinsic components of sound practice and meaningful human behavior amplifies.

The victory of Donald Trump has shocked the radical left in this country and united them in their desperation. The plebeians of our day have taken to the streets. Countrywide demonstrations peak in calls to remove Trump from office, with individual exponents even bluntly calling for his assassination. Rather than bringing people to their senses and quelling the riot, pundits and elected representatives stir the hatred and encourage the firebrand.  

Over time, the plebeians have managed to turn values and righteousness upside down through their aggressive agitation. They've turned right into wrong, straight into crooked, the upstanding is now considered insincere, and termed the reasonable 'un-American.' 

They deprived our societies of their religious foundation and are fervently working on dismantling any possible common denominator that could serve, beyond the pluralism of values and political stances, as a unifying force. (On that destructive aspect, read my blog essay on "The Crisis of Morality" of March 31, 2015, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/03/the-crisis-of-morality.html). The plebeians of our day usurped the editorial offices of mainstream media outlets, they populate the academic quarters on the college campuses, and they became hateful obstructionists on Capitol Hill. 

At this juncture, perhaps the most pressing question is whether or not this culture war that is in full swing will escalate into what some commentators have already heralded as the Second American Civil War. We shall find out soon if the left's tyranny will ease up on their mental authoritarianism or drag this nation into a large-scale violent uprising and outright civil war.