Madness Grips the USA

That the US political system is in the grip of collective madness ought to be obvious to anyone who has been looking at what has been going on in Washington DC for the last few years. It has been present for some time now, but was to a certain extent hidden under the cover of some fig leaf or other – “nation-building”; “responsibility to protect”; “the war on terror”; “some other slogan”.

But in the past few years, and especially the last 12 months, only someone with a skull as thick as that wall Mr Trump keeps threatening to build could have failed to see that the Washington elites and their Global Pravda Network of Dutiful Stenographers have gone well and truly mad.

Part of the problem with writing about this stuff is that people in the modern era have a tendency to think in binary terms, which means that whatever I say about the madness of the Washington elites is bound to be interpreted by some as an endorsement of Mr Trump. But it is no such thing. I took it to be self-evident before last year’s election that he was not fit for office, and many of his actions as President – particularly his bombing of Syria, his sabre rattling with North Korea, and the way he fired the awful James Comey, following it up with a Tweeted threat for good measure – have confirmed this, and then some.

But Mr Trump is not the real problem here. He only became President because of the real problem, which is that the US is not really run by the people who get voted in, but by a Deep State and a media that have an ideology that is bound to lead the country into a descent into darkness and madness.

To understand what really lies behind what is happening at the moment, forget about the players — Trump, Comey, Flynn, etc — and forget about the supposed actions — alleged Russian hacking, alleged Trump/Russia connections etc. This will only lead to missing the wood for the trees. No, we need to take a step back and look at the ideology that has spawned this entire situation, where the entirety of the US political system and media are now exposing themselves to anyone with eyes to see as the world’s worst joke.

So how is it that in a country where politicians still make claims of their democracy being a beacon of light to the world (even though it’s a Republic, not a democracy), the political system and “free press” has been shown to be a putrid, rotting corpse? In a word: Exceptionalism.

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US elites have convinced themselves that they have the right, the entitlement and the means to exercise dominion over the rest of the planet. But only by grasping the full extent to which they are in the grip of this idolatry can you understand why we are now in a situation where the Deep State has determined to slowly turn the thumbscrews on an elected President, and why they are simply waiting for the right time and the right opportunity before they move in for the kill.

Their commitment to this ideology of exceptionalism is not some tepid belief that the US has sort of been handed this role in history. It is not something that its adherents are able to quietly put to one side if it seems that the consequences of pursuing it are doing more harm than good to the country. No, it is a fanatical and extremist ideology, and the adherents of it have the kind of zeal for pursuing it which is matched only by the fanaticism of certain Middle Eastern Islamist terrorist groups.

Which means that the people who hold to this ideology won’t drop it. They will not give it up. They will not go quietly into the night. They believe with every fibre of their being that America is destined and entitled to be the world’s hegemon, exercising full spectrum dominance over the entire planet, making its own rules, breaking them when it wants, and destroying anyone who resists. And in their view, the two biggest obstacles to their plans are one, Russia, and two China.

So the suggestion, put about by Mr Trump, that the nation might stop seeing Russia as an adversary and instead start to treat it as an equal partner is anathema to the Exceptionalists. Russia is not a communist country, as many Americans continue to believe. It is a mixed market economy, and it is also an increasingly conservative and Christian nation. There is therefore no ideological divide which would forbid some kind of détente. Unless of course one of the sides had developed another post-Cold War ideology — not communism versus capitalism this time — which forbade détente under any circumstances. Which is exactly what has happened. For the US elites, such is their fanatical commitment to exercise control over the entire planet, that their heads would explode if they started to entertain the thought of being equals with another country — especially the old adversary — for more than a couple of seconds.

Until 2014, the plans of the Exceptionalists (including both so-called “neocons” and so-called “liberal interventionists) were going pretty well. From Yugoslavia to Libya, they carried out their laughably misnamed “nation building” or “responsibility to protect” or “war on terror” like a giant, global wrecking ball. But then things started to go wrong. The plan to bring down Bashar al-Assad using fanatical Islamist proxies disguised as “moderates” failed. Their plan to invade Syria was thwarted when the British Parliament voted against it, and when Mr Obama made one of the few sensible foreign policy decisions of his presidency, which was to back off an invasion. Their plan to kick the Russian fleet out of Sevastopol and install Nato ships there via an illegal coup in Kiev backfired spectacularly. Their plan to bring a coup to Russia by destroying its economy through sanctions failed. Their plan to install the corrupt puppet, Hillary Clinton, failed.

All of which has made the US Exceptionalists madder than a swarm of hornets that has just been poked with a stick. They were used to winning and getting their own way, but they’ve now had blow after blow to their plans. Which has unfortunately meant that the entire planet has been subjected to the horrible spectacle of seeing these deluded people try to cope with being on the losing end of things.

But of course they can’t cope. They can’t cope because there is no coping mechanism within their ideology. Their messianic ideology teaches them that the US is fated to be the world hegemon, and it doesn’t allow for any other outcome. It must happen because the ideology says it must happen. Anything that impedes it happening must be demonized, torn down and destroyed. So their response to the monkey wrenches being thrown into their works has not been to abandon the ideology, but rather to double down, triple down, quadruple down on their plots, slander and demonisation propaganda. For any open-eyed onlooker, it is one long painful experience of seeing them go deeper and deeper into darkness and madness.

As I said at the beginning, I have no time for Mr Trump. But I really do fear what will happen if these people succeed in bringing him down, which I have little doubt they will. I have read a good many people arguing that they won’t try to impeach him because constitutionally it would be tricky, or that it might set off mass protests. Sorry, but I don’t believe it. If the last few months and years have taught us anything, it is that these people just don’t know when and how to stop, and they certainly aren’t bothered by trifling questions of constitutional correctness. They are merely waiting for the right time to pounce, but given their fanatical commitment to their hegemonic ideology, I am convinced that they are prepared to take enormous risks, even to the point of bringing the US to the point of civil war or the world itself to the brink of nuclear war, rather than drop the pursuit of their messianic and maniacal cause.

I realise that this will sound alarmist. I suppose it is. But that’s because the alarm bells have been ringing louder and louder and louder over the past few years, and they just became deafening. It’s time to start dusting off the imprecatory Psalms and pleading fervently to God to bring these people down before they wreak havoc.