[Sundaycommunity] Donald Trump Is The Empire Unmasked

[Arthur Blomme]

Hi all

Here on Vancouver Island, I distribute a monthly free alternative 
newspaper called Druthers <https://druthers.ca/>. Its published in 
Toronto. Some of you may have seen it before. When I visit Toronto I 
pass out a few copies.  I get so much push back that   I have to muster 
my  courage to distribute it.  It publishes factual journalism that 
people do not want to hear.  It has very few adds and is supported by 
donation and they publish over 200 thousand copies monthly.

This past month's issue was particularly informative.   I had been 
hoping they would once again publish on the Gaza genocide and this month 
they delivered. I’m One Of The ‘Indigo 11.’ Here’s Why I Did It 
<https://www.readthemaple.com/im-one-of-the-indigo-11-heres-why-i-did-it/>.  
This is especially relevant considering the recent arrest of Yves Engler 
in Montreal for speaking out against genocide on twitter.

I feel often misunderstood when it comes to my perspective on Trump. I  
wanted to share the  following article from Druthers which best  
articulates my overall attitude in this regard.

Art


  Donald Trump Is The Empire Unmasked

Caitlin Johnstone <https://substack.com/@caitlinjohnstone>
Jan 20, 2025

During his inaugural address, the new president of the United States was 
refreshingly open about the fact that Washington is the hub of a 
continuously expanding empire which is ruled by billionaire plutocrats.

As Joe Lauria highlighted for Consortium News 
<https://consortiumnews.com/2025/01/20/the-imperial-presidency-marches-on/>, 
President Trump’s speech included references to the “manifest destiny” 
of America, saying that under his presidency the US will consider itself 
a nation that “expands our territory”. He waxed fondly about the 
settler-colonialist past which established the country at the expense of 
the people who were already living there, and vowed to take control of 
the Panama Canal.

Trump gave this speech to an audience where the wealthiest people on 
earth sat alongside his own cabinet in the best seats in the house. Elon 
Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai were 
seen together 
<https://x.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1881398555157631157>in the crowd 
among the more official members of the incoming administration. 
Israeli-American Trump megadonor Miriam Adelson, who according to Trump 
<https://x.com/mtracey/status/1837886438903357920>helped dictate US 
policy toward Israel during his first term, was seen sitting 
<https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1881392501229256988>among Joe Biden, 
Kamala Harris and the Clintons at the inauguration. There will 
reportedly be no fewer than 13 billionaires 
<https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-tapped-unprecedented-13-billionaires-top-administration-roles/story?id=116872968>with 
official roles in the new Trump administration.

If you were to twist my arm and force me to say something positive about 
Donald Trump, this is the sort of thing I would point to. He makes the 
US empire much more transparent and unhidden. He removes its mask and 
reveals the twisted face beneath it.

The US isn’t suddenly ruled by billionaires now that Trump is president; 
it was already ruled by billionaires 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig>. The US isn’t suddenly an 
empire bent on global domination now that Trump has been sworn in; that 
was already the case 
<https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/06/01/the-us-empire-isnt-a-government-that-runs-nonstop-wars-its-a-nonstop-war-that-runs-a-government/>. 
But you’re not supposed to just come right out and /*say*/that.

Well, Trump comes right out and says it. He says the quiet parts out 
loud. He’s the only president who’ll openly boast 
<https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/keeping-oil-syria-trump-considered-war-crime/story?id=66589757>that 
US troops are in Syria to keep the oil or lament 
<https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2023/06/12/trump-venezuela-oil-coup/>that 
they failed to take the oil from Venezuela, or just come right out and 
tell everyone 
<https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1881488396985761812>he’s bought and 
owned by Zionist oligarchs. He puts much less effort into disguising the 
true nature of the US empire than other presidents.

That’s the only reason various factions of America’s unofficial 
permanent government have had objections to Trump’s presidency over the 
years. It’s not because he presents a threat to the establishment or 
because he’s trying to bring down the deep state, it’s because he is 
viewed as a poor custodian of the empire. He either doesn’t understand 
or doesn’t care about the importance of keeping a polite face on the 
imperial machine.

If I were forced to say something positive about Trump, that would be 
it. The thing some US empire managers dislike about him is the only 
thing I like about him: that he makes the US empire a less effective 
evil because of how much less hidden he keeps the inner workings of the 
machine. The hood stays popped open the entire time, showing the whole 
world how the imperial sausage gets made.

<https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F73b48c01-b35d-4bc2-9d95-3a2782b57444_1018x902.png>

Not that there haven’t been plenty of mask-off moments during the 
dementia-muddled chaos of the Biden administration as well. A new 
article in Time titled “Why Biden’s Ukraine Win Was Zelensky’s Loss 
<https://time.com/7207661/bidens-ukraine-win-zelensky-loss/>” is a good 
example of this; the report cites a former member of Biden’s National 
Security Council saying that victory for Ukraine was never part of the 
Biden administration’s plan.

The opening paragraph reads as follows:

    “When Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago, President Joe
    Biden set three objectives for the U.S. response. Ukraine’s victory
    was never among them. The phrase the White House used to describe
    its mission at the time — supporting Ukraine ‘for as long as it
    takes’ — was intentionally vague. It also raised the question: As
    long as it takes to do what?”

“Ukraine’s victory was never among them.”

Talk about a mask-off moment. It has long been clear that the US pushed 
Ukraine into an unwinnable war 
<https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2023/07/24/the-empire-knows-its-pouring-ukrainian-blood-into-an-unwinnable-proxy-war/>with 
the goal of bleeding and preoccupying Moscow, and that it actively 
sabotaged peace negotiations 
<https://news.antiwar.com/2024/09/09/victoria-nuland-admits-us-discouraged-ukraine-from-signing-peace-deal-with-russia-in-2022/>in 
the early days of the war in order to pursue these goals. Now that the 
job has been done and the demented meat puppet is out of office, we are 
finally hearing it from Biden’s own handlers in his administration.

And of course there was Gaza, where the world spent 15 months watching 
history’s first live-streamed genocide right in front of their faces 
while western officials made nonstop excuses of less and less 
believability. If there’s to be any good to come from that 
incomprehensibly horrific nightmare, it’s that it has shown everyone the 
true face of the empire.

The more glimpses people get of the true face of the empire, the less 
effective the imperial propaganda becomes, because propaganda only works 
if you believe it. The primary obstacle to revolutionary change under 
the western empire is the fact that its citizenry have been successfully 
propagandized into accepting the status quo. The more people open their 
eyes to the fact that we are ruled by psychopaths who are driving us to 
our doom on multiple fronts, the closer we get to a collective movement 
toward a healthy world.
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