Now that Trump 2.0 is poised to become official, the armchair experts are back to predicting that either the Orange Man is going to trigger World War III or become the dove that flies the olive branch of peace from Jerusalem all the way to Moscow and Pyongyang.
Depending on the pundit, the news channel and the time of day, Trump 2.0 is either going to unlock the magic of Excalibur or wield the sword of Damocles that will rain down nuclear fallout all over the Free World.
My father was an armchair expert on international geopolitical paradigms, and even though he only held a degree from a Baptist seminary, generally, his observations were spot on.
During one of the many climaxes of the otherwise uneventful global Cold War, I recall my parents at the family dinner table, discussing the Reagan election over mom’s ever-delicious chicken pie as the new president took his oath of office.
The latest news of the day was that Iran had released 52 American hostages mere hours after Reagan’s swearing-in, ending 444 days of humiliating captivity for the American diplomats and their staff.
“It is all political theater. The entire thing is a show, and the best thing Reagan can do is give the hostages a White House welcome and leave it at that. Give them a nice cameo and go right back to ignoring them,” was my father, the elder Hudson’s take.
In fact, my dad saw pretty much the entire Cold War, from the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the war in Vietnam, and the Iranian hostage crisis as little more than a highly choreographed stage presentation where all of the directors, actors, ticket sellers and ushers were members of the Military Industrial Complex Theater Guild.
Dad was not a conspiracy theorist, but he remained wary of the American arms industry and was one of the early few that did not believe the Warren Commission’s report and firmly believed that JFK’s assassination was one of the few “conspiracies” that had actually worked, despite having so many potential conspirators.
As far as my dad was concerned, so many people with arms-connected profit motives, including the CIA, wanted John Kennedy dead for everything from the Bay of Pigs fiasco to his wariness of entering Vietnam and the whole relationship between several federal agencies and the Italian-American Mafia meant that Kennedy was not safe anywhere he went.
“All they needed to do was hand Oswald a crappy Carcano 38 long-barrel rifle with a bad scope and put Allen Dulles in charge of the investigation, and people followed along without question,” I remember my dad saying.
Of course, in 1980, conservatives gushed that Iran had released the hostages out of fear that Reagan would nuke them back into the stone age, and the war doves celebrated when all Reagan did was announce no new changes were to be made in the Carter era embargo policy towards the rogue nation.
However, we all know now that the finale of the hostage situation merely gave Reagan the cover in which to revert back to selling arms to Iran in what, years later, would emerge as the “Iran-Contra Affair.”
In that instance, Dad, who was a Reagan supporter, saw the whole thing for what it was; just one scene in a seemingly endless stage revue that spanned continents and terrified the millions around the globe who were actually trying to pay attention. A play made even more horrifying because the daily news made it appear that the apocalypse was just one push-button away with the whole nonsense of “mutually assured destruction.”
America’s capitalist economy has long depended on arms sales to prop up its superpower status. The Russians still cling to a hodgepodge military doctrine from the time of the tsars in an ongoing attempt, at almost all costs, to actually maintain itself as superpower player on the world stage and China has emerged as the newest set of cast members of the MIC, showing off their flashy new heroic medal-decorated military costumes against a backdrop of fearsome looking rolling harbingers of death.
Meanwhile, poor North Korea is still vying to get an audition on “Tyrant’s Got Talent” with their goose-stepping soldiers bravely showing off the country’s latest versions of state-of-the-art cardboard tanks.
After over 100 years, the rhetoric has only changed slightly with the times, but the script has now become so fully ingrained in the socio-economic fabric of the world that, it seems, people are accustomed to seeing the most recent media build-up of international flashpoints to yet another faux climax into the next buildup and anticipated cliffhanger that occurs every time a new American president is sworn in.
Other nation’s responses to the new president-elect and the “sudden” challenges have historically been recorded by the same media who double as the ghost-writing staff for the overall production as well.
There never is a denouement as each generation of script writers are only writing one season of the show at a time with “mutually assured destruction” being the constant overarching theme and scare tactic to continuously sell tickets.
For those who missed the latest live stream, here are the latest Headlines:
“Trump demands hostage return before inauguration!”
“Syrian president boxed in as rebels approach Damascus!”
“Trump handshake goes viral!”
“Putin ramps up nuclear threats!”
“North Korean soldiers attempting to defect to Ukraine!”
“World War III Already Begun!”
The one thing that doesn’t bother me about Trump is his track record on international affairs. No new wars were started or funded by America during his first term as president. In my opinion, he showed firm leadership with NATO, as well as pragmatism with the many Middle East skirmishes without using the world podium as a battering ram.
The only new expenses Trump added to the Middle East ledger that I recall were apparently the cost for new signage at the Jerusalem embassy building.
With all the scrutiny this man has been under, if Trump or any of his “cronies” have engaged in what the Clinton, Obama and Biden families have pretty much known to have done, more people in the Trump orbit would be in jail and for transgressions other than “process” crimes.
If anything, I believe that history shows that Trump will be pragmatic and only let the New Yorker in him come out behind closed doors.
Trump would be well suited to stifle his Teddy Roosevelt tendencies in favor of those of Ike Eisenhower, who knew the Korean War was folly and made ending it a campaign promise and an early administration priority. Eisenhower presented his “grandfatherly” style to the public, but behind closed doors the old general knew that war does two things: it kills people and it makes other people insanely wealthy.
Eisenhower knew that countries with the best industrial capacity wins wars and that the sales of arms is always necessary to some degree to maintain that capacity. However, the president was keen to limit American export arms sales and in a major speech to the media moguls of the time, attempted to scold the media about the use of the Cold War as mere scaremongering keeping people addicted to watching the real life soaps play out on the news each night to the delight of cigarette ad salesmen.
In an address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953, Eisenhower urged that the media help the nation strive toward economic prosperity without buildups and arms races but, rather, to achieve peace through diplomacy, education and technical innovation, saying, in part:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.”
In my opinion, if Trump does anything, he could order his Department of Government Efficiency, or “DoGE” to complete a review of military arms research spending. Americans might be shocked to learn how many arms related expenditures make it into the budget cloaked as $150,000 hammers and $2 million toilet seats.
Here is the reality as I see it from my armchair perch:
Putin, Xi and Kim will continue to saber rattle as that is all they know how to do; neither’s country have the nuclear industrial capacity to cause “mutually assured destruction;” the Chinese will do the same with Taiwan, even though they, and everyone else, are aware that China’s sea fleet (if you can call it that) is no match for the American Navy and totally unprepared to launch an air/sea/ ground invasion across the Taiwan Straight in the unstable and deadly waters off the coast of an island that is armed to the teeth.
Israel will continue to fight terrorism as long as the terrorists continue to produce more little terrorists, of which they undoubtably will; the situation in Ukraine will continue to be fluid until one side runs out of other country’s money and resources and, finally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will be replaced with another tinpot dictator and forgotten until the mass media experiences a slow news week.
The best thing Trump can do is just stand back and let it all happen, neither attempting to follow the script nor create a new one; but rather, stand back and watch both sides prominent in the media parse his every sentence, scan his body language and even handshakes for clues of future possible news stories to develop.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
