Смотрю сейчас National Geographic Wild Channel.

Про львов.

Оказывается, у самцов в львином Прайде совсем мало работы. Они играют главнейшую роль в приумножении потомства и& В обще-то,  это все. Еще на Львов возложена обязанность защитника прайда. Охотятся в прайде, в основном, львицы. Львов зовут на помощь, только когда нужно убить чего-нибудь очень крупное, буйвола, к примеру, или жирафа. А, в основном, львы-самцы  спят.

И, еще, они первыми начинают поедать добытую львицами добычу.

У львят  самцов, очень маленький процент доживаемости до жизни взрослой. Кажется, один из пяти а то и того меньше. Вообще у львят очень маленький процент выживаемости.

В случае, если в Прайде меняется хозяин, первое, что делает новый глава Прайда  убивает всех львят в прайде. Потому что новый Папа заинтересован в собственной генетической линии. И еще, оказывается, когда у львицы есть детеныш, она никак не заинтересована в ухаживаниях нового Папы  Хозяина.

Генри Фой (Henry Foy)

Она стреляет ракетами, летящими со скоростью два километра в секунду, и может поражать цели, двигающиеся в два раза быстрее. Она способна одновременно взять на прицел 80 различных вражеских самолетов, дронов и крылатых ракет на расстоянии в 400 километров и засечь боевые самолеты-невидимки, которые ранее уклонялись от обнаружения.

Но, возможно, самым опасным аспектом российской зенитно-ракетной системы С-400 «Триумф» является ущерб, который она нанесла силе воздействия антимосковской программы санкций Вашингтона и согласованным усилиям США по изоляции России от остального мира.

Несмотря на широкий спектр санкций против российской оборонной промышленности, направленных на перекрытие каналов ее прибыльного экспорта, и запрет на покупку С-400 другими странами, Россия успешно наращивает продажи того, что большинство экспертов считают самой передовой системой противовоздушной обороны в мире.

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Возвращение блудного меня в Сетевую жизнь.

Это просто попытка.

Пока&

Любопытный пост от русского, живущего и работающего в США.

Еще раз для людей с триггерным сознанием: я могу показать в США места, которые выглядять чудовищно по сравнению с Пхеньяном.

Это совершенно не означает, что в Северной Корее все замечательно, а в США все ужасно. США, Британия, по своему,интересные страны и сегодня  спасибо их островному положению,  в них комфортно жить. Комфортнее, чем в Северной Корее.

Речь совершенно не об этом. Речь о том, что социалистический строй в СССР, на Кубе, в Северной Корее, показал совершенно удивительную способность обеспечивать людям максимально достойную жизнь в доступных этим странам по существу военных условиях, которые не они себе создали.

Надо осознавать, что СССР, например, дважды терял по 30% национального богатства в XX веке в мировых войнах и стартовал с состояния отсталости на 100-150 лет от колониальных европейских империй, ограбивших к тому времени весь мир. Надо осознавать, насколько низким был старт, если еще в 1928 году в СССР было 84; крестьянства, тогда как в Англии было 17% крестьянства уже в первой половине XIX века. И стартуя с такого вот состояния, СССР создал первоклассную индустрию, первоклассную науку, первоклассную систему образования. Причем все это СССР создал за считанные 16 лет, тогда как вот уже 25 лет капиталистическая экономика даже и не приблизилась к показателям последних советских лет НИ В ЧЕМ.

Уровень жизни советских 100% людей к 80-м годам  могу это доказать с цифрами в руках,  равнялся и по многим параметрам превышал уровень жизни 80% американских семей сегодня. За исключением одного параметра  жилья, которого СССР потерял в годы войны для 25000000 человек. Плюс надо помнить, что за считанные годы до войны в города переселились десятки миллионов человек, которые тоже требовали жилья& СССР не успел& Надо было защищаться, а не тратить ресурсы на хамон.

Куба. Бог с ней, с кубинской армией, которая оказалась ключевой силой на африканском континенте и имела вес в Латинской Америке. Бог с ней. Но& Куба  остров с ничтожным, по существу, населением, находясь в военно-экономической блокаде,  обеспечила такую продолжительность жизни, которой могут позавидовать иные более чем развитые страны и такой уровень медицины, что туда стремятся попасть на лечение из Канады и США.

Да та же Северная Корея. Не очень там хорошо, хотя достижения тоже очевидны и, с учетом блокады, тянут на чудо. НИ ОДНА капиталистическая страна, окажись она под таким всеобщим военным, политически и экономическим давлением не в выжила бы в принципе. Северная Корея выжила, создала  вынуждено!  мощную армию и люди там из-за этого живут небогато, но, как бы сказать& ЧИСТО.

По существу, социалистических стран не было ВРЕМЕНИ, чтобы строить социализм, ибо все они находились в условиях осады с момента возникновения первого такого государства  СССР.

Их вынужденным ответом на агрессию была мобилизация всего: экономики, армии, народа. Им просто не дали спокойно развиваться элиты тех стран, что ограбили весь мир до нитки и потому располагали значительно большими ресурсами.

Но придет время, и умные люди оценят опыт и СССР, и Кубы, и СК и похоронят Синий мир ворья раз и навсегда.

И вообще, просто не надо врать. Ни про голодомор, ни про ужасы Северной Кореи, ни про Сталина, ни про идеальные США.

Просто не надо врать.

И тогда все встает на свои места.

Отсюда.

Всем моим знакомым и не только, с Наступающим Новым годом!

Счастья всем и  МИРА!

Мира в ваши семьи и просто МИРА всем нам!

Еще немного шпионских страстей.

A recent BuzzFeed article outlined behind-the-scenes efforts by Russian and American diplomats to end the tit-for-tat expulsion of embassy personnel between the two sides. Reports say American officials are reacting positively to Moscow’s signals to end the feud and are looking to “turn the page” and improve relations.

While nobody should be against efforts to improve relations, let’s not fool ourselves as to who came out ahead in this contest. “Ending the feud” is exactly what the Russians want — because they won. The United States lost far more from the expulsions than Russia, and, worse, it acceded to a long-sought-after and long-rejected Russian demand that all interactions conform to the practice of parity. In fact, there’s a pattern that I observed during my years in the CIA: In 2016 — as in 2001, 1994, and 1986 — the United States tried to punish Russia but mishandled the effort, eventually cried uncle, and left Russia in a better position than when it started.

Let’s recap the most recent effort to “punish” Russia.

As we now know, Russia utilized a multipronged attack to destabilize our democratic system and damage our leadership abroad during the 2016 presidential election. We are learning more every day about the scale and audaciousness of the trespass, and it continues to disrupt our political process. Denis McDonough, former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, characterized the effort as an attack on the “heart of our system.” Some observers have even called it the “crime of the century,” and Virginia Sen. Mark Warner described his efforts to uncover the attack as “very well … the most important thing I do in my public life.”

What consequences did the Kremlin face for its brazen assault on our system?

Following a flurry of expulsions, both sides have settled on a position as outlined in an Aug. 31 State Department statement, titled “Achieving Parity in Diplomatic Missions,” that seeks to lock in the status quo and focus on efforts to improve relations.

Our mission in Moscow housed almost 1,800 people in 2006 but now has only 455. President Barack Obama cut Russia’s missions in the United States from 490 to 455. Since Russia refuses to hire Americans to work in its diplomatic facilities, the most powerful country in the world has fewer Americans in Russia than Russia has diplomats in the United States. Russia also maintains more diplomatic missions in the United States. Further, Russia finally achieved a long-sought demand that the two sides treat all interactions through the prism of reciprocity. All previous U.S. administrations have rejected this effort as part of Russia’s effort to force the United States and other interlocutors to accept a world of coequal spheres of influence.

That is, we lost.

Vladimir Putin’s singular goal is to win re-election in 2018, ensuring that nothing thwarts his ability to stage-manage the outcome. This drawdown of our diplomats and spies will make Putin’s job much easier.

Both the Obama and Trump administrations share blame for this outcome. The Obama administration held numerous secret strategy meetings and debates throughout the second half of 2016 but was ultimately unable to agree on an appropriate response. Each effort to consider action and weigh the possible consequences led to only hand-wringing and inaction.

In fairness, there were no easy answers, and such confusion has been a standard outcome as the United States has tried to determine how to best deter, defend, or retaliate against attacks in the new world of cyberintrusions.

However, by December 2016, and following the victory of Donald Trump, the Obama administration announced a series of measures that amounted to a slap on the wrist to the Kremlin. A small fraction of known Russian spies, 35, would be expelled, and the United States would close two vacation properties that the Russians often misused for espionage purposes. That is, the punishment for the chaos inflicted by the Russians during the election was what might normally be expected following a much lower-impact spy case. Indeed, the arrests of spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen led to more robust responses. As Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, noted, “The punishment did not fit the crime.”

Following an interval to determine whether the incoming Trump administration would radically reorder its relationship with Moscow, the Kremlin eventually retaliated, insisting that the U.S. mission in Moscow draw down by more than 750 positions, seeking parity in the size of the Russian and U.S. embassies in their respective countries. The United States, in turn, closed the Russian consulate in San Francisco but allowed the Russians to maintain a small numerical advantage in diplomatic properties, at which time the United States called for an end to the tit-for-tat action, accepting parity as the final result.

It was a huge win for Russia and a capitulation that every other U.S. administration had resisted. We were trying to punish Russian misconduct, but we ended up exactly where Russia wanted to be. They lost 35 people; we lost 755. For the first time, there are more Russians in the United States than Americans in Russia (although Russia has always had more spies in the United States than vice versa). While most Americans probably don’t even give it a second thought, Putin certainly sees it as a victory and a sign that the new administration is pro-Russian, weak, or just foolish. In retrospect, if we had simply accepted Russia’s bad behavior and done nothing, we would have ended up in a better place.

But we should have seen this coming. It is the same game we’ve played and lost numerous times — most recently in 2001.

On Feb. 18, 2001, officers of the FBI’s Washington field office arrested one of their own, agent Robert Hanssen, while he was hiding a package of classified materials for his Russian spy handlers. A secret FBI-CIA team had been hunting a mole inside the national security apparatus for some time and had acquired information pointing to Hanssen as the traitor.

In the wake of the arrest and subsequent media coverage of the serious damage Hanssen’s treachery had inflicted, the George W. Bush administration decided to play hardball with the Russians. The administration knew that the Russians had been taking advantage of a disparity in the number of spies in each other’s countries. To this day, Moscow has more spies deployed overseas than any other country — including the United States. And despite the disparity between its relative economic and political power, Russia has assigned far more spies in the United States than the Americans have ever had in Russia. Every few years or so, a spy scandal reminds U.S. officials of the imbalance, and both Democratic and Republican administrations have sought to use those opportunities to cull the herd. For the Bush team, the arrest of Hanssen was a golden opportunity to change the calculus.

We in the CIA warned the administration that the Russians were masters at playing a strong game with a weak hand. Their tighter decision-making chain, willingness to engage in brinksmanship, obsession with reciprocity, and focus on a singular enemy (the United States) had manifested in a willingness to take a hard and consistent line. In past spy spats, the Russians immediately expelled U.S. diplomats in retaliation, maintained a hard line, and capitalized on U.S. indecisiveness. They had consistent goals and were willing to act boldly to defend them. In each case, the United States ultimately backed down, settling for a less-than-successful outcome. Utilizing the policy of brute force, Russia approached each interaction like that of a schoolyard bully.

Although we were supportive of the expulsion of Russian spies, we feared that unless the administration was willing to throw out the great majority of them, the Russians would retaliate and leave themselves with far more spies in the United States than anything we could match in Moscow. Hardly a fitting “punishment.”

Indeed, the history of tit-for-tat spy expulsions has taught the Russians how to ruthlessly manipulate squabbles within the U.S. bureaucracy. Whenever the United States throws out Moscow’s spies, the Russians make sure to expel U.S. diplomats from a variety of agencies — Commerce, Defense, State, Treasury, USAID, and others, making a second round of expulsions less likely. Each agency, reluctant to risk losing employees for what it believes is an internecine battle between spy agencies, lobbies the White House to avoid further expulsions for fear that it may lose its limited resources in Moscow. It is a game Russia knows well.

But, no, the Bush administration assured us, the United States would not accept an imbalance of Russian spies in the country, and we would hit back even harder if the Russians retaliated, drawing down the substantial U.S.-based Russian spying apparatus once and for all.

Sure enough, however, in 2001 following the expulsion of 50 Russian spies, the Kremlin retaliated immediately, kicking out 50 Americans from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow — including a smattering of individuals from all agencies. When the Bush administration regrouped to consider a second round of expulsions, several U.S. departments lobbied to complain that they couldn’t possibly tolerate any additional drawdowns. Not surprisingly, the administration balked, agreed to end the expulsions, and left us with a decimated intelligence capability in Russia compared with a much larger Russian presence in the United States.

The same cycle of pain followed a spate of spy cases during the Ronald Reagan administration in 1986 and following the arrest of Aldrich Ames in 1994.

The Russians know us well.

Perhaps more fundamentally, Russia wins when we aim small. The focus on expulsions plays into its doctrine of conflict. The Russians are playing a bigger game and are willing to take losses if they can achieve their goal of getting the United States to play by their rules. It doesn’t matter if you lose 10,000 men to take a position as long as the position was taken. If we limit our responses to petty diplomatic expulsions, we cede them the results of their efforts and simply give them acceptable casualties. It’s a good trade for them. Their leadership doesn’t mind the petty human losses if they win. Betting on improved behavior from the Kremlin is not likely to pay off anytime soon unless and until Putin fears that his actions will have real consequences for his staying power. In the meantime, the United States needs to protect itself from further Russian manipulation. Multiple and partisan efforts to investigate Russian action won’t suffice to meet the threat. Instead, it seems to me that the only sensible means to prepare for the future is to empower a 9/11-like commission to look into the Russian attacks on our system once and for all. Maybe that way, although Russia will likely continue to win the short-term, tit-for-tat battles, it will lose the larger war.

Отсюда.

А здесь,  оно же на русском.

От бывшего командира муджехеддинов&

Editor’s Note: Khadir Mohmand was a Mujahideen commander once upon a time, until the yellow brick road of life brought him to the US where he became a successful businessman and has supported his people every since from Kalamazoo, MI. We should all be so lucky to have someone this passionate and steadfast to support our cause… Jim W. Dean

September 5, 2017

To the Honorable James Mattis

U.S. Secretary of Defense

1000 Defense Pentagon

Washington, DC 20301-1000

RE: The United States’ New Strategy of Escalating the Killing of the Afghan/Pashtun Majority in Afghanistan Will Not Work. This Longest War For Control of the REEs Must End.

*

Dear Secretary Mattis:

War crimes are being committed against Afghan/Pashtun villagers by the United States. Just last week Afghan/Pashtun villagers were killed in Pashtun areas throughout Afghanistan especially in Helmand Province, Logar, Herat, Kunduz and Kunar Province. History has shown that wars against Afghan/Pashtun cannot be won. Presently, I believe the United States’ troops, its mercenaries/private contractors, and the Afghan administration’s puppet forces cannot beat the resisting Pashtun villagers/freedom fighters on the ground. I believe it is cowardice to use more B-52 bombers, drones and other sophisticated weapons and aircraft to kill Afghan/Pashtun villagers, who are the native majority population. I am sorry to say if we continue with this stupid strategy of fighting the Afghans/Pashtun, our country will end up like the former Soviet Union, which collapsed after they lost in Afghanistan. If we continue with the war strategy in Afghanistan only China and Russia will be the winners.

I believe the new U.S. Trump strategy in Afghanistan is genocide- the intentional killing of the Afghan/Pashtun villagers, who are the only roadblock to the Trump administration’s exploitation of the Rare Earth Elements (REEs), is wrong and unlawful. At one of his recent media events, Trump himself boldly stated that he wanted the United States to “exploit” the REEs. His friends, Michael N. Silver of American Elements, a company that specializes in mining REEs and his adviser, billionaire friend, Stephen A. Feinberg of Dyncorp will benefit from this exploitation. The vast untapped deposits of REEs are located on the Afghan/Pashtun villagers’ land especially in Helmand Province and other Pashtun areas throughout Afghanistan. The Afghan/Pashtun villagers are fighting to defend their land that is being taken from them for control over the REEs. It is really not about terrorism. It is really about exploiting the Afghan’s REEs! I believe the Afghan Villagers are not terrorizing the United States, but the United States is terrorizing the Afghan villagers.

The United States, under the command of Trump and ultimately under your command and the command on the ground of General Nicholson, is cowardly attacking the Afghan/Pashtun villagers using phosphorus and other chemical bombs against them. On August 28, 2017, thirty five (35) Afghan villagers, many women and children, were killed in Shindand District in Herat Province. This killing of Afghan villagers/civilians is happening throughout Afghanistan every day-mostly unreported by the media. It is escalating under Trump’s new strategy of genocide of the Afghan /Pashtun villagers, who are the road block to his exploitation of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.

The native majority, the Pashtun villagers, are not the enemy of the United States. I believe that the best path for the United States is to stop the war against the Pashtun villagers and talk directly with them to reach peace. The United States needs to be united with the Afghan/Pashtun villagers, the majority, in order to keep Russia and China from becoming the new superpowers. China’s and Russia’s power is evidenced in the recent BRICS Summit. China and Russia benefit from the United States continuing its war strategy in Afghanistan in its longest war. Their power and influence in the world have grown. Whereas, the United States continues to spend trillions and cause the loss of life in a war it cannot win. Our stature in the world has decreased because of this war.

I fought against the Soviet Union and the Afghan communists in Afghanistan in the 1980s (Please see my attached biography and photos). I hate war. It takes more courage to admit that a war cannot be won and change the strategy to a peace strategy than cowardly escalate the bombardment of Afghan /Pashtun villagers in a 16 year long war. You are a soldier, a general, who understands what war is and its destructiveness. I expect more from you, as Secretary of Defense.

Please change the strategy now. Stop the genocide of the Pashtun villagers in Afghanistan. Stop the war.

Sincerely,

Kadir A. Mohmand

6147 Old Log Trail

Kalamazoo, MI 49009

(269) 353-7044

Отсюда.

Очень любопытно&

On Wednesday, 12 civilians were killed and 16 wounded in American airstrikes in Afghanistan’s eastern province Logar. Afghan politicians commented to Sputnik Afghanistan on the issue, noting that civilians fear US army and NATO operations more that the Taliban.

On Wednesday, 12 civilians were killed and 16 wounded in an American airstrike in Dasht-e-Bari, an area of the city Pul-e-Alam, the capital of Logar province, according to Afghan broadcaster 1TV.

US media also reported on the incident, saying that 11 civilians were killed, including eight women.

The Afghan and American forces apparently came under fire from the Taliban while an American helicopter attempted to make a “precautionary landing because of a maintenance issue,” The New York Times quotes Capt. Bill Salvin, a spokesman for the United States military in Afghanistan, as saying.

The allied forces have called for air support and another aircraft bombed the house from where militants allegedly fired at the helicopter.

“Three families were living in the house which was bombed; 11 people, including eight women, were killed,” the newspaper quotes Hawas Khan Kochai, a resident of the Dasht e Bari area, as saying by phone.

“We recovered all the bodies with an excavator after several hours, but two children are still missing,” he added.

The incident comes days after 13 civilians were killed in an air raid in the western province of Herat.

Haji Ullah Gol Mujahid, a military expert and member of the Afghan parliament from Kabul province, commented to Sputnik Afghanistan on the incident, saying that Afghan civilians fear the US army more than the Taliban.

“After the defeat of the Taliban, Afghan people did not want the war to continue, but it was still going on because of the US operations in the country: they have been breaking into houses, bombing settlements and even striking weddings and have been blaming it on the Taliban,” he told Sputnik.

The politician further recalled that 150 civilians have been killed in Nangarhar province, while similar incidents happened in Helmand province.

“Nobody wants the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan. The Afghans have not seen anything good from the Americans and they don’t want them staying on their land any longer,” he concluded.

Obaid Kabir, one of the leaders of the Afghanistan Solidarity Party, told Sputnik that his home country is now “in the mill, stuck between three millstones.”

“This is all being done by American occupiers, their allies, the puppet government in Kabul, the Taliban and Daesh,” he told Sputnik.

The Taliban, he said, is the brainchild of the US and Pakistani intelligence, thus it will only continue to strengthen. The movement, he said, has now found other patrons. However Afghan residents see no difference between the US and the Taliban: all of them eat out of the same dish, and ordinary Afghans are left to suffer.

A recent report of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) recorded a 43 percent increase in civilian casualties from aerial operations during the first six months of 2017 compared to the same period in 2016, documenting 232 civilian casualties (95 deaths and 137 injured), with substantial increases in deaths among women and children.

Отсюда.

Очень хорошая статья об Истории Гражданской войны в США. О причинах войны, о Линкольне..

В общем, обо всем том, из-за чего сейчас здесь сносят памятники и т.д.

Thomas DiLorenzo

“Lincoln is theology, not historiology. He is a faith, he is a church, he is a religion, and he has his own priests and acolytes, most of whom . . . are passionately opposed to anybody telling the truth about him . . . with rare exceptions, you can’t believe what any major Lincoln scholar tells you about Abraham Lincoln and race.”

–Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced into Glory, p. 114

The author of the above quotation, Lerone Bennett, Jr., was the executive editor of Ebony magazine for several decades, beginning in 1958. He is a distinguished African-American author of numerous books, including a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. He spent twenty years researching and writing his book, Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream, from which he drew the above conclusion about the so-called Lincoln scholars and how they have lied about Lincoln for generations. For obvious reasons, Mr. Bennett is incensed over how so many lies have been told about Lincoln and race.

Few Americans have ever been taught the truth about Lincoln and race, but it is all right there in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (CW), and in his actions and behavior throughout his life. For example, he said the following:

“Free them [i.e. the slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We cannot then make them equals” (CW, vol. II, p. 256.

“What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races” (CW, vol. II, p. 521).

“I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races . . . . I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary” (CW, vol. III, p, 16). (Has there ever been a clearer definition of “white supremacist”?).

“I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races . . . . I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people” (CW, vol. III, pp. 145-146).

“I will to the very last stand by the law of this state [Illinois], which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes” (CW, vol. III, p. 146).

“Senator Douglas remarked . . . that . . . this government was made for the white people and not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too” (CW, vol. II, p. 281)

Lincoln was also a lifelong advocate of “colonization,” or the deportation of black people from America. He was a “manager” of the Illinois Colonization Society, which procured tax funding to deport the small number of free blacks residing in the state. He also supported the Illinois constitution, which in 1848 was amended to prohibit the immigration of black people into the state. He made numerous speeches about “colonization.” “I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation . . . . such separation must be effected by colonization” (CW, vol. II, p. 409). And, “Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and . . . favorable to . . . our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime” (CW, vol. II, p. 409). Note how Lincoln referred to black people as “the African,” as though they were alien creatures. “The place I am thinking about having for a colony,” he said, “is in Central America. It is nearer to us than Liberia” (CW, vol. V, pp. 373-374).

Bennett also documents how Lincoln so habitually used the N word that his cabinet members – and many others – were shocked by his crudeness, even during a time of pervasive white supremacy, North and South. He was also a very big fan of “black face” minstrel shows, writes Bennett.

For generations, the so-called Lincoln scholars claimed without any documentation that Lincoln suddenly gave up on his “dream” of deporting all the black people sometime in the middle of the war, even though he allocated millions of dollars for a “colonization” program in Liberia during his administration. But the book Colonization After Emancipation by Phillip Magness and Sebastian Page, drawing on documents from the British and American national archives, proved that Lincoln was hard at work until his dying day plotting with Secretary of State William Seward the deportation of all the freed slaves. The documents produced in this book show Lincoln’s negotiations with European governments to purchase land in Central America and elsewhere for “colonization.” They were even counting how many ships it would take to complete the task.

Lincoln’s Slavery-Forever Speech: The First Inaugural

Lincoln’s first inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1861, is probably the most powerful defense of slavery ever made by an American politician. In the speech Lincoln denies having any intention to interfere with Southern slavery; supports the federal Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution, which compelled citizens of non-slave states to capture runaway slaves; and also supported a constitutional amendment known as the Corwin Amendment that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering in Southern slavery, thereby enshrining it explicitly in the text of the U.S. Constitution.

Lincoln stated at the outset of his first inaugural address that “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” Furthermore, “Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the [Republican Party] platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: Resolved, that the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to the balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend . . .” By “domestic institutions” Lincoln meant slavery.

Lincoln also strongly supported the Fugitive Slave Clause and the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act in his first inaugural address by reminding his audience that the Clause is a part of the Constitution that he, and all members of Congress, swore to defend. In fact, the Fugitive Slave Act was strongly enforced all during the Lincoln administration, as documented by the scholarly book, The Slave Catchers, by historian Stanley Campbell (University of North Carolina Press, 2011). “The Fugitive Slave Law remained in force and was executed by federal marshals” all during the Lincoln regime, writes Campbell. For example, he writes that “the docket for the [Superior] Court [of the District of Columbia] listed the claims of twenty-eight different slave owners for 101 runaway slaves. In the two months following the court’s decision [that the law was applicable to the District], 26 fugitive slaves were returned to their owners . . .” This was in Washington, D.C., Lincoln’s own residence.

Near the end of his first inaugural address (seven paragraphs from the end) Lincoln makes his most powerful defense of slavery by saying: “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service [i.e., slaves]. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable” (emphasis added).

The Corwin Amendment, named for Rep. Thomas Corwin of Ohio, said:

“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which shall authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any state, the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor [i.e., slaves] or service by the laws of said State.”

After all the Southern members of Congress had left, the exclusively-Northern U.S. Congress voted in favor of the Corwin Amendment by a vote of 133-65 in the House of Representatives on February 28, 1861, and by a vote of 24-12 in the U.S. Senate on March 2, two days before Lincoln’s inauguration.

Lincoln lied in his first inaugural address when he said that he had not seen the Corwin Amendment. Not only did he support the amendment in his speech; it was his idea, as documented by Doris Kearns-Goodwin in her worshipful book on Lincoln entitled Team of Rivals. Based on primary sources, Goodwin writes on page 296 that after he was elected and before he was inaugurated Lincoln “instructed Seward to introduce these proposals in the Senate Committee of Thirteen without indicating they issued from Springfield.” “These proposals” were 1) the Corwin Amendment; and 2) a federal law to nullify personal liberty laws created by several states to allow them to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act.

In 1860-61 Lincoln and the Republican Party fiercely defended Southern slavery while only opposing the extension of slavery into the new territories. They gave three reasons for this:

(1) “Many northern whites . . . wanted to keep slaves out of the [new territories] in order to keep blacks out. The North was a pervasively racist society . . . . Bigots, they sought to bar African-American slaves from the West,” wrote University of Virginia historian Michael Holt in his book, The Fate of Their Country (p. 27).

(2) Northerners did not want to have to compete for jobs with black people, free or slave. Lincoln himself said that “we” want to preserve the territories for “free white labor”.

(3) If slaves were brought into the territories it could inflate the congressional representation of the Democratic Party once a territory became a state because of the three-fifths clause of the Constitution that counted five slaves as three persons for purposes of determining how many congressional representatives each state would have. The Republican Party feared that this might further block their economic policy agenda of high protectionist tariffs to protect Northern manufacturers from competition; corporate welfare for road, canal, and railroad-building corporations; a national bank; and a giving away, rather than selling, of federal land (mostly to mining, timber, and railroad corporations). Professor Holt quotes Ohio Congressman Joshua Giddings explaining: “To give the south the preponderance of political power would be itself to surrender our tariff, our internal improvements [a.k.a. corporate welfare], our distribution of proceeds of public lands . . .” (p. 28).

Lincoln called the Emancipation Proclamation a “war measure,” which meant that if the war ended the next day, it would become null and void. It only applied to “rebel territory” and specifically exempted by name areas of the South that were under Union Army control at the time, such as most of the parishes of Louisiana; and entire states like West Virginia, the last slave state to enter the union, having been created during the war by the Republican Party. That is why historian James Randall wrote that it “freed no one.” The apparent purpose was to incite slave rebellions, which it failed to do. Slavery was finally ended in 1866 by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, with virtually no assistance from Lincoln, as described by Pulitzer prize-winning Lincoln biographer David Donald in his book, Lincoln. On page 545 of his magnum opus David Donald writes of how Lincoln refused to lift a finger to help the genuine abolitionists accumulate votes in Congress for the Thirteenth Amendment. Stories that he did help, such as the false tale told in Steven Spielberg’s movie about Lincoln, are based on pure “gossip,” not documented history, wrote Donald.

Lincoln Promises War Over Tax Collection

In contrast to his compromising stance on slavery, Lincoln was totally and completely uncompromising on the issue of tax collection in his first inaugural address, literally threatening war over it. For decades, Northerners had been attempting to plunder Southerners (and others) with high protectionist tariffs. There was almost a war of secession in the late 1820s over the “Tariff of Abominations” of 1828 that increased the average tariff rate (essentially a sales tax in imports) to 45%. The agricultural South would have been forced to pay higher prices for clothing, farm tools, shoes, and myriad other manufactured products that they purchased mostly from Northern businesses. South Carolina nullified the tariff, refusing to collect it, and a compromise was eventually reached to reduce the tariff rate over a ten-year period.

By 1857 the average tariff rate had declined to about 15%, and tariff revenues accounted for at least 90% of all federal tax revenue. This was the high water mark of free trade in the nineteenth century. Then, with the Republican Party in control of Congress and the White House, the average tariff rate was increased, by 1863, back up to 47%, starting with the Morrill Tariff, which was signed into law on March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln’s inauguration by Pennsylvania steel industry protectionist President James Buchanan. (It had first passed in the House of Representatives during the 1859-60 session).

Understanding that the Southern states that had seceded and had no intention of continuing to send tariff revenues to Washington, D.C., Lincoln threatened war over it. “[T]here needs to be no bloodshed or violence,” he said in his first inaugural address, “and there shall be none unless it is forced upon the national authority.”

And what could “force” the “national authority” to commit acts of “violence” and “bloodshed”? Lincoln explained in the next sentence: “The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.” “Pay up or die; the American union is no longer voluntary” was his principal message. In Lincoln’s mind, the union was more like what would become the Soviet union than the original, voluntary union of the founding fathers. He kept his promise by invading the Southern states with an initial 75,000 troops after duping South Carolinians into firing upon Fort Sumter (where no one was harmed, let alone killed).

The Stated Purpose of the War

The U.S. Senate issued a War Aims Resolution that said: “[T]his war is not waged . . . in any spirit of oppression, or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those [Southern] states, but to defend . . . the Constitution, and to preserve the Union . . .” By “established institutions” of the Southern states they meant slavery.

Like the U.S. Senate, Lincoln also clearly stated that the purpose of the war was to “save the union” and not to interfere with Southern slavery. In a famous August 22, 1862 letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, he wrote that:

“My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.” Of course, Lincoln’s war destroyed the voluntary union of the founding fathers and replaced it with an involuntary union held together by threat of invasion, bloodshed, conquest, and subjugation.

The Very Definition of Treason

Treason is defined by Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution as follows: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” The most important word here is “them.” As in all the founding documents, “United States” is always in the plural, signifying that the “free and independent states,” as they are called in the Declaration of Independence, are united in forming a compact or confederacy with other states. Levying war against “them” means levying war against individual states, not something called “the United States government.” Therefore, Lincoln’s invasion and levying of war upon the Southern states is the very definition of treason in the Constitution.

Lincoln took it upon himself to arbitrarily redefine treason, not by amending the Constitution, but by using brute military force. His new definition was any criticism of himself, his administration, and his policies. He illegally suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus (illegal according to this own attorney general, Robert Bates) and had the military arrest and imprison without due process tens of thousands of Northern-state citizens, including newspaper editors, the Maryland legislature, the mayor of Baltimore, the grandson of Francis Scott Key who was a Baltimore newspaper editor, Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, his chief critic in the U.S. Congress, and essentially anyone overheard criticizing the government. (See Freedom Under Lincoln by Dean Sprague and Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln by James Randall).

More than 300 Northern newspapers were shut down for criticizing the Lincoln regime as documented by James Randall, the preeminent Lincoln scholar of the twentieth century.

Lincoln’s Real Agenda: A Mercantilist Empire

Lincoln began his political career in 1832 as a Whig. Northern Whigs like Lincoln were the party of the corporate plutocracy who wanted to use the coercive powers of government to line the pockets of their big business benefactors (and of themselves). They proclaimed to stand for what their political predecessor, Alexander Hamilton, called the “American System.” This was really an Americanized version of the rotten, corrupt system of British “mercantilism” that the colonists had rebelled against. Its planks included protectionist tariffs to benefit Northern manufacturers and their banking and insurance industry business associates; a government-run national bank to provide cheap credit to politically-connected businesses; and “internal improvement subsidies,” which we today would call “corporate welfare,” for canal-, road-, and railroad-building corporations. So when Lincoln first ran for political office in Illinois in 1832 he announced: “I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many friends to become a candidate for the legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank . . . in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff.” He would devote his entire political career for the next twenty-nine years on that agenda.

The major opposition to Lincoln’s agenda of a mercantilist empire modeled after the British empire had always been from the South, as Presidents Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, and Tyler, among others, vetoed or obstructed Whig and later, Republican, legislation. There were Southern supporters of this agenda, and Northern, Jeffersonian opponents of it, but it is nevertheless true that the overwhelming opposition to this Northern, Hamiltonian scheme came from the Jeffersonian South.

Henry Clay was the leader of the Whigs until his death in 1852, and Lincoln once claimed that he got all of his political ideas from Clay, who he eulogized as “the beau ideal of a statesman.” In reality, the Hamilton/Clay/Lincoln “American System” was best described by Edgar Lee Masters, who was Clarence Darrow’s law partner and a renowned playwright (author of The Spoon River Anthology). In his book, Lincoln the Man (p. 27), Masters wrote that:

“Henry clay was the champion of that political system which doles favors to the strong in order to win and to keep their adherence to the government. His system offered shelter to devious schemes and corrupt enterprises . . . He was the beloved son of Alexander Hamilton with his corrupt funding schemes, his superstitions concerning the advantage of a public debt, and a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that cannot stand alone. His example and his doctrines led to the creation of a party that had not platform to announce, because its principles were plunder and nothing else.”

This was the agenda that Abraham Lincoln devoted his entire political life to. The “American System” was finally fully enacted with Lincoln’s Pacific Railroad Bill, which led to historic corruption during the Grant administration with its gargantuan subsidies to railroad corporations and others; fifty years of high, protectionist tariffs that continued to plunder Agricultural America, especially the South and the Mid-West, for the benefit of the industrial North; the nationalization of the money supply with the National Currency Acts and Legal Tender Acts; and the beginnings of a welfare state with veterans’ pensions. Most importantly, the system of federalism that was established by the founding fathers was all but destroyed with a massive shift in political power to Washington, D.C. and away from the people, due to the abolition (at gunpoint) of the rights of nullification and secession.

Lincoln’ Biggest Failure

Slavery was ended peacefully everywhere else in the world during the nineteenth century. This includes Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York, where slaves were once used to build slave ships that sailed out of New York, Providence, Hartford, Providence, and Boston harbors. There were still slaves in New York City as late as 1853.

Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Fogel and co-author Stanley Engerman, in their book, Time on the Cross, describe how the British, Spanish, and French empires, as well as the Swedes, Danes, and Dutch, ended slavery peacefully during the nineteenth century. Whenever slaves did participate in wars in Central America and elsewhere, it was because they were promised freedom by one side in the war; the purpose of the wars, however, was never to free the slaves.

The British simply used tax dollars to purchase the freedom of the slaves and then legally ended the practice. The cost of the “Civil War” to Northern taxpayers alone would have been sufficient to achieve the same thing in the U.S. Instead, the slaves were used as political pawns in a war that ended with the death of as many as 850,000 Americans according to the latest research (the number was 620,000 for the past 100 years or so), with more than double that amount maimed for life, physically and psychologically. (Lincoln did make a speech in favor of “compensated emancipation” in the border states but insisted that it be accompanied by deportation of any emancipated slaves. He never used his “legendary” political skills, however, to achieve any such outcome, as a real statesman would have done – minus the deportation).

The Glory of the Coming of the Lord?

By the mid nineteenth century the world had evolved such that international law and the laws of war condemned the waging of war on civilians. It was widely recognized that civilians would always become casualties in any war, but to intentionally target them was a war crime.

The Lincoln regime reversed that progress and paved the way for all the gross wartime atrocities of the twentieth century by waging war on Southern civilians for four long years. Rape, pillage, plunder, the bombing and burning of entire cities populated only by civilians was the Lincolnian way of waging war – not on foreign invaders but on his own fellow American citizens. (Lincoln did not consider secession to be legal; therefore, he thought of all citizens of the Southern states to be American citizens, not citizens of the Confederate government).

General Sherman said in a letter to his wife that his purpose was “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people” (Letter from Sherman to Mrs. Sherman, July 31, 1862). Two years later, he would order his artillery officers to use the homes of Atlanta occupied by women and children as target practice for four days, while much of the rest of the city was a conflagration. The remaining residents were then kicked out of their homes – in November with the onset of winter. Ninety percent of Atlanta was demolished after the Confederate army had left the city.

General Philip Sheridan similarly terrorized the civilians of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. All of this led historian Lee Kennett, in his biography of Sherman, to honestly state that “had the Confederates somehow won, had their victory put them in position to bring their chief opponents before some sort of tribunal, they would have found themselves justified . . . in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants” (Lee Kennett, Marching Through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians During Sherman’s Campaign, p. 286).

About All Those Statues

Professor Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995) was perhaps the most famous academic libertarian in the world during the last half of the twentieth century. A renowned Austrian School economist, he also wrote widely on historical topics, especially war and foreign policy. In a 1994 essay entitled “Just War” (online at https://mises.org/library/just-war), Rothbard argued that the only two American wars that would qualify as just wars (defined as wars to ward off a threat of coercive domination) were the American Revolution and the South’s side in the American “Civil War.” Without getting into his detailed explanation of this, his conclusion is especially relevant and worth quoting at length:

“[I]n this War Between the States, the South may have fought for its sacred honor, but the Northern war was the very opposite of honorable. We remember the care with which the civilized nations had developed classical international law. Above all, civilians must not be targeted; wars must be limited. But the North insisted on creating a conscript army, a nation in arms, and broke the 19th-century rules of war by specifically plundering and slaughtering civilians, by destroying civilian life and institutions so as to reduce the South to submission. Sherman’s famous march through Georgia was one of the great war crimes, and crimes against humanity, of the past century-and-a-half. Because by targeting and butchering civilians, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman paved the way for all the genocidal horrors of the monstrous 20th century. . . . As Lord Acton, the great libertarian historian, put it, the historian, in the last analysis, must be a moral judge. The muse of the historian, he wrote, is not Clio but Rhadamanthus, the legendary avenger of innocent blood. In that spirit, we must always remember, we must never forget, we must put in the dock and hang higher than Haman, those who, in modern times, opened the Pandora’s Box of genocide and the extermination of civilians: Sherman, Grant, and Lincoln.

Perhaps, some day, their statues will be toppled and melted down; their insignias and battle flag will be desecrated, and their war songs tossed into the fire.

Perhaps, some day. But in the meantime, and for the past 150 years, the mountain of lies that has concocted the Lincoln Myth has been invoked over and over again to “justify” war after war, all disguised as some great moral crusade, but in reality merely a tool to enrich the already wealthy-beyond-their-wildest-dreams military/industrial complex and its political promoter class. As Robert Penn Warren wrote in his 1960 book, The Legacy of the Civil War, the Lincoln Myth, painstakingly fabricated by the Republican Party, long ago created a “psychological heritage” that contends that “the Northerner, with his Treasury of Virtue” caused by his victory in the “Civil War,” feels as though he has “an indulgence, a plenary indulgence, for all sins past, present, and future.” This “indulgence,” wrote Warren, “is the justification for our crusades of 1917-1918 and 1941-1945 and our diplomacy of righteousness, with the slogan of unconditional surrender and universal rehabilitation for others” (emphasis added). Robert Penn Warren believed that most Americans were content with all of these lies about their own history, the work of what he called “the manipulations of propaganda specialists,” referring to those who describe themselves as “Lincoln scholars.”

Thomas DiLorenzo is a professor at Loyola University in Maryland. Among his books are: The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe; Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Arch-Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution and What It Means for Americans Today.

Отсюда.

И про то, что здесь происходит.

Мне показалось очень интересной статьей.

О фигуре Дональда Трампа будут спорить еще долгие годы. Какова его роль в истории Америки? Кто он? Американский герой — супермен, борющийся один против всех за правду американской глубинки против «вашингтонского бюрократического болота»? Новый Джордж Вашингтон, оставивший свою любимую плантацию, чтобы возглавить войну за свободу от кабалы глобальных элит (тогда — британского короля Георга III). Самовлюбленный эксцентрик, решивший добавить к своим реалити-шоу роль президента США? А может быть, неординарность личности Трампа отражает беспрецедентность развертывающейся в Америке революции?

В том, что в Соединенных Штатах происходит именно революция, то есть «радикальное, коренное, глубокое, качественное изменение в развитии общества», нет никакого сомнения. Все ее классические элементы — от экономических проблем, провоцирующих массовую мобилизацию на фоне нарратива перемен, до паралича элит, погрязших в междоусобных разборках, до атмосферы глобального кризиса, дезориентирующего старую власть и ожесточающую новую, — налицо.

Более того, в Америке одновременно идут две революции. Первая — та, что на поверхности, — политическая, ведет к слому монополии американских «универсалистов-глобалистов», которые завели страну в тупик, и приходу националистов. Эта революция — в своем апогее.

Вторая революция пока почти незаметна, но именно она определит, какими будут Соединенные Штаты через 10, а возможно, и 30 лет. Эта вторая революция медленно, но неумолимо приближается. Скоро она столкнет между собой консерваторов и социал-либералов, или, сильно упрощая — наследников Рейгана и наследников Рузвельта.

Трамп является если не вдохновителем, то безусловным символом первой революции. Ирония истории заключается в том, что своей победой он расчищает дорогу к поражению своих сторонников во второй.

Причины первой революции не вызывают сомнений. С конца 1980-х Америка вступила в имперскую эпоху. В отсутствие идеологических конкурентов американская политическая система загнила, закостенела. В Вашингтоне вырос «имперский класс», который решил, что его звездный час никогда не кончится. Как в Древнем Риме, возникла типично имперская элита, идеологию которой можно назвать универсализмом. Веря в фукуямовский «конец истории», она провозгласила универсальность американской системы (то есть то, что существующие в США принципы организации экономической и политической жизни являются единственно верными и должны быть распространены на весь мир). Универсалисты полностью контролировали американскую повестку дня от Билла Клинтона до Трампа, независимо от того, к какой партии принадлежал президент и какой был расклад на Капитолийском холме, поэтому деление на республиканцев и демократов давно потеряло смысл.

Универсалисты создали понятие глобализации и идеального «глобального» человека будущего, который существует вне контекста социальной принадлежности, пола, цвета кожи и страны. Этот стерильно толерантный индивидуум символизирует глобально-коннектированную, полностью уверенную в своей правоте элиту, которая смотрит CNN и тусуется в Давосе. Исторически и ментально универсализм опирается на англосаксонский белый протестантский активизм — на понимание роли США как избранного Богом защитника вселенского добра от зла и утверждение киплинговского «бремени белого человека» как модели развития мира.

Нынешняя универсалистская элита даже забыла, как делаются деньги: большинство ее представителей никогда не занимались бизнесом, это обслуживающие систему профессиональные политики, партийные активисты, журналисты, профессора, бюрократы, руководители благотворительных фондов и созданных на политические гранты НКО.

Эта элита получает деньги только потому, что является политической и идеологической надстройкой над американской имперской системой. Именно потому она настолько агрессивна в попытках сохранить свои позиции, что по-другому кормиться просто не сможет. Как показывают недавние события в Шарлотсвилле, чтобы сломать Трампа, она даже готова развязать новую гражданскую войну.

Лишь в последние несколько лет, после череды военных и финансовых провалов со стороны универсалистов, у их противников — консерваторов-националистов — появился шанс. У американских предпринимателей, теряющих конкурентоспособность, и у нищающего американского среднего класса возник общий интерес в победе национального перед глобальным. Призыв Трампа к джексоновской, антиэлитной, традиционной, самодостаточной Америке нашел отклик среди всех тех, кто чувствовал страх за свое будущее, за свой образ жизни.

Националист Трамп поставил точку в глобализации, прямо назвав весь мир конкурентом США. Но он также положил конец лицемерию Америки, лицемерию прежде всего по отношению к самой себе. С появлением Трампа пришел конец политкорректности — этакому эсперанто универсалистов, которая контролировала, суживала общественную дискуссию до допустимых элитами рамок и дискредитировала, объявляла вне закона все идеи, выходившие за эти рамки, вместе с их авторами. Это была самая страшная цензура. Публично навешивая ярлыки (вспомните «русских хакеров»), она навсегда выводила из игры неугодных вместе с их идеями. Кстати, Токвилль предупреждал об американском идеологическом тоталитаризме еще 150 лет назад!

Однако феномен Дональда Трампа — это не только результат подъема консервативного движения. В не меньшей мере это результат провала левой идеологии в США. Став имперскими универсалистами, верхушка демократов оторвалась от среднего класса как своей традиционной базы. Партия ушла от социал-либерализма Рузвельта к олигархическому неолиберализму Клинтонов.

Однако сейчас Америка, да и весь мир, вернулись к ситуации, которая привела Рузвельта к власти почти сто лет назад. Перед нами опять системный экономический кризис и финансовые пузыри, вопиющая поляризация и социальное недовольство, а главное — перспектива нового передела мира и необходимость концентрации национальных ресурсов для новой гонки за мировое лидерство.

Исторический выбор, стоящий перед Америкой, таков: либо, как когда-то Рузвельт, в целях сохранения социальной стабильности и покупательной способности сделать распределение национального богатства более справедливым, обеспечить нормальную, осмысленную жизнь человека в обществе, всё более атомизируемом «Убером», где роботы скоро могут оставить без надежды на будущее миллионы людей, либо последует революционный взрыв — как в голливудских «Голодных играх». С Америкой это уже случалось — праздник 1 Мая к нам пришел после расстрелов чикагских рабочих в 1886 году.

Ни один из вопросов, от которых зависит будущее Америки, нельзя решить с позиций побеждающего сегодня консерватизма, который, наоборот, предполагает сокращение роли государства, максимальную свободу для бизнеса и примат интересов индивидуума над интересами общества, то есть ведет страну в тупик, к социальному взрыву. Для решения накопившихся проблем необходим новый этап государственного регулирования экономики и новый социальный договор на уровне тех экономических возможностей, которые реально останутся у США. Поэтому приход социал-либералов к власти неизбежен, это только вопрос времени.

Но при чем же здесь Трамп?

Для того чтобы построить что-то новое, старое должно быть сломано. Трамп — это разрушитель старой системы, срезающий раковый нарост ее закостеневшей элиты, освобождающий политическое пространство для перемен. Любой другой, менее радикальный, если не сказать одиозный, политик попытался бы медленно реформировать систему и был бы этой системой переварен и подчинен.

Трамп дезавуировал Вашингтон — и демократов, и республиканцев — как носителей универсальной правды, спровоцировав яркую демонстрацию их моральной деградации и показав, что, кроме американских универсалистов, есть и американские националисты, то есть что американский универсализм не универсален. Заодно Трамп разрушает и атлантическую солидарность, которая для самодостаточной Америки становится ненужной и затратной.

Прогрессивные демократы должны быть благодарны Трампу за то, что он ускорил зачистку левого фланга американской политики от клинтонистской гнили, которую сами демократы боялись тронуть. Как показала предвыборная кампания, с левого фланга, со стороны Сандерса, пробить стену политкорректной, всеобволакивающей цензуры было просто невозможно. Это мог сделать только Трамп — тот, кому ярлыки, сколько бы их ни навешивали, уже не могли навредить!

Трамп еще может проиграть, но возврата к статусу-кво уже не будет. Он уже разрушил договор элит, обострил их противостояние, вывел их войну в публичное пространство, отрезал всем путь к отступлению. Консерваторы его администрации уже ломают отжившие социальные программы, на которые у экономики США больше нет ресурсов, развязывая руки тем, кто придет после них с кардинально новыми решениями!

Это значит, что впервые за долгие годы вместо постановочного соревнования республиканцев и демократов мы увидим реальную борьбу правых и левых — консерваторов и либералов. Обе партии омолаживаются и радикализируются — они уже начали возвращение к своим идеологическим истокам — именно на базе американских национальных интересов, и с явным уклоном на социальную повестку дня. Эта борьба начинается с местных органов власти и через 4–8 лет радикально обновит конгресс.

Особо стоит отметить, что приоритеты консерваторов Трампа и прогрессистов Сандерса совпадают по целому ряду ключевых проблем Америки: по необходимости налоговой реформы, ограничению власти финансистов, возрождению национальной экономики, реформе избирательной системы. Это вселяет надежду на то, что стабильное электоральное большинство в поддержку леволиберального, «рузвельтовского» курса во внутренней, да и во внешней политике завтрашней Америки не только возможно, но практически неизбежно.

С одной стороны, Трамп — лидер консервативной революции отходящей англосаксонской протестантской Америки. С другой стороны, Трамп — это акселератор другой революции, гораздо более фундаментальной. Он неумолимо разваливает систему, которая эту революцию сдерживает. Приход консерваторов к власти заставит всех тех, кто с ними не согласен, вернуться к истокам американского социального прогрессивизма. Консервативная революция сверху открывает дорогу либеральной революции снизу. Таким образом, Трамп, вполне возможно, сам того не понимая и не желая, ускоряет исторический поворот Америки от наследников Рейгана к наследникам Рузвельта.

Автор -— доцент Университета МГИМО

Отсюда.

Немного веселого&

Dear Mom!

Нашу роту завтра отправляют на полигон Кэмп-Леджен, что в Северной Каролине. Там раньше готовили морских пехотинцев для наших победоносных войн в Ираке и Афганистане, а теперь будут готовить для победоносной войны с Россией. Эти рашенз совсем обнаглели: они вмешались в наши выборы, а также отняли у Юкрейн остров Крит, как нам рассказал наш капрал Джонс. Мы потренируемся, а потом покажем этим алкашам, что такое Корпус морской пехоты США.

Как приеду на место, обязательно тебе напишу.

Твой сын Коди.

***

Dear Mom!

Вот мы и прибыли на место. Тут кругом лес. Это хорошо, так как все русские тоже живут в лесу, как нам рассказал наш капрал Джонс. Посреди леса стоит настоящая вилладж.

Она раньше была иракская, а теперь ее переделали в русскую, только кое-где остались пальмы. Но капрал Джонс сказал, что у русских на Черном море тоже есть пальмы, так что все в порядке, ведь скоро мы будем и там. Недалеко от вилладж стоит казарма, где разместили нашу роту. Завтра нам пообещали сюрприз, и я тебе о нем обязательно расскажу.

Твой сын Коди.

***

Dear Mom!

Ого! Представь, у нас будет настоящая массовка! Оказывается, военно-морской департамент набрал русскоговорящих статистов, чтобы они изображали русских солдат и мирных жителей вилладжа. Кстати, по-русски вилладж — это дьеревна.

Все будет как в настоящем голливудском блокбастере! Твой сын теперь Брюс Уиллис! Правда, круто?

Статистов около тридцати, все эмигранты. Водители, строители, продавцы, айтишники, пара преподавателей, несколько женщин, а одна даже с маленькой дочкой лет пяти.

Для кого-то сто баксов в день — хорошие деньги, а кто-то пошел просто из любопытства.

На мужчин надели русские куртки из ваты, сапоги и пилотки со звездой, а женщин нарядили в широкие цветные юбки и закутали в большие платки — все как в настоящей России. Мы с парнями просто обхохотались, глядя на этих клоунов.

Завтра у нас начинаются тренировки. Обязательно расскажу о впечатлениях!

Твой сын Коди.

***

Dear Mom!

Это было просто здорово! Три наших взвода ворвались в эту дьеревну с трех сторон как ураган. Мы быстро положили мордами в землю десяток статистов со списанными нерабочими АК, рассредоточились и приступили к зачистке. Двое стояли по бокам, я выбивал дверь, быстро бросал в дом две гранаты, отбегал, после чего парни выпускали внутрь по обойме через окна.

Женщины-статистки кричали по-русски Спасите!, все было в дыму, звучала какая-то русская музыка и сильно воняло навозом. Господи, и как эти русские живут в таких условиях? Да они просто свиньи!

В общем, развлеклись мы здорово. Капрал Джонс для хохмы дал очередь холостыми над несколькими статистками — они испугались, а мы чуть животики не надорвали от смеха.

Твой сын Коди.

***

Dear Mom!

Сегодня мы отрабатывали тактику антипартизанской борьбы. Мужчины-статисты попрятались, а мы должны были их найти. Чтобы не терять время и не обыскивать воняющие навозом дома, капрал Джонс предложил отличную идею. Мы согнали всех статисток в сарай и через громкоговоритель объявили, что если статисты-партизаны через три минуты не выйдут, то мы подожжем сарай.

Никто не вышел.

Тогда капрал Джонс привел девочку-статистку, отобрал у нее плюшевого мишку, отрезал ему голову тактическим ножом и крикнул, что девочка следующая.

Мне кажется, ма, что Джонс перестарался.

Девочка расплакалась, и тут вышел один статист — какой-то щуплый тип в очках. Он молча подошел к нашему капралу и врезал ему в челюсть прикладом списанного нерабочего АК. Приклад, как оказалось, еще работал вполне исправно. Прекрасные белые зубы нашего капрала блеснули на солнце и упали примерно в двух метрах от того места, где рухнул сам капрал.

Мы все стояли как громом пораженные, ма. Взять и ударить вооруженного двухметрового морского пехотинца США по лицу мог только дикарь без чести и совести. А тут еще та девочка подошла к бесчувственному телу капрала и пару раз радостно пнула его ногой по ребрам. Где они их всех набирали — в джунглях Сибири?

Бойфренд нашего капрала взвизгнул, выхватил свой кольт, заряженный боевыми патронами, и стал стрелять в щуплого. Но не попал, так как из-за слез у него потекла тушь.

Зато изо всех щелей на нас кинулись статисты с каким-то страшным криком Рра! — или Юра!. Я не успел толком расслышать, так как что-то сильно ударило меня по каске, и я потерял сознание. Когда очнулся, было уже темно и никого рядом не было. Буду выбираться с этой проклятой базы. Напишу тебе завтра, а то мой планшет уже мигает и что-то тревожно шевелится в кустах. Мне страшно, ма. Я хочу домой, в Калифорнию.

Твой сын Коди.

***

Dear Mom!

Товарищ ефрейтор запаса поставил меня в наряд по туалету, и у меня есть минутка, чтобы тебе написать. Служу я хорошо. Капрал Джонс тоже в порядке, он стоит на тумбочке и громко кричит Шмирно!, если в казарму входит товарищ старший лейтенант запаса или товарищ старшина запаса.

Весь день у нас теперь расписан по минутам. То покраска травы, то подметание дорожек кисточками для бритья, то строевая подготовка с песнями. Я уже выучил песню: У солдата выходной, пуговицы в ряд.

Один из трех взводов всегда окапывается на плацу. Норматив пять минут, окоп в полный профиль, кто не укладывается — идет надувать колеса хамви без насоса. Но это все равно лучше, чем накачивать ручным насосом танковые катки, чтобы танк ездил мягче.

У меня для тебя хорошие новости! Командование Корпуса морской пехоты, наконец, заканчивает секретные переговоры со статистами, и нас всех отпустят в обмен на подписку, что статисты никому не расскажут, как тридцать гражданских взяли в плен двести морских пехотинцев. Им еще пообещали заплатить, а той девочке подарят трех плюшевых медведей и пять кукол Барби. Она, кстати, подружилась с капралом Джонсом и часто носила ему конфеты, когда он плакал на своей тумбочке. Русские оказались добрыми людьми — мы все живы и здоровы, спасибо им за это.

Так что скоро у меня дембель! Я уже стал пришивать к камуфляжу позолоченные аксельбанты и доделал дембельский альбом.

До скорой встречи!

Твой сын, дух первого месяца службы, Коди.

РИА Новости

После своего выступления, он продержался пару дней&

(CNN)In any normal White House, in any normal week, the ouster of the Presidents political and ideological guru would signal a major course correction.

Though Steve Bannon has been a force of disruption in President Donald Trumps tumultuous seven months in power, the now former chief White House strategist is unlikely to take the chaos he has fomented with him after being forced out of the West Wing Friday.

Thats because the most disruptive, unpredictable, outrageous influence in the White House is going nowhere, and he just happens to be the man in charge.

Trump is still President and he is an uncontrollable force, we have found out, said David Gergen, an adviser to four presidents, Democrats and Republicans.

A lot of the chaos and spewing of hatred comes from him himself, not just the people around him.

Ever since jumping to the Presidents campaign a year ago, Bannon has been portrayed as a political flamethrower and the personification of the America First economic nationalism and populism that Trump rode to the White House.

On one level, his exit is a victory for the generals Trump has gathered around him, including John Kelly, his new chief of staff, and H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser, who have battled to impose order and continuity on Trumps governing process and foreign policy as pandemonium raged.

One administration was clearly not big enough for Kelly and Bannon.

And sources have told CNN that Trump had grown irritated with his chief strategists outsized media profile and reputation as the intellectual guardian of his political project.

Yet photos of Kelly, staring helplessly at his shoes Tuesday as Trump drew new equivalencies between white supremacists and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, told their own story.

Kelly may be able to impose order and to oust the most disruptive elements of Trumps White House staff. But corralling the unruly President who resists discipline and control and who blurts out inflammatory statements and sets Twitter alight on a whim is another.

Bannon has often been seen as a link between Trump and the alt-right, nationalist sectors of his political base, that were particularly attracted to his rhetoric on immigration and tough line on Islamic terror during the campaign.

But Bannon, while clearly playing a role in laying out the ideological underpinnings of Trumps worldview, was always more of a symptom of Trumpism than its cause. The President was lashing out against Mexicans and indulging in anti-Muslim rhetoric long before he officially joined the campaign.

And the most remarkable news conference in presidential history also made another point clear: Trumps reticence in specifically singling out white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups was not the result of Bannon whispering in his ear  it was an authentic representation of his own core beliefs.

RELATED: A Trump meltdown for the ages

As a massive backlash grew against Trump, from business leaders, Republican senators and others, it became clear that his presidency itself was facing a huge crisis of moral legitimacy  a reality that the firing of a mere operative like Bannon, who has been at the fringes of Trumps team during the Presidents politically disastrous two-week working vacation, would do little to change.

After his ousting Friday, Bannon spoke to The Weekly Standard, making a pointed case that the Trump presidency that his brand of populist, right-wing conservatives helped make possible is now over.

We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency, Bannon told The Weekly Standard. But that presidency is over. Itll be something else. And therell be all kinds of fights, and therell be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.

The departure of the rumpled chief strategist provokes questions that could shape the Trump presidency going forward.

One effect could be to consolidate the White Houses political message more fully under the control of Kelly and any future appointees.

His absence could allow Kelly and McMaster to rein in conflicting strands of Trumps foreign policy. Bannons comment for example this week in an interview with the American Prospect that there was no military solution to the North Korea nuclear showdown undercut the Presidents rhetoric and caused deep confusion among US allies in Asia.

Still, given Trumps tendency to ad-lib his way through foreign policy crises, any control that Kelly and McMaster do manage to exert on national security policy is always going to be tenuous.

With chaos reigning in the White House, Trump has struggled to attract new blood to his team, following regular rounds of staff bloodletting. Perhaps, with Kelly running a tighter ship on military discipline, that could change.

Gen. Kelly is getting control of the staff, now we will see who he can attract in, Republican political consultant Rich Galen said on CNN.

For months, the conventional wisdom in Washington has been that Trump would be loathe to let Bannon go because he fears his slash-and-burn political tactics could be turned back against the administration itself.

But there is also anxiety among those who work in the intellectual engines of Trumpism that Bannons demise could see the President transformed into a more traditional, moderate politician. This would be especially the case if Bannons exit leads to more power for Trumps daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House economic supremo Gary Cohn.

Bannons former home, the conservative website, Breitbart, was quick to declare war on the Trump administration following Bannons firing.

The groups senior editor at large Joel Pollak warned that Trump could share the fate of another outsider candidate who disappointed his followers and turned into a liberal: former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Steve Bannon personified the Trump agenda. With Bannon gone, there is no guarantee that Trump will stick to the plan, Pollak wrote.

His comments were a signal that any softening of Trumps political persona would spell trouble for the White House

I think they are going to go to all-out war with what they perceive to be the West Wing globalists and really go after Jared and Ivanka and Gary Cohn and Don Jr., said Kurt Bardella, a Republican strategist and former Breitbart executive.

It did not take long for Bannon to end up back at Breitbart. The website said Friday evening that the man it described as a populist hero had returned to the company as executive chairman and had already chaired an editorial meeting.

His new perch will allow Bannon to pursue the feuds he waged inside the West Wing and license to push his key issues, including a crackdown on what he sees as Chinas trade abuses and the economic plight of white working-class Americans.

I think that Bannon is going to try to paint the narrative that the person that his audience voted for has been co-opted by these West Wing globalists, Bardella said.

Still, a White House ally of Bannon told CNNs Jeremy Diamond on Friday, that the now former chief strategist did not want to go to war with Trump.

Thats not where Steves head is at, this source said. Hes been fighting for the exact same things that the president has been fighting for.

The source quoted Bannon as saying I want (Trump) to succeed.

That could lead to Bannon going hard after his former enemies in the West Wing, but staying publicly loyal to Trump  in a way that would allow him to emerge as a private counselor for a President, who is known to trawl a wide range of former associates and colleagues for advice, and support.

Отсюда.

Администрацию лихорадит и Трамп сдает своих одного за другим.

Честно говоря, очень надеялся на то, что вся та мерзость, которая была в предвыборной кампании, она прекратится.

После выборов, обычно американцы называли Президентом того человека, который побеждал. Все откладывали предвыборные страсти и потихоньку страна возвращалась к нормальной жизни, хотя бы до следующих выборов.

После объявления Президентом Трампа, ничего подобного не случилось.

Увы&

The “Trump colluded with Russia” narrative is alive and well in the United States. With the media and the Marxist left lacking any facts to support this falsehood, they have now resorted to guessing what evidence hackers overseas may provide to resuscitate their attempt to unseat a duly elected U.S. president.

The Associated Press and The New York Times reported this week that a Ukrainian hacker named “Profexer” had turned himself in and is now a cooperating witness for the FBI. The mainstream media is beside itself reporting what “facts” this new twist of the Russia story may uncover. Why do you need facts when you can pollute the news cycle with things you can make up about what a man might say about President Trump?

According to the AP account, “There is no evidence that Profexer worked, at least knowingly, for Russia’s intelligence services.” But hey — why does that matter when you can attach all kinds of innuendo and made-up stuff to an overseas arrest for hacking?

But that story aside, some real news is coming out of Ukraine on the collusion front. I’m not talking about Russian collusion against Hillary Clinton; I’m talking about collusion between the Democratic National Committee and the government of Ukraine to try to stop Donald Trump from winning the presidential election.

We all know what Mr. Trump said about trying to work with Moscow on the world stage during the campaign. Essentially, it was a recognition that Washington should seek better relations with Russia — you know, that really big nation that has the most nuclear weapons in the world. Mr. Trump essentially said we should respect Moscow’s concerns about its “near abroad” and work with Russia where we could to defeat the Islamic State and other threats to both countries.

This obviously didn’t sit well with Kiev, which has been fighting a pro-Russian insurgency in the eastern Donbass region for the past few years. Would Mr. Trump end sanctions on Russia? Would Mr. Trump end support for the Ukrainian armed forces in its conflict against Moscow?

Once in office, however, Mr. Trump has done just the opposite. He has buttressed support for Ukraine and even attacked a Syrian air base with 59 cruise missiles even with hundreds of Russian technicians deployed there.

Evidence has been released suggesting DNC operatives may have worked with the government of Ukraine to manufacture evidence against Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s onetime campaign manager who has emerged as a central figure in the Russian meddling probe. After speaking with the Ukrainian National Anti-corruption Bureau (NABU), I wrote in this space a year ago that they knew at the time that a “ledger” published in The New York Times supposedly showing that Mr. Manfort received illegal payments from a source tied to ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was bogus. NABU investigators clearly said at the time that the newspaper took the phony document from the internet.

This week, Ukrainian parliamentary member Andrei Derkach sent a letter to the country’s chief prosecutor demanding an investigation into illegal collusion with the Clinton campaign to defeat Mr. Trump.

“Only a transparent and thorough investigation into the unlawful interference of Ukrainian officials with the U.S. election campaign can restore the trust of our strategic partner,” Mr. Derkach wrote.

He said there has been “illegal interference in the election of president of the United States organized by a criminal organization” consisting of Ukrainian government officials, an effort that had harmed relations with the U.S.

I spoke with NABU officials again this week, and they provided a canned statement saying essentially they had washed their hands of the Manafort affair.

Will special counsel Robert Mueller do the right thing and investigate this collusion as well? Or will he act in a partisan manner and ignore the evidence?

This week we also found out that rocket engines from a Ukrainian factory may have found their way to North Korea and vastly improved Kim Jong-un’s ability to attack the U.S. mainland with nuclear weapons. I guess we are supposed to ignore this revelation as well.

• L. Todd Wood is a former special operations helicopter pilot and Wall Street debt trader, and has contributed to Fox Business, The Moscow Times, National Review, the New York Post and many other publications. He can be reached through his website, LToddWood.com.

Отсюда.

Это все уже немного утомляет&.

На то, что в Америке происходит снос памятнков, смотрю сейчас с большим недоумением и непониманием.

Не думал никогда, что до этого дойдет в стране, пытающейся стать цивилизационным маяком для других стран.

Вот сейчас в Мемфисе дошла очередь до сноса памятника и даже могилы этого человека.

Кстати, о нем есть упоминание в одном из любимых мной фильмов. Собственно говоря, в фильме говорится, что главный герой был назван в его честь&

О каком фильме речь, думаю  понятно&

Видение одного из советников Президента Трампа&

You might think from recent press accounts that Steve Bannon is on the ropes and therefore behaving prudently. In the aftermath of events in Charlottesville, he is widely blamed for his boss’s continuing indulgence of white supremacists. Allies of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster hold Bannon responsible for a campaign by Breitbart News, which Bannon once led, to vilify the security chief. Trump’s defense of Bannon, at his Tuesday press conference, was tepid.

But Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of taking a harder line with China, and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury. “They’re wetting themselves,” he said, proceeding to detail how he would oust some of his opponents at State and Defense.

Needless to say, I was a little stunned to get an email from Bannon’s assistant midday Tuesday, just as all hell was breaking loose once again about Charlottesville, saying that Bannon wished to meet with me. I’d just published a column on how China was profiting from the U.S.-North Korea nuclear brinkmanship, and it included some choice words about Bannon’s boss.

“In Kim, Trump has met his match,” I wrote. “The risk of two arrogant fools blundering into a nuclear exchange is more serious than at any time since October 1962.” Maybe Bannon wanted to scream at me?

I told the assistant that I was on vacation, but I would be happy to speak by phone. Bannon promptly called.

Far from dressing me down for comparing Trump to Kim, he began, “It’s a great honor to finally track you down. I’ve followed your writing for years and I think you and I are in the same boat when it comes to China. You absolutely nailed it.”

“We’re at economic war with China,” he added. “It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path. On Korea, they’re just tapping us along. It’s just a sideshow.”

Bannon said he might consider a deal in which China got North Korea to freeze its nuclear buildup with verifiable inspections and the United States removed its troops from the peninsula, but such a deal seemed remote. Given that China is not likely to do much more on North Korea, and that the logic of mutually assured destruction was its own source of restraint, Bannon saw no reason not to proceed with tough trade sanctions against China.

Contrary to Trump’s threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.” Bannon went on to describe his battle inside the administration to take a harder line on China trade, and not to fall into a trap of wishful thinking in which complaints against China’s trade practices now had to take a backseat to the hope that China, as honest broker, would help restrain Kim.

“To me,” Bannon said, “the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, were five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which well never be able to recover.”

Bannon’s plan of attack includes: a complaint under Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from American corporations doing business there, and follow-up complaints against steel and aluminum dumping. “We’re going to run the tables on these guys. We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us.”

But what about his internal adversaries, at the departments of State and Defense, who think the United States can enlist Beijing’s aid on the North Korean standoff, and at Treasury and the National Economic Council who don’t want to mess with the trading system?

“Oh, they’re wetting themselves,” he said, explaining that the Section 301 complaint, which was put on hold when the war of threats with North Korea broke out, was shelved only temporarily, and will be revived in three weeks. As for other cabinet departments, Bannon has big plans to marginalize their influence.

“I’m changing out people at East Asian Defense; I’m getting hawks in. I’m getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State.”

But can Bannon really win that fight internally?

“That’s a fight I fight every day here,” he said. “We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying.”

“We gotta do this. The president’s default position is to do it, but the apparatus is going crazy. Don’t get me wrong. It’s like, every day.”

Bannon explained that his strategy is to battle the trade doves inside the administration while building an outside coalition of trade hawks that includes left as well as right. Hence the phone call to me.

There are a couple of things that are startling about this premise. First, to the extent that most of the opponents of Bannon’s China trade strategy are other Trump administration officials, it’s not clear how reaching out to the left helps him. If anything, it gives his adversaries ammunition to characterize Bannon as unreliable or disloyal.

More puzzling is the fact that Bannon would phone a writer and editor of a progressive publication (the cover lines on whose first two issues after Trump’s election were “Resisting Trump” and “Containing Trump”) and assume that a possible convergence of views on China trade might somehow paper over the political and moral chasm on white nationalism.

The question of whether the phone call was on or off the record never came up. This is also puzzling, since Steve Bannon is not exactly Bambi when it comes to dealing with the press. He’s probably the most media-savvy person in America.

I asked Bannon about the connection between his program of economic nationalism and the ugly white nationalism epitomized by the racist violence in Charlottesville and Trump’s reluctance to condemn it. Bannon, after all, was the architect of the strategy of using Breitbart to heat up white nationalism and then rely on the radical right as Trump’s base.

He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: “Ethno-nationalism—its losers. Its a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.”

“These guys are a collection of clowns,” he added.

From his lips to Trump’s ear.

“The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

I had never before spoken with Bannon. I came away from the conversation with a sense both of his savvy and his recklessness. The waters around him are rising, but he is going about his business of infighting, and attempting to cultivate improbable outside allies, to promote his China strategy. His enemies will do what they do.

Either the reports of the threats to Bannon’s job are grossly exaggerated and leaked by his rivals, or he has decided not to change his routine and to go down fighting. Given Trump’s impulsivity, neither Bannon nor Trump really has any idea from day to day whether Bannon is staying or going. He has survived earlier threats. So what the hell, damn the torpedoes.

The conversation ended with Bannon inviting me to the White House after Labor Day to continue the discussion of China and trade. We’ll see if he’s still there.

Отсюда.

Основная мысль,  главный враг Америки  Китай.

Не Россия&