The latest efforts to establish that President Trump is ‘a Russian asset’, (investigatese for Russian agent), is an indirect result of the fact that America’s two hundred and thirty year-old constitution designated Congress as the only branch of government that can declare war.
The American colonists were obsessed with getting as far away from absolute forms of government as possible: kings and queens having been guilty throughout history of declaring war on each other, the American colonists wanted to be sure that would never happen in the new world. The will of the people had to be behind any call to aggress another nation (and even to respond to an attack…).
Now, perhaps for the first time, that principle could spell the end of the world. Candidates win congressional elections thanks to the money their supporters poney up for their campaigns. The same is true for presidents, however, when it comes to war, his financiers can turn to the Congress they created if he fails to do their bidding.
This is the situation the US is in right now: Determined to make deals with his peers around the world rather than war, the President is being investigated by the third branch of government: ‘justice’, not in a court of law, but by the FBI. During the last week, the New York Times ‘broke the story’ (meaning it revealed new events and facts) having magically learned this stunning news (curiously, the word ‘leak’ has not been pronounced, so how did the intrepid NYT reporter come to know this latest bombshell?). The media is milking this extraordinary event for all it is worth, rehashing ad nauseum Nixon’s trajectory toward resignation to avoid impeachment, Clinton’s unsuccessful impeachment for dalliances, without referencing the matter that underlies two plus years of investigations into the 2016 election.
Those who backed Trump may were probably not planning to take down Vladimir Putin in order to re-secure Russian compliance with America’s hegemonic policies, probably being inclined, like the President toward making ‘deals’ with Russia to secure access to its mineral cornucopia. What we now refer to as ‘the deep state’ however, is another matter: it represents the interests of the arms makers and the military. And their raison d’etre is to protect American world hegemony, punishing foreign leaders who fail to obey.
Efforts began on the day Trump was inaugurated to override his propensity for ‘deals’ and bring him around to the idea that Russia must be treated as an enemy. As a matter of fact, Vladimir Putin has made not the slightest move to attack us in any way, shape or form (unless it be by boarding Ukrainian military ships for violating Russia’s territorial waters).
Is that not extraordinary, when you consider that the US routinely foments ‘color revolutions’ abroad in order to take down disobedient rulers? (The American people would by now have initiated one over the government shutdown had they been French….) Nor was Russian alleged ‘meddling’ in the 2016 election intended to support Trump’s wall: Putin’s way of dealing with the minority status of the Caucasian peoples is to cooperate with the honey-colored majority across the globe led by Xi, Modi, etc.
To return to the dangerous situation the Constitution has created, Congress, whose leaders are as ignorant as the American ‘masses’ when it comes to history and geography, is braying for war with Russia because the arms industry finances its campaigns, while the President is accused of having personal business motives for supposedly doing Putin’s bidding (the nature of which is not revealed). Contrary to millennia of negotiations between kings, Trump was immediately accused of treason for meeting with Putin in Helsinki, and again when it was revealed that he had confiscated the translators’ notes — as if rulers are not entitled to confidentiality!
While Trump’s base, like all American school-children, has been taught that countries should cooperate rather than make war, the President seems unable to challenge Congress, which sings to a different hymn sheet and has the power to declare war. To avoid being impeached, which is suddenly a real possibility, he pitifully declares that ‘I have never worked for Russia’, paving the way for one anchor to actually ask him the ritual McCarthy era question: “Do you now or have you ever worked for Russia?” The only thing that may hopefully cause Congress to think twice may be Trump’s base: If it gets rid of the President will it be able to convince his followers that America is the greater for it, or will they descend on Washington with NRA-facilitated guns, unwilling to fight yet another war — which they vaguely realize would be humanity’s last?
P.S. CLOSING IN FOR THE KILL
Still pending is the question of why now? The new Speaker of the House of representatives, Nancy Pelosi, famous for knowing how to count potential votes, knows that it will be very difficult to obtain a vote of impeachment from the Republican majority Senate. But things would likely be very different if the President were to be accused of TREASON!
For its part, the media, obviously feeling guilty for having built up the Trump campaign like nothing before, is doubling down on accusations against him. Any accusation will do, whether its paying off playmates or aspiring to build a tower in Moscow. The definition of “collusion”, the accusation being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, is a word that even legal scholars disagree about, but you have only to have been an ardent movie fan all your life to know that treason is not open to interpretation. And the punishment is death. The small talk revolves around Nixon’s Watergate and Clinton’s dalliances, but lurking in the background is the possibility of the President being impeached — or even tried — for betrayal of country. And Congress, whose members with one voice tout ‘cooperation across the aisle’, meaning between Republicans and Democrats, condemns the President’s efforts to cooperate with the other major nuclear power to preserve the world from a holocaust.
That, apparently, is the new definition of ‘treason’.
Deena Stryker is an international expert, author and journalist that has been at the forefront of international politics for over thirty years, exlusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook”.
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