Saturday, January 21, 2017

Why I Am Not Going to Give Donald Trump a Break; Not Even at the Start of His Administration

By Robert Wenzel

The Donald Trump presidency has begun.

It begins at a time when the United States economy is unstable as is United States society as a whole---as is the world.

The economy is being propped up by Federal Reserve money manipulations. This, of course, will not end well. We are headed toward accelerating price inflation and an eventual economic bust.

As far as the greater society, we have a large portion of the masses hypnotized, thanks to the government controlled education system, in bizarre political correctness views and a general leaning toward central planning. At its core, these people hold remarkably naive views, they want free healthcare, free education and free this and free that. As if free products can be declared and they will appear. And they will protest to demand the free goods and they will protest in favor of wacky cultural Marxist influenced political correctness . At the same time, on the global front, they are egged on by media, they are anti-Russia, with other factions, and overlapping factions, anti-Muslim. With the Trump side anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican.

Under these circumstances, anything could blow.

Enter Donald John Trump. He is far from a libertarian but he is taking on parts of the establishment.

Unfortunately, however, the Trump broadside is merely an internal Deep State battle. It is at its core the civil intelligence agencies against the military, with the media as an adjunct tool of the civil intelligence agencies---with other Deep State factions such as Big Oil and crony Wall Street seeming to be able to operate fully regardless of how the battle within the Deep State turns.

So while it is fun to see Trump smash at parts of the establishment, do not think for a minute that this is a smashing of the Deep State itself.

The reemergence of the military wing can be seen with Trump naming military men to extremely significant Administration positions: National Security Adviser, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. These men to a man, named to these positions, hate Iran, believe Muslims, for the most part, are evil. These are not men of peace.

That crony Wall Street is still a player can be seen by the fact that, at last count, Trump has named eight crony bastards from Goldman Sachs to top positions in his Administration.

And evidence that the Big Oil influence is intact in the Trump Administration can be seen by the fact that the head of the EPA was put there on the recommendation of Big Oil. The Department of Energy will have the Big Oil friendly Rick Perry in charge, and at the epicenter of US global plotting, at Secretary of State, will be Rex Tillerson, who for the past 10 years has been the chairman and chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil.

It is delusional to think that Trump is anti-establishment with these Deep State players across his administration. He is against civil intelligence agencies and against the civil intelligence agency tool, the mainstream media, but his supporting cast is all Deep State.

Given this situation, the country is boiling. The mainstream media influenced masses are angry as hell at the Trump election. Those influenced by alternative media appreciate the attack by Trump on mainstream media but are also attracted to Trump's economic ignorance. Trump is a mad protectionist. He is ass backward with the voucher program that will be promoted by his incoming Secretary of Education.

The Goldman Sachs bastards in his camp are already jawboning the Fed to keep interest rates low. The Goldman Sachs bastard that will head the Treasury is calling for an expansion of the IRS.

And Trump continues to stoke Muslim fears which is music to the ears of the military Deep State faction within the Trump Administration.

On the grand stage, at the visible level, we will see massive battles and protests from various groups manipulated by the different factions of the Deep State. It will be the wacky socialist leaning, economically ignorant left versus the as wacky, as economically ignorant, nationalists captured by the personality of the military faction frontman Donald J. Trump.

It is a grave strategic error for libertarians to pick a side in this battle. This battle, which will get fierce (especially given the potential for faction agent provocateurs), is going to drown out much of the libertarian message.

This is the time it is important to push aggressively the alternative libertarian message as an alternative to the pitched battle between different factions of the Deep Sttae. But for some reason, parts of the libertarian movement have been captured by the Trump side. They give him close to unconditional support by ignoring the many Deep State influences around him, the insane protectionist policies he advocates and his taunting of Asia and his anti-Muslim positions. And they ignore what seems to be a very strong authoritarian streak in Trump that should be deeply concerning in the current unstable world.

And so at Target Liberty and EconomicPolicyJournal.com, we are not going to take a side in this Deep State battle. We will offer commentary, from the start of the Trump Administration, from a free market and libertarian perspective.

We are not going to turn a blind eye to Trump positions that go against the grain of free markets and liberty.

If Trump takes a step toward liberty, we will cheer it. If he takes steps away from liberty, we will call him out.

As this Deep State battle rages, the libertarian voice will be heard from fewer and fewer quarters but it will always be heard at Target Liberty and EconomicPolicyJournal.com.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of  EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn.




14 comments:

  1. Yes, unless he drastically reduces foreign military interventionism and domestic crony MICism, there is nothing we Veterans for Peace, who have seen the idiocy and destructiveness firsthand (and learned from it) as the forces of the global imperialists, to celebrate with this new Commander-in-Chief.

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  2. As far Trump ...

    If you believe in liberty, the free market, free trade, less government, peace, etc., the election of Trump should NOT be seen as a victory. It should only be seen as NOT an immediate defeat.

    However, if your politics are purely tribal, it is true your tribe won. You beat them, badly. So when your tribe shoves interventions down your throat, you can rest knowing that at least it isn’t them doing it.

    I suspect Trump may scourge with scorpions instead of just whips.

    Note: On the other hand. if you believe in mercantilism, autarky, and trade wars (causes of the world wars), rabid nationalism, hints of Roman grandeur and an enlarged military (with requisite interventions — wars), deficit spending, etc., then your ideology rules the day. I only ask that you recognize the coming results and accept blame. Your policies are not the opposite of Obama’s — they are just a different flavor of etatism (love of the state).

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  3. I think you exaggerate trump's libertarian support. We know 100% what HRC would have been so we cheered on an unknown. Unconditional support for trump by libertarians is a complete fabrication. The only man alive who has anything close to that is Ron Paul.

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  4. Robert, I can not remember an article where you were this concise, and brutally honest in your opinion on any matter, but you are one hundred percent correct in what we face from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. I thank you.

    Donald Trump made me extremely nervous a long time ago, and his cabinet picks were horrific, but his speech yesterday was authoritarian in a way that should alarm anyone who loves what liberty they have left. When he called out the gangs and drug dealers, his pick for attorney general came to mind. What are they going to do, mandate stop and frisk, roll out the National Guard, and go after marijuana users? Trump looks like he is going to outdo Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton in his zealous drive to create a police state to stop drugs use in this country. States rights died a long time ago, but it is like Trump wants dig up it's bones and burn them so it will be like they never existed.

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    1. Trumpussolini and his cabinet are dangerous in ways that HRC was not. The outcome is likely to be very violent when things don't go as planned. Authoritarians, the lot of them.

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    2. I agree completely.

      A short note on authoritarians. Three months ago I was driving to an office store shortly before closing time, and I was in a hurry. I honked twice at the person ahead of me at a traffic light because they would not make a right turn on a green light. Unbeknownst to me a Phoenix Police Department vehicle was two cars away when I honked my horn at 6:50PM. The Phoenix Police officers were going to arrest me for road rage, and one of the officers was very aggressive in his approach. I managed to get the officer to calm down, but it was touch and go. I did not know that honking your horn twice at someone who was not moving could be interpreted as road rage.

      I am 63 and I have never been arrested.

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  5. Amen Robert, while the left's credibility (with the lone exception of Glenn Greenwald) is completely shot, it's up to real libertarians to step up to plate to show why Trump is wrong.

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  6. I appreciate your very level-headed & informative analysis. when he first came on the scene in 2015 I was very skeltical & I pointed out hos very anti-libertarian and anti conservative history. however watching this guy I believe that while far from perfect, trump is still infinitely better that Clinton or an of the gop contenders. I bel8eve he really loves America and wants the best for its people. and most of all, trump would never kill Americans in a false flag terror attack like his predecessors did.

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  7. Wenzel used to make me mad with his Rand Paul stuff, especially early on when I still had hope for the guy. Right every time nearly, especially about the big stuff.

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  8. 100% correct. I thought all of this from the beginning. I have no idea what Woods and Rockwell and Raimondo are thinking. They see certain elements of evil being destroyed by Trump and they think there is some victory there for liberty. There is none to be found.

    When Hitler attacked Stalin, did we all cheer and say 'Well, at least he is destroying Stalin'? Of course not, because we fully understood that he was going to replace it with something just as evil. All this celebration that Trump is going against the media or the CIA is the same exact thing. he's just replacing it with his own BS tyranny.

    Some people compare Trump to Ron Paul, or make him out to be a Paul-lite. Complete and utter nonsense. I've never heard Ron demagogue against anyone. Because they have some positions in common by coincidence means nothing. Paul was teaching people how to be civilized, approaching his positions from completely different approaches.

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  9. Unfortunately many libertarians hate Trump for the wrong reasons. They are more worried about the Un-PC side of Trump. Likewise some libertarians love Trump for the Un-PC stuff and ignore how terrible he is on so many issues.

    Who would think Lewrockwell.com would run an item titled "Salute the President" unironically. Weird stuff.

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  10. Who can really say if liberty is liable to be degraded further with Trump than it would have with Clinton? They both have different areas of focus in violating the NAP. All we can know for sure is that, in either case, the state will continue to grow. That said, Trump's election has already had four benefits for libertarians: it has stimulated Progressives to talk about secession; it has stimulated Progressives to talk about nullification; it has stimulated Progressives to protest the legitimacy of the executive branch; and it has exposed the Progressives' double standards and sophomoric hysteria. None of those would have occurred under a President Clinton (Reprise).

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    1. Those aren't signs of progress. We all know that no progressive is going to keep talking about secession and nullification and whatever when they get back into power.

      And now conservatives are celebrating the state instead of talking about those things. So the net effect is zero. No real progress being made.

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    2. I'm not claiming these will be permanent effects, only that (a) it opens the door for libertarians to discuss these principles with Progressives, since they are now actively pondering concepts which hitherto they associated with their only intellectual riposte, "NEO-CONFEDERATE SLAVERY!" and (b) this would not have happened if Trump had lost. As to "conservatives", if you mean GOPers then they have always celebrated the state, so I don't see there being any real change. True conservatives -- the "Old Right" -- are an increasingly rare breed.

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