First the Romance, Now the Reality

Now it is only a question of how deep will be our disappointment. Enjoy the losers’ tears before they dry up, but know as monumental as the election was, it’s but a blip against the longer term trend line tracing the successful progress of their long war. Their histrionics are all the more remarkable in light of their still commanding position. Brace for their fury.

This time, as in 2016, Donald Trump’s biggest advantage was his competition. I think Kamala Harris’ campaign adopted “joy” as an early theme to turn to its advantage Harris’ habit of nervous laughter–because her habitual “cackling” appeared to be just that, the nervous laughter of someone out of their depth.

Harris didn’t make her own way to prominence in the Democratic Party. She was picked out of the chorus line and guided along like a starlet in the old Hollywood studio system, which is the model to which the two political parties aspire. Someone in the film industry once said “the audience will know what they want when we show it to them”– the only defensible position for an artist to take. Big donors and political honchos aren’t supposed to be in the business of entertainment and diversion, but they view the American voter the same way; they have no intention of letting you write the script.

It’s easy to forget now after Kamala Harris’ humiliating last four years, but she was considered the strong horse of the Democratic field going into 2020. Despite failing miserably in the primaries the Democratic leadership still thought enough of her to foist her on Joe Biden, who was supposed to play the role of place marker, before going off script declaring his intention to run in 2024.

Harris was not selected for ability, but for pliability. Ability is still a virtuous necessity for doctors and lawyers, accountants and mechanics. But in a presidential candidate exceptional ability, leading as it might to grander ambitions beyond personal advancement, is as dangerous and unreliable as exceptional character, to those for whom the president is the hired help. Harris, like Biden, like all candidates will be going forward should the powerful get their way (and there’s no reason to think they won’t, the glitch that is Donald Trump notwithstanding), was chosen because her lack of loftier ideals precludes the threat of her acquiring loftier ambitions.

Harris’ qualifications were supposed to be entirely theatrical. And she tried, a little too hard: the guffawing and contorted expressions were the affectations of a ham actor on stage. To be fair she was supposed to have had more time to prepare for her big run when Joe Biden sputtered out. She was in over her head in a way none of us could imagine. She did what people tend to do; she resorted to what she knew. Willie Brown’s former mistress played on her feminine wiles, as she saw them, combined with her impersonation of a television girl-boss (“I am speaking, sir!”); beyond that there was nothing.

Substance was out of the question; the Democrats had spent the Biden Harris years wreaking deliberate havoc. Kamala running on her personality was Kamala running away from her record, or lack of one. So the campaign tried to make the candidate’s lack of gravitas work for her. Thus the companion to “joy”, the “brat” theme. She wasn’t lacking in seriousness; no, she was fun-loving, relatable. The definition of brat, the internet tells me, is “confidently rebellious, unapologetically bold, and playfully defiant.” It must have seemed genius to the girls of Team Kamala at the time. But how is this–rebellious, bold, defiant--not an apt description of Trump as politician? If not for the fact the campaign seemed incapable of sizing up the competition, I would have thought they’d decided to out-Trump Donald Trump.

Joy failed them. The laughter was a little too loud to be genuine. All the joy was on the other side. Trump’s often vulgar humor started as a political consultant’s nightmare in 2016 but by 2024 not only had his initial admirers not grown weary of it, more of the fence-sitters and even detractors had been worn down. Because through the increasing madness prescribed by the ruling elite and their obvious disdain for us Trump’s persona, like his outsized confidence, wavered not a bit. Trump was stable, familiar, normal (achieving his opponents’ dreaded “normalization”) as his enemies became increasingly unstable, abnormal and relentless in their ongoing war on the familiar–no one recognizes the country they grew up in.

By 2024 the Democrats and progressive left had finished their unspoken transition from a class-based conspiracy of power–an elite faction conspiring with the economically disadvantaged to disempower the middle class–to its present conspiracy: an elite faction cultivating and conspiring with the psychologically damaged, to disempower us all.

This is what we all see. This is why the Trump revolution succeeded. This is why the election is legitimate cause for celebration. But to think we will see it go away, with the mere election of a president, especially this president, is naive.

Trump enters office a lame duck, with no more elections to run. This only leaves him more susceptible to the designs of the cabal of “advisors” that will ultimately control him. These people, if drawn from elite ranks, will have no interest in the success or failure of his term and no ultimate interest in the fate of the country; they have other ideas and other loyalties. The high profile renegade heroes that joined the campaign–Robert Kennedy Jr, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard–are not going to be in the most crucial posts. It’s notable none of them, with the possible exception of Gabbard, who sold Trump as a peace candidate in apparent ignorance of Trump’s record and statements regarding Israel, dares challenge the capture of US foreign policy by the Jewish State. Even if Musk is somehow allowed to reform wasteful government and RFK to revolutionize public health–very long shots–the status quo order will have hardly deflected from its present course.

They’re already hard at work to maneuver Trump into war with Iran, and leading the effort is the same intelligence apparatus that conspired against him.

An Iranian national and two Americans have been charged with involvement in a murder-for-hire plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump, as well as an Iranian dissident, the US Department of Justice has announced.

Farhad Shakeri, Carlisle ‘Pop’ Rivera and Jonathon Loadholt were named in the criminal complaint unveiled on Friday by the Southern District of New York. Rivera was arrested in Brooklyn and Loadholt in Staten Island. Shakeri is “believed to reside” in Iran and remains at large.

“The charges announced today expose Iran’s continued brazen attempts to target US citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump, other government leaders and dissidents who criticize the regime in Tehran,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

And Trump has in fact already committed to hostilities with Iran in his first term, withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and drawing first blood in any assassination games.

While the DOJ noted that the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court, Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland  have held up the indictment as proof that Iran is “actively targeting nationals of the United States and its allies living in countries around the world for attacks” motivated by vengeance for the 2020 death of IRGC Quds Force commander, General Qassem Soleimani.

Trump ordered Soleimani’s assassination in a drone strike carried out near the Baghdad airport in Iraq.

Primarily Trump’s victory is a victory for Israel, specifically Israel’s hardline Zionists; everything else is secondary and can be countered by the deep state.

Every candidate for foreign policy positions is fiercely pro-Israel and hostile to Iran. There’s virtually no chance of establishing independence from Israel barring a sudden, drastic change in direction:

Brian Hook, a hawkish fixture of the first Donald Trump administration who formerly served under George W. Bush, is reportedly getting the call to start staffing the State Department for a new Trump term. Hook, known as a major Iran hawk who helped lead the “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions, sabotage, and assassinations that characterized Trump’s approach to Tehran, has been appointed to help oversee the formation of a new foreign policy team, according to reports from Politico and CNN.

Hook served as U.S. Special Representative for Iran and advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the last two years of Trump’s presidency, which saw the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and expansion of crushing sanctions intended to spur regime change in Iran. That approach ultimately failed to collapse the Iranian government, or compel it to reduce its support for its network of armed proxies in the region. Instead, it wound up escalating the hostility between the two countries while Iran ramped up its nuclear enrichment following Trump’s withdrawal from the Obama-era nuclear deal.  

On the day of Trump’s reelection Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister Yoav Gallant, a hard-liner himself but one pushing for genuine negotiations with Hamas over hostages:

While Netanyahu has called for continued military pressure on Hamas, Gallant had taken a more pragmatic approach, saying that military force has created the necessary conditions for at least a temporary diplomatic deal that could bring home hostages held by the militant group.

Celebrants online have posted the I’m assembling a team meme featuring the higher profile and more popular supporters of Trump:

Notably not a one of them is a proponent of our independence from Israel’s foreign policy, and meanwhile Trump is in fact assembling a less glamorous team for the dirty work. Those in line for cabinet posts:

Elise Stefanik, who led the Congressional charge to censor anti-Israel protests on college campuses and boasts of backing “every measure to aid Israel”:

[update, Nov 11: Stefanik has been chosen to be UN ambassador]

Mike Lee, in line for Attorney General (and to wage a crackdown on anti-Israel dissent), whose qualifications the American Jewish Congress celebrates here:

Senator Lee opposed the Iran nuclear deal. He opposed UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that claimed that Israel’s settlements have no legal validity. He has cosponsored a resolution that opposes the discriminatory Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the delegitimization of Israel.

In 2018, Senator Lee cosponsored the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act, a legislation that supported full funding of security assistance to Israel as outlined in the 2016 U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding.

In 2019, he voted for the Strengthening America’s Middle East Security Act which, among other things, strengthens Israel’s security and allows a state or local government to adopt measures to divest its assets from entities that boycott Israel.

The aforementioned Brian Hook, leading the transition team, is a confidante of Jared Kushner, a Bush II regime veteran, led a neocon purge of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff during the first Trump term, and crafted a grand plan to “reform Islam”:

Founded in 1947, the Policy Planning Staff is the department’s in-house think tank. It is headed by the hawkish former Bush administration official Brian Hook, who was in charge at the time the memo was produced. According to the department’s website, Hook and his team “take a longer term, strategic view of global trends.” The document was finished shortly after Hook had purged career staffers he considered to be insufficiently loyal to Trump or too friendly with Iran. Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, for instance, was pushed out of Hook’s policy department following a right-wing smear campaign that questioned her loyalty to the United States, reporting falsely that she was born in Iran.

The policy shop, shorn of expertise and stocked with ideologues, is now producing material unlike anything it has before, according to a range of former State Department, Pentagon, and NSC officials, advisers, and lawyers consulted by The Intercept. They said that they had never seen the contentious and inflammatory phrase “Islamic Reformation” — a call for a Martin Luther-like figure to bring Islam into modernity that is rooted in tropes that presume Islam to be inherently violent and backward — used in an official U.S. government document before.

Also in line for Attorney General is John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence. Here he is making his pitch for a role in the next Trump administration in this Real Clear Defense article:

While Israel works to fend off terrorists, the Biden administration is withholding both intelligence and military aid – placing a key ally in jeopardy and putting America’s own national security at risk.

The administration is refusing to share valuable information regarding Hamas with Israeli intelligence until Israel halts its Rafah offensive – a decision that follows close on the heels of the administration’s announcement that it would halt weapon shipments to Israel. Yet these appalling decisions are only the most recent in a long string of poor policy choices…

This misperception led the Biden administration to divert critical assets away from terrorist groups like Hamas – ultimately leading to the failure to anticipate or disrupt the events of Oct. 7. In November, senior administration officials admitted that, following 9/11, U.S. intelligence agencies almost completely stopped spying on Hamas and other violent Palestinian groups, believing that Hamas constituted no direct threat to the U.S.

Last time I checked it doesn’t.

Indeed, Washington deprioritized the Middle East as a whole. After the Biden administration’s takeover, the Central Intelligence Agency decided to reduce the number of civilian intelligence analysts tasked with monitoring the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the aftermath of Oct. 7, more than a dozen current and former U.S. officials, lawmakers, and congressional aides testified that this deprioritization of the Middle East had left the U.S. vulnerable and unable to anticipate the attacks.

Congressman Mark Green of Tennessee is being considered for the Department of Homeland Security. An aside in his pro-censorship article in The Hill:

Even more sickening are the actions of some American political leaders. Multiple Democrat members of Congress have yet to sign a resolution stating Israel has the right to defend itself. Several members have also introduced a resolution calling for a cease-fire, which is the same thing as calling for Israel to allow Hamas to stay in control of Gaza. Iran is our enemy. Hezbollah is our enemy. Hamas is our enemy. Islamic terrorism is our enemy. Yet these elected officials refuse to admit it.

At this point there isn’t a single person under consideration who might temper the devotion to Israel of the rest.

Beyond foreign policy and the welcome addition of Tom Holman to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement there is little to cheer, just uncertainty and the likelihood Trump will be maneuvered by his new elite friends like Elon Musk into globalist strategies for monetizing the environment. Whitney Webb on what Trump’s victory means for carbon tax proponents:

Chief among these is Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team who has stated that he is tasked with finding the “talent” for the incoming administration. Lutnick is the long-time and current head of Cantor Fitzgerald, which was one of the earliest players in emission trading and has since become a global leader in ESG investing, “sustainable infrastructure” financing and green bonds. For example, Cantor’s sustainable infrastructure fund is expressly committed to “digital transformation, decarbonization and the improvement and modernization of aging infrastructure,” while “a primary focus for the Fund will be to invest in issuers that are helping to address certain United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through their products and services.” In addition, the top constituent of another Cantor infrastructure fund is Invenergy, a renewable energy company that has received a significant amount of subsidies from the Biden’s controversial Inflation Reduction Act and is run by the country’s first “wind billionaire” Michael Polsky.

Transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick is a thorough-going globalist master of the universe type and “sustainability” enthusiast.

Elon Musk is representative of the Trump dilemma. His enthusiasm is genuine, his liberation of Twitter heroic, but so are his connections to the surveillance state, his enthusiasm for carbon taxes and his thorough acquiescence to Zionism and Jewish power.

This is the elite faction behind Trump, grand scourge of the Elite. Their determination to serve Trump is suspect; their determination to serve Israel is not, and it won’t stop them from joining with anti-Trump efforts elsewhere. They might on one hand encourage him into becoming a war president on behalf of Israel, while also helping his political enemies determined to foil populist domestic policy. This is all setting up the second Trump administration to be a complete failure for America and a historic boon for Israel.

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