No Thanks for Thanksgiving Under Trump
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
One day there may be reason to give thanks. How can there be now with endless US wars raging, force-fed austerity on ordinary Americans, poverty the nation’s leading growth industry, real unemployment at Depression-era levels, police state laws destroying fundamental freedoms, and governance of, by and for the privileged few exclusively.
Super-rich Americans never had things better, benefitting from the greatest ever wealth transfer scheme from ordinary people to them.
Trump’s tax cut scheme will hand them trillions more dollars if enacted into law – coming out of the pockets of low and middle-income households.
America is a plutocracy, not a democracy, run by sinister dark forces, presidents and key congressional leaders serving their interests.
The law of the land is consistently ignored when conflicting with the agenda of its ruling class.
Societies are judged by their freedom from poverty, racism, sexism, exploitation, imperialism, environmental devastation, commitment to social justice, and respect for the sovereign rights of all nations. America fails dismally on all counts.
Most US workers struggle to get by on part-time or temp jobs paying poverty wages – one missed paycheck from homelessness, hunger and deprivation, an uncaring nation doing nothing to help, pretending prosperity exists.
The nation was thirdworldized to benefit its privileged class. It’s the most inequitable of all developed ones.
A year ago at Thanksgiving, I wrote an open letter to Trump – post-election, pre-inauguration. You’ll have the power of your incumbency for good or ill, I said.
I hoped for improvement over dismal governance under the Clinton co-presidency, Bush/Cheney and Obama.
Instead, things are worse than ever. Trump’s latest outrages include destroying digital democracy by ending Net Neutrality, along with deporting 59,000 Haitians, given temporary protection after their country’s devastating 2010 earthquake – unwanted by the administration because they’re Black, not white Anglos.
A year ago, I asked if Trump’s promises were real or empty. Will history remember him as another dirty business as usual leader or a force for positive change?
Would he renounce perverse notions of American exceptionalism; the indispensable nation; US moral, ethical and cultural superiority; and its self-proclaimed right for dominion over planet earth, its resources and populations?
Would he drain the swamp instead of filling it to overflowing, restore honor to Washington, give working people a voice for the first time, improve their lives and welfare, serve all Americans equitably, not just its privileged few.
Would he end US imperial wars against nations threatening no one, beginning a new era of world peace and stability?
Would he normalize relations with Russia as promised, end illegal sanctions, work cooperatively with Putin, along with treating other independent world leaders respectfully?
Would he be a peacemaker, not warrior president? Would he favor disarmament instead of a continuing arms race? Would he save humanity from unthinkable nuclear war?
Would his tenure deliver historic change or hugely dangerous continuity?
History will judge him accordingly, I said. After 10 disastrous months in office, the verdict is in.
He failed on all counts, governing more deplorably than my worst fears – short of nuclear war perhaps yet to come.
On Thanksgiving day, privileged Americans have much to be thankful for, millions of ordinary ones paying the price for their bountiful blessings.
VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].
My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."