DONALD TRUMP, STEPHEN MILLER AND THE INSANITY OF THEIR DOG-EAT-DOG WORLD
Dr. Common Good
In a CNN interview on January 5, Jake Tapper reminded Trump chief policy advisor Stephen Miller that the US actually invaded Venezuela and seized its leader. Miller’s response? “Damn straight we did!…Because the point, Jake, is we’re not going to let tinpot communist dictators send rapists into our country, send drugs into our country, send weapons into our country, okay? And we’re not going to let a country fall into the hands of our adversaries.” [Note for the record here the assertion that Venezuela has been sending rapists to the US, or that they are a major exporter of either drugs or guns to the US, is a complete fabrication, without evidence.] He then added that “The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.” Even more grandiose and twisted, Miller said that the post-World War II period of the West “apologizing and groveling and begging” was over. [For the record, most of the world would have no idea what Miller was referring to with respect to American “groveling” and “begging.”]
That was about Venezuela. Regarding military force to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, a founding member of NATO in 1949, Miller dismissively declared that “The United States is the power of NATO, for the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests.” “Obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States, and so that’s a conversation that we’re going to have as a country. That’s a process we’re going to have as a new community of nations.” Not only that, but “The real question is what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim?” [Note for the record that Greenland was linked to the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway for about a thousand years, officially becoming a Danish colony in 1814, a part of the Danish state in 1953, and an autonomous territory since 1979.] Ah, but Miller says that “Nobody’s gonna fight the United States military over the future of Greenland.”
To cap off this repulsive, school-bully frothing, Miller just kept going, justifying any American imperialism with a dystopian vision of a new world order in which the United States can freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as it is in the national interest. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
Ah, I get it. The age-old “iron laws.” So, it is okay for Putin to roll over Ukraine, and maybe a few other Eastern European and Baltic states. And it is okay for China to roll over Taiwan. Same rules, eh? Is it also okay for any country to just seize the American president and his wife, and maybe other officials – like Stephen Miller – if they have the power to do so?
Of course, Miller is not alone in his mind-boggling assertion of the right to power and the ignorance about where that leads. In a New York Times interview on Wednesday, January 7, Trump asserted that he “doesn’t need international law” to govern his pursuit of Western Hemisphere dominance. The only check on his power, he said, is “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” Unfortunately, we know about Trump’s “mind” and his “morality.” Neither exist in any recognizable form.
This kind of garbage, and there is no nicer word, is the stuff of people whose untethered hubris and ignorance have merged into the insane. I ask you, Stephen Miller, how ignorant can you be of recent world history? The entire reason we have what you and your fellow traffickers-in-madness derogate as the “liberal world order” is that we have the experience of two brutal world wars — somewhere around 22 million people were killed in WWI and 70-85 million killed in WWII. The horror of these wars, and the realization that such are the real-world consequences of a dog-eat-dog world governed purely by military might, is the reason the United Nations was created in the first place, along with its related system of international law and human rights. Are you not aware of this? Truly, what planet do you hail from? And what does this have to do with “groveling?” Nothing. Nothing at all, unless your vision is so warped by some puerile bully-fantasy that you cannot grasp what a significant collective of human beings attempted to do to prevent future brutality and provide some framework for human progress.
Dr. Common Good has just one more question, this time for journalists. In your interviews and broadcasts, why are you quibbling about the feasibility of “managing” Venezuela, or what the oil companies think about this, or any other sideshow. These questions are immaterial. The real question is, what right does the Trump administration have to do any of this? And why are we, as American citizens, as global citizens, continuing to nibble at the edges of this appalling human travesty, being committed right in our collective faces by Trump, his storm troopers, and their simpering and/or conniving apologists?