Douglas Schorr

President Trump echoed what much of the world has been questioning for 50 years: “Why are we Americans involved in so many places? What is all this ‘Aid’ business about, and are we getting a fair return for our buck?”

Maybe he is upset enough to build a wall that will keep Americans in! And what if we refused to send them the foreign goods they’ve lived their extraordinarily rich lives on? Wow, the world would get a chance to recuperate, and it might be a re-evaluation of the American role on the global stage.

Maybe he could do it under the guise of a tariff war!

What a great idea. Please, Gods, I’m begging, get him to do it.

Never in the history of the world has there ever been such a violent, self-serving, and crass imperial power as the United States of America. It sees by satellite and, after ensuring there is nothing too dangerous lurking, it comes, totally destroys, rampages, robs, and rapes. It loads up and leaves its victims decades to pick up the pieces. Long before everything is mended, the division the US leaves ensures endless rounds of picking up pieces.

The smirks and rough jibes in Congress, the Senate, and on US TV make having empire privilege without duty wholly acceptable. Why? Because with a hostile force bigger than the combined defense forces of the rest of the world, they can. And the juiciest joke is this – “you simpletons of the rest of the world paid for every last penny we spent! In fact, we didn’t spend but printed and churned it through the economy!”

As many predicted, finally this satanic block overheats. It is both fascinating and satisfying to witness the cracks in this mighty structure of materialism and exploitation widen and crumble.

There is no single “we Americans.” The country is a melting pot of ethnicities, cultures, religions, half-baked ideologies, and skewed worldviews. However, the love of the US dollar has kept all Americans in step. Having it became more important than earning it by doing something special. It was once the greatest destination country for any intrepid, adventurous spirit looking for fame, fortune and a chance to shine. The Robber Barons earned their infamy by wokeist hindsight. They built America. Yes, they earned fortunes, but for every dollar banked, they invested truckloads in jobs, new ventures, training – the list is endless. Now it’s a place where the pursuit of the prosperous life is about shortcuts. Criticizing liberals connive to succeed at the expense of others. And the biggest mass of others are everyone who isn’t “we American.”

America’s democratic (the meaning is forever tainted) leadership saw massive opportunities in the looming clouds of World War II. America set off down the road of profit, no matter the cost. It supported both sides and never looked back. But two things: though the new business model proved maximum destruction was hugely profitable, it needed the mainstream media to justify it. Secondly, covert operations, once a wink passed in the corridors of power, became a veritable force supported by billions of dollars because the returns were so lucrative. The American Bully’s business dealings shifted from polite threats in front of the cameras to backstabbing behind closed doors. Interestingly, language standards plummeted too—the most common words on TV became “fucking motherfucker.” Owning the notion of profit, no matter the cost, marked their speech as bravado.

America treated the world as a Garden of Eden that didn’t need its tending. With their own flourishing at their back, they looked across the oceans, winked, and said, “Why pluck ours when theirs is there?” Until recently, there wasn’t an orchard gate that withstood an American visit. Their trademark was to leave nothing but pips, peelings, and the bodies of objecting gardeners. For 75-years the USA has manufactured reasons or not bothered to justify continuous looting worldwide. Some were killing sprees, but most were on a graduated scale from breaking and entering to extremely violent hit-and-disappear events. While the military made the most noise, the real damage was intellectual white-collar crime behind closed doors.

Where Bretton Woods 1944 fuelled American bullying practices, Nixon’s 1971 sledgehammer blow to the heads of the world’s developed, developing, and emerging nations set back progress for years. He effectively taxed the world to support the American dream. Every president since has added more “tax”. The Federal Reserve’s antics and Clinton’s liberalization of banks turned international trade into a massacre for countries without means. To expedite matters, the US exported its manufacturing to sweatshops, mostly to Asia. People, first under the whip of Western European and Japanese brutality, then American imperialism, worked themselves to death to ensure their children escaped dire poverty. They produced goods that Americans sold at exorbitant markups, calling the markup “productivity improvement!”

Ironically, this devastating financial assault created a massive social welfare problem among America’s “useless class” and launched into the “big time” heinous activities like drug and human trafficking, money laundering, and currency manipulation. Fine, if it stayed on the island—not Epstein’s, the big one—but when America sneezes, the West catches a chill, and the developing world gets pneumonia. Though everything about drugs etcetera, and the fallout therefrom enables the American dream, the rest of the world was at risk. And for 40 years, contamination hasn’t often been direct. The best con-artist moves the US pulled were through institutions like the UN, WB, IMF, WTO, and others, the private banks, and corporate-owned corporations. But even more heinous has been the American pretence of giving aid. There was no giving about it.

In the invisible small print below the signatures was detailed exactly what they were taking in return and for what. Forget about Obama’s remote missile assassins cheered by Americans; in thousands of offices, some of America’s nicest, church-going people have been doing the “admin” for some truly heinous deeds worldwide at the hidden cost of hundreds of billions.

Will President Trump really do it? The fact that he isn’t a professional politician and hasn’t had the time to become a complete monster means he might.