Vladimir Putin Should Welcome Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address

The first thing he will remark is the promise not to try to dictate to the world:

“We will seek friendship with all nations of the world, but with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their needs first.  We will not seek to impose our ways on others but we will seek to shine.”

The Russian President will also approve President Trump’s emphasis on God: “We will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism there is no room for prejudice. The Bible says how great it is when God’s people live together in peace.”

Trump’s totally new condemnation of gangs will also strike a chord with Vladimir Putin and the New Right, who see crime as a major negative result of modernity.

Judging by the reactions of the audience gathered on the Washington Mall, President Trump’s inaugural address was not only a surprise to politicians: it was clear by the time lag between his words and the often hesitant applause from the crowd, that his impassioned promise to change the life of the little guy was unexpected, even by his supporters in vizor caps, while the beltway mutters to itself:  “Where is this guy taking us?”

But let’s not get carried away: Hitler too promised the lumpen proletariat a new world, and it soon appeared in black shirts.  Yesterday’s announcement of missile launchers being placed on the site of the Stone Rock protests against an oil pipeline by the National Guard, are unlikely to have been ordered by former President Obama. Reading between the lines, Trump’s message is that if ‘the people’ obey, they will have nothing to fear as the 1% gets its way.

President Putin will no doubt wonder whether his new ‘partner’, as he likes to call Western leaders, will buy into his concept of a multi-polar world, but Trump’s inaugural speech leaves room for hope. After all, Rex Tillerson, his anointed Secretary of State, was not only the CEO of the world’s biggest oil company.  He also did a stint as President of the Boy Scouts, whose precepts are duty to God and country, duty to others and duty to self, which includes being morally straight.  

Donald Trump’s presidency should be attractive to a world that the US has for too long sought to rule, but instead it is obediently responding to  suggestions from the media that he is a loose cannon, enabling the old political guard to oppose his dismantling of ‘the greatest military alliance the world has ever known’, assisted by a Western press wholly committed to ‘the establishment’.  

In 1972, back in the US after being an expat for twenty-four years, I hoped my country would finally catch up with Western Europe, and recognize that government must embody the solidarity that had long relied on neighborliness. Anti-war activist and Senator George McGovern was the Democratic candidate, running against incumbent Richard Nixon, who claimed he would end the unpopular Vietnam war.  

I was appalled at McGovern’s treatment by the press, which spent most of its time warning voters of his leftward leanings, at a time when McCarthyism was still fresh in peoples’ minds. I almost couldn’t believe the innuendos I was reading, and was astonished that the public seemed unaware of the media’s distortions. (Forty-five years later, most Americans still believe the New York Times to be the gold standard, misinterpreting its motto ‘All the News that’s Fit to Print’ as a guarantee of impartiality, when in reality it was a reference to the muck-raking practiced by its competitors.) McGovern’s anti-war record was so closely harnessed to his left-leaning political views that no American presidential candidate since has dared to appear even remotely favorable to social democracy.

That brings us to the for many difficult to understand election of Donald J. Trump. As with McGovern in 1972, whose candidacy was brought down by the media, Bernie Sanders, Trump’s rival for the working class vote, was given comparatively little air-time, although his rallies drew large, enthusiastic crowds. When the Democratic Party realized that not all Americans still thought socialism was the worst thing that could happen to them, they connived to deprive Sanders of the nomination, as leaked emails from its national committee ultimately showed. They didn’t realize that in so doing, they were leaving the working class with only one realistic alternative: Donald Trump. (These people knew that a vote for the Green candidate, Jill Stein, would change nothing.)

Trump’s unexpected victory initiated a period of mourning for American "progressives", still convinced that only the Democratic Party can bring progress without sacrificing ‘democracy’.

By January 20th, the placards were ready  — as they have been in the long series of ‘color revolutions’ abroad — and women, fearful of losing the right to abortion, flooded the streets screaming that Donald Trump was not their president. The media had chided him when he said it would be up to his followers whether he would accept a negative election outcome, but it approvingly featured ‘worldwide’ demonstrations against the newly elected American president.  

On his first day in office, Trump met with several hundred CIA employees, who responded to his overtures with loud cheers, as if he had never accused their colleagues of Nazi behavior or incompetence. Ignoring the rowdy reception, the media picked apart small details of his address, complaining that his inaugural speech had not ‘brought people together’.

During the Sunday talk shows, although a crucial primary was taking place in France, where a Trump ally could become the next president, it was all about Trump’s complaint that photographs of the size of the crowd attending the inauguration were  misleading. Breaking with a long-standing custom of granting new presidents an initial honeymoon’, the journalists condemned him unanimously. Meanwhile, anti-Trump demonstrators interviewed at random by RT were unable to square their actions with America’s ‘ideals’ and ‘democratic system’, thus Washington Democrats will be able to oppose Trump in ways that go far beyond parliamentary procedure, their obedient fourth estate ecstatic at being encouraged to break with sycophancy. 

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer went so far as to wonder out loud who would legally be in charge if the newly elected president and his vice president were killed on inauguration day, suggesting that Trump’s adversaries in the august halls of power will spend most of their time seeking ways to shorten his rule.