America needs a rebalancing of power and wealth

Upon further reflection on the first presidential spectacle that took place this week, I am reminded of a talk I attended in New York City in September 2015 by Noam Chomsky. When asked about Donald Trump and the Republican primary elections at that time, the philosopher pointed out that Trump and everything he represents is the culmination of what Republicans had become over the decades – an insurgent party based on division and hatred.

Several months later, at one of those dreaded Thanksgiving family discussions that CGTN columnist Chris Hawke referred to, I saw members of my family warming up to the idea of a President Trump, and on later occasions it was friends and acquaintances. The connection is very obvious, as I have pointed out previously for CGTN, between the once-prevailing conservative ideology and the tendencies that Trump exploited to ascend to the White House.

As the last debate showed very clearly, one of these clear tendencies is racism. But it was not Trump that pioneered dog-whistling to racists – Republicans have long used coded language such as "states' rights," "family values," and even "freedom of speech" to justify appeals to reprehensible ideological tendencies.

The reasoning at that time was very clear: no one wants to admit that they're racist, xenophobic, sexist, or anything else of the sort that a decent society would keep away from political power.

But Trump went further – he said the quiet part out loud and, to the horror of some Republicans at that time, their base loved it.

Fast forward almost four years, now seeking a second bid as president, Trump publicly stoked white supremacists and right-wing hate groups before a television audience by telling them to "stand back and stand by" during the first presidential debate. This falls in line with his past comments; for example, saying there were "very fine people" on both sides when referring to a deadly attack committed by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

Trump is perhaps not politically sophisticated enough to be a far-right ideologue himself (though according to his ex-wife, Ivana Trump, he reportedly owned a copy of Adolf Hitler's speeches and kept them in his bedside cabinet), he maintains a symbiotic relationship with them.

Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief ideological advisor, who is surely not a political intellect and has never uttered a single word that meaningfully contributes to society, was once the "ghost in the machine" that is Trump.

And while Bannon maintains no formal tie to the White House, he is still a barometer for the most dangerous inclinations of the president's spasmodic mind; for example, his insistence on the importance of the results of "game day" when referring to the results of the presidential election, which he uses to call into question the legitimacy of mail-in ballots.

Bannon's podcast co-host, Raheem Kassam, a cartoonish "Americanophile" with an equally unimpressive intellect, has made false claims that foreign actors would use these ballots to cast illegitimate votes, and his "news" website is locked into various other conspiracy theories surrounding the topic. Both insist that they don't want to see a "civil war" erupt after the election, but narrate current events as if they were Earl Turner.

The foot soldiers of these basement dwelling pseudo-intellectuals have apparently taken notice and are indeed ready to "stand by," as Trump said during the debate. Ken Klippenstein of The Nation reported this week that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sees the months leading up to inauguration as a "flashpoint" for right-wing terrorism, according to a leaked FBI report.

The FBI's inside sources said that radical right-wing terrorists are planning to "hunt" anti-fascist activists and "shoot" anti-racist protesters.

They evidently know the president is endorsing them and, more importantly, it should be understood that Trump's constant bashing of "Marxism," "the radical left," "rioters," and so on were clearly not directed at Biden or even Marxists in any real sense. They were direct threats against everyday people who have taken to the streets to resist the flagrant actions of this president. Voting for Democrats alone will not fix this issue.

As I said in June, returning again to the words of Chomsky, America needs a "kind of denazification" and, I would add for clarity, a complete rebalancing of power and wealth at every level.

Decades of anti-progressive activity and neoliberal decadence have led to a nosedive American decline, and the methods used abroad to quell burgeoning class contradiction in the imperial periphery are coming home to roost, namely right-wing violence. Watching it all materialize is really something like the collapse of the Soviet Union, except the difference being that an American collapse would be far more bloody and would drag the entire world down with it.

We can attribute this decline most immediately to Republicans, who have become so addicted to power at any cost that they resorted to exploiting racial division and cozying up to, even building up, extremely reactionary tendencies just to win elections. Like any addiction, breaking it starts first with breaking denial. Will they finally put an end to this?